The Dragon Revenant (29 page)

When he settled into a stance of his own, knees wide, his weight perfectly balanced between them, she realized that he was a good fighter—and much more dangerous than she was, whether she had a dagger or not. From the way he smiled as he circled round, he knew it, too. They heard Rhodry, then, yelling her name, and footsteps pounding toward them, but neither said a word, merely circled, Gwin leading, nearer and nearer to his fallen knife. She felt her heart thudding as she waited for the one split-second she would have, when he stooped to grab it. Closer now, closer, and Rhodry screaming like a berserker outside—Gwin tripped, cursed, and went down, screeching foul oaths, under a heaving pile of Wildfolk. With a howl of triumph Jill sprang, straddling him from behind while Wildfolk scattered and grabbing his hair in one hand to wrench his head back. It was her dagger at his throat, now.

“Jill, don’t!” Rhodry burst into the room with the door banging behind him, a blooded sword in his hand. “Don’t kill him!”

Only then did she realize that she’d been about to do just that. She froze, staring at Rhodry. He wasn’t begging—he was ordering her, his eyes snapping as he took another step into the room. She let Gwin go and stood, dodging free of him before he could rise.

“As Your Grace commands, of course.”

At the snarl in her voice Rhodry turned bewildered.

“Ah by the hells, my love, I don’t mean to order you about. It’s just that you were half-berserk, and I wanted to make sure you understood me. Words don’t mean a blasted lot to berserkers, you know.”

“Well, true enough.”

Gwin was still lying sprawled on the floor. Slowly he rolled over and sat up with a cautious eye for the Wildfolk who stood about in mobs or hovered above him in the air.

“Why not let her kill me, Rhodry?” This time he spoke in Deverrian.

“Because I owe you somewhat, enough so that if you have to die, I’ll do it myself for the honor of the thing.”

Gwin stared, his mouth a little open, his eyes filling with tears, and that grief was a gruesome thing to see on a man as cold and hard as he was.

“I can understand that kind of honor,” he whispered. “My thanks, Your Grace. So, that lofty a title belongs to you, does it? Who are you? I never did know.”

“Rhodry Maelwaedd, Gwerbret Aberwyn.” It was Salamander, crowding into the room with a wince for the huddled corpse of the Bardekian. “Do you know what it means to raise a hand against a gwerbret?”

“By the dung of the Clawed Ones! I do at that, by every god-cursed demon in the three hells! That’s just like the filth-sucking Old One, isn’t it, to hire us to risk our rotten lives and never even tell us just how great the blasted risk is! The pig-bugger! I’ll …” Gwin stopped, his mouth twisting in his mocking grin. “Well, I’ll be doing naught that can harm him, truly, unless I come back as a haunt or suchlike.” He got to his feet, slowly, keeping his hands in the air where they could all see them. “If ever I did you any favor, Your Grace, when you were in that stinking ship, I’ll beg you to kill me quickly and easily. That’s all.”

He could force himself to smile, force himself to stand proudly, his head tossed back like a true warrior, but there was nothing he could do, apparently, that would make him stop shaking all over. It wasn’t fear, Jill realized; his eyes were too dead already for him to be simply afraid to die. When Rhodry laid his sword blade alongside Gwin’s throat in such a way as one flick of his wrist would kill the Hawk in an instant, Gwin merely looked him straight in the face—yet he went on shaking. Although Jill had been ready to kill him herself only a few moments before, she found herself stepping forward.

“Tell me somewhat,” she said. “Would you rather live or die?”

“I don’t know.” Gwin smiled again, such a normal smile, filled with good cheer, that it chilled her heart. “I truly don’t, and here I’ve been asking myself that question for days now. I’d rather die than live as a Hawk—I suppose. I’m not truly certain of that, either.”

“It’s time you made up your mind. If you stay a Hawk, you’ll die, sure enough. Come over to us, and give us your word on it, and I’ll beg the gwerbret for your life.”

Gwin began shaking so hard that the sword blade nicked his skin. Rhodry moved the blade a little, then glanced her way with eyes that seemed to understand her better than she did herself. Salamander said nothing, but she could tell from the tense way he stood, half a warrior at the moment, that something of great importance was at stake. A man’s soul if naught else, she thought to herself, and at the thought she went cold. All at once Rhodry lowered the blade, glanced at the old blood on it, and stooped to wipe it clean on the dead man’s tunic. When he sheathed it, the sound was like a slap in the breathless room. As he stood there in his muddy clothes, unshaven and damp, with half his memories gone and his life still broken, she saw him suddenly as the gwerbret, the ruler he would be—no, that he was now, despite everything. She knew then for a surety that Rhys was dead, and that Wyrd had picked up the dice to roll a turn.

“I’m not killing you, Gwin,” Rhodry said. “You can come with us as a prisoner, or as my man. Which is it?”

Gwin gave one last convulsive shudder.

“Rhodry,” was all he could say, because he was weeping.

Salamander grabbed Jill’s arm, but he had no need to drag her away; she was in as much hurry to get out of the chamber and leave them alone as he was. A few steps led them up to a muddy, bare farmyard between a long whitewashed house and a square building that might have been a barn or a granary. Lying near a well was another dead man, and tethered out in a meadow were some twenty-five horses—theirs among them. Overhead the sky was a low, cold gray, swirling with wind.

“That was a fine thing you did in there,” Salamander said.

“Was it? If he’s lying, I’ve endangered us all.”

“Lying? Gwin? Not by a pile of horseshit, he isn’t. Mayhap you’ve never seen a man broken down to naught before—I have. Oh, he’ll follow our Rhodry to the death, he will, and see him as a god, too, after this.”

The wind picked up, and Jill shivered, looking around her for the first time with eyes that truly saw.

“Where are we?”

“A farm in the hills. In the flood-time the tenants who hold isolated little places like this take shelter with their landlords in the big villas. When Gwin and his late and unlamented friends needed a place to hide, all they had to do was ride in and make themselves at home.”

Jill nodded, barely hearing him. She was remembering Gwin’s eyes, turning from black to blue, and the firelight that seemed to have burned behind him in her vision. Small wet fingers touched her cheek: rain, the first fat drops of a storm.

“Gods!” Salamander snarled. “Run for it!”

They dashed across the yard and ducked into the open door of the farmhouse just ahead of a drench of water.

“When it rains in this benighted country, it
rains!”
Salamander said, tossing his head and scattering the drops from his hair. “This is going to make traveling most unpleasant indeed, my wee waterfowl. We might just stay here for a day or two. Gwin and his freshly felled fellows seem to have broken the door right off its hinges, so we’ll have to leave the good farmer some coins for damages anyway. We might as well leave him a few more for rent.”

“I think we should get on the road and use the rain to our advantage.”

“Advantage? What advantage? Maybe you see advantages in riding wet, sodden, damp, saturated, and soaking, to say nothing of cold, chilly, freezing, and frigid, or—”

“What about riding invisible?”

Salamander stopped his lexiconic recital in mid-word and blinked at her.

“I don’t mean invisible to ordinary sight. You’re the one who’s always talking about the astral vibrations of water interfering when someone wants to scry.” Jill waved her hand at the down-driving rain outside. “Well, what about all this?”

“It might work, it might indeed. At the least, they’ll have a wretched lot of trouble getting clear images of trivial little details like, oh for instance, where we are and who’s with us.”

“Exactly what I thought. It’s going to be hard on the horses, but we don’t have to move fast. If we’re off this road and into the mountains before they scry us out, they won’t really know where we are. Remember when you were trying to find Rhodry, and all the grasslands looked the same?”

“The mountains are no more distinguished, truly—trees and boulders, boulders and trees, and here and there a charming little ravine, replete with snakes, which are rather tasty this time of year, come to think of it, and may be most welcome.”

“What? Eat
snakes?”

“What? Ride
wet?”
He grinned at her. “We are all in for an unlovely time, my little linnet, but I promise you that it’ll be far more pleasant than—indeed, it’ll be like living in the wondrous Halls of Bel in the Otherlands themselves compared to lying on a torture table in one of the hidden chambers of the Hawks.”

“Odd—I was having thoughts that were somewhat the same. How far to Pastedion from here?”

“Um, well, if we went directly there, some four nights, maybe five, since we’ll be traveling in this slop. If we keep to the mountains, it’ll be safer but longer.”

“Let’s stick with safer, shall we?”

“I couldn’t agree more. Very well, then, say an eightnight, depending on the weather and all. Let’s go fetch Rhodry and Gwin. The sooner we put your plan in action, the better.”

That very night Baruma tried to scry them out. For the past few weeks he’d been posing as a legal messenger so that he could travel along the coast with a proper caravan. Just as the winter rains began, they reached Indila, not far from his destination, and Baruma stayed there in a comfortable inn for two days while he debated whether or not it was time to join the Old One. Although he was afraid to go, he was equally afraid to stay away. What if the Old One came to suspect his double-dealings? He knew perfectly well that those who went to the master’s villa were sometimes never seen again. Baruma suspected that the Old One had done nothing so rudimentary as merely killing the poor wretches. On the other hand, if he shirked spying for the Hawkmaster, his position would be even more dangerous. In an attempt to gather information that would help him decide, Baruma brought out the silver bowl and the black ink, unwrapped Rhodry’s silver dagger to use as a focus, and sat himself down at a low table to scry. If the Hawkmaster had already taken the barbarian prisoner, he might well be too distracted to worry about Baruma’s affairs.

Although the vision came immediately, it was cloudy and distorted, flickering and bobbing as if a wind ruffled the surface of the ink. He could see Rhodry quite clearly, thanks to the evil link of pain between them, and he could make out horses—a great many horses, or so it seemed from the brief glimpses he got of them. When he tried to widen the vision to include Rhodry’s location, he got an impression more than a sight of rocks and a huge silvery rush of etheric force that had to be coming from a river or flooded ravine. Dimly within this mist he spotted a couple of human forms moving back and forth. Beyond that he could tell nothing.

The vision vanished. For a long time Baruma sat at the table and watched his hands shake, while he considered the fate of a grain of wheat, caught between two millstones.

Finally he was calm enough to pour the black ink back into its special bottle. He heaved one last sigh, then got up to see the wolf, lounging on his bed and licking its paws. In his frustrated rage he grabbed the ink bottle and threw it straight at the wolfs head. Although the image did disappear, he’d forgotten to put the cork back in the bottle. Swearing with every foul oath he knew, he grabbed a rag and started to sop up the mess, then decided to fetch the innkeeper to do it for him. He flung open the door that led to the outer room of his suite and found three men waiting for him there, and one of them was wearing a red silk hood.

“You keep a very poor watch, Baruma.”

“I had no idea I needed to.” He managed to force out a smile. “You might have knocked.”

When the Hawkmaster chuckled under his breath, the two men with him smiled, baring their teeth like animals.

“I might have but I didn’t. Why haven’t you joined the Old One yet?”

“He suspects treachery. I’ve been debating whether I should go or not.”

“Does he? Oh, does he? And you never said a word to me about it?”

Baruma went sick-cold with fear, but even though his stomach was churning and his hands were shaking, he tried to keep his voice steady.

“How could I have contacted you? Would you have appreciated me calling to you when anyone could hear? Should I have sent a public messenger with a letter?”

“Well, I have to give you that, yes. Besides, you couldn’t know that he’s struck against us.”

“He’s what?” Baruma heard the squeal in his voice, but by then he was shaking too hard to control it.

“He sent his confederates against my men. He has to be the one behind this, he has to! No one else would dare cross me.”

As if by some prearranged signal, the other two Hawks stepped forward. One grabbed Baruma’s wrists and twisted his arms round behind his back; the other clamped a hand over his mouth.

“Did you warn the Old One, little Baruma?” the master said. “One of my men is dead. I can’t make contact with the others. Is it your fault, little piglet?”

Since his captor’s grip was too firm for a shake, Baruma wobbled his head in a no. Sweat was trickling down his back and beading on his forehead.

“I don’t know if I believe you, creature. You were trying to cram both heels of the loaf into your mouth at once, weren’t you? Did you think you were clever enough to fool both me and the Old One?”

Baruma choked out a muffled snort that he meant for no.

“We’re going to take you with us, piglet. We’re going to make you answer our questions. I’ve heard you’re a master at giving pain. How well do you take it, I wonder?”

The Hawkmaster reached out and caught his elbow between a probing thumb and forefinger that slid down, separating the muscle masses, then pressed—hard—the raw nerve against solid bone. Baruma’s scream gathered in his throat and forced its way into his stifled mouth as a gargling spitting cough that made him spasm.