The Silver Mage - Katharine Kerr [101]
“Only women feel that way?”
His laughter rumbled briefly. “You’ve caught me there,” he said. “Men, too, at times.”
“So I thought.”
“But well and good, then. I’ll take Mic with her, if he’ll go, and I think he will. We don’t want him sneaking off to try to rescue his cousin on his own, anyway.”
“Very true, especially since Kov isn’t where Mic left him. Every time I scry for him, I see him still in some sort of tunnel with all those other people.”
“Then he’s safe for the nonce. Good. I’ve not got the time to rescue him right now.”
Traveling underground with a pack of Dwrgwn was coming close to driving Kov insane. He was accustomed to the tightly organized and rapid marches of Mountain Folk, who could cheerfully cover thirty miles a day, even when burdened with children and household goods. Under the same conditions the Dwrgwn dawdled, dragged, whined, complained, and at moments, outright stopped to sit down and announce that they simply couldn’t move one more step. At the most, Kov figured, they were making twelve miles daily, and that on a good day.
The tunnels meandered, changed direction and levels, and branched off in a welter of ways. Kov could keep track of where they’d been, but since he had no idea of where they were going, he could only listen with the others while Lady and Leejak argued furiously about the route. Eventually one or the other would win, and the ragged procession would set off again, trending generally north.
Now and then they reached an air vent where a ladder leaned against a nearby wall, the sign of an observation hole. One of the Dwrgi men would climb up, stick his head out for a look around, then climb down again to tell Leejak what he’d seen—usually mere landscape. Finally, however, after a long blur of days in the tunnels, the scout hurried down and began chattering in sheer excitement.
“He did see huts,” Leejak told Kov. “We be here, and they be not burnt.”
Most of the Dwrgwn stayed in the tunnel to watch over their goods while Kov, Leejak, Lady, and a guard of five men climbed up and out. Waiting for them was a delegation from the new village, a half circle of Dwrgi spearmen guarding a woman dressed in shimmering gold. When Lady hurried forward to greet her, Kov guessed that she held the same position of lady in her tribe. The two women walked a few steps away from the crowd and began to talk in low voices.
Both sets of men crossed their arms over their chests and stared at each other in cold silence. One of the men from the new village wore clothing made of leather, Kov noticed. Around his neck, a bronze knife with a long blade dangled from a chain.
When Kov looked around, he realized from the position of the sun that he faced east. Straight ahead, in a bend of a river, stood a circle of meager-looking huts some hundred yards away. In among them, he saw two of the narrow wooden booths indicating entrances to the underground domain of this new group. He turned back to the west and saw straggly fields of grain stretching out to a stand of trees. I could be anywhere in the Northlands, he thought. Even if he managed to escape his captors, getting home to Lin Serr was going to be an adventure at best but more likely an ordeal. At worst—what if he never found it?
The two women had finished their conversation. Lady rejoined her troop of refugees, spoke briefly to Leejak, then addressed them, speaking so fast that Kov could pick out only a few words here and there. From the way that everyone smiled and nodded, he could assume that they were being welcomed. Or at least, most of the refugees were welcome—he himself seemed to be an exception, judging from the villagers’ cold stares and the fingers jabbed in his direction. The fellow in the leather clothes unhooked his knife from the chain and gave Kov an unpleasantly meaningful look.
“They no trust you,” Leejak