The Bristling Wood - Katharine Kerr [104]
“Somewhat wrong?” Nedd said.
“Naught, my lord. It just looked like … oh, like someone had dropped a bit of gear in there, but it was only a rock.”
Later, as they sat by the campfire, Rhodry had the distinct feeling that he was being watched, but although he looked carefully around him, he never caught either man or spirit looking his way.
“Using the Wildfolk to spy could be cursed dangerous,” said the man who was calling himself Gwin.
“1 know that, but there’s naught else I can do until I get a look at Rhodry in the flesh.” His companion looked up from the scrying mirror, laid out on a square of black velvet on the table in front of him. “At least he’s got out of that siege. That stinking little feud could have been the ruin of all our plans.”
Gwin merely nodded, well aware how close they’d come to losing their prey to a warrior’s Wyrd. The man who was using the name Merryc carefully wrapped up the mirror and put it back into the secret pocket of his saddlebags. Although they were both Bardek men, they’d been chosen for this hunt because there was Deverry blood in their families. Both had straight, dark brown hair and skin light enough to go unremarked in the kingdom, especially in the northern provinces, where men of their homeland were rarely seen. Gwin’s mother, in fact, had been a Deverry girl, sold by her impoverished clan to a Bardek merchant as a concubine. As he vaguely remembered, his father had been fairly pale by Bardek standards, too, but then he’d only seen the man a handful of times before they’d sold him off as an unwanted slave child at the age of four. He knew nothing about Merryc’s background nor, in fact, his true name. Men who were chosen for the Hawks of the Brotherhood kept their own secrets and allowed others theirs.
“Do you know where he is now?”
“I do,” Merryc said, buckling the saddlebag. “It’s not far. I think it’ll be perfectly safe for us to ride by on the morrow. We can stop and gawk at the army for a few minutes. No one will think much of it. What traveler wouldn’t stop and stare at the doings of the noble-born?”
“True-spoken. And then?”
“We watch. Naught more. Remember that well. All we do is watch from a distance until Rhodry and the lass are out on the road alone. Then we can summon the others and make our move.”
“Well and good, then, but there’s somewhat about this plan that vexes me. It’s too complex, all twisted like a bit of those interlaced decorations they favor here.”
“Well, and I have to admit I feel the same, but who are we to argue with our officers?”
“No one, of course.”
“That jest wasn’t funny in the least.”
“I didn’t mean it to be a jest.”
Gwin felt a sudden shudder of fear, as if by saying the ordinary phrase “nev yn” he might have summoned Nevyn into their inn chamber like a demon rising at the very sound of its name. Then he brushed the irrational thought aside. It was only a symptom of his unease with the convoluted scheme which his superiors in the blood guild had laid upon them. It was all very well for them, safely back in the islands, to talk of kidnapping Rhodry unharmed without attracting the attention of the dweomer of light.
“Has anyone told you what we’re supposed to do about that lass of his?” Merryc said.
“They have. Kill her. If there’s time, we’re allowed to have a bit of sport with her first.”
“Splendid. By all accounts, she’s lovely.”
“But only if it’s safe. She’s not important at all to whatever the point of all this is, or so I was told. She just needs to be gotten out of the way.”
Merryc nodded, considering this new bit of information. They were both too low in the Hawks’ guild to have been given more than what they absolutely needed to know.