The Silver Mage - Katharine Kerr [184]
The crowd was beginning to disperse. Those at the back of the plaza were turning and filing down the path, heading for the lakeshore, while those waiting milled around, finding friends, talking amongst themselves, picking up frightened children, but always moving steadily off the plaza like slow water running over an outcrop of rock.
Dallandra allowed Jahdo to help her down from the platform, but they lingered, waiting for the crowd to thin. Some of the militia men filled buckets at the well and sluiced down the platform. Dallandra turned her back rather than watch Drav’s blood run along the cobbles.
“Well,” she said, “now we know for certain that Cleddrik was a traitor. I just wish I’d seen it sooner.”
“I do wish the same for myself,” Jahdo said. “Niffa did have her doubts, and now I do wish I’d listened more carefully. But there be naught we can do now. I be remembering my time in Cengarn, and what the folk there might say, ‘It were Drav’s wyrd, and no man can turn his wyrd aside.’ Somewhat like that, at least.”
“That’s true enough. But I still wish I’d sniffed out Cleddrik earlier.”
That afternoon, the Council of Five walked through the town to speak to the citizens. They came to the conclusion that they had no need to call for a formal Deciding, as the Cerr Cawnen people called their method of voting. Almost everyone in town wanted to leave now that Dar was offering them a destination. Those few who didn’t would be coerced by their kin. Still, it would take several days for the town to pack up and leave in a orderly fashion, as Jahdo pointed out that night at the evening meal.
“We don’t have two days,” Niffa’s voice shook. “I did scry out Rori this morning. He be harrying the army, be they be close, mayhap four days’ ride at the most. If they do find us gone, but we do linger close by, then they will be riding after us.”
“Slaves are a valuable commodity to the Horsekin,” Calonderiel said. “We’ll have to fight some kind of delaying action.”
“We don’t have the men to spare,” Dar said, “so we have to make all possible speed. Jahdo, please, tell your people to take only what they can grab and carry away fast. If they’re dead or enslaved, their possessions won’t do them any good, will they now?”
“True spoken, Your Highness,” Jahdo said. “Food first, clothing and blankets next, and then whatever trinkets do pack fast and easily. I think me we all ken what evil comes toward us, and none will linger to feel its whips.”
“Good. Once we’re all heading south, then I’ll give you horses for messengers. They can ride to the farms with the ill news and collect those people, too.”
Late that night, Dallandra and Calonderiel were talking over the evacuation plans in their chamber when she heard Jahdo calling for her. She opened the door to find the Chief Speaker pacing in the corridor. Two town guards stood nearby.
“Ill news,” Jahdo said. “Cleddrik did hang himself.”
“Ye gods!” Dallandra said. “How?”
“He did manage to tear his clothes to strips and braid himself a noose.” Jahdo shuddered profoundly. “The cell he were in, the ceiling, it be not high enough for him to drop, like, so he did fasten the noose to the iron bars in the little window and lean forward, trying to kneel, like, till he did choke.”
“I can’t see how anyone could—by the Black Sun!”
“He would have gone into a faint, methinks, early on, and then kept strangling till he died.”
“Mayhap, but still! He must have been incredibly determined to die.”
“He were sore afraid to face his Horsekin masters, I do wager.”
“Now that’s true spoken. Most likely he took the easier way to his death, ghastly though it sounds.”
“A quicker one, at the least. The militia men, they be hanging his corpse again, from the north gate this time.” Jahdo allowed himself a thin smile. “Just to let the invading Horsekin know, like, when they get here, that their traitor, he did fail them.”
Salamander and Rori had left the young hatchlings in Medea’s care and followed the Horsekin army. On that first day after the defection of the priestesses,