Bristling Wood (42 page)

“My humble thanks, my liege. Your consideration is all that I’d ever ask for in this matter.”

The king nodded with a glance away.

“Tell the barber that he can come back, will you? I want these towels off and now. I have some serious thinking to do.”

In spite of the king’s return to a more familiar tone, Blaen knew that he’d been dismissed. As he rose and bowed, he was wondering just what Talidd of Belglaedd and his allies had been telling their leige.

“I know Blaen will take good care of him, but I hate to leave Sunrise behind,” Jill said.

“Oh, come now, my turtledove.” Salamander was busy tying shut his saddlebags. “Every lad in the royal stables will be fussing over him, and with luck, we won’t be gone long.”

“I doubt me if we’re going to have that kind of luck.”

He paused, turning to look at her. They were in the inn chamber with their packed gear strewn around them.

“Well? Do you think—”

“I don’t.” He sighed elaborately. “I was merely trying to console.”

There was a brief knocking at the door, and Blaen strode in without waiting for an invitation. With him were two serving lads who immediately began gathering up the gear.

“The galley’s ready,” Blaen announced. “I’ll accompany you down to the docks.”

“His Grace is most kind.” Salamander made him a bow. “And our liege the king as well.”

“Indeed? I’ve found out—or, I should say, my lady found out—exactly why Savyl of Camynwaen is taking a hand in this affair. His younger brother has a slight claim to Aberwyn.”

“Truly?” Jill said. “I never heard Lady Lovyan mention him.”

“Well, it’s not truly the sort of thing my aunt would dwell upon. You see, Rhodry’s father had two bastard daughters with a mistress of his. Savyl’s brother married one of them.”

“Two daughters?” Salamander broke in. “Well, fancy that! Or . . . here, of course. You mean Gwerbret Tingyr.”

“And who else would I be meaning?”

Jill gave Salamander a subtle sidewise kick.

“No one, Your Grace.” Salamander covered smoothly. “I’d merely forgotten the gwerbret’s name.”

“Ah. Well, it’s hard to keep all the noble bloodlines up in mind, truly. Here.” Blaen tossed Salamander an embroidered cloth pouch. “Use this wisely.”

Whistling under his breath, Salamander hefted the pouch and made it jingle.

“From the weight and the sound, Your Grace, there must be a cursed lot of gold in here.”

“As much as I could raise. I intend to get it back from my scapegrace cousin once he’s Aberwyn, mind.”

Although he spoke casually, Jill could hear the tension in his voice, a wondering, perhaps, if he were bankrupting himself to little end. Once again she was overwhelmed by the sheer weight or ruling, the smothering web of obligations and intrigues that overlaid even something as fine as Blaen’s and Rhodry’s love for each other. Salamander made the gwerbret an exaggerated bow.

“We shall do our best to protect His Grace’s investment.” Then he flicked his long fingers and made the pouch disappear, seemingly into nothingness.

By then it was just sunset, and long shadows filled the curving streets. When they reached the wooden wharves to the south of the city, the sky had turned a velvet blue-gray with twilight. Over the grassy riverbanks bold swallows swooped and twisted. Riding low in the water some little way from the masses of barges and skiffs was the royal galley, about forty feet long and sleek as a ferret. There were red shields painted with the royal gold wyvern at every oarlock, and the men who lounged at the oars were wearing white shirts embroidered with the wyvern badge and long lines of interlace.

“The king’s elite?” Salamander raised an eyebrow.

“The same,” Blaen said. “I can’t tell you, though, if our liege is doing this for Rhodry’s sake or mine.”

“Surely the king doesn’t want to see Eldidd at war?” Salamander said. “Because if Rhodry doesn’t return, war is what we’ll have. Each clan will be accusing the others of murdering the rightful heir and claiming the rhan for themselves.”

“I’m sure our liege knows that as well as you do.” Yet Blaen sounded oddly stiff, a bit frightened, perhaps. “I’m not privy to all his thoughts, gerthddyn.”

At the sight of Blaen, the galley’s captain hopped to the pier and hurried over with a bow. While the servants loaded the gear aboard, Jill turned away and watched the smooth-flowing river. Desperately she tried to scry Rhodry out, but her untrained mind could show her nothing. All at once she felt another fear and involuntarily yelped aloud.

What is it?” Salamander said.

“Perryn. He’s close by. I know it.”

She spun around, half expecting to see him in the crowd behind them, but there was no one there but curious passersby and a few longshoremen. Yet up in the velvet sky it seemed to her that she saw a long tendril of mist, reaching down toward her. Salamander saw it, too. When he threw up one hand and muttered a few words, the tendril vanished.

“He’s in town, all right. Madoc will be taking care of that, Jill. Don’t worry about a thing.”

“Still, can’t we get on that wretched boat and get out of here?”

“This very minute. There’s the captain signaling us aboard.”

Perryn paused just inside the south gate of the city. Just a moment ago he’d felt Jill’s nearness; now the trail had suddenly gone cold. His dapple gray stamped impatiently and tossed its head. When they’d ridden into the vast city earlier that afternoon, the gray had nearly panicked. It had taken all of Perryn’s horse empathy to calm it, and even so, it was still restless.

“Here, you! Are you going in or out? It’s time to close the gates.”

Perryn turned to see two city guards hurrying toward him, one of them carrying a torch. The cavernous gateway was already quite dark.

“Oh, er, ah, well . . . in, I think.”

“Then don’t just think—move, man!”

As Perryn obediently began to lead his horses toward the inner gate, the guard carrying the torch raised it high to shine the light full on his face.

“Your name wouldn’t be Lord Perryn of Alobry, would it, now?”

“It is at that. Why?”

The torch bearer whistled sharply, three loud notes. The other guard grabbed Perryn’s shoulder with his left hand and slammed his fist hard into his stomach, so quickly that Perryn had no time to dodge. He doubled over, retching, as two more guards ran up and grabbed his horses’ reins from his helpless fingers.

“Good work! You’ve got the weasel Lord Madoc wanted, right enough.”

“Talks like a simpleton, his lordship told me, and he must be one, too, to answer to his name like that.”

Although the world still danced around him, Perryn forced himself to raise his head and look in time to see a guard rummaging through his saddlebags. With a bark of triumph, he held up the rambling scribe. When Perryn made a feeble grab at it, another guard slapped him across the face.

“None of that, horse thief. The only thing this scribe’s going to write for you now is your death writ.”

They disarmed him, bound his hands behind him, then pushed him along through the streets. Those few people still out at night stopped to stare and jeer when the guards announced that he was horse thief. At one point they met a slender young man, wearing the plaid brigga of the noble-born, who was followed by a page with a torch.

“A horse thief, is he?” the young lord said. “When will you be hanging him?”

“Don’t know, my lord. We’ve got to have the trial first.”

“True enough. Well, no doubt I’ll hear of it. My mistress is quite keen on hangings, you see.” He gave the guard a conspiratorial wink. “She finds them quite . . . well, shall we say exciting? And so I take her to every single one.”

At last they reached the guard station at the foot of the royal hill and turned Perryn over to the men there, though the man who’d first recognized him stayed to escort him into the royal compound itself. By then Perryn had recovered enough from the blows to feel the terror: they were going to hang him. There was no use lying to the king’s officers; the rambling scribe would hang him on its own. Although at one point he did have a sentimental pang that he’d never see Jill again, at the root he was too terrified to care much about that one way or another. What counted was that he was going to die. No matter how hard he tried to pull himself together and face his death like a warrior, he kept trembling and sweating. When his guards noticed, they laughed.

“You should have thought about this rope when you were putting one on another man’s horses, you cowardly little bastard.”

“There must be a bit of fun to being hanged, lad. Why, a man gets hard, then spews all over himself when the noose jerks.”

They kept up the jests the entire time that they were dragging him through the warren of sheds and outbuildings that surrounded the king’s many-towered broch complex. In the flickering torchlight Perryn was completely disoriented. By the time that they shoved him into a tiny cell in a long stone building, he had no idea of which way north lay, much less of the layout of the palace grounds.

The cell was about eight feet on a side, with fairly clean straw on the floor and a leather bucket, swarming with flies, in one corner. In the door was a small barred opening that let in a bit of light from the corridor. Perryn stood next to it and tried to hear what the guards were saying, but they moved down along the corridor and out of earshot. He heard: “Of course Lord Madoc’s interested in horse thieves; he’s an equerry, isn’t he?” before they were gone. All at once his legs went weak. He slumped down into the straw before he fell and covered his face with his hands. Somehow or other, he’d offended one of the powerful royal servitors. He was doomed.

Perryn had no idea of how long he’d sat there before the door opened. A guard handed him a trencher with half a loaf of bread and a couple of slices of cold meat on it.

“Pity that we had to take your dagger away, lad.” His smile was not pleasant, “Just use your teeth like a wolf, eh? In the morning one of the undercouncillors will be along to see you.”

“What for?”

“To tell you about your rights, of course. Here, they caught you red-handed, but you’ll still get a trial, and you’ve got the right to have your kin by your side. Just tell the fellow, and he’ll get a herald to them.”

“I don’t want them to know. Ah ye gods, I’d rather die slowly in pieces than look my uncle in the eye over this.”

“Pity you didn’t think of that before, eh? Well, I’m sure it can all be arranged. If you don’t want your kin here, no need to waste the herald’s time.”

The warder handed in a tankard of ale, then locked the door. Perryn heard him whistling as he walked away.

Although, the food and drink were unexpectedly decent, Perryn ate only to pass the time. The thought of Benoic and Nedd learning of his shame had taken his appetite away. Sooner or later they would, too, no matter whether they were there to watch him hang or not. He thought of the warder’s words, that he might have thought of all this before, and wept a few tears for the truth of it.

“But I didn’t really steal them. They followed me, didn’t they?’

“Only in a manner of speaking.”

He yelped and leapt to his feet, scattering the bread into the straw. There was a man standing on the other side of the door, a pleasant-looking fellow with blond hair and blue eyes. The sheer bulk of the elaborate embroidery on his shirt proclaimed him a member of the king’s household.

“I’m, Lord Madoc. Guards, bring him. out.”

“Are you going to hang me right now?”

“Naught of the sort. I want a few words with you, lad.”

They bound his hands, then marched him along to the wardroom, a long, narrow chamber with an oppressively low ceiling. Down one wall was a row of sconces, and lit torches; down the other, a narrow table spread with the tools of the torturer’s trade.

“I’ll confess,” Perryn bleated. “You don’t have to do anything to me.”

“Splendid, but I wasn’t planning on having you tortured. I want look at you. Guards, tie him to the wall; then you can get back to your dinners.”

“My thanks, Your Lordship.” The guard captain made him a bow. “Do you have any idea of when he’ll go to trial?”

“Oh, he won’t be tried here. Our liege is remanding him to Rhys, Gwerbret Aberwyn. This little idiot raped the daughter of one of the gwerbret’s highly regarded subjects, and under Eldidd law her father has the right to cut him to pieces.”

Perryn’s knees buckled. If he hadn’t been tied to an iron ring attached to the wall, he would have fallen.

“Huh,” the captain snorted. “A fine figure of a noble lord he is, raping women and stealing horses!”

Once the guards were gone, Madoc turned to Perryn and considered him with eyes so cold and distant that Perryn began to sweat again.

“Do you know who Jill’s father is, lad?”

“I don’t, my lord.”

“Cullyn of Cerrmor, that’s who.”

Perryn yelped, a strangled little sob.

“Just so. They’ll give him a sword and shield, hand you a dagger to defend yourself, then turn him loose on you. Think you’ll win the ritual combat?”

Perryn shook his head no.

“I doubt me, as well. And even if you had all the gold in the world to offer as compensation, Cullyn wouldn’t take it instead of your blood. So, are you going to face him, or are you going to do as I say instead?”

“Anything, my lord. I’ll do anything. Please, I never raped her, I truly didn’t. I thought she loved me, I truly did.”

“I know, and your stupidity is the one thing that’s saving you now. If I untie you, will you give me your word of honor that you won’t try to escape?”

“Gladly. I doubt me if I could run, my lord, the way I feel.”

“No doubt.” He stepped back and considered him in a strange way, his eyes moving as if he were looking all around Perryn rather than at him. “Truly, you’re halfway to being dead, aren’t you?”

The lord’s words seemed true enough. As soon as he was untied, Perryn staggered and would have fallen if it weren’t for Madoc’s support. The equerry half led, half hauled him down the room to a low bench by a hearth, where some tinder and small sticks were laid ready for a fire. Madoc laid on a pair of logs, then snapped his fingers. Fire sprang out and danced along the wood. Perryn screamed. He clapped his hands over his mouth to force a second scream back, then swiveled around, crouching, to stare up at Madoc in terror.