The Dragon Revenant - Katharine Kerr [100]
“Obey me, and in a time, you will cease being a beast and start being a servant. This is the only hope you have. For a brave man it would never be enough, but it will keep a coward like you alive and obedient, crawling at my feet, but alive.”
The drunkenness swirled round his mind, that trained and disciplined mind that he’d been so proud of, that he’d bragged about, that had seemed to him clear proof of his superiority over the common class of men. Now it was swirling and staggering, and he was staggering, too, as the Hawks let him go. He took a few steps, lurched forward, and fell to his knees at the master’s feet.
“Get his gear,” the master said to the others. “We’ll go through it in a safer place. Get up, piglet. You’ll be carrying this load to spare the strength of the real men.”
Obediently Baruma rose, swaying a little, still dizzy. When he caught the edge of the table to steady himself, the dizziness passed off. Around him the Hawks were talking again; their words came and went through his mind like a barely comprehensible song.
“A dagger made out of silver—some ritual thing, I suppose—no, Deverrian—never mind that now—we have work to do tonight—a little surprise for the Old One’s men? We don’t know.”
When the words faded into a wind-sound, Baruma realized both that he’d been ensorceled and that the Hawkmaster had left him enough mind to know how little he had left. Even though deep in that last fragment of mind he was roiling with rage, he knew that his fear of dying and the torments that went with it would make him obey. Thanks to those tenors, he would shuffle along before his master the way a top spins before the child who whips it.
Down in Aberwyn, not far from the harbor, was a tavern that existed on the very cliff-edge of respectability. If its owner, the widow Sama, hadn’t worked so hard, the Three Swans would have slid over that edge years before, but she was up before dawn to mend up the fire and scrub tables, on her feet all day cooking solid meals for decent folk and serving good ale for a fair price, and late at night, by the light of a dying fire and a cheap tallow candle, she was sweeping the floor and starting the next morning’s porridge to stewing. All of this exhaustion enabled her to save a handful of coins, which she’d portioned out, a few at a time, as dowries for three of her four pretty daughters, so that they were all respectable married women now instead of hanging round the tavern working for the wrong kind of coin. Everyone in the neighborhood, even the unmarried young longshoremen, honored the widow for her virtue, and even in their most drunken moments none of them would have ever considered brawling in her tavern, where they might break a precious mug or overturn an expensive table and thus add to the widow’s hard lot in life.
The youngest and prettiest daughter, however, still lived with her mother, but not out of filial devotion. Although Sama had named her Heledd, everyone called her Glomer—as hard as coal at the very marrow of her bones, they all said, and why the Goddess saw fit to give a daughter like that to such a good woman we’ll never know! Even though she was sixteen and should have been married for several years, she’d turned down two decent suitors, saying the tanner’s lad stank too badly and the dyer’s lad had warts all over his hands. What Glomer wanted in her heart of hearts was the chance to work in the gwerbret’s dun. In those days being a servant for a generous clan like the Maelwaedds was a good position for a poor lass; you had plenty of food and drink, a new dress every year, a warm place to sleep and exciting events