The Gold Falcon - Katharine Kerr [200]
“You!” Adranna stopped in front of him and considered him for a long moment. “Raldd told us of your treachery. You—after we fed you at our table.”
“It aches my heart,” Salamander began, “but—”
Adranna spat full into his face. With a toss of her head she walked past him, head held high. Neb pulled an ink-stained rag out of his pocket and handed it to Salamander, who took it with a murmur of thanks.
Tieryn Cadryc was hurrying forward to meet Adranna when Treniffa spotted him. With a howl of “Gran, Gran!” she broke away from her mother’s grasp and ran weeping to his outspread arms. At the sight Adranna began to weep as well. For a moment she stood trembling and alone, watching her father as if she feared a blow.
“Addi!” Cadryc bellowed. “Thanks be to every god! Er, or every goddess, I suppose I should say, eh? Your mother’s been worried half out of her mind, and I don’t mind admitting that I’m cursed glad to see you out of that dun.”
“I—” Adranna was weeping too hard to finish. She ran the last few yards with the servants hurrying after. The Red Wolf warband closed around them all and swept them downhill to safety.
After a brief discussion with his daughter and his captain, Cadryc decided to send the women back to Cengarn immediately. Gerran picked out five men for an escort and gave them their orders—get the women to safety, then return to the army. Two of those he picked, Warryc and Daumyr, decided to argue about it.
“Your Grace, and you, too, Captain,” Warryc said, “we respectfully request that you let us stay with the army and send someone else to Cengarn instead.”
“Oh, do you now?” Cadryc sounded amused. “And why should the captain let you do that?”
“It was us that Honelg lied to, Your Grace, about there being illness in his dun, I mean. We don’t want to miss the fight.”
“So he did. I’d forgotten that.” Cadryc glanced at Gerran. “You get the last word on this.”
“What makes you think you’re going to miss anything?” Gerran said. “We could be here for the rest of the summer.”
“Well, true-spoken.” Warryc paused to turn uphill and look at the dun. “But he’s sent his women out, hasn’t it? I’d wager that’s a sign of change.”
“Oh, very well, then.” Gerran scowled at him, but he knew that the scowl couldn’t hide his respect for them. “Turn those horses over to young Allo and Bryn and tell them to join the escort.”
“My thanks!” Warryc made a bob of a bow in Cadryc’s direction. “And my thanks to you, too, my lord.”
Still grinning, the pair of them led the horses away.
“I hope five men will be enough,” Cadryc said. “I keep wondering if Honelg has allies somewhere close by, someone who might want to take my daughter for a hostage.”
“If he does have allies,” Gerran said, “they’re not Deverry men.”
“That’s what’s troubling me the most.”
“True spoken, but if Horsekin were lying in ambush, the dragon would have smelled them even if she couldn’t see them.”
“I keep forgetting about that blasted creature. Imph, I must be getting old, seeing enemies everywhere.”
Yet the tieryn wasn’t the only person who worried about Adranna’s safety. With the escort settled, Gerran went out to the pasture where the Red Wolf horses were tethered to pick out the most tractable mounts for the women. Prince Daralanteriel and Dallandra came down to join him there.
“A request of you, Captain,” the prince said. “The Wise One here has asked me to send four archers back to Cengarn with the escort.”
“That’s a generous offer, Your Highness,” Gerran said. “I’ll accept it gladly.”
“You’re going to ask me why,” Dallandra said with a good-humored smile. “Not all the dragons in this part of the world are friendly, and so I thought archers might come in handy, as it were. I asked the prince to send some of our men along.”
And what good, Gerran thought to himself, are hunting bows going to be against dragons? Yet he merely smiled and bowed to her, because he could guess that Dallandra in truth had another sort of enemy in mind. Of what sort, he had no idea, but he also had no doubt that she knew, and that was