A Time of Omens (48 page)

“Save it for the bandits, Rhodry,” Yraen put in with a sigh. “How wide is the forest, anyway? Traveling from south to north, I mean.”

“Oh, let’s see.” The blacksmith rubbed his chin. “I’ve never been north, myself. But it stretches a fair ways. Then you come to some more farming country, and then forest again. Cengarn’s right up in the hills. Lot of trade comes through Cengarn.”

“Trade?” Carra said, startled. “With the Westfolk?”

“Them, too, lass.” The blacksmith gave Otho a conspiratorial wink. “I take it she’s never ridden our way before. I think the lass is in for a surprise or two.”

The hayloft turned out to be quite big enough for all of them, though Nedd insisted on piling up a barrier of hay to give Carra a bit of privacy in one curve of the wall. Before she went to this improvised bower, she asked Rhodry outright why he’d lied to the blacksmith.

“Because the truth could be dangerous, that’s why. Bandits have been known to hold important people for ransom.”

“Important…”

“Carra, believe me. The Westfolk would hand over every fine horse they own to ransom Dar’s wife and heir, to say naught of that bit of jewelry you’re carrying. From now on, just pretend you ran off with me. It’s perfectly believable.”

“The vanity of the man!” Otho said. “But women do stupid things sometimes, sure enough.”

“And men are the soul of tact?” Carra snapped.

“It’s not like you really did run off with Rhodry. This man of yours couldn’t be any worse, even if he is an elf.”

Lightning picked up her mood and growled. At the sound Thunder swung his head around and bared teeth.

“My apologies,” Otho said, and quickly. “No offense meant.”

Carra decided that as men at arms went, the dogs had much to recommend them.

In the morning, when they rode out, Rhodry and Yraen held a last conference with the blacksmith, then decided to wear the mail shirts they’d been carrying in their saddlebags. Much to Carra’s surprise, Otho produced one as well. As they followed the road into the forest, Nedd put the dogs on alert with a few hand signals; their noses would provide the best warning they could have against possible ambushes. Although she tried to keep her courage up, a few hours of this dangerous riding brought Carra an acute case of nerves. Every flicker of movement in the underbrush, every ripple of wind in the trees, every distant crack of a twig or hammer of a woodpecker, made her flinch.

Rhodry and Yraen rode in silence, as alert as the dogs. When they finally came clear of the forest, just after noon, she offered up a prayer of thanks to the Goddess. Yet, paradoxically enough, it was out in the open farmlands that the reality of their danger struck her like a blow across the face. Thanks to heavy cutting by the locals, the trees ended in a welter of stumps just at the edge of a broad valley. As they jogged their horses out into the open air, the dogs growled and threw up their heads to sniff the sudden gust of burning that greeted them. When Carra looked up, she could see a lazy drift of smoke, yellowing the sky. Circling up high flew the raven. Yraen swore—he’d seen it, too. Rhodry, oddly enough, started singing, just a few lines of some looping melody in the language of the Westfolk.

“Would that I had my good yew bow to speed an arrow to your lying heart,” he translated. “So your blood could water the tree of my revenge—but that bit isn’t really to the point, being as that cursed bird hasn’t done anything to us yet. I suspect it of having plans. What do you think, Otho?”

“I think we should turn back, that’s what.”

The raven headed off west and disappeared into the bright sun beyond the smoke.

“Normally I’d agree, but there’s a farmstead burning over there.” Rhodry rose in his stirrups and squinted across the valley. “Somebody might be still alive.”

But the gods weren’t so kind as that. At a fast jog they cut across the fields, the dogs racing to keep up, and reached the farmstead to find the fire burning itself out in a smolder of smoking thatch and glowing embers. Just at the road lay the corpse of a woman, her head half cut from her shoulders, in a blackening pool of blood. She lay on her back, her arms thrown akimbo, her stomach swollen with a late pregnancy.

“Get back!” Rhodry turned in his saddle and yelled at Carra. “Get back with the dogs!”

She wheeled her horse around, but it was too late. Mixed with the smoke hung a sweet scent, much too much like burnt meat. She pulled Gwerlas up after a few lengths, dismounted as fast as she could, and vomited into the long grass. Sick, cold, and shaking, she wiped her mouth on a pull of grass and got up, staggering back to her horse, just as the two dogs reached her. Whining, they crowded close. She let her hands rest on their necks while she stared at the sky and resolutely tried to put the sight of the murdered woman out of her mind. It was impossible.

“There, there, lass.” It was Otho, and his voice was full of soft concern. “You’ll come right in a moment.”

When she tried to answer the words stuck like lumps of vomit in her throat. Finally she decided that she’d have to face what needed facing and turned to look at the distant village. She could just see Rhodry and Yraen circling round the burning, with Nedd close behind them. She realized suddenly that if there were trapped survivors, the dogs would find them. She snapped her fingers and pointed.

“Nedd. Go to Nedd.”

They bounded off.

“Oh, well,” Carra went on. “It’s still better than marrying Lord Scraev. I’ll tell you about him sometime, Otho. You’ll laugh and laugh.”

Her voice sounded so weak and shaky to her own ears that she nearly wept. Otho laid a surprisingly gentle hand on her shoulder. “Tears help, lass.”

“I can’t weep. I’m a queen now. Sort of, anyway. The queens in all the old tales face this sort of thing with proud sneers or maybe a supernatural calm. Like what’s-her-name, King Maryn’s wife, when her enemies were accusing her of adultery and stuff.”

Otho’s face turned pale and oddly blank.

“Haven’t you heard that old story? Bellyra, that was it, and she stared them all down till her witness could get there and keep them from killing her.”

“Many a time and from many a bard.”

“You know, he was a smith like you, wasn’t he? I think that’s the way the tale ran. He was her jeweler or suchlike.” Carra forced a smile. “And she wasn’t killed, and so I’ll just take that as a good omen.”

“Now listen, lass, things look dark. I won’t lie to you. But for all that I love to slang him, Rhodry ap Devaberiel’s the best swordsman in this kingdom and points beyond as well, and young Yraen’s his match. We’ll get you through to Cengarn.”

“Shouldn’t we turn back?”

“Well, the raiders left plenty of tracks. Didn’t seem to see any reason why they should cover them, like, the arrogant bastards. I’d say they’re heading south right now. No use in riding after them, is there?”

“Oh, Goddess, I wish Dar were here! I… hold a bit. Did you say that Rhodry’s father is one of the Westfolk? I mean, with that name—”

“He couldn’t be anything but an elf, truly. That’s what I said, all right, but I’m not saying another word about it. Rhodry’s affair, not mine.”

In a few minutes the other men came back, Rhodry and Yraen grim, shaking their heads, Nedd dead-pale and sweating, the dogs slinking, all limp tails and ears. When they reached the body of the dead woman, Rhodry sent the others on ahead, then knelt down beside it. Carra turned her back on him and took a deep gulp of air.

“Are there more people dead?” she said to Yraen.

“There are. Not one thing we can do for the poor bastards. Three dead men, one lad of maybe fifteen. That woman we saw first. And the child she was carrying, of course.”

“That’s all? I mean, a farm this big—usually there’s a couple of families, working it.”

“I know.” Yraen muttered something foul under his breath before he went on. “I wonder if these bandits maybe took the other women and the children with them.”

“We’re not close enough to the coast for that.” Rhodry joined them. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“What?” Carra broke in. “What are you talking about?”

“Slaves for the Bardek trade. But the bandits would have to get them all the way down to the sea, avoiding the Westfolk and Deverry men alike on the way. Can’t see them bothering.”

“Well.” Yraen rubbed the side of his face with a gauntleted hand. “They might have wanted the women for—”

“Hold your tongue!” Rhodry hit him on the shoulder. “Look what I found in the dead woman’s fingers. She must have grabbed her attacker or suchlike.”

He held out a tuft of straw-colored hair, each coarse strand about a foot long.

“Looks like horse hair to me,” Yraen said.

Nedd sniffed it, then shook his head in a vigorous no.

“There weren’t any hoofprints anywhere near her, but there were boot prints, so I think I’ll side with Nedd.” Rhodry rubbed the strands between thumb and forefinger. “The fellow might have packed his hair with lime, like the High King does—the old Dawntime way, I mean. It makes your hair turn to straw like this.”

“Oh, and I suppose you’ve been close enough to the king to tell,” Yraen muttered.

Rhodry flashed a brief grin, shot through with weariness.

“Let’s get out of here.” Nedd spoke so rarely that all of them jumped and swirled round to face him. Although he was still pale, his mouth was set in a tight line, and his eyes burned with an expression that Carra could only call fierce. “Tell the gwerbret. We’ve got to.”

“So we should.” Rhodry glanced at Otho. “Looks like they headed south, anyway.”

“So I told our lady. Can’t turn back.”

“I’m on for the ride.” Carra thought of ancient queens and forced her voice steady. “I say we get to the gwerbret as fast as ever we can.”

“Done, then.” Rhodry looked up with a toss of his head.
“Nedd, can you and Carra each carry one of the dogs? You can sling them over the front of your saddles, if they’ll allow it.”

Nedd nodded his head to indicate that they would.

“Good. We want to make speed.”

That night when they camped, Rhodry and Yraen set a guard with the dogs to help them. It became their pattern: rise early, tend the horses, then ride hard all day, making a late camp and a guarded one, especially once they reached the second stretch of forest, where no one slept much. The dogs were especially nervous, whining and growling, turning their heads this way and that as they rode. When they were allowed down they would trot round and round the horses and look up, every now and then, to growl or bark at the sky. Carra wondered if the raven were following them, somewhere above the sheltering trees. As they traveled steadily north, the land kept rising, and it turned rocky, too, with huge boulders pushing their way through the earth and stunting the black and twisted pines. The muddy track they were following wound and switched back and forth through the jagged hills until Carra wondered if they’d ever reach Cengarn.

Finally, though, on the third day after they’d found the ravaged village, they reached a road, made of felled trees, trimmed into logs and half-buried, side by side in the dirt. At its abrupt beginning stood a stone marker carved with a sunburst and a couple of lines of lettering. Carra was surprised to learn that Rhodry could read.

“Well, we’re not far now, twenty miles from Cadmar’s city.” He laid one finger on the carved sun. “This is his device.”

The country here was broken tableland. On the flat the pine forest grew all tangled round with ancient underbrush, like a hedge on either side of the road, only to break suddenly and tumble down a small gulch in a spill of green or reveal huge boulders, heaped and tumbled like a giant’s toys. When the sunlight was falling in long and dusty-gold slants through the trees, the road flattened out and straightened. As they traveled along at a steady walk, Carra heard a distant noise ahead of them, went stiff with fear, then realized that it was the sound of a river, racing and tumbling over rock. As the road snaked west, at the end of
a leafy tunnel they could see both the river and a blessed token that some kind of human presence lay close at hand. On either side the riverbank had been cleared of trees and underbrush; the rocks out in the water itself had been hauled around and arranged to floor a level if deep-looking ford. But while they were still in the forest’s shelter, Rhodry threw up his hand for a halt.

“What’s wrong?” Carra said. “Can’t we camp here? I’d be so glad to see the sky.”

All at once the dogs began growling and squirming so badly that neither Carra nor Nedd could keep them on the saddle. They slithered down and rushed to the head of the line, bristling and snarling on the edge of barks. At their signal Rhodry began yelling at Carra and Nedd to get back into the forest. In a swirl of confusion they did just that, but as Carra looked up reflexively at the sky, she saw the raven flap away. Whistling and yelling, Nedd got the dogs to come to him, but they kept growling. Up ahead Rhodry, Yraen, and Otho peered across the river into the forest on the other side. Nothing moved. It was dead-silent, not the chirp of a bird, not the rustle of a squirrel.

“Ill-omened places, fords,” Yraen remarked.

“So they are.” Rhodry rose in the stirrups and stared as if he were counting every distant tree. “Think there’s someone waiting on the other side?”

“The dogs think there is,” Otho put in. “I say we ride upstream.”

“Upstream?” Yraen said. “What’s upstream?”

“Naught, I suppose. So they won’t expect us to go that way.”

Rhodry laughed, a little mutter under his breath like a ferret’s chortle. Carra went ice-cold. She was going to die. She realized it all at once with a calm clarity: what waited for them across that river was death, and there was no escaping it. They couldn’t go back, they couldn’t go forward, they might as well cross over to the Otherlands and be done with it. Although she tried to tell the rest of them, when she opened her mouth she simply couldn’t speak. Not so much as a gasp came out.

“Well spoken, Otho my old friend,” Rhodry said at last. “Let’s give it a try. See those boulders up there a ways? Shelter of a sort. But we’d best dismount, I think.”

Since the trees thinned out toward the clearing’s edge they could lead their horses, single file, without leaving this imperfect shelter, but they couldn’t do it without cracking branches and snapping twigs and setting the underbrush rustling. After some twenty yards the dogs began growling and snarling, anyway, no matter how Nedd tried to hush them.