The Silver Mage - Katharine Kerr [72]
The hatreds, in particular, burned in his mind. As he floated on the currents of the wind, he counted them: the Horsekin, certainly. Tren. Raena. Alastyr—but, he reminded himself, Alastyr and Tren were one and the same soul. The Bear clan of Eldidd that had tried to undermine his rule as Gwerbret Aberwyn—all of them, too. Most deeply of all, he hated the dark dweomermen of Bardek, who had broken his mind and will back when he’d still been a young man and an exile. Nearly a hundred years old, some of those memories, but the hatreds still smoldered in his soul. At times they flared up, so hot and bitter that they made him uneasy, threatening every shred of mercy and justice he possessed. The years that he’d passed in dragon form were divesting him of everything that had made him a good ruler, a decent lord, a human being. Dalla was right, he thought. I can’t—can’t what? keep living like this?
He shuddered with a vast shiver of extended wings and tried to put the rage out of his mind. His one reliable refuge from his thoughts beckoned: flight. His wings beat the air as he gained height, until the fortress looked like a smear on the earth and naught more. The cool wind soothed his hatreds and blew them among the thin streaks of clouds.
Rori made a wide turn to the north and spotted on the distant horizon the pluming dust that meant the approach of a large number of—something. He dropped down and flew in that direction until he soared over a long column of marching spearmen, followed by a ragtag collection of Horsekin on foot. Behind them trundled loaded wagons, drawn by horses, and oxcarts as well, piled high with lumpy, uneven cargo held down by hides and ropes. A bevy of mounted riders drove herds of horses and cattle, while behind them marched another tidy column of spearmen. Riders brought up the rear. These, some hundreds of them, rode in a straggly column, bunching up, thinning out as they traveled slowly along. Horsekin, then, not Gel da’Thae cavalry—Rori risked swooping down lower, circling the line of march for a better look.
Although he saw chained slaves among those who walked behind the leading contingent of uniformed spearmen, the others in the line of march seemed to be traveling freely enough. Mostly women drove the wagons. Children perched on top of bulky, ill-stowed loads or sat beside the women on the wagon boxes. The rearguard horsemen wore heavy tunics of leather, painted with designs that from his height Rori couldn’t read. Painted shields hung from their saddle peaks. A migration, all right, a full migration of Horsekin tribes. Probably they were planning on settling around the new fortress to raise food and mounts for whatever plans Alshandra’s rakzanir had underway.
As Rori headed south again, he realized that he wasn’t far—not far as dragons reckon distance, at any rate—from the strange village and the wooden bridge that Berwynna had described to him. Any army planning on extending itself through the Northlands would want that bridge. He decided to take a look at it and headed east again. Soon he was soaring high above the Dwrvawr. He turned downriver, spotted the village and the rickety bridge that Berwynna had described, then circled lower for a better look.
Near the village a strip of sandy beach sloped down toward water reeds and what appeared to be shallow water, shaded by a cluster of willows. In deeper water a pair of enormous otters swam back and forth. Rori dropped down a hundred yards or so and circled to confirm that indeed, two otters, roughly six feet long from whiskered snout to graceful tail, were exactly what they were. As he watched, one of them swam to the beach and clambered out. It started chasing its tail like a dog. In a swirl of bluish light the otter disappeared, and a human being, dripping wet and naked, stood in its stead. The other creature