• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 718 0

waiting for him. You’re twice a dolt, he told himself, first taking another man’s woman—and then losing her. Benoic would heap scorn on him for years over this, he knew. After the splendor of having had someone to love, of having had someone who had loved him—he refused to believe that Jill had never loved him—his life stretched ahead like a bleak, foggy road. It seemed to take him forever to leave the spot. He would just get some small task done, like rolling up his blankets, when something would make him think of Jill, and he would weep again. The dapple gray stayed close to him, nuzzling his shoulder or nudging him in the back as if to say that he should cheer up.

“At least you love me, don’t you?” Perryn whispered. “But a horse is a wretchedly easy thing to please.”

Finally he was ready to set out, with his gray saddled and his pack horse and the two new colts on lead ropes. He mounted, then merely sat in the saddle for a long time and stared at the place that would hold his last memories of Jill. Where to go next? The question seemed insuperable. At last, when the gray was beginning to dance in irritable restlessness under him, he turned back northwest. Not far away was the town of Leryn, where he knew a dishonest trader who would take the colts and ask no questions. All that day he rode slowly, and the tears came and went of their own accord.

Rhodry might have taken a barge passage immediately if it hadn’t been for the gray gnome, who came to him early on the same morning that Salamander caught up with Jill. The little creature was ecstatic, dancing around and grinning so broadly that it exposed all its long pointed teeth.

“Well, little brother, I take it you know that Jill’s left Perryn.”

The gnome nodded, then pointed to the southeast.

“Is that where Jill is?”

The gnome shook its head no, then pantomimed Perryn’s graceless walk.

“Oho! How far away is our dear Lord Perryn?”

The gnome shrugged and waved its hands as if to say not very far at all. Rhodry debated for a long while. On the one hand, he wanted to be after Jill; on the other, his desire for revenge was like a lust. Finally the vengeance won.

“Well and good, little brother. I’ll saddle up my horse, and you lead me to him.”

The gnome grinned and jigged, pointing always off to the south and east.

It was late in the afternoon when Rhodry came to a scrappy little village, a huddle of houses at the top of a hill without even a proper wall around it. Although there was no tavern, the blacksmith’s wife kept a few barrels of ale in her kitchen for thirsty travelers, but she refused to have a silver dagger in her house. She did, however, let him buy a tankard and drink it out in the muddy yard, where chickens scratched near a small sty that held a pair of half-grown pigs. The woman, a stout sort with wispy gray hair, set her hands on her hips and glared at him the whole time as if she thought he would steal the tankard. When he was done, Rhodry handed it back with an exaggerated bow.

“My thanks, fair lady. I don’t suppose you get many travelers through here.”

“Why do you want to know?”

“I’m looking for a friend of mine, that’s all, a tall, skinny fellow with red hair and—”

“You’d best go over to the baker’s then. A fellow like that bought a tankard from me not half an hour ago, and he said he needed to buy bread.”

“Oh, indeed? He didn’t have a lass with him, did he?”

“He didn’t, just a couple of extra horses. Too many horses, if you ask me. Didn’t like the look of him, I didn’t.”

Following her directions, Rhodry hurried along the twisting street. When he reached the house with the big beehive clay ovens in the front yard he saw Perryn’s dapple gray, his pack horse, and a pair of colts tied up nearby. He laughed aloud, just a quick snatch of a berserker’s chuckle, and thanked Great Bel in his heart. As he tied up his horse, he could see Perryn through the open door, handing over some coppers to a fellow in a cloth apron. Rhodry strode in. His hands full of loaves, Perryn turned and yelped, a satisfying gulp of pure terror.

“You bastard,” Rhodry