The Shadow Isle - Katharine Kerr [135]
“No trouble out of you,” Nicedd said with a growl in his voice. “Or else.”
Sharak flinched, then lowered his head in a gesture of submission.
“Here, Clae,” Gerran said, “bring out those rations, will you?”
They all made a drab meal of flatbread, salt beef, and cheese around the small campfire. All around them the normal life of a military camp rippled like water—men coming and going, some exulting over their victory, some mourning dead friends, some swearing in pain, others laughing over their ration of ale. In the Falcon’s tiny sector, no one spoke, not even Salamander, until they’d finished eating. Canna’s baby fussed and whined, even when she laid her own food aside to nurse him.
“Do you have any milk?” Salamander asked.
“Precious little, my lord.” Her voice had all the life of dead leaves rustling on an autumn branch. “Truly, I’m not surprised.”
“Me, either, but I’m not a lord. I’ve got a clean rag if you want to make a sop for him to have some water.”
“I would, and my thanks.”
Salamander got up, rummaged in his saddlebags, which Clae had laid nearby, and brought out a rag and a cup. He sent Clae off to fill the cup with fresh water and handed Canna the rag as he sat back down. Gerran was honestly surprised that the gerthddyn would know so much about women’s matters. The surprise reminded him of a painfully unanswered question.
“Tell me somewhat, Canna,” Gerran said, “if you can. Why were the bastard scum killing their women prisoners?”
“So we couldn’t be saved, my lord. They taunted us, like, saying that they were going to show you all that coming after us would do no good. We could be slaves or we could be dead, but they wouldn’t let us be rescued.”
Salamander swore under his breath, while Nicedd did the same, but loudly.
“So,” Gerran said. “They want to raid and not have us chase after, do they? Wanting and having are two different things, or so I always heard.”
Clae came trotting back with the cup of water. He sat and held it for Canna, so she could dip the sop into the water and allow the baby to suck enough to calm his thirst. Salamander, who’d finished eating by then, got up and went to kneel in front of Sharak. The Horsekin lad shrank back and raised his good arm as if to parry a blow.
“Before you start,” Gerran said to Salamander, “can you please tell him that he doesn’t have to act like a dog? He thinks he’s a slave. I don’t.”
“I’ll try,” Salamander said, “but I suspect you’ll have to wait till Grallezar or Pir can do the translating for that. I only know some basic words. It’s going to be a very peculiar idea for his Horsekin mind to understand.”
For some while Salamander and Sharak talked back and forth in a jumbled mix of Deverrian and the Horsekin language. Gerran soon gave up trying to follow the conversation. Once they’d finished, Salamander gave him the gist of it.
“It’s as I thought,” the gerthddyn said. “The priestesses firmly believe that Alshandra’s still alive. They tell that to the faithful, who, I assume, believe them even though no one but the holy ladies can see her. She appeared to them in the sky now and then and gave them instructions to pass on to the common believers.”
“Huh! Like those messages Great Bel sends to the priests, I’ll wager, the ones that always say what the priests want to hear.”
“You’d win that wager handily, no doubt.”
“What does he think about the way they’re threatening to kill the women they take?”
Salamander spoke briefly to Sharak, whose eyes filled with tears. He murmured a few words.
“It sickened him,” Salamander said. “That’s why he ran from the battle.”
“Was he ordered to kill some of them?”
Again Salamander spoke to the lad. Sharak nodded his head in miserable agreement and murmured a few more words.
“That’s why he ran,” Salamander repeated. “The Keeper giving the orders followed and got one good cut on him. That’s who broke his hand.”
“Ah. Tell him he’s a good man.”
Salamander did so. Sharak tried to smile, then merely stared at the ground.
“I suspect that a good many of the loyal Alshandrites would be furious at the idea