The Gold Falcon - Katharine Kerr [220]
“What’s wrong?” Dallandra waited to speak till they’d gone well past their informant.
“Naught, naught.” Salamander smiled brightly. “It’s just that I doubt if Rocca’s a threat to the gwerbretrhyn.”
“Of course she isn’t. But she might make a good hostage to bargain with.”
Again he went pale, and she noticed him shoving his hands into his brigga pockets as if to hide their trembling. No, he doesn’t realize it, she thought. All at once she felt impossibly weary. “Ebañy, I’ve got to lie down. I’ve got to sleep. I hate battles so much, seeing men die, feeling their souls all around me, so bewildered.”
She staggered, and for a moment lost her balance so badly that she nearly fell. The mass of tents below them on the hill seemed to rise up like a wave of filthy water. Salamander caught her arm and steadied her.
“Let’s get you to your tent,” he said. “You need to sleep.”
“But I want to know about the dragons—”
“I’ll scry for them, once you’re resting.”
In vision Salamander found the dragons among rocky hills and dark pines, a common type of terrain a good many miles to the north. Arzosah crouched on an outcrop of gray boulders, her wings tightly furled, her tail lashing in rage. Rori would settle near her, then suddenly leap into the air and fly in a wide circle, only to return and perch among the rocks for a brief while before flying again. Although Salamander could see that she was speaking, he couldn’t hear her voice. He wondered if she were trying to persuade him to consult Dallandra about his wound. Whatever her subject was, Salamander could assume that Rori was refusing to listen.
Salamander broke the vision and turned to tell Dallandra what he’d seen, but she was already asleep, curled up in a nest of rumpled blankets. For a moment he stayed in the shelter of her tent and thought about Rocca. Would she come back only to blunder into a trap? There was no way he could warn her without betraying his own people—he was painfully aware of that. He opened his Sight again, though this time he thought of Rocca. He saw her standing outside the stone shrine, talking with two Horsekin men. All three were laughing, perhaps at a jest. Again, he could hear nothing. He watched her until she went inside the shrine, then looked around the fort.
The gates stood wide open, and two guards were sitting in the dirt between them, playing dice. A quick thought of Sidro brought her image to him. She was kneeling in the kitchen garden, weeding a row of cabbages with one of the Horsekin priestesses. In the sunlight her hair gleamed, as blue-black and shiny as a raven’s feathers. She looked too untroubled to be someone who knew about the army of destruction assembling off to the east. He broke the vision. Apparently no one at Zakh Gral had the slightest idea that an attack was coming. Whoever the raven mazrak was, he certainly hadn’t gone to the Horsekin with a warning.
Salamander got up without waking Dallandra and left to find Calonderiel. The banadar was standing in front of the prince’s tent with his archers all around him to watch Daralanteriel divide up the Westfolk’s share of the booty—scavenged arrows, blankets, live chickens, and the shoddy like—into equal little heaps, one for each man who’d fought that day.
“Dalla’s in your tent,” Salamander told Calonderiel. “She’s exhausted.”
“No doubt,” Calonderiel said, “squandering her energies on the Roundears as she was. I’d better go make sure she’s all right.”
“I’d recommend it, truly.” Salamander watched him hurry off, then turned back to consider the prizes of war. “You know, Dar, you might leave the dun’s actual furnishings behind, like those pewter bowls, for instance. The gwerbret’s going to attaint this dun and give it to some other lord.”
“Too bad,” Dar said cheerfully. “Ridvar gets plenty of coin and kind in taxes. He can just part with some of it. Let him furnish the dun all over again.”
“I take it your heart is not warm with affection for the