Bristling Wood (18 page)

“Now that’s a puzzle and a half,” Caudyr said. “Owaen’s the last man I ever thought would do such a thing.”

“No more did I. I know that Caradoc thinks highly of the lad. Maybe he’s right, after all.”

In the barracks a couple of the men were building a fire in the stone hearth. Others sat on the line of bunks and talked of dice games. Pale, mousy Argyn, who was one of the most cold-blooded and vicious killers in the warband, was already asleep, but for all that he was snoring like a summer storm, no one disturbed him to shut him up. The long room smelled of sweat, woodsmoke, and horses, especially of horses, since the troop’s mounts were stabled directly below the slatted floor. To Maddyn, it was a comfortable kind of smell that said home to him after all these years of riding in one warband or another. He sat down on his bunk and took his harp out of its padded leather bag.

“Here, Maddo!” Aethan called out. “For the love of every god in the Otherlands, don’t sing that same blasted song about King Bran’s cattle raid, will you?”

“Ah, hold your tongue. I’m trying to learn it.”

“And don’t we all know it?” Caradoc broke in. “I’m as sick as I can be of you missing that stanza in the middle and going back over it.”

“As the captain orders. But don’t be taking my head off, then, for never knowing a new song.”

In sheer annoyance he put the harp away and stomped out of tne barracks, followed by a small crowd of disappointed Wildfolk, who tugged at his sleeve and his brigga leg to try to get him to go back and sing. When he ignored them, they disappeared, a few at a time, but all of them with reproachful looks on their tiny faces. He went straight to the kitchen hut, where there was a scullery lass, Clwna, who liked him well enough to sneak out to the hayloft with him every now and then. By his reckoning, she should have been done with her work. The kitchen hut’s door was open to let a cheerful spill of light fall across the cobbles, and clustered around it were the king’s hunting dogs, waiting hopefully for scraps. Maddyn kicked his way through the pack and stood in the doorway. The scullery boys were washing the last of the kettles at the hearth, and the cook herself, a gray-haired, woman with enormous, muscular arms, was perched on a tall stool and eating her own dinner out of a wooden bowl.

“I know what you’re after, silver dagger, Clwna’s gone already, and no doubt with another of you lads.”

“No doubt. With my lady’s gracious permission, I’ll wait here for a bit to see if she comes back.”

The cook snorted and pushed a strand of hair back from her forehead with her little finger.

“You silver daggers are a strange lot. Most men would be howling with, rage if their wench slipped out with another lad.”

“We share what we get when we can get it. I’m just glad that Clwna’s a sensible lass.”

“Sensible, hah! If you call it sensible to get yourself known as one of the silver daggers’ women. I’m fair minded to beat some sense into the lass, I am.”

“Oh, now here! How could, you be so cruel to deny us a bit of comfort, when we’re fighting for the very honor of Eldidd?”

“Listen to him!” The cook rolled her eyes heavenward to invoke the gods. “Out of my kitchen, bard! You’re giving the scullery lads wrong ideas.”

Maddyn made her a mocking bow and left, shoving his way through the dogs. As he crossed the ward, it occurred to him that the entire troop had been in the barracks when he’d left it. While he was willing to share Clwna with other silver daggers, the thought of sharing her with an outsider griped his soul. He ducked inside the back door of the great hall and snagged himself a torch from one of the sconces, then searched through the ward with a growing sense of righteous irritation. In the aftermath of the feast there were lots of people about: servants bringing firewood and barrels of ale, glutted riders strolling slowly back to barracks or privy, serving lasses intent on flirtations of their own or running similar errands for their noble mistresses. About halfway to the stables he saw his prey—Clwna walking along arm in arm with one of the king’s guard. From the disarray of her dresses and the bit of straw in her hair, Maddyn knew that his suspicions were justified. Clwna herself settled any lingering doubt by screaming the moment she saw him.

“So!” Maddyn held the torch up like a householder apprehending a thief. “And what’s all this, lass?”

Clwna made a miserable little shriek and stuffed her knuckles into her mouth. With his hand on his sword hilt, Owaen stepped forward into the pool of light. Maddyn realized that the situation could easily go beyond irritation to danger.

“What’s it to you, you little dog?” Owaen snapped. “The lady happens to prefer a real man instead of a bondsman with a sword.”

It took every scrap of will that Maddyn possessed to stop himself from hitting Owaen in the face with the flaming torch. In his rage he was only dimly aware that they were gathering a crowd, but he did hear Clwna nattering on and on to some sympathetic listener. Owaen stood smiling at him, his mouth a twist of utter smugness.

“Well, come on, old man,” he said at last. “Don’t you have a word to say to me?”

“Oh, I’ll have plenty of words, little lad. You forget that you’re talking to a bard. I haven’t made a good flyting song in a long, long time.”

“You wouldn’t dare!” Owaen’s voice was a childlike howl of indignation. “That’s not fair!”

At that the ring of onlookers burst out laughing; for all his swordcraft, he looked such an outraged boy standing there that Maddyn had to chuckle himself, thinking that in truth it hardly mattered who tumbled Clwna around in the hay. He was just about to say something conciliatory to the lad when Owaen, his face blushing red, unbuckled his sword belt and threw it onto the cobbles.

“Well and good, then, bard!” he snarled. “It’s breaking geis to draw on you, but hand that torch to someone, and I’ll grind your face in the stones for you!”

“Oh, for the sake of every god in the sky, Owaen,” Maddyn said wearily. “She’s hardly worth—”

Owaen swung at him, an open-handed slap that he dodged barely in time. At that there were yells, and a couple of men in the crowd leaped forward and grabbed the lad. Howling and swearing, he tried to break free, but they dragged him back and held him. By the blazons on their shirts Maddyn could tell that they were guardsmen, too. The reason for this unexpected civility pushed his way through the onlookers.

“Now, what’s all this?” said Wevryl, captain of the king’s guard. “Owaen, by the black hairy ass of the Lord of Hell! I swear that Trouble was your dam and Twice Trouble your grandam! What was he doing to you, bard?”

“Naught, truly, but making a fool of himself.”

“My apologies!” Clwna broke in with a wail. “I never meant to cause trouble, Maddo.” She paused for a couple of moist sobs. “Truly I didn’t.”

“Oh, over a lass, was it?” The captain looked profoundly annoyed. “The same tedious old horse dung, is it? Ye gods, it’s only fall! What are you lads going to be like when the winter sets in, eh? Very well, bard. Take the lass away, will you? Owaen, as for you, it’ll be a couple of lashes out in the ward tomorrow morn. I’ll not be having trouble over a kitchen slut.”

Owaen’s face drained dead white. In the crowd, a couple of men snickered.

“Oh, here, Captain,” Maddyn said. “If you’re flogging him for my sake, there’s no need.”

“Not for your sake—for the sake of peace in the dun. You might pass that on to that troop you ride with, too. I won’t tolerate this sort of fighting. Save the bloodlust for spring and our enemies.”

In the morning, when they dragged Owaen out to the ward for his lashes, Maddyn refused to go watch, although most of the other silver daggers and half the dun did. It was entertainment of a sort. With his blue sprite and a couple of gnomes for company, he wandered around to the back of the stables and lounged on a bale of straw in the warm sun. Caradoc eventually found him there.

“Is it over?” Maddyn said.

“It is. Wevryl tells me that Owaen’s been naught but trouble ever since he rode his first battle, bragging and swaggering around, so he decided it was time to show the lad his place. Aches my heart. Look, they put this young hothead in the king’s guard because he’s the best swordsman they’ve ever seen, and so what does he do? Sit around most of the year and watch the old king sleep. No wonder he’s as hot as summer tinder. He’d be better off in the silver daggers.”

“You keep saying that. Well, if he keeps on being so cursed arrogant, you might have your chance to recruit him yet.”

They always say that bards have a touch of prophecy. For close to a week, Maddyn saw no sign of Owaen, not even in the great hall at meals. He was apparently keeping strictly to himself and letting his wounds heal, and as painful as two stripes were, it would be the shame that would be paining him the more, Maddyn assumed. Since every silver dagger knew what shame tasted like, when Owaen did reappear, they went out of their way to treat him as if nothing had happened. The young handpicked riders in the king’s guard had no such hard-earned compassion. When a stiff-backed Owaen took his place at table for the first time, he was greeted with a chorus of catcalls and a couple of truly vicious remarks about whipped dogs and kennels. Since Wevryl was nowhere in sight, Caradoc stood on his position as a captain and went over and broke it up. His face bright red, Owaen gulped ale from his tankard and stared down at the tabletop.

When Caradoc came back, he sat down next to Maddyn.

“Little pusboils,” the captain remarked. “Now that’s a truly stupid way to treat a man when your life might depend on him someday in a scrap.”

“Even stupider when he’s a man who could cut you into pieces without half trying.”

“Now that, alas, is true-spoken.”

Later that morning Maddyn was grooming his horse in front of the stable when Clwna, all nervous smile and sidelong glance, came sidling up to him. If she hadn’t been so thin and pale, she would have been a lovely lass, but as it was, her blond hair always smelled of roast meat and there was always grease under her fingernails.

“Have you forgiven me yet, Maddo?”

“Oh, easily. Going to meet me out in the hayloft tonight?”

She giggled, hiding her mouth behind her hand like a court lady, a gesture that was somehow pathetic.

“Here, I’ll be riding to town today,” Maddyn said. “I’ll buy you some ribands from the tailor. What colors would you like?”

“Blue and green, and my thanks. You’re so sweet, Maddo. I like you the best of anybody.”

“Oh huh! And how many of the lads do you say that to?”

“Only you. And maybe Aethan but only sometimes. Sometimes he frightens me.” Unconsciously she brought her hand to her throat. “Sometimes he looks at me, and I think he’s going to hit me, but then he only says some mean thing and walks away.”

“When he does that, he’s thinking of another woman, lass, not of you. Stay away from him when he’s in that mood.”

“I will, then.” She went suddenly tense, looking over his shoulder. “Oh ye gods!”

Maddyn turned to see a gaggle of guardsmen strolling their way with Owaen among them. At the sight of Clwna, they began nudging each other and snickering.

“There’s the fair maiden, Owaen. Oh, she doesn’t look half so tasty in the daylight. Was she worth it, Owaen? Was she? As hot as Bardek spices, then.”

Owaen walked away fast, his head up high, his mouth set tight. Clwna burst out weeping and ran. Maddyn thought of following her, then decided that she’d have to learn her lessons, too.

That night the first of the long slashing winter rains came in from the Southern Sea. Penned inside with no more amusements than dice and ale, the king’s guard kept up their relentless teasing. It seemed to Maddyn that no matter when he saw Owaen, the lad was being mocked by his fellows. There were jests about Clwna, jests about whipping dogs into shape, jests about a man stupid enough to challenge a bard—on and on, over and over, and each more tired and feeble than the last. Maddyn could only assume that Owaen’s arrogance had irked his fellow guardsmen for years; doubtless they envied him, too. Maddyn also noticed Caradoc keeping a careful eye on the situation. Often the captain stepped in when the teasing turned vicious and stopped it.

Finally, on the fourth solid day of rain, things came to a head. After dinner that night, Caradoc lingered in the great hall and kept Maddyn there with him after the rest of the silver daggers went to the barracks. They collared a couple of tankards of dark ale from a serving lass and moved to a table in the curve of the wall, where they were barely noticeable in the shadows but had a good view of Owaen, who was sitting at the end of a table of guardsmen.

“Tomorrow this demon-get storm will blow over,” Caradoc remarked. “I hope that someone else does somewhat stupid and soon. Give them a new butt for their jokes.”

They lounged there for about half an hour while the prince’s bard sang manfully over the laughter and talk. Because of all the noise, Maddyn never heard what started the fight. All at once, Owaen and another lad were on their feet and yelling at each other in inarticulate rage. Caradoc leapt up and ran, but too late. The other lad grabbed his sword and drew. Maddyn hardly saw Owaen move. There was a flash of steel in torchlight; his opponent staggered back, blood running down his face. Caradoc caught him by the shoulders and laid him down in the straw just as Maddyn reached them. The hall broke out in screaming and shouting. Owaen threw his bloody sword down on the table and stared, his mouth open in shock. When men grabbed him from behind, he went limp in their hands. Maddyn knelt beside Caradoc and the bleeding victim.

“How badly is he cut?”

“Cut? He’s dead.”

Half disbelieving it, Maddyn stared at the corpse on the floor. Owaen had struck twice in that blur of motion, slashing the lad’s face half open, then catching his throat on the backswing. Shouting and swearing, men clustered round; Caradoc and Maddyn left the corpse to them and worked their way free of the mob just in time to see the guard marching Owaen out of the hall. The lad was weeping.

“Ah, horseshit!” Caradoc growled. “He’s just too blasted good with that blade. I could have stopped it in time if it’d been anyone else. Ah, horseshit!”