The Red Wyvern - Katharine Kerr [118]
“Look, Your Highness!” Branoic snarled. “Just look.”
Across the no-man’s-land and atop the regent’s last wall someone’s head had been raised on a pike and stuck onto the wall twixt two merlons. As they watched, a couple of the regent’s men flung the headless body over. It fell spraddled into the dirt.
“It’s Caradoc.” Owaen was near choking on rage. “The piss-proud dogs!”
“You’ve got good eyes, lad.” Nevyn shaded his with his hand. “But, truly, I think it is, though I’m not sure at this distance.”
“It is,” Branoic said. “I say we go get him back.”
The silver daggers cheered, but the prince grabbed Branoic by the arm and shook him.
“You’ll do naught of the sort!” Maryn snarled. “None of you will! Upon my direct order, do you understand me?”
The silver daggers stared for a long moment, then nodded, murmuring agreement. Branoic was the last.
“Understood, Your Highness,” he said, but he sounded near tears. “Is it beyond my station to ask you why?”
“It’s not.” Maryn softened his voice. “When you get close to the wall, they’ll kill you, that’s why, with javelins if they have some or stones if that’s all they have left to throw. It’s a trap.”
“Oh.” Branoic flung back his head. “I hadn’t thought—”
“None of us are thinking very clearly.” Maryn paused to stare at the blasphemy on the far wall. “I hate to leave him there, but he’d not want his men killed in vain, would he?”
“He wouldn’t,” Branoic said. “My apologies, Your Highness.”
Nevyn felt his own rage run cold rather than hot, an icy thing that left his mind perfectly clear. Caradoc’s soul was beyond caring what happened to his dead body, Nevyn reminded himself. But to allow his friend’s remains to be mocked as they rotted? Intolerable! He may have been two hundred years old and a master of the dweomer, but he was a Deverry man still in his heart. Nevyn turned and strode along the catwalk until he stood well away from the crowd around the prince. He needed to concentrate.
On their far wall the regent’s men were laughing, calling out taunts incomprehensible at a distance though the tone carried across well enough. Nevyn’s rage turned into fire, pure and white hot. In his mind he called upon the Lords of Fire, who came to him as friends to share his rage. Shimmering pillars of silver light formed around him, and in each one floated a figure, vaguely man-shaped but fashioned of fire, the glowing red of embers, the golden lick of flame.
“My friend lies dead,” Nevyn thought to them. “I would give him a pyre like a hero from the Dawntime, but I cannot reach him with wood and oil.”
In his mind he felt their answer, a rage that some mere mortal would deny their peer anything he might want. Slowly Nevyn raised his arms above his head. He paused for a moment, staring at Caradoc’s body, at the pitiful severed head upon its pike, then slowly lowered his arms till his hands pointed across the ring to what was left of the captain. He called out one sacred word.
Silver light leapt down from the sky; a strange metallic flame tinged with blue fell upon Caradoc’s body with a roar and gust of fire. It leapt up, reaching out long silver fingers for his severed head upon the wall. Suddenly the head flamed, too, a torch brighter than the sunlight around it. The men who’d been mocking screamed as they ran, scattering on the catwalk and suddenly disappearing as they climbed down to the ground and no doubt ran for the dun. On their wall the silver daggers stood in utter silence, staring at the magical pyre. In but a little while the flames died down, flickered on bare ground, and disappeared. All that remained of Caradoc were handfuls of pure white ash, scattering in the wind, then gone.
Maddyn had just left Trevyr with the chirurgeons when one of the Ramsmen brought him the news. He headed for the fourth wall, but by the time he reached it the prince was leading the silver daggers downhill. Nevyn came last, looking grimly pleased with himself. When Maddyn fell into step beside him, Owaen dropped back