The Bristling Wood - Katharine Kerr [63]
“There’s the fair maiden, Owaen. Oh, she doesn’t look half so tasty in the daylight. Was she worth it, Owaen? Was she? As hot as Bardek spices, then.”
Owaen walked away fast, his head up high, his mouth set tight. Clwna burst out weeping and ran. Maddyn thought of following her, then decided that she’d have to learn her lessons, too.
That night the first of the long slashing winter rains came in from the Southern Sea. Penned inside with no more amusements than dice and ale, the king’s guard kept up their relentless teasing. It seemed to Maddyn that no matter when he saw Owaen, the lad was being mocked by his fellows. There were jests about Clwna, jests about whipping dogs into shape, jests about a man stupid enough to challenge a bard—on and on, over and over, and each more tired and feeble than the last. Maddyn could only assume that Owaen’s arrogance had irked his fellow guardsmen for years; doubtless they envied him, too. Maddyn also noticed Caradoc keeping a careful eye on the situation. Often the captain stepped in when the teasing turned vicious and stopped it.
Finally, on the fourth solid day of rain, things came to a head. After dinner that night, Caradoc lingered in the great hall and kept Maddyn there with him after the rest of the silver daggers went to the barracks. They collared a couple of tankards of dark ale from a serving lass and moved to a table in the curve of the wall, where they were barely noticeable in the shadows but had a good view of Owaen, who was sitting at the end of a table of guardsmen.
“Tomorrow this demon-get storm will blow over,” Caradoc remarked. “I hope that someone else does somewhat stupid and soon. Give them a new butt for their jokes.”
They lounged there for about half an hour while the prince’s bard sang manfully over the laughter and talk. Because of all the noise, Maddyn never heard what started the fight. All at once, Owaen and another lad were on their feet and yelling at each other in inarticulate rage. Caradoc leapt up and ran, but too late. The other lad grabbed his sword and drew. Maddyn hardly saw Owaen move. There was a flash of steel in torchlight; his opponent staggered back, blood running down his face. Caradoc caught him by the shoulders and laid him down in the straw just as Maddyn reached them. The hall broke out in screaming and shouting. Owaen threw his bloody sword down on the table and stared, his mouth open in shock. When men grabbed him from behind, he went limp in their hands. Maddyn knelt beside Caradoc and the bleeding victim.
“How badly is he cut?”
“Cut? He’s dead.”
Half disbelieving it, Maddyn stared at the corpse on the floor. Owaen had struck twice in that blur of motion, slashing the lad’s face half open, then catching his throat on the backswing. Shouting and swearing, men clustered round; Caradoc and Maddyn left the corpse to them and worked their way free of the mob just in time to see the guard marching Owaen out of the hall. The lad was weeping.
“Ah, horseshit!” Caradoc growled. “He’s just too blasted good with that blade. I could have stopped it in time if it’d been anyone else. Ah, horseshit!”
“And a stinking heap of it. What’ll you wager he didn’t even realize he’d killed the lad until he heard you say it?”
Caradoc muttered an inaudible oath under his breath, then went in search of their tankards.
For a long hour, Maddyn and Caradoc waited in the nervous crowd for news of Prince Cadlew’s judgment. Finally two pages, young eyes bright with excitement, came running in to announce that the prince was going to have Owaen hanged on the morrow. Since the other lad had drawn first, no one thought the sentence just, but no one could argue with the prince, either. The very same lads who’d driven Owaen to his fit of temper spoke contritely and defended him to everyone else, while serving lasses wept and said how handsome he was to die so young. Caradoc drank steadily, then suddenly slammed his tankard onto the table.
“I’m not going to stand for it! What do you