The Bristling Wood - Katharine Kerr [160]
Once she collected her horse and gear, as a precaution she took the long way back to the Golden Dragon, sticking to the wider boulevards where she could ride rather than leading her horse down narrow streets. She took a turn by the harbor, where the merchantmen were drawn up at pier after pier to load the last of the summer’s goods. In another month or so, the seas would be impassable, and already the water was a darker, colder blue. Here and there she saw Bardek men engrossed in conversations with the foremen of the longshore crews, while great bales of cargo marched down the gangplanks on the backs of men. You can get a cursed lot in one of those ships, she idly thought to herself.
“Gods!”
She kicked her horse to a jog and rushed back to the inn, caution forgotten.
She found Salamander perfectly calm, or rather, a little too calm, just as she was, his eye more steel than smoke, his voice brittle. He waved at a pair of full goblets on the table.
“We never drank the mead I poured. I suggest we do so. A pledge, I was thinking.”
“Splendid idea. Tell me the elven word for vengeance, will you? We should swear in both our tongues.”
“Anadelonbrin. Swift-striking hatred.”
“Done, then. Anadelonbrin!”
“Vengeance!” And he tossed back his head and howled like a wolf on the coldest night in winter. “That’s to summon the death wolves, my turtledove, the vengeance wolves of the goddess of the Dark Sun. Do you know Her? I think me you do, but by another name, because I can see Her eyes look out of yours at times. The elven seers teach that there are two suns, a pair of twin sisters. One is the bright sun that we see in the sky; the other is on the other side of the world. The bright sister gives life, and the dark, need I say, death.”
“Then may Her wolves ever run before us.”
They touched goblets and drank the mead together.
Salamander had, of course, contacted Nevyn through the fire and told him of Jill’s discovery. For some hours that afternoon, Nevyn could do little but pace back and forth in the sickroom and let his rioting emotions spend themselves. Loathing, grief, fury—they all ran together and made him feel like screaming out curses on the gods and the Great Ones alike, that they would let such a thing happen. That Rhodry would die was horrible enough; that he would die slowly at the hands of perverted men was heart-wrenching. As always, he berated himself as well. Surely there must have been some warning he’d overlooked, something he could have done? Every time he looked at Rhys, fighting for his life, gasping for every painful breath he drew, his highly trained imagination would threaten him with pictures of Rhodry in the hands of the Hawks. Over and over again he banished those thoughts by stamping them with the image of a flaming pentagram until at last his mind was still.
Then, finally, he could think. Although his first impulse was to rush to Cerrmor, not only did he have pressing reasons to stay where he was, but also the journey would simply take too much time. By the time he reached Cerrmor, Jill and Salamander might well be a hundred miles away. Besides, if the enemy had left by water, as certainly seemed the case, they and their victim were doubtless already long gone. It made perfect sense: although they could never get an unconscious man past the harbor guards and customs officers in Cerrmor itself, nothing would be easier than to get him out of the city in a wagon, load him onto a coastal vessel, and take him to some less heavily guarded port, where … where what? That ‘what’ puzzled Nevyn mightily. If the Hawks had simply wanted to torture him to death or even kill him quickly, why hadn’t they taken him on the long road down to Cerrmor or even stayed in the Bilge, where torturing a man to death was considered light entertainment and no matter for the gwerbret’s men? Why all this business with ships and this slow game of gwyddbwcl that offered