The Silver Mage - Katharine Kerr [102]
He stalked off to join the woman dressed in gold scales. Lady came over to Kov and patted him on the arm.
“Fear not,” she said. “We won’t let them sacrifice you.”
“Sacrifice?” Kov could hear an unmanly squeal in his voice and coughed to clear it.
“They want to sacrifice you to the water. You’re a stranger, and not one of us, and so they’re frightened, is all. With Horsekin on the move, everyone’s at the edge of panic.”
“That man with the knife. I take it he’s the priest?”
“Not in the sense that the Deverry people speak of priests. I think you could call him a spirit walker or somewhat like that. He knows some dweomer.” She sighed and paused to watch Leejak, who was waving his arms as he spoke. “They do agree that we have to make some sort of strike at the Horsekin. They have good spearmen here, she told me, and now we’ve brought more.”
“Do they know about that fortress?”
“They do, and that’s what will save you. I told them that as a man of Earth and the mountains, you understand stone and how to destroy such things.”
Kov’s stomach clenched. He wished he’d paid more attention during those long meetings with the sappers and miners of Lin Serr.
“The rest of us will stay here,” Lady continued. “Some of the men will stay to guard us; not, I suppose, that they’ll be able to do much against raiders like the ones who burnt our village. We’d all best keep underground as much as possible.”
“That seems wise to me, certainly.”
Finally, the woman in gold flung her hands in the air, said something abrupt, and turned back to her village. Smiling, Leejak strode over.
“She tell me no sacrifice,” he said.
“Thank all the gods for that.” Kov let out his breath in a sharp sigh of relief. His aching stomach began to ease.
“I tell them you know tunnels and such. You bring down fortress for us.”
“Ye gods, I hope I can do it now!”
“You best had. Spirit man, Gebval his name, he come with us. If you no kill the fortress, they sacrifice you and me with you.” Leejak tossed back his head and laughed. “So dig good, Mountain Man!”
Kov’s stomach clenched again, so tightly that he feared he was going to vomit. He managed to suppress the urge, then pushed out a smile that, or so he hoped, brimmed with confidence.
Kov and Leejak spent the rest of that day gathering supplies and volunteers for their long hike west to the Horsekin fortress. Although the Dwrgi men would bring their spears, their real weapons would be shovels and baskets to move the earth under the fortress. Fighting above ground would get them killed, Kov figured, and little more. Still, when he surveyed his ragged pack of Dwrgwn, he found himself wishing for a nice large contingent of Westfolk archers and Deverry swordsmen, someone to guard them while they dug, under Prince Voran, say, or Lord Gerran of the Gold Falcon.
Impossible, of course. The old Mountain proverb came to him, “Do what you can with what you have, and if you can’t do anything else, then dig your way out of danger.” It was, he reflected, the best advice he was going to get, and the only.
Lord Gerran happened to be out in the ward, talking with his foster brother, Lord Mirryn, when he heard the drumming of dragon wings, heading for the Red Wolf dun.
“Messages from Prince Dar, maybe,” Gerran said.
“A good guess.” Mirryn shaded his eyes with his hand and looked off to the west. “I think it’s Rori. It’s a silver one, anyway. Here! He’s carrying riders.”
Yelling for pages to follow them, they hurried out of the main gates and jogged down the hill to the meadow where the dragons usually landed on their infrequent visits. The silver wyrm circled the meadow, dropping lower each time, then ungracefully flopped into the tall grass. His two riders wasted no time in sliding down from his massive back, a man of the Mountain Folk and a pretty young woman with dark hair and cornflower blue eyes.
“Allow me to present my daughter,” Rori said in his deep growl of a voice. “Berwynna of Haen Marn, and her maternal uncle, Mic son of Miccala, both of Lin Serr.”
Gerran