The Red Wyvern - Katharine Kerr [22]
The third evening, then, they rode up to Lord Camlyn’s dun with dread as a member of their entourage, but the gates stood open, and Camlyn himself, a tall young man with a shock of red hair, came running out to the ward to greet them with four grey boarhounds barking after him. He yelled the dogs into silence, then grabbed the gwerbret’s stirrup in a show of fealty and blurted:
“Your Grace, what greeting did you get at Ganedd’s door?”
“A cursed poor one,” Daeryc said. “I’m glad to see you held loyal to the true king. This autumn, when we ride against Ganedd, his lands are yours.”
At dinner that night the talk centered itself upon broken fealties—who had gone over to the Usurper, who was threatening neutrality, who was weaselling any way he could to get out of his obligations for fighting men and the provisions to feed them. Since only one honor table stood in the poverty of Camlyn’s hall, Bevyan heard it all. She shared a trencher with Camlyn’s wife, Varylla, at the foot of the table. In unspoken agreement the two women spoke little, merely listened. By the time the page poured the men mead, Gwerbret Daeryc had forgotten tact.
“It’s the cursed Boar clan that’s the trouble,” he snarled. “Men would rally to the king, but why should they rally to the Boar?”
“Just so,” Camlyn said. “The wars have made them rich while the rest of us—huh, we’ll be out on the roads like beggars one fine day.”
The two men were looking at Peddyc and waiting.
“I’ve no love for Burcan or Tibryn,” he said. “But if the king had chosen them, I’d serve in their cause.”
“I like that if.” Daeryc paused for a careful bite of food; he could chew only on one side of his mouth, since most of his teeth were gone. “I’d do the same. If.”
Peddyc glanced down the table and caught Bevyan’s glance. She answered the unspoken question with a small shrug. It seemed safe enough to voice their long doubts here.
“Well,” Peddyc went on. “They say that King Daen made Burcan regent when he was dying. I wasn’t there to hear him.”
“No more was I,” Camlyn snapped.
“Nor I either. And with Daen’s widow such close kin to the Boar …” Daeryc let his words trail off into a swallow of mead.
“Hogs root,” Camlyn said, seemingly absently. “If you let hogs into a field, they’ll tear it up with tusk and trotter till the grass all dies.”
“There’s only one thing to do in that case,” Peddyc said. “And that’s turn them out of it.”
“Only the one, truly.” Daeryc hesitated for a long time. “But you’d best have a swineherd with well-trained dogs.”
The three men looked back and forth at one another while Bevyan felt herself turn, very slowly, as cold as if a winter wind had blown into the hall. She glanced at Varylla.
“I should so like to see the embroideries you’ve been making,” Bevyan said. “You do such lovely work.”
“My thanks, my lady.” Varylla allowed herself a shy smile. “If you’ll come with me to my chambers?”
As they headed for the staircase up, Bevyan caught Peddyc’s eye. He winked at her in thanks, but his smile was forced. Why shouldn’t it be, she thought, if they’ll be talking treason?
Late on the next day, with Lord Camlyn and his men as part of the army, Gwerbret Daeryc’s entourage came to the city, which rose high on its hills behind massive double rings of stone walls, crenellated and towered. A cobbled road led up to the main gates, ironbound and carved with the king’s blazon of the wyvern rampant. To either side honor guards in thickly embroidered shirts stood, bowing as the gwerbret and his party rode through. Yet as soon as they came inside to the city itself, the impression of splendor vanished.
Ruins filled the space inside the walls—heaps of stone among rotting, charred timbers from the most recent siege; heaps of dirt covering stone razed long years past. Most of the remaining houses stood abandoned, with weed-choked yards and empty windows, the thatch blowing rotten