The Silver Mage - Katharine Kerr [127]
“No more do I.” Kov swallowed heavily. “But what will happen to you?”
“Naught.” Leejak shrugged the problem away. “Cowards, these are.”
“I worry for Kov, not us,” Jemjek said. “Horsekin all round.”
“He travel at night. He sees in dark. Horsekin do not.”
But they can sniff me out, Kov thought. Kov wondered if he were about to faint and disgrace himself. He’d be on his own, exposed, running for his life in the middle of Horsekin territory. But free, he reminded himself. For all the good it’s going to do me.
His escape went smoothly. Between them Leejak, Grallag, and Jemjek smuggled supplies, a few at a time, out of the night’s camp and placed them at the foot of the ladder in a ventilation shaft. Once the rest of the Dwrgwn slept, Kov crept down the tunnel and bundled the supplies in his blanket. He found a length of rope among them and used that to harness the bundle to his back. Before he climbed up, he waited, listening, peering down the dark tunnel to the faint blue glow of the camp’s fungi baskets. Everyone lay still; some snored.
Kov climbed the ladder, but at the top his spear, stuck crosswise across the bundle on his back, caught in the opening. He clung to the ladder with one hand, managed to get the spear free, and threw it out ahead of him. As he clambered over the edge of the opening, clods of earth fell and landed with a plop on the tunnel floor below. He froze for a moment, but heard nothing behind him. He grabbed his spear and set off at an awkward run with the bundle thumping against his back.
Ahead he saw the dark mass of the forest, rising against the starry night. He kept running until he was gasping for breath, then drove himself to keep walking until at last, he could plunge in among the pines. In the hopes of foiling the Horsekin’s keen sense of smell, he made himself a nest of pine needles. On the trunk of the tree above him, he found several globs of resin, which he smeared on his clothing. He nearly gagged on the strong scent, but he could hope that the Horsekin would smell only pine trees and not the filthy dwarf who hid under them.
Safe, he thought. For now.
After he’d left the Red Wolf dun, Rori had carried Cadryc’s answers to the prince’s messages back to the royal alar. He lingered there for several days, lairing with Arzosah and his step-daughter, to let his wound recover from the stress of his flight east. Every morning, Neb examined the incisions, which were healing up nicely, or so the young healer said.
“No sign of infection,” Neb pronounced. “And the gold won’t become tarnished and spread corruption like the silver dagger did. I’ll take the staples out later, though, once the skin’s grown back together.”
“Good,” Rori said. “It still itches, but not as badly.”
“Soon it won’t itch at all. Arzosah was right. Dragons do mend fast.”
“She generally is right, when it comes to things dragonish.”
Although, he thought to himself, human things are another matter entirely.
Dragonish things were much on Arzosah’s mind that day. When Rori rejoined her, she brought up a delicate matter. Medea had reached her hundred and twentieth year, close to the age when she would want a mate.
“I”ve sniffed out a few young males up north,” Arzosah told him. “Eventually one of them will smell Medea’s scent upon the wind and come flying our way. Then he’ll no doubt tell the other about Mezza, as well, once she’s ready. But I do worry about our son.”
“No scent of young females?” Rori said.
“None.” Arzosah heaved a sigh. “A mother’s lot is so difficult when you’re a dragon. It’s not like we can fly in flocks like birds or suchlike.”
“Well, we have years yet before he’ll be wanting a mate.”
“True, true, he’s but five and thirty years old, by my reckoning. A mere child yet. But I don’t want him taking an unhealthy interest in his sisters when the time comes. It’s not good for the bloodlines.”
“We’ve raised him better than that!”
“So I hope.” She sighed again. “I worry about the younger hatchlings in general, though, off alone like that. Don’t you? One of them is yours.”
“So