The Bristling Wood - Katharine Kerr [99]
“Rhoddo!” Jill yelled. “Get up behind me! Naddryc’s horses are about to stampede.”
Rhodry sheathed his sword and swung up behind her. He was barely settled when she kicked Sunrise to a trot.
“What are you doing here?”
“Rescuing you. I could hear you laughing and rode straight for the sound. Look behind us. Are they coming?”
When he glanced back, he could see little in the smoke and dust, but he did make out an orderly procession of horselike objects moving away from the burning camp.
“By all the gods! Someone’s gotten them out of there.”
“It must be Epona herself, then. When I rode by a few minutes ago, they were screaming and pulling at their tethers.”
She paused the horse and turned in the saddle to give him a puzzled look. He grabbed her and kissed her, remembered his irrational panic, and kissed her again. With a laugh she pushed him away.
“You’re breaking my neck, twisted around like this. Wait till we’re alone, my love.”
At that Rhodry remembered that they were in the middle of a battle, but as he looked around, somewhat dazed as he always was when the fit left him, he realized that the fighting was over. Naddryc had been so outnumbered that most of his men had been slaughtered and the fortunate few remaining taken prisoner. As they dismounted and walked on, leading the horse over the uncertain ground, he saw Nedd talking to Graemyn over Naddryc’s corpse.
“Come here, silver dagger.” Nedd hailed him with a shout. “Your Grace, this is the man who killed this bastard.”
“You’ll be well rewarded for this, silver dagger,” Graemyn said. “Indeed, well rewarded for everything you’ve done for me.”
The tieryn knelt beside the corpse, then took his sword two-handed and severed Naddryc’s neck in one swift blow. Rhodry’s stomach churned; it was an impious thing that he was seeing. Graemyn grabbed the head by the hair and stood up, looking at every man nearby as if challenging them to say one wrong word, then strode away, the head dangling in his hand. Even though the priests had long since banned the taking of trophy heads with mighty curses, the sight of Graemyn with his enemy’s head touched something deep in Rhodry, as one string of a harp will sound when another is plucked. Although Jill and Nedd were watching the tieryn in honest revulsion, he felt a certain dark satisfaction.
“I’d do no less to a man who threatened my wife and kin,” Rhodry said.
“Well.” Nedd considered this briefly. “He had provocation, sure enough.”
Before he went back to the dun, Rhodry knelt beside the headless corpse and methodically looted it of every small and valuable thing, coin, ring brooch, a gold-trimmed scabbard, and a silver belt buckle. This hire had drawn to an end, and a silver dagger had to think of eating on the long road.
When the fire broke out in the tents, Perryn was riding around the edge of the actual battle, rounding up wounded horses and leading them to safety outside the earthworks. The meaning of the spread of smoke didn’t quite register on him until the chestnut he was riding snorted nervously and danced. Then he remembered Naddryc’s horses, tethered behind the tents. With an oath he turned the chestnut and galloped straight for the camp. At first the horse balked, but Perryn talked to him, patted him, soothed him until at last he picked up courage and allowed himself to be ridden near to the fire.
Between the burning and the earthwork, horses were rearing, screaming with that ugly half-human sound a horse makes only in terror, kicking out at the grooms trying to save them as they pulled desperately at their tether ropes. Perryn wrapped his reins around the saddle