The Bristling Wood - Katharine Kerr [122]
The tears stopped, and she looked up at him.
“It was true, then? He has the dweomer?”
“I’m not so sure of that, but you were ensorceled well and truly. Where is he?”
“Off stealing a horse from someone.”
“And the horse dung, too, no doubt. This lad sounds stranger and stranger.”
“You might well say that and twice. Please, we’ve got to get away before he gets back.”
“Not that, because I’ve got a thing or two to say to him.”
“But he’s dweomer!”
Salamander smiled lazily.
“It is time for all truths to be known. So am I.”
She pulled away, staring at him.
“How else did I know you’d been ensorceled, and how else would I have found you? Now come along. Let’s get your gear on your horse. I want to curse this fellow to the three hells, and then we’ve got to be on our way. Rhodry’s got a long head start on us.”
At the mention of Rhodry’s name, she began to sob again. Salamander pulled her close into his arms.
“Na, na, na, little one. Remember you’re a warrior’s daughter. There’ll be time enough for tears later, when we’re well away from here. We’ll find your Rhodry for you.”
“Oh ye gods, I don’t know if your brother will even want me back.”
“My … here! How did you find out?”
The urgency in his voice stopped her tears.
“I … well, I had a true dream. I saw your father.”
“Gods! If you have that kind of power, and this fellow still … well, he may be a bit more powerful than I thought, but cursed if I’ll run until I get a look at him. Let me saddle your horse for you, and you tell me the tale.”
As best she could, Jill told him about Perryn and the events of the last few days, but it was difficult for her to find words to put things in any sort of order, or indeed to remember exactly how long she’d been traveling with Perryn. At times it seemed a few years, at others months. She was shocked when Salamander told her that it had been at most a fortnight. While he listened, he grew angry, until finally he cut short one last stumbling sentence with a wave of his hand.
“I’ve heard enough, little one. This ugly bastard should be flogged and hanged, if you ask me. I wonder if I can get him to a lord’s justice.”
“Not here. All the lords are his kin.”
“And who will believe me when I come to them talking of dweomer, besides? Well, there’s other kinds of justice in the kingdom.”
When she looked at him, she saw his anger like ghostly flames burning over his face and looked away again. Yet the vision jogged her memory.
“Was it you I saw a while back? I saw an elf all covered with silver fire in the sky.”
“It was, true enough. But you were seeing only a well … call it an image of me.”
She nodded, the thought and the memory slipping away again. She wondered why he was so angry with Perryn, but it seemed that somehow she should know the answer.
Salamander was just finishing tying her bedroll behind the saddle when he paused, cocking his head to listen. It was several minutes before she heard the sound of hoof beats, three horses coming fast. Ducking and dodging among the trees, Perryn rode up with two chestnut colts following him along. As Salamander walked to meet him, Perryn dismounted and ran the last few yards.
“Who are you?” Perryn shouted. “Jill, what are you doing?”
Although she was shaking too hard to speak, her saddled and loaded horse was an obvious answer. When Perryn started to run to her, Salamander stepped in between. Perryn swung at him flat-handed. All at once Wildfolk swarmed into existence and mobbed him, a good hundred of them biting pinching kicking punching as they fell upon him like dogs on a tossed bone. Perryn screamed and yelped, hitting blindly at an enemy he couldn’t see, and finally went down under them, a tossing, heaving mound.
“Enough!” Salamander yelled.
The Wildfolk disappeared, leaving Perryn trembling and whimpering on the ground.
“That’s better, dog,” Salamander snarled. “A fine scion of the Wolf clan are you, a horse thief and a wife stealer both!”
He flung up one hand and chanted a long string