The Red Wyvern - Katharine Kerr [79]
Maddyn sighed and raised his tankard.
“To our dead,” he called out.
At their long tables, the other silver daggers returned the toast. They had honored places, these days, right at the front of the hall. Up on the dais itself, Caradoc was sitting at the foot of the prince’s table, dining with the great lords who had, over the years, come to accept his presence there as a whim of the prince’s though not as the captain’s right. Tieryn Gauryc was the worst; he never spoke to Caradoc directly if he could get a servant to relay his message, as if his very words might be dirtied by the captain’s hearing of them. Maddyn watched him for a moment, a heavyset lord, neither old nor young, who wore his dark hair cropped off so close to his skull that it stuck out at assorted ungainly angles.
“What’s old Gauryc up to?” Branoic whispered.
“Naught that I can see. The man just annoys me, is all.”
All smiles and bobs of a subservient head, the tieryn was chatting with Prince Maryn, while Councillor Oggyn looked on.
“Ah well,” Branoic said. “He can swing a sword well enough.”
“True spoken, and that’s all that counts.”
Yet later, oddly enough, Maddyn ended up having a word with Tieryn Gauryc. He had just left the great hall to head back to barracks when he heard an arrogant voice calling after him.
“Silver dagger, hold a moment! I want a word with you.”
Maddyn paused in a spill of light from the hall and let Gauryc catch up with him. The lord was jingling coins in one hand.
“It’s about these Rams,” Gauryc said. “I understand that the lass with them was born into the Boar clan.”
“She was, Your Grace,” Maddyn said.
“Our prince has a great heart for mercy,” Gauryc went on. “Some of us were born with colder natures. You’re part of the prince’s guard, and you hear what’s to be heard, I’ll wager. If you ever hear anything suspicious about this tieryn and his son, there’s profit in it for you if you pass the word along to me or Councillor Oggyn.”
Gauryc held out his hand, the one with the coins. Maddyn shoved his hands into his pockets.
“May I ask why, Your Grace?”
Gauryc nearly dropped his bribe into thin air, then caught himself and the coins and stepped back.
“The Rams were very much in the Boar’s favor. That’s all.”
“Your Grace, you can rest assured that if I see Peddyc or anyone else do anything that might be the least harmful to the prince, I’ll go straight to him with the news.”
Gauryc froze for the briefest of moments, then forced out a thin smile.
“Of course, silver dagger. Of course.”
Maddyn bowed, then turned on his heel and strode away. At a good distance he risked a glance back to find Gauryc still staring after him. Ah by the hells! Maddyn thought. That’s all I need—a well-born enemy! He decided that if Peddyc proved a decent lord, then he’d have a word with him and his son and warn them about Gauryc and his ilk. As a bard, after all, he could speak freely, whether the great lords liked it or not.
For five days, Prince Maryn’s army crawled its safe if slow way north through the lands of the prince’s truly loyal vassals, the ones who’d backed him from the beginning. Once they reached the demesnes of those whose loyalties depended on the fortunes of war, they would have to travel more carefully. In the order of march Prince Maryn always rode at the head of the army with his silver daggers directly behind him. Alone of all the contingents, even in this safe country they travelled wearing mail and carried shields at their saddle peaks. Behind them came the noble-born and their warbands in order of rank. The spearmen marched at the rear, ready to guard the baggage train trailing along behind.
As the mood took him, Nevyn would ride at different places in the line, but he stayed toward the front to avoid the dust. Every night, he would scry out the terrain ahead of them. Although he felt stabs of guilt for twisting dweomer to such ends, he’d spent so many years using dweomer to put Maryn on his throne that a few more transgressions now weren’t going to matter.
At every