The Dragon Revenant - Katharine Kerr [164]
Something caught her hand, and she looked down to see her gray gnome, dancing in glee and pulling her onward. Through a waft of smoke shapes appeared ahead: more gnomes, all sooty and triumphant.
“Rhodry!” she gasped out. “Are you …”
“Right here.” He was choking and hacking. “Right here and safe.”
The gnomes clustered round and grabbed his hands to drag him forward. In a crowd of Wildfolk they staggered up to the crest of a hill and flopped down, coughing and gasping for breath. When Jill looked back, she saw the compound walls collapsing inward in a rush of greasy black smoke. Even though the tall grass grew all round, and sparks and great slabs of burning debris blew through the air, not one blade of the green ever caught, nor did the fire reach them. She turned to Rhodry and burst into hysterical laughter, because even in the midst of all these vast dweomer-workings, these mighty magicks drawn from the soul of the universe, her dagger still faithfully glowed to warn her that an unreliable elf was close at hand.
“Oh, I wish Otho could see this!” She was choking and laughing and sobbing all at once. “Never trust an elf, he told me. They’ll get you into trouble for sure, he said. Ye gods, he was right! He was right!”
Rhodry stabbed the dagger into the ground to douse it and threw his arms around her. Alternately choking and laughing they clung together until Nevyn and Salamander came pounding up the hill.
“Are you hurt?” Nevyn said.
“We’re not. Singed, no doubt.”
“You don’t have any eyebrows that I can see. And as sooty as the inside of a charcoal brazier, both of you.” Nevyn’s voice shook so badly that it was hard to tell if he were close to tears or hysterical laughter. “Can you ride? We’d best get out of here.”
Rhodry scrambled up, then caught her hand to pull her after him. When she stumbled and nearly fell, she realized just how exhausted she was, and not in any normal way. Only then did she realize something else as well, that there in the burning garden she’d worked dweomer, not done an exercise or accidental trick, but performed an act of magic, and a mighty one.
Late that afternoon Rhodry led his ragged line of frightened men and spooked horses up to the grassy crest of a low hill. Down below he saw a sheltered valley where a stream ran over clean rock, and holm oaks grew in a scattered grove. Although it was a perfect place to camp, when he turned in the saddle he could still see the smoke of the burning villa, a black though distant streak on the sky. Nevyn rode up next to him.
“It’s time to camp for the night.”
“We can’t stop here. We’re still in danger.”
“Well, so we are.” Nevyn’s voice seemed to trail away in exhaustion after every phrase. “The rest of the Hawks are bound to discover what’s happened sooner or later.”
“That’s not what I meant, my lord. Those slaves you drove off? They must have reached a town or another villa by now. The authorities will round up the local militia. The smoke from that fire’s like a beacon, and once they get to the villa, they’d have to be blind to miss our tracks.”
“Just so. That’s one reason I set the wretched fire in the first place. Gwiri’s got you thinking like a Hawk, Rhodry lad. Once we’re under arrest, we’ll be safe.” The old man patted the leather bags that hung from his saddle’s peak. “I have letters from the archon of Pastedion to show around as we need them. Come to think of it, I’ve got some from the archon of Surat, too.”
For a moment Rhodry wanted to yell at the old man. It was a physical thing, sharp and bitter—he wanted to snarl at Nevyn and announce that he was in charge here and that they’d blasted well camp when he wanted to and not a moment before.
“Jill’s got to rest,” Nevyn went on. “She’s so utterly spent that she can’t even stay in the saddle much longer.”
Hearing the old man mention her name infuriated him