The Silver Mage - Katharine Kerr [121]
“Tell me somewhat, loremaster,” Voran said. “Do your people know these hills at all well?”
“Only the priestesses of Alshandra do, Your Highness,” Laz said. “They have some sort of secret road through them, you see, marked out by symbols of some kind, scratched on rocks and the like. Alas, they keep those signs to themselves.”
Voran muttered a few foul oaths under his breath. Warleader Brel knelt to join them at the map.
“My people don’t come this far south,” Brel said. “Neither do the merchants from Cerr Cawnen.”
“So the Boars have had it all to themselves for all these years,” Voran said. “A nice sty to breed in.” He stood up with a stretch of his back. “Well, this place must have been deserted some while ago. Maybe we can pick up their tracks, maybe not.”
Yet, that very night, help came from a completely unexpected source. As they scouted around the deserted fields surrounding the old Boar village, some of Voran’s men caught a cow, left behind and turned half-wild. They slaughtered her and shared out the meat, which the servants soon had simmering at the cooking fires. Even Laz had to admit that fresh beef cooking smelled as good as any fine perfume.
The smell apparently drifted into the forest. Laz and Faharn, who found themselves attached to the prince’s retinue, had been given a spot inside the walls though outside the broch. They were still eating when they heard one of the sentries beyond the gates calling out. One of the watchmen on the walls took up the cry to open up. Slowly the gates creaked open just enough to let in two armed men and a prisoner of sorts. Laz and Faharn stood and watched as the guards marched him along past their campfire.
“Bren!” Faharn said.
Laz hurriedly sat down to hide his face. He did catch a quick look at Bren, so thin he seemed starved, his hair long and matted, his clothes mere rags. The guards took him into the broch. The door had barely closed when the rumors began running through the camp, that the sentries had caught an assassin coming after the prince, or a spy for the Boars, or this thing or the other.
The truth, augmented by Faharn’s memory, arrived with the morning’s muster. Envoy Garin climbed up onto the walls and bellowed the tale to the men waiting below.
“The man you saw on the night past—Bren’s his name—used to worship the false goddess Alshandra,” Garin announced. “But the prince has forgiven him, and no one’s to harm him. He knows where the Boars have gone to.”
The waiting army cheered. Garin held up both hands for silence then continued.
“Bren was sent to this village with messages from a priestess. At first they treated him well, but then he learned that they weren’t what he called true followers. So he escaped this spring. He’s been living in the woods, but he smelled the cow cooking and came forward.”
More cheers, this time for the cow.
“Her bovine sacrifice was not in vain,” Laz said. “I suppose that priestess was Sidro.”
“Yes, it was,” Faharn said. “Huh, she could have gotten the poor man killed, sending him here. Just like her.”
“Since I was ready to kill him myself, I can hardly take issue with what she did. Be that as it may, I’m cursed glad now that I didn’t kill him, so she was right, after all.”
Faharn had the decency to cringe. Laz let the gesture go without comment, because Garin was speaking again.
“The Boars had spies in Cerrgonney,” Garin said. “They could tell that the Deverry High King would be sending an army against them. So they moved their people north to settle new land.”
General cries of “Cowards! Bastards!” greeted these remarks. Garin held up his hands for silence and eventually got it.
“As for