The Red Wyvern - Katharine Kerr [154]
“I be afraid to hurt you.”
“If it does hurt, it’ll be but that once. Do let’s put that behind us.”
Yet he kissed and caressed her a while longer, so that when he finally did take her, she felt no pain at all, just a sharp thrust into her desire, and then pleasure.
It was four nights past Samaen, the turning of the new year, when the first snow fell over Cengarn, far south of the Rhiddaer. Dallandra woke one morning to the smell of snow in the air and a fanged chill in her tower room. Near her bed stood the bronze brazier, stacked ready with twigs and lumps of charcoal. She stuck a cautious arm out from under the covers and pointed, summoning Wildfolk to light the fuel, then drew her arm back in fast.
“It must be snowing,” she remarked to Rhodry.
He mumbled something foul and pulled the blankets over his head. She snuggled down next to him and watched the Wildfolk, mostly grey gnomes, who lounged at the foot of the bed like cats. The next time she woke, the air in the chamber seemed just bearable. Since she kept her clothes over the chair back and next to the brazier, they were warmer than the air, at least. She struggled into her leggings under the blankets, then grabbed her tunic and, like a trout breaking water to catch a fly, sat up fast and just long enough to pull it on.
“You’re determined to get up, aren’t you?” Rhodry said.
“I am. I’m hungry, and the chamberpot is almost full.”
“Ah. If you’re going down to the great hall, bring me some bread back, will you?”
“Lazy sot.”
With a long martyred sigh, Dallandra sat up and grabbed her boots from the floor. Not until she had them on did she get out of bed. When she opened a shutter a crack, she could see grey light and indeed, snow falling in long ropes let down from the heavens. At least the worst of the stinks would freeze, but she swore an oath to herself that this would be the very last winter she would spend among humans in their stone tents.
“It is snowing,” she said.
Rhodry had fallen asleep again.
Down in Dun Cengarn’s great hall, the gwerbret’s warband clustered around the lesser hearth to get warm after their night in the barracks. At the table of honor Gwerbret Cadmar was sharing a loaf of bread with his guest, Prince Daralanteriel, Carra’s husband. The gwerbret had once been an imposing man, well over six feet tall, broad in the shoulders, broad in the hands, but the summer’s fighting had left him exhausted and somehow shrunken. As an herb-woman and the only real physician in the dun, Dallandra frankly worried about him. His slate-grey hair was thinning, and his moustaches were turning white; he sat slumped in his chair with his twisted right leg stuck out in front of him to soak up the fire’s warmth. The prince, however, was a young man and as handsome and vital as most of his kind, with raven-dark hair but pale grey eyes, slit vertically like a cat’s to reveal lavender pupils. Although his hair had grown shaggy, there was no hiding his ears, long and tightly furled like seashells, as elven as Dallandra’s own.
At the honor hearth, where a great stone dragon embraced the fire, a clot of boys sat as near as they could get without singeing, Jahdo among them. Two of the older boys played a game of carnoic while the others watched or fended off the dogs, who kept threatening to sweep the stones off the board with their tails. Since Jahdo was attending upon Rhodry as his page, Dallandra decided that he could take up the bread Rhodry wanted and empty the pot as well. She was just walking over when she heard first one woman scream, then another join in. She spun around in time to see Evandar walking through the dun wall some ten feet from her. The dogs leapt up and started barking.
“My pardons,” Evandar said. “I just wanted to see little Elessi.”
“She’s upstairs in the women’s hall,” Dallandra said. “And I wish you’d remember to use the door.”
With a laugh Evandar disappeared, leaving a whole gaggle of maidservants screaming and pointing while the men pretended they’d seen nothing and the boys stared goggle-eyed. Dalla kicked the nearest boar hound