The Shadow Isle - Katharine Kerr [182]
That will give them somewhat to brood over, he thought, them and their cursed Alshandra! He swung wide to turn toward the south and Cengarn, but as he did, he spotted what appeared to be more horses farther off to the west. With a smooth heft of one wing, he swooped back. Below him he saw a large, flat barrow, further fortified with a ramshackle stone wall and guarded by a ragtag group of human beings and a pair of dwarves. He was willing to wager that he’d found the Horsekin’s prey.
He adjusted his wings to glide down lower and circled around the hill, far enough away to avoid panicking the horses and mules tethered in the midst of the defenders. He was planning on calling out a greeting, but one of the dwarves got in before him. At Rori’s distance the voice sounded thin and faint, but he recognized it.
“Rhodry! It’s Mic! It’s Mic! Help us!”
“Mic!” Rori called out. “Ye gods! Here, I’ll land!”
The entire mob inside the wall answered him with a roar of cheers. Rori glided past, turned to the west, and settled on the road downwind of the improvised fort. Mic, who’d grown stout over the years, came puffing down, staff in hand, to join him. The other dwarf followed, dressed in baggy shirt and brigga. She, Rori was startled to realize, was not a man of the Mountain Folk at all, but a young human woman with a long knife clutched in one fist. Her hair was dark, and her eyes cornflower blue—Eldidd coloring, he thought, but all the way up here?
“Mic it is, indeed!” Rori sang out. “And here I was a-feared you and Otho had been slain by Horsekin. Long years ago now, it was.”
“Naught of the sort,” Mic said, grinning, “but Otho’s gone to his rest, slain by old age and naught more. I cannot tell you how much it gladdens my heart to see you.”
“No doubt. Did you know there were Horsekin raiders on the road behind you?”
“Know? They attacked us once already, and it’s a marvel that any of us are still alive.”
“Then it’s a good thing I scattered them.” Rori allowed himself a long rumble of laughter. “They won’t be following you any longer, I’ll wager.”
Mic’s eyes filled with tears, but he grinned, then turned to call out the good news to the others still in the improvised dun. Rori took a good look at the lass. The calm way she looked back and the wide set of her eyes, her short but sturdy build, reminded him of someone—of Angmar, he realized suddenly.
“Here,” Rori said in as gentle a voice as he could manage. “Do you come from Haen Marn?”
“I do,” she said. “You be my father, or so I were told. I be Angmar’s daughter, one of them, for we be twins, Marnmara and me. My mam be well, though truly she were fair taken aback by the news that you be a dragon now.”
“No doubt.” Rori found himself unable to say more.
“Ah, indeed, this is Berwynna,” Mic said, “and truly, she’s your spawn, no doubt about that! Ye gods, we’ve got so much to tell you. And you to tell us, no doubt.”
“Such as how I came by these wings?” Rori recovered his voice with a gulp and a snap of fangs. “Here, I don’t dare go any closer to your mules and horses. As long as I’m with you, the Horsekin aren’t going to attack, so you can leave them inside that wall and camp outside of it.”
“Well and good, then,” Mic said. “I’ll go tell the others.”
The dwarf hurried back up the hill, leaving Rori alone with this strange lass, his bloodkin. She was a pretty little thing, he decided, but nothing about her struck him as delicate. She stood with one hand on her hip, the other holding the dangerous-looking knife at an easy angle.
“Da,” she said, “you be hurt! That thing