The Spirit Stone - Katharine Kerr [158]
‘So we do.’ Gerran said. ‘My thanks, good scribe. We’d best be getting back to our quarters.’
Late that night, Salamander felt too tired to sleep at the same time as he wanted nothing more than to sleep. He went for a walk through the camp, then left it for the sake of silence. The new moon, close to setting in the clear sky, tempted him too badly for him to resist using it as a focus. He scried for Rocca and saw her sleeping, lying in straw heaped on a stone floor. And what was she going to say to him, he wondered, if they met again? If she lives, he thought. If they let her live. The prince would no doubt give the women of the fortress the chance to leave unharmed, but would the rakzanir let them take it? He could do nothing but wait and see.
‘Laz,’ Pir said, ‘the only thing worth eating in this camp is meat. The men are starting to grumble. I sent the last of the horses’ grain off with Bren for his mount. He won’t reach the Boar dun without it. You’ve got to go raiding, and you’ve got to do it soon.’
‘So we do,’ Laz said. ‘There’s that big farming village north of here. We’ve not paid them one of our visits since the spring.’ He glanced at Sidro. ‘I don’t suppose you’d care to join me and the fellows?’
‘I most certainly wouldn’t,’ Sidro said. ‘It’s bad enough knowing I’m eating stolen food. I don’t want to watch you steal it.’
‘Suit yourself. Pir will stay here, being of much the same noble turn of mind as you. I’m surprised he didn’t end up in a temple like you did.’
The horse mage gave Laz a look that Sidro found hard to interpret. Annoyance, most likely, at the tease, but something else flickered in his dark eyes. Contempt, perhaps?
‘Vek never goes with us, either, but mostly because he’s too young,’ Laz went on. ‘We’ll be gone several days. Don’t worry about me, Sisi. This lot won’t give us any trouble.’
Although Faharn would officer the raiding party on the ground, Laz would fly ahead and lead them in his raven form. The magical raven always frightened the villagers into obedience, or so he told her. Sidro supposed that the fifteen Horsekin spearmen he was bringing along would frighten them a fair bit more, but she refrained from pointing that out. Pir accompanied them when they left the camp, but only to help them with the packhorses, which he pastured during the day in forest clearings.
Now that she’d left Alshandra’s worship behind, Sidro had returned to the scrupulous cleanliness that she’d learned as a slave child. First she took Laz’s clothes and her own linen shift down to a stream and pounded them clean, then hung them from low-growing branches to dry. Next she set work on the cabin, despite the way her leather dress chafed without the shift under it. First she made a broom of twigs and swept the filthy rushes and pine needles out of the cabin. Down by the stream fresh rushes grew in profusion. She pulled big armfuls of them, then spread them out in front of the cabin to dry.
For the pine needles she’d need an edge sharper than the kitchen knife. She searched through the camp until she found an axe and a big basket, then returned to the forest and cut a number of slender branches. Trimming the needles from the pitch-sticky twigs proved difficult. She was struggling with the job when she heard someone walk up behind her. With a yelp, she spun around, clutching the axe, but it was only Pir, returned from seeing the raiders on their way.
‘I’ll do that for you if you like,’ he said.
‘Thank you.’ She handed him the axe. ‘You’re doubtless better with this than I am. Do you have a spare shirt I can wash in return?’
‘No.’ He leaned the axe against a tree, then pulled off the shirt he was wearing. Soft dark hair rippled on his chest and arms and down his back. ‘But I’d appreciate it if you could do something with this one. It, um, well, stinks, not to put too subtle a word upon it, as Laz would say.’
Stink it certainly did. Sidro hurried to the stream and immersed