The Gold Falcon - Katharine Kerr [219]
“Here! You’re the one who was just telling me that we had to be ruthless. What about those traitors in Cengarn?”
“I’ll worry about them later. Where is he?”
“Who? The gwerbret—Dalla, you can’t just go and—”
“Oh, can’t I?” Dallandra pulled her arm free of his grasp.
With Salamander right behind, babbling words she didn’t bother to comprehend, Dallandra strode through the camp. She found Ridvar standing in front of his tent with the two princes. A servant was just carrying away his mail and helm. Overhead hung the bright gold sun banner of Cengarn, matching the blazons on his shirt.
Dallandra marched up to Ridvar and grabbed him by the blazons with both hands. Distantly she heard men shouting that someone was laying hands on the gwerbret. Guards came running only to stop a few feet away when they saw that the interloper was a woman. One of them grabbed Salamander by the shirt collar and hauled him back. Dallandra ignored them.
“You!” she snarled. “I hear you’re going to torture the prisoners to death.”
Ridvar was too shocked to do more than gape at her. Prince Daralanteriel stepped forward, caught her hands, and pried them from the gwerbret’s shirt.
“Dalla, you’re exhausted,” he said in Elvish, then switched to Deverrian. “My apologies, Your Grace. My healer—”
“Is not going to be put off so easily.” Dallandra pulled her hands free. “Listen, you.” She addressed this last to all three of them. “The chirurgeons and I have been slaving for hours to save the lives of men you’re going to torture to death. I won’t stand for it. I haven’t studied healing for five hundred years to become an executioner.”
“My dear woman,” Ridvar recovered himself. “They’re traitors to the—”
“Don’t you condescend to me, you—” Dallandra stopped herself in the nick of time from calling him an ignorant child. “You don’t see the obvious, do you? These cultists all want to die. They call it witnessing to their goddess. Why are you giving them exactly what they want? Seeing them go singing to their deaths is going to make converts, not deter them.”
Once again Ridvar could only stare at her.
“You know,” Prince Voran said, “she’s quite right.”
Prince Daralanteriel nodded his agreement. At these signs of royal approval, the guards all moved away from Dallandra. Salamander’s captor let him go with a murmured apology.
“I saw a grim truth today,” Voran went on. “These Alshandra worshippers are a different sort of man than we’ve ever seen before, and my heart is sore troubled. Our people have always tended toward great passions and wild humors. Coupled with this set of peculiar beliefs—” He shook his head and shuddered. “Do we put out a fire by throwing oil upon it?”
For a long moment Ridvar stood looking back and forth between the two men of royal blood.
“Besides, Your Grace,” Salamander stepped forward and knelt smoothly in front of the gwerbret. “The prisoners are common-born farmers. Where’s the honor in killing them?”
Ridvar let out his breath in a sharp puff. “I’ll take all this under advisement,” the gwerbret said, “but truly, I do see the truth in what you’re all saying.”
Daralanteriel turned to Dallandra and spoke softly in Elvish. “Go away and leave him to us.”
It was a reasonable request, she supposed. Salamander got up and slipped his arm companionably through hers.
“My humble thanks, Your Grace,” Salamander said. Then he led her firmly away.
This time Dallandra let him. Her fury had spent itself, leaving her tired and a little dizzy. As they walked through the camps of the Deverry men, they heard more gossip, that the gwerbret would also leave men behind on fort guard, in case any Horsekin appeared to visit their now-dead ally.
“And then there’s that priestess, too,” said one soldier. “If she comes through here, she’s in for a surprise. We’re to arrest her and bring her to Cengarn.”
Salamander’s face went dead-white, and he stopped walking, but only briefly. With a