The Shadow Isle - Katharine Kerr [96]
“I’ll be glad to have my dresses back,” Berwynna told Dougie. “I didn’t want to go to Lin Serr wearing Mic’s spare brigga.”
“It sounds too grand a place for that.” Dougie scowled at his own filthy shirt. “I could use a bit of washing myself, but naught I could borrow here would fit me.”
“You look like a stork among chickens, truly. I’ll have to make you a second shirt if we can find some cloth somewhere.”
On the morrow, when they set out for Lin Serr, once again Berwynna and Otho rode while everyone else walked. Although the road ran through peaceful-looking farmland, here and there beside it stood stone towers some forty feet high, each circled by a stone wall.
“Do people live in those?” Berwynna asked Enj, who was leading her mule.
“They do,” Enj said. “They’re easily defended in case the Horsekin come a-raiding.”
“They look new.”
“They are. The Horsekin didn’t raid until about forty-some years ago.”
Toward noon they came to a small grove of oak trees. Although some had reached full growth, and their green canopies nodded high in the light wind, a few were mere saplings of some six feet, while others of various heights stood in between. Their regular arrangement in a rough square made it clear that they’d been planted and coppiced over long years. In the open middle of the square grew brushy shrubs and short grass. Berwynna assumed that they were about to stop for a meal and a rest, but Enj had a surprise in store for her. He handed the lead rope of Berwynna’s mule to Dougie, then knelt down among the shrubs. He picked up a flat-sided rock and pounded it sharply on the ground.
“What in God’s name?” Dougie muttered. “Has he gone daft?”
“I don’t know,” Berwynna said. “But when he beat on the ground, it sounded hollow.”
Sure enough, in but a few moments Enj stood up and stepped back. Berwynna heard a massive rumble, then a loud creaking, and slowly a square of ground slid sideways, bushes and all, to reveal a hole of some ten feet on a side.
“The entrance to the city,” Enj called out. “Or one of them.”
A long easy slope of stone ramp led down into dim light and shadow. Thanks to the descriptions Enj had given her of the city, Berwynna was expecting that the ramp would lead a long mysterious way down, but in about fifty yards it leveled out onto the floor of a huge, rough-hewn room that smelled of mules and dust. A squad of men armed with war axes stood around, at ease when Berwynna first glimpsed them, but suddenly one of them shouted. Axes at the ready, they advanced on Enj and Pel and began to all talk at once. Enj shouted back and joined the argument, which was so loud and disjointed that Berwynna couldn’t follow it. She did clearly hear “red-haired giant” and “from Haen Marn.”
“Ah,” Mic said. “My people haven’t changed any, I see. Our folk love to argue, Wynni.”
“So I see, or maybe I should say, so I hear. What’s the trouble, Uncle Mic?”
“Dougie. They don’t want to allow him into the city because he’s not one of the Mountain Folk.”
“Well, if he can’t go in, neither will I, and that’s that.”
“I’ll go tell Enj that.”
“Please do! What do they expect? That we’re supposed to let him sleep outside by himself like a dog?”
“Well, no. They said something about a trading caravan camping outside the main gates. Apparently they think he’d be welcome there or suchlike. But do be patient! I’ll talk with them and come up with something to change their minds.”
Mic hurried off to join the shouting match. Dougie