The Spirit Stone - Katharine Kerr [34]
‘Ah ye gods! How can you do this to me?’
The gods didn’t deign to answer. With a sigh, Gwairyc unbuckled his sword belt and laid it down carefully on the bed. He had better pack up his gear, he decided, what there was of it, enough clothes and the like to fit into two pair of saddlebags and little more. At a timid knock on his door, he opened it to find a small group of his riders clustered behind red-haired Rhwn, who generally acted as his second-in-command. Rhwn was holding out a big silver pitcher and a clay cup.
‘My lord?’ Rhwn said. ‘Me and the lads bribed a kitchen lass and got you some mead. Figured you’d need it.’
‘My thanks.’ Gwairyc steadied his voice by force of will, then took the mead. ‘Do you hold this to my shame?’
‘How can we? I tell you, my lord, me and the lads are as vexed as the Lord of Hell with boils on his cock! It’s not going to be the same, riding behind some other captain.’
The men behind him all nodded their agreement.
‘Well, my thanks,’ Gwairyc said again. ‘I never knew I had such a blasted strange wyrd in store for me.’
‘No man knows his wyrd,’ Rhwn said with a shrug. ‘Here, my lord, who is that old man? He can’t truly be some old daft herbman. The King himself called him a lord.’
‘Then he’s a daft old lord who turned herbman, maybe. Ah horseshit, I’m going to find out, aren’t I?’
Rhwn nodded with a long sad sigh, then herded the other men away to leave Gwairyc his privacy. Gwairyc barred the door again and returned to stuffing his material wealth into his saddlebags. By the time he’d done, he’d drunk half the mead. He finished off the rest of the pitcher fast, drinking it down like physick, then passed out fully dressed on his bunk.
Waking brought torment, a headache like a sword cut, a stomach that roiled like a winter sea. Rolling up his blankets gave him a foretaste of the seven hells. Gwairyc had a brief thought of suicide, decided it would be acknowledging defeat in a battle not yet begun, and grimly got his gear together instead of slitting his own throat. Just as dawn was brightening the sky, he led his grey gelding, a personal gift from the king, out of the dun gates. When he mounted, the effort made the buildings around him sway and wobble. He let the horse pick a slow way out into the city streets.
Only a few townsfolk were out this early: a housewife sweeping off her steps, a servant emptying a chamber-pot into the gutter. Gwairyc found the temple of Wmm by luck as much as memory. He dismounted, wondering where exactly Nevyn might be. When he touched the locked gate, the geese charged, hissing and flapping.
‘If you didn’t belong to a priest,’ Gwairyc said, ‘I’d wring your ugly white necks.’
He led his horse around to the mews he’d noticed behind the priest’s house. Sure enough, Nevyn was just tying a saddled riding horse to a hitching rail.
‘Ah, there you are,’ the old man said. ‘I’m still loading the mule.’
The gate was just broad enough to let Gwairyc’s horse follow him into a small dusty yard behind what seemed to be a stable. Nevyn was standing beside a pair of large canvas packs, while his mule stood head-down and sulky nearby. Gwairyc made an uneasy bow to his new master. Nevyn was a tall man, slender and remarkably strong-looking with a vigour that belied his untidy shock of white hair and his wrinkled face, dotted with the brown spots of advanced old age. He was dressed in a pair of dirty, much-mended brown brigga and an old shirt without any blazon on the yokes. A tattered brown cloak hung over the horse’s saddle.
‘Well, here I am,’ Gwairyc said. ‘Do you want me to load that mule for you?’
‘In a bit. You look ill. What did you do, drink yourself blind last night?’
‘Just that.’
‘I thought you might, so I saved out a few herbs for you. Here, sit down. I’ll just fetch a bit of hot water from Affyna’s kitchen.’
Gwairyc sat down on the ground.