The Bristling Wood - Katharine Kerr [129]
“Humph,” Nevyn snorted. “Blaen isn’t much of a man at subterfuge.”
“Rhys would have understood that message in an instant if he’d read it.” Lovyan took the letter back and dropped it into the glowing charcoal. The smell of burning leather drifted into the room, and Nevyn hurried to open the shutters. “The news about Savyl of Camynwaen’s troubling. I do not like the idea of Talidd’s finding another gwerbret to plead his case with our liege.”
“No more do I. Ye gods, this is all getting vexed!”
“Do you think Rhys would rebel if the king overrode his decree of exile?”
“Not on his own, but he might be persuaded by men who think they have a chance at the rhan if he died childless.”
“Just so. They’d try to push him into it, anyway. On the other hand, if the king does intervene, then Rhys could stop my nagging tongue without losing any face.”
“True enough. He could bluster about the decree all he wanted in front of the other lords but accept it privately.”
“So I hope. Well, we don’t even know if the king truly plans to recall Rhodry.” She looked at the twisted sheet of parchment ash in the brazier, then picked up the poker and knocked it into dust. “Let us hope that Blaen sends us more news soon.”
Rhodry had no trouble buying passage on a barge that was making the run down to Lughcarn. His horse shared the stern with the barge mules that would pull the boat upriver again; he had a place to sleep in the bow with the four crewmen, who spoke to him as little as possible. The rest of the barge’s hundred feet were laden with rough-shaped iron ingots from the smelters of Ladotyn up in the high mountains. Although the barge rode low in the water, the river current was smooth and steady, and for three days they glided south, while Rhodry amused himself by watching the countryside go by. Once the hills were behind them, the grassy meadows and rich grain fields of Gwaentaer province spread out, green and gold in the late summer sun, flat and seemingly endless.
On the fourth day they crossed the border into Deverry proper, though Rhodry didn’t see much change in the countryside to mark it. Toward noon, the bargemaster told him that they’d make Lughcarn that night.
“It’s the end of our run, silver dagger, but I’ll wager you can find another barge going down into Dun Deverry.”
“Splendid. This is a cursed eight faster than riding, and I’ve got to reach Cerrmor as soon as ever I can.”
The bargemaster scratched his beard thoughtfully.
“Don’t know much about the river traffic south out of the king’s city, but I’ll wager there’s some.” He shrugged his massive shoulders. “Well, whether there is or not, you’ll be only about a week’s ride from Cerrmor then.”
By late afternoon Rhodry saw the first sign that they were coming close to the city. At first he thought he was seeing clouds on the southern horizon, but the steersman enlightened him. A dark pall of smoke hung in the air, smoke from the charcoal ovens, smoke from the charcoal itself as it fed the forges to turn rough iron into Lughcarn steel. By the time they turned into the docks just outside the walled city, his linen shirt was flecked with soot. The docks themselves and the warehouses just beyond were grimy gray. As he rode through the gate in the soot-blackened city walls, Rhodry was thinking that he’d be very glad to leave Lughcarn behind.
Yet it was a rich city under the soot. As he searched for a tavern poor enough to take in a silver dagger, Rhodry passed fine houses, some of them as tall as a poor lord’s broch, with carved plaques over the doors proclaiming the name of one great merchant clan or another. There were temples all over the city, too, some to obscure gods usually relegated to a tiny shrine in the corner of a temple of Bel, some, like the great temple of Bel itself, as large as duns, with gardens and outbuildings of their own. Until he finally found the poor section of town, down by the river on the southern bank, he saw very few beggars, and even among the wooden huts of the longshoremen