The Bristling Wood - Katharine Kerr [27]
“Here,” Maddyn said. “What’s wrong?”
At that the rider did turn to look at him, and Maddyn swore aloud.
“Aethan, by all the gods! What are you doing on the Gwaentaer road?”
“And I could ask the same of you, Maddo.” His voice, normally deep and full of humor, was rasped with old pain. “Or have you come to fetch me to the Otherlands?”
Maddyn stared for a moment, then remembered that everyone in Cantrae thought him dead.
“Oh, I’m as much alive as you are. How were you wounded?”
“I’m not. I’ve been flogged.”
“Ah, horse dung and a pile of it! Can you ride any farther?”
Aethan considered this for a long moment. He was normally a handsome man, with even features, dark hair just touched with gray at the temples, and wide blue eyes that always seemed to be laughing at some jest, but now his face was twisted in pain, and his eyes were narrow and grim, as if perhaps he’d never laugh again.
“I need a rest,” he said at last. “Shall we sit awhile, or are you riding on and leaving me?”
“What? Are you daft? Would I run out on a man I’ve known since I was a cub of fifteen?”
“I don’t know anymore what men will do, and women neither.”
In a nearby meadow they found a pleasant copse of willows planted round a farmer’s duck pond, with the farmer nowhere in sight. Maddyn dismounted, then helped Aethan down and watered the horses while his friend sat numbly in the shade. As he worked, he was wondering over it all. Aethan was the last man in the kingdom that Maddyn would have expected to get himself shamed, flogged, and turned out of his warband. A favorite of his captain, Aethan had been a second-in-command of Gwerbret Tibryn’s own warband. He was one of those genuinely decent men so valuable to any good warband—the conciliator, everyone’s friend, the man who settled all those petty disputes bound to arise when a lot of men are packed into a barracks together. The gwerbret himself had on occasion asked Aethan’s advice on small matters dealing with the warband, but now here he was, with his shame written on his back in blood.
Once the horses were watered, Maddyn filled the waterskin with fresh drink and sat down next to Aethan, who took the skin from him with a twisted smile.
“Outlawed we may be, but we still follow the rules of the troop, don’t we, Maddo? Horses first, then men.”
“We need these mounts more than ever, with no lord to give us another.”
Aethan nodded and drank deep, then handed the skin back.
“Well, it gladdens my heart that you weren’t killed in Lord Devyr’s last charge. I take it you found a farm or suchlike to hide in all winter.”
“Somewhat like that. I was dying, actually, from a wound I took, when a local herbman found me.”
“Gods! You’ve always had the luck, haven’t you?”
Maddyn merely shrugged and stoppered up the skin tight. For a moment they merely sat there in an uncomfortable silence and watched the fat gray ducks grubbing at the edge of the pond.
“You hold your tongue cursed well for a bard,” Aethan said abruptly. “Aren’t you going to ask me about my shame?”
“Say what you want and not a word more.”
Aethan considered, staring out at the far flat horizon.
“Ah, horseshit,” he said at last. “It’s a tale fit for a bard to know, in a way. Do you remember our gwerbret’s sister, the Lady Merodda?”
“Oh, and how could any man with blood in his veins forget her?”
“He’d best try.” Aethan’s voice turned hard and cold. “Her husband was killed in battle last summer, and so she came back to her brother in Dun Cantrae. And the captain made me her escort, to ride behind her whenever she went out.” He was quiet, his mouth working, for a good couple of minutes. “And she took a fancy to me. Ah, by the black ass of the Lord of Hell, I should have said her nay—I blasted well knew it, even then—but ye gods, Maddo, I’m only made of