The Red Wyvern - Katharine Kerr [61]
“All the rest of you,” Peddyc said, “freeborn and bondman alike, either come with us or run for your lives. The Boarsmen will be taking Hendyr as soon as they hear the news.” He looked up at the row of faded, tattered banners. “May my ancestors forgive me, but I can’t hold the dun against them, not and serve my king.”
CHAPTER TWO
In the midst of the towers and walls of Dun Cerrmor stood a garden. Although it was an odd-shaped bit of ground and a mere thirty feet across, it sported a tiny stream with a wooden bridge, a rolling stretch of green grass, some rosebushes, and an ancient willow tree, all gnarled and drooping, that, or so some people said, had been planted by the ancient sorcerer who once had served King Glyn the First, back at the very beginning of the civil wars. Others dismissed the sorcerer as a bard’s fancy, but they of course were wrong.
At the base of the willow tree Maddyn sat in the shade, tuning his harp. Although he considered himself a mere minstrel, everyone treated him these days as an important man, the sworn bard of the prince’s personal guard. Every now and then he would have to shake his head and laugh, when he considered just how long a road the silver daggers had ridden. Not many years before they’d been naught but a ragged troop of mercenaries without a scrap of honor; now they lived in what splendor Dun Cerrmor could offer, and all because their leader, Caradoc, could recognize an omen when he saw one.
As he worked, the Wildfolk gathered around him, sprites and gnomes, mostly, though occasionally an undine rose out of the stream to shake the water from her long silver hair and listen for a moment. Close beside the bard sat his favorite blue sprite, a beautiful little thing until she smiled, revealing a mouthful of sharp fangs. Whenever some gnome would try to get too close to Maddyn, she would leap upon it, biting and scratching, until it fled and she had the privileged position to herself again. Once he’d finished tuning and began to play, they all sat solemnly on the grass and listened, sucking warty fingers or picking dirty fangs.
“Maddo! Ah, there you are.”
The Wildfolk leapt up and disappeared. Maddyn looked up to see the prince’s closest friend—in truth, perhaps his only friend—striding across the lawn toward him. He was an old man, Councillor Nevyn, with a shock of untidy white hair and skin as wrinkled as tree bark, but he strode along with all the vigor of a young warrior. It’s his herbcraft that keeps him so strong, everyone said. After all, the councillor had been a physician before he’d come to serve the prince. Maddyn, however, figured that the old man’s undoubted knowledge of the dweomer had more to do with it than any herbs or roots.
“I’m here, indeed,” Maddyn said. “Do you need me for somewhat?”
“I do, as a witness. You can be the representative of the prince’s guard at the council session.”
“What council session?”
“The one that’s about to begin. Come along and you’ll see.”
In the royal council chamber of Dun Cerrmor, the prince himself was waiting with another pair of trusted advisors. Gavlyn, the bald and portly chief herald of the royal court, stood at a long oak table and unrolled three large parchments, which he snapped out like bedsheets, then lay down smooth with great ceremony. Councillor Oggyn, a barrel-chested man and egg-bald, leaned from the other side and considered them while he stroked his brindled grey and black beard.
Sunlight poured in through a narrow window and fell across the polished oak table to gleam on the prince’s honey-blond hair and glint on the enormous silver ring brooch that pinned his plaid at one shoulder. In the five years of his rule as Gwerbret Cerrmor and Marked Prince of what of Deverry he could hold, Maryn had aged ten, it seemed. He was a man, now, not that innocent laughing boy the silver daggers had sworn to serve so long ago. His grey eyes seemed to look at the world from a distance denied to ordinary men, and when he spoke, his low voice crackled with authority.
“Very well,” Maryn