The Silver Mage - Katharine Kerr [103]
“I can’t tell you how glad I am to be on the ground,” was Mic’s only response.
Rori laughed in his deep rumble.
“Oh, come now, Uncle Mic,” Berwynna said. “It were glorious, being up so high and seeing everything all laid out below.”
Mic rolled his eyes and moaned under his breath.
“Be that as it may,” Rori said, “I’ve come to beg the tieryn to take my daughter and her escort under his protection. Mirryn, do you think—”
“Of course!” Mirryn broke in. “I shall be honored to escort such a lovely lady back to my father’s dun.”
Mirryn led the pair away. Gerran untied the various sacks of supplies and bedrolls from the dragon’s broad back. He handed them over to the pages to carry and sent them back to the dun while he lingered to have a few words with the dragon.
“I’ve got messages from the prince,” Rori said. “They’re in the pouch around my neck. If you’ll just untie that and take it up?”
“Gladly,” Gerran said. “Is our prince well?”
“He is, for now, but truly, Gerro, I don’t like what I see up in the Northlands. The Horsekin are moving south. War might not come this year, but sooner or later, it will. We’ve got to get more men into the Melyn River Valley.”
“So we do, but I don’t know where we’ll find them.”
Gerran carried the messages back up to find the great hall full. The warband, the servants, and the noble-born alike all crowded in to see the lass who was a dragon’s daughter. Gerran found his greatly-pregnant wife, the only person in the dun who could read, and handed her the pouch of letters.
“Is she truly Rori’s kin?” Solla asked.
“So he said, and I’ll not be arguing with him.” Gerran paused to sniff the vinegar-scented air. “She smells like one of the great wyrms, truly, but that may be from riding on her da’s back.”
Lady Galla had noticed the scent as well, apparently, because she called for servants to heat bathwater and swept Berwynna off to the women’s hall. Mic had to make do with the stream out in the meadow. The next time that Gerran saw Berwynna, he and Solla were sitting together at the table of honor. When Galla and the lass came downstairs, Gerran noticed that she was wearing a proper dress, a pale gray color trimmed with bits of blue Bardek silk.
“That’s Galla’s very best dress.” Solla sounded on the edge of laughter. “No doubt she wants little Berwynna to make a good impression.”
“Why?” Gerran said.
Solla rolled her eyes. “Because of Mirryn, of course.”
“Ah, I understand now. Our lady’s spotted marriage prey.”
Solla giggled, then arranged a neutral smile for Galla and Berwynna when they joined her at table. Mirryn sat next to Berwynna, begged her to share his trencher at dinner, and put on what courtly manners he had, pouring her a goblet of Bardek wine and asking her various small questions while Galla beamed at them both. Berwynna, however polite, seemed mostly weary.
Late that night, after Solla had spent the evening in the women’s hall, Gerran learned the cause of Berwynna’s exhausted air.
“The poor child!” Solla told him. “Her betrothed was slain in battle not a month past.”
“I’ll have a word with Mirro, then,” Gerran said. “He needs to pull back his forces and plan for a long siege.”
“Will it trouble his heart that she’s been betrothed?”
“I doubt it. An alliance with a powerful dragon, and through him to our overlord? It’s worth laying aside a few scruples.” He paused to grin at her. “Assuming Mirro has any.”
Solla abruptly winced and laid both hands on her swollen stomach. “The baby kicked me again, and twice,” she announced. “Gerro, I’m as sure as ever I can be that this is a lad. No lass would be so mean to her poor mother.”
“I’d tell him to stop, but I doubt me if he’ll listen.”
“Oh, no doubt he wouldn’t. He’s your child, after all.”
They shared a laugh and a kiss.
In the morning, once Solla had written out the tieryn’s answers to the prince’s messages, Gerran took the pouch back down to the meadow, where the dragon lay lounging in the sun.