The Black Raven - Katharine Kerr [69]
They left the hall but stood for a moment under the shelter of the doorway. Rain pounded down on the cobbled ward, one of many at the heart of the fortress. Dun Deverry stood on the crest of a high hill and spilled over it, too, trailing down the sides in a jumble of towers and barracks, storage sheds and brochs. Here and there low walls surrounded a particular cluster of buildings, marked off a random—seeming ward, or cut across open space for no particular reason. Most of the buildings were squat in the broch style, wider at the base than the top. A few slender towers rose up over the confusion, though they seemed to have been built off true, because they leaned over the wards below.
Thunder cracked overhead and rolled around the towers. Owaen looked up at the dark sky and scratched his stomach in a thoughtful sort of way.
“They won’t be out and about,” Maddyn said, “these lads of yours.”
“Maybe not. Here! What’s that?”
At the gates someone was yelling, demanding entry, and men came running to swing them wide. Escorted by pages, a rider on a black horse jogged through. He was carrying a staff wound with many-colored ribands, plastered down at the moment with rain. His boots and brigga and his mount’s legs and belly dripped dark mud.
“It’s a herald,” Owaen said.
“True spoken,” Maddyn said. “And isn’t that the Boar crest on his saddlebags?”
The herald handed his staff down to a page, then dismounted and reclaimed the soggy emblem of his office. As a stableboy led the black away, the silver daggers could see the Boar rampant quite clearly, stamped on the saddle skirts as well as the saddlebags.
“Isn’t that interesting?” Maddyn said. “I wonder what Lord Braemys has to say to our prince?”
“The gall of the man!” Prince Maryn snarled. “The stinking spiteful gall!”
“Well, truly, Your Highness,” Oggyn said. “It bodes ill.”
Nevyn propped his elbows on the table and considered the piece of parchment lying in front of him. The three men were sitting in the prince’s private council chamber, where the prince had pressed Nevyn into service as a scribe to read the letter from Braemys of the Boar. A cold wind flapped the cowhides hanging over the windows and swirled round the stone room. The candles guttered dangerously low. Nevyn grabbed the parchment and held it flat.
“I must admit,” the prince said, “that I’m not looking forward to spending a winter here. The summer storms are bad enough. Listen to that rain come down!”
“True spoken, my liege,” Nevyn said. “But if this is how Braemys thinks a man sues for peace, then you’d best not leave Dun Deverry. He might move right in and call himself king.”
“Just so, my prince,” Oggyn put in. “His arrogance astounds me.”
“He mentions Tibryn’s son, the new gwerbret. What is he, still a child?”
“Just that, my liege, about seven years old,” Oggyn said. “By a second wife. Nevyn, what did you say the child’s name was?”
Nevyn read the letter aloud once again. “To the Usurper, Maryn, Prince of Pyrdon. It is my understanding that you hold among your court’s womenfolk Lillorigga, daughter of the Boar clan. Since she has been formally betrothed to me, I demand her immediate release and return to me at Cantrae. Braemys of the Boar, Regent to Lwvan, Gwerbret Cantrae.”
That was all, but the salutation spoke clearly enough for a stack of parchments.
“So!” the prince said. “He wants war.”
“Just so, my liege,” Nevyn said. “He’s taken on his father’s feud.”
“Well, it’s his right, and he’s doing the honorable thing.” Maryn frowned down at the table. “But I wish he’d seen his way clear to taking my pardon instead.”
Nevyn nodded agreement. Before this summer’s fighting had given Maryn control of Dun Deverry, the lords of the Boar clan—Braemys’s father and uncle—had ruled in their half of the divided kingdom, though technically in the name of another child, young Olaen, who claimed to be king. They were all dead now, the would-be king and the two Boar lords as well, but the civil wars, it seemed, were not yet over, not with the Boar’s son to carry them on.
“Perhaps we can