The Bristling Wood - Katharine Kerr [60]
“I don’t want to hear anyone else mock a man for a trouble he can’t help.”
Except for the nervous horses, stamping restless hooves, the ward was dead silent. Puzzled as much as pleased, Maddyn kept his eyes on Owaen, who was barely seventeen, for all that he’d been riding to war for the past three years. Normally he was the most arrogant man Maddyn had ever met. Wearing the Eldidd dragons on his shirt wasn’t enough for Owaen, who had his own device of a striking falcon marked on his shirt, his dagger, his saddle—on every piece of gear he owned, from the look of it. He was also the best swordsman in the guard, if not the entire kingdom, and his fellow riders knew it. When the squad dismounted, it was only to pick up the unconscious man and sling him over his saddle to carry him away. With a small, friendly nod in Caudyr’s direction, Owaen followed them.
“Now that’s a puzzle and a half,” Caudyr said. “Owaen’s the last man I ever thought would do such a thing.”
“No more did I. I know that Caradoc thinks highly of the lad. Maybe he’s right, after all.”
In the barracks a couple of the men were building a fire in the stone hearth. Others sat on the line of bunks and talked of dice games. Pale, mousy Argyn, who was one of the most cold-blooded and vicious killers in the warband, was already asleep, but for all that he was snoring like a summer storm, no one disturbed him to shut him up. The long room smelled of sweat, woodsmoke, and horses, especially of horses, since the troop’s mounts were stabled directly below the slatted floor. To Maddyn, it was a comfortable kind of smell that said home to him after all these years of riding in one warband or another. He sat down on his bunk and took his harp out of its padded leather bag.
“Here, Maddo!” Aethan called out. “For the love of every god in the Otherlands, don’t sing that same blasted song about King Bran’s cattle raid, will you?”
“Ah, hold your tongue. I’m trying to learn it.”
“And don’t we all know it?” Caradoc broke in. “I’m as sick as I can be of you missing that stanza in the middle and going back over it.”
“As the captain orders. But don’t be taking my head off, then, for never knowing a new song.”
In sheer annoyance he put the harp away and stomped out of the barracks, followed by a small crowd of disappointed Wildfolk, who tugged at his sleeve and his brigga leg to try to get him to go back and sing. When he ignored them, they disappeared, a few at a time, but all of them with reproachful looks on their tiny faces. He went straight to the kitchen hut, where there was a scullery lass, Clwna, who liked him well enough to sneak out to the hayloft with him every now and then. By his reckoning, she should have been done with her work. The kitchen hut’s door was open to let a cheerful spill of light fall across the cobbles, and clustered around it were the king’s hunting dogs, waiting hopefully for scraps. Maddyn kicked his way through the pack and stood in the doorway. The scullery boys were washing the last of the kettles at the hearth, and the cook herself, a gray-haired woman with enormous muscular arms, was perched on a tall stool and eating her own dinner out of a wooden bowl.
“I know what you’re after, silver dagger. Clwna’s gone already, and no doubt with another of you lads.”
“No doubt. With my lady’s gracious permission, I’ll wait here for a bit to see if she comes back.”
The cook snorted and pushed a strand of hair back from her forehead with her little finger.
“You silver daggers are a strange lot. Most men would be howling with rage if their wench slipped out with another lad.”
“We share what we get when we can get it. I’m just glad that Clwna’s a sensible lass.”
“Sensible, hah! If you call it sensible to get yourself known as one of the silver daggers’ women. I’m fair minded to beat some sense into the lass, I am.”
“Oh, now here!