The Gold Falcon - Katharine Kerr [83]
“Well, my dear banadar, we do have an available refuge,” Meranaldar said. “The Southern Isles. The High Council has repeatedly invited his royal highness to take up residence among them, and of course that invitation extends to the prince’s retinue.”
“It would have to extend to every person in the Westlands,” Dar said, “before I’d leave my people.”
Meranaldar ducked his head and murmured an apology.
“Besides, go live in a stinking jungle?” With a jut of his jaw Cal interrupted. “I’d rather die defending the Westlands.”
“I’d rather we all stayed alive in the Westlands,” Dallandra said. “And I intend to find ways for us to do just that. Come on, Cal, we do have allies. The Deverry lords know that if we fall, the Horsekin will be camping on their border.”
“That’s true, and it means we can count on a good many reinforcements.” Cal sounded suddenly cheerful. “They breed like rats, the Roundears.”
“Here!” Maelaber rose to his knees. “You’re talking about my mother’s folk, you know.”
“Be calm, lad!” Calonderiel was grinning at him. “If I’d thought ill of her, you wouldn’t be here.”
Mael opened his mouth to snarl, but Dallandra got in first. “Oh, do hold your tongue, Cal!” she said. “It’s a wretched hot night, and squabbling will only make it feel worse.”
“True enough.” Cal turned to his sulky son. “Consider the circumstances. I meant ‘breeding like rats’ as a compliment.”
Mael forced out a cold smile.
“Well, think!” Cal went on. “What’s always been our curse, out here on the grass? Our numbers, that’s what. Our women don’t bear enough children. Not that I’m blaming them, but—”
“Oh, of course you are!” Dalla broke in. “I suppose it never occurred to you that you men might have something to do with the problem.”
“What?” Calonderiel snapped. “Of course it has! You’re so cursed touchy tonight—”
“Stop it!” Daralanteriel asserted his royal prerogative. “Stop it right now, both of you! It’s the heat, and the wretched insects, and the ill news, everything all together, but fighting among ourselves isn’t going to ease our troubles.”
“No, it’s not,” Cal said. “Sorry.”
“Quite so.” Dallandra nodded the prince’s way. “I apologize.”
Daralanteriel smiled, but grimly. “Go on, dweomermaster,” he said. “You were going to tell us?”
“About the children, yes. It’s no one’s fault. It’s because of our long lives, Cal. No creature that lives a long time bears hordes of offspring, especially not those who hunt for meat, as we do. If they did, every tasty kind of animal would be wiped out. The dweomer calls this principle the balance of life against lives.”
“Does it?” Cal paused, then shrugged. “You’d know better than I about that.”
“Well, yes, I do.” Dalla forced out a smile to soften the words. “You’ve heard the Deverry folktales, that we’re immortal. It must look that way to them, but if we were, a woman would have a child once in a thousand years, if that.”
“I’m cursed glad we’re not immortal, then,” Cal said, “and for other reasons as well. Ye gods, who would show the least bit of courage if cowards could live forever?”
“I’d not thought of it that way before,” Meranaldar remarked. “To risk a death in battle if you were throwing away an immortal life? Why would you?”
“You’d be a fool to do it. It’s one thing, when you get to be my age, and realize how little lies ahead, to go raging into battle. If you die, you die and only lose that little.” Cal shrugged in dismissal. “As for our lack of children, and notice, please, Dalla, that I said our, I suppose when we all lived in those fine cities Meranaldar keeps talking about that it was a blessing of sorts, but out here it’s a curse. The Roundears—er, the Deverry folk, I mean—have so many children they can’t even feed all of them, and the Horsekin are much the same. So Deverry spreads from the east, and the Horsekin spread from the west, and here we are, squeezed and strangled in the middle.”
“Or we would be,” Daralanteriel said, “if it weren’t for the alliances we have with Deverry men.”
“True. They’re on our side—for