The Gold Falcon - Katharine Kerr [102]
“Here, if he didn’t even want you in his dun, why would he object?”
“Oh, it’s not me. It’s the honor of thing. His daughter, marrying a commoner—he might start breathing fire and swearing at the very thought. We honestly don’t know how he’ll take it.”
Neb groaned aloud. Branna reached over and patted his arm.
“Well, if worse comes to worst,” she said, “we can run away together, and even if they catch us, I’ll be dishonored and they’ll have to let us marry.”
“If he doesn’t beat you—”
“Do you think the Wildfolk would let him?”
Neb grinned in slow satisfaction. “They wouldn’t, and it would be a sight worth seeing if he tried. But what shall we do next? Write him a letter?”
“I don’t know. Aunt Galla wants to think about it before we do anything. She knows him better than anyone, after all. She’s his sister.”
“Very well, then. I’ll be guided by our lady’s advice.”
“I truly do think that’s best.” Branna frowned down at the table. “I wonder if there’s going to be a war soon. I’ve been having the oddest sort of—well, they’re not dreams, because I’m awake when they happen, but they’re sort of pictures and the like, about our men fighting the Horsekin.”
“Do we win?”
“They don’t go that far.” Branna looked up, her face pale. “You believe that I’ve seen omens, don’t you?”
“I do. Why would I doubt you?”
Branna laid her hand at her throat and looked away for a long silence. Finally she said, “I wish Salamander would get back here! That’s all. He’ll either have news of the Horsekin or he won’t, and he’ll either know what’s happening to us or he won’t, and ye gods, I’m sick of waiting to find out.”
Salamander himself was wishing that he were back in the tieryn’s dun. Rocca had been leading him west by an improbably round-about route. Certain rock formations, she told him, were cursed and had to be avoided, just as certain ancient trees held evil spirits. A particular stream held water so heavily enchanted, or so she believed, that they followed it upstream for miles until it became narrow enough for them to jump across it. In the virgin forest, where bracken and shrubs grew thick between the trees, Salamander was forced to walk and lead his pair of horses along narrow trails.
“You know,” he said one evening, “if we turned south, we could travel across grassland, and it would be faster.”
“What? Never!” Rocca said. “This stretch of the journey, it be terrible dangerous enough as it is. The open land, it be worse.”
“It is?” Salamander said. “Why?”
“Because of Vandar’s spawn.”
“Who?”
“The Lord of Evil, Vandar, did father children on beasts.” Rocca glanced around and lowered her voice, as if she feared spies lurking in the wild forest around them. “They do look somewhat like men and Horsekin, but their eyes do give them away, all slit like cats and bestial. And their ears! It be a custom amongst them, that they do torture their children as babies, you see, to fill them with hate and bile. They do pull upon the child’s ears and cut them with sharp knives. Betimes even do they touch them with hot irons.” She shuddered dramatically. “Mayhap some knowledge of them has come your way. Men call them the Westfolk.”
Salamander was so shocked that he could do nothing but gape at her.
“It be a horrible thing, bain’t?” Rocca continued. “But fear not! The Children of Alshandra shall prevail in the end. It be our wyrd to kill every single one of the Spawn and make the plains clean and pure again. And then our people, they may graze their horses on the abundance of Alshandra’s good grass.”
“I see.” Salamander managed to find his voice. “And what then? Once we have enough horses, are we going to conquer Deverry as well?”
“Nah, nah, nah, naught as horrid as that! With the Spawn destroyed,