The Red Wyvern - Katharine Kerr [111]
Caradoc opened his mouth and shut it again.
“Indeed,” Nevyn said, grinning. “Didn’t think of that, did you? And before you waste the breath asking, I cannot turn men invisible.” He let the smile fade. “Truly, if I can help you with sorcery, I will, but I need to think. Every idea I’ve come up with so far would hinder you more than them.”
“I see.” Caradoc reached up and rubbed the back of his head with one hand. “Curse it all!”
On the other side of the tents, someone cheered. Distantly Nevyn heard more cheers, and then laughter, ringing out closer and louder.
“Let’s just see what the lads are up to,” Caradoc said.
They walked through the tents to a sort of road, mostly an open strip of mud, that wound through the entire camp. Trotting toward them were a gaggle of men with the Cerrmor three ships blazon on their shirts. One of them carried a Boar banner, tied to a long spear. He was waving it about and laughing, while all along his route men stopped what they were doing and turned to jeer.
“It’s a fine piglet now, isn’t it? All ready to be roasted and sliced, isn’t it?”
Others suggested a number of obscene things that the regent could do with a boar if he were even man enough to catch one. Caradoc merely grinned with a shake of his head.
“Let them gloat,” he remarked to Nevyn. “The gods all know they’ve earned it.”
Lilli was walking with Anasyn when the captured Boar pennant passed them. By then it had gathered a pack of escorts, all of them laughing and jeering, and it seemed likely that a good ration of ale had gone round among them as well. Anasyn put an arm around her shoulders and drew her off the path as the improvised parade went by. No one noticed them. Lilli felt herself tremble. Once that blazon had summed up her clan’s honor, its pride, its very identity. Soon the information she’d brought the prince would tear it down from every wall until the name itself became a word fit to jest with it.
“You’re white as ghost,” Anasyn said. “Here, do you want to go back to your tent?”
“I don’t know. I feel so odd. Oh ye gods, I really am a traitor, aren’t I?”
“And what did you betray? A bunch of murdering fools!” His voice cracked and growled. “A regent who’s more of a usurper. Someone who’d kill women on the roads.”
Lilli felt the tearing again, as if hands had grabbed her soul and were trying to rip it apart. The sensation suddenly became physical, as if those hands were grasping her lungs.
“Let’s go back,” Anasyn said. “Here. Lean on me.”
Panting for breath, Lilli had no choice but to let him lead her back to her tent. She sank into her chair and let her maidservants fuss over her, but in her mind the words chanted with every pound of her heart: traitor, traitor, traitor to your clan.
In the day’s battle Burcan had been hit across the face with something. He neither remembered nor cared whether it was the flat of a sword, a gauntlet, or a pole. The blow had left him with a red and purple bruise marked with tiny cuts—splits in the skin, really—down the middle like a line of red embroidery. Merodda made him lie down on her bed, then brewed up a poultice of herbs at the hearth in the other room. When she came back into the bedchamber with her supplies, he’d fallen asleep, but he woke when she set the pots and cloths down on the chest under the window.
“What is that?” he said. “It smells foul.”
“No doubt, but it’ll draw any corrupted humors out of the wound.”
“It’s not a wound. Just a blasted bruise.”
But he made no objection when she put the warm cloth, wrapped round damp herbs, onto his cheek. She sat down on the edge of the bed and held it in place. In a draught from the window the candle flames danced in long shadows.
“It was a real setback today, wasn’t it?” Merodda said at last.
Burcan hesitated, staring up at the ceiling.
“It was, of course, but there’s some good in it. There are two rings left ’twixt us and them still, and now both are of a size we can hold.” He shifted uneasily. “That blasted thing is dripping down my neck.”
Merodda