The Red Wyvern: Book One of the Dragon Mage (39 page)

“By the asses of the gods, it must be safe enough for me to go in now!”

“Most likely, my liege.” Nevyn turned to Oggyn. “And what does my fellow councillor think?”

“I’ll go look, my Lord, and have a word with those guards.”

Oggyn trotted over to the broken doors of the great hall, paused briefly to talk with one of the men, then came rushing back.

“My liege, my liege,” Oggyn called out. “They’ve found the false king!”

“Good!” Maryn said. “Where is he?”

“In his chamber. I suggest you go up now. The sooner he’s slain, the better.”

“I’m not going to murder him out of hand, Oggyn. He’ll be judged properly in my malover.”

Oggyn bit back a reply and covered his near-discourtesy with a bow. He looked frightened, Nevyn realized, and once he saw this terrible enemy, he realized why. With a handful of the king’s guard they hurried up the stairs from the great hall, down a hallway where corpses lay, and into a chamber littered with broken furniture. They all knew, of course, that the would-be king in Dun Deverry was but a child, but knowing and actually seeing were two different things. Little Olaen sat in the curve of the wall and clutched a wooden horse to his chest; his face was filthy with tears and snot, and he smelled of urine.

“By every god in the sky!” Maryn snapped. “He’s but a baby! I can’t kill him.”

“My liege!” Oggyn howled. “He owns a claim on your kingdom. You must kill him if there’s to be any lasting peace.”

Olaen started to sob.

“Nevyn?” Maryn looked at him with one eyebrow raised.

“Oh ye gods! I don’t know what to advise, my liege. It would ache my heart to slay a child, but—”

“But, my lord,” Oggyn broke in. “I’m right, am I not? It’s not the lad himself, my prince. It’s the factions that could form around him, that
will
form.”

“I know all that,” Nevyn snapped. “But give me a day at least to consult with the priests of Bel about the law of the thing. Our liege is determined to rule by law, isn’t he? Well, then, let me see what the ancient books say.”

Oggyn started to speak, but Maryn waved him silent.

“Do that, Nevyn.” The prince turned to his guards. “Take the child somewhere safe. He must have a nursemaid somewhere around here. Find her.”

It was a long while after noon before anyone remembered the captive women. By then their waterskins were long empty, and the sun beat down hard on the roof. Merodda was just considering humbling herself before their guard and begging for better shelter when another soldier climbed up through the shattered roof.

“Orders from the prince’s councillor. We’re to take the women down to the women’s hall and let them stay there. Is the king’s nursemaid up here?”

“I am.” Rwla stepped forward. “What have they done with my lad?”

“Naught, yet. The prince says I’m to take you to him.”

Rwla allowed herself a sob of relief.

“Move along, all of you,” their first guard said. “I’m sick of this duty, and it’ll be cursed good to get off this cursed roof!”

Although Merodda had been hoping that they’d be left without guards, once they were back in the women’s hall, two more soldiers appeared to stand outside the door. When she asked, however, they allowed two of the pages to go fetch water up, and the boys came back with a bucketful and a couple of loaves of stale bread as well. The women gathered around and gobbled shamelessly.

“This is so odd,” Abrwnna said at last. “Why is the prince sparing us this way?”

“I’ve no idea,” Merodda said. “To make a public spectacle of us, I suppose.”

“Maybe he’s truly merciful,” Pavva put in. “Just like everyone’s been saying.”

“To you he will be, lass. No doubt it’s only the queen and I who have the rank to interest him.” All at once Merodda felt herself smile. “That’s true, isn’t it? Here, how would you like to trade clothes with me?”

“What?” Pavva looked down at her drab dresses. “But these are so old and dirty.”

“Just so. Would the great lady Merodda of the Boar wear such things?”

Pavva laughed.

“Very well, my lady,” she said. “I’ll trade with you and gladly when the time comes.”

“We’d best do it now. They won’t be sending us a page, ever so nicely, asking us to join them at table or suchlike.” Merodda glanced at Abrwnna. “We can do the same for you, Your Highness.”

Abrwnna shook her head, then turned and walked to her favorite chair, lying on its side in front of the dead hearth. She set it upright, then flopped into it with one of her long sighs.

“I shall die with my husband,” she announced. “They shall find me here, defiant to the end.”

“Oh for the sake of the gods!” Merodda was about to say more, but she had run out of patience with the queen. “As you wish, then. Pavva, let’s get our clothes changed.”

They traded dresses, and Pavva took her baby to sit near the queen’s feet. Abrwnna leaned back in her chair and stared at the ceiling while the others made a halfhearted attempt to convince her to try to escape. Time, however, had run out—Merodda was just tying a dirty shawl round her waist for want of a proper kirtle when the guards flung open the door. A stout man, egg-bald but with a full, brindled beard, strode into the room with other soldiers behind him.

“The one with the red hair,” the bald fellow snapped, pointing. “That’s the queen, or so we’ve been told. Now come along, lass. No one will harm you. No one will harm any of you, for that matter, but I suggest you all stay here, safely away from the common-born riders. I can’t vouch for their conduct. Is the Lady Merodda among you?”

“She’s not.” Abrwnna rose with a toss of her hair. “I’ve no idea if she lives or lies dead.”

“No doubt. Well, come along. You’re going to be imprisoned elsewhere.”

With her head held high, Abrwnna strode out of the room. She’s a queen at last, Merodda thought to herself—at the last, indeed.

Lilli had spent the entire day lying on top of her blankets in her tent. Since her maidservants kept badgering her, she did dress in the morning and eat some of the food they brought her, too. But forcing herself outside lay beyond her. She felt exhausted or perhaps paralyzed; at times it seemed she lacked the energy or will even to sit up. Distantly she could hear the noise of the battle, and now and then one of the girls would go outside and bring back news of the fighting. At times Lilli would drift off to sleep, only to have dreams of wyverns grappling with boars, which would wake her, screaming.

“What is it, my lady?” Clodda would ask.

“I’m being torn in half,” Lilli would answer. “I don’t know how else to put it.”

When the sound of battle died away, Lilli finally managed to step outside her tent. The sun was setting, and up atop the hill the humbled towers of Dun Deverry gleamed in the heavy light.

“Mistress?” Clodda said. “Shall I bring out your chair?”

“If you would, please.”

Lilli sank into the chair and sat looking up at the dun. All around them swept the noise and bustle—men carrying wounded, men yelling and leaping at the victory, men weeping for dead friends. She herself felt beyond tears or hope, but Anasyn at last returned, striding across the camp, calling out to her when he drew near. Still in his mail, he was carrying his helm in one hand, swinging it the way he used to swing some toy when they’d both been children in Dun Hendyr. She rose to greet him, but she couldn’t force a smile to match his.

“We’ve done it!” Anasyn crowed. “The broch’s ours and the false king’s in Maryn’s hands!”

“That gladdens my heart.” The words seemed to stick in her mouth.

Anasyn considered her, then stopped smiling. He tossed the helm to a maidservant and laid his hand on Lilli’s shoulder.

“I shouldn’t gloat,” he said.

“Why not? Bevva’s avenged, and this rotten, horrid war is over. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” She turned away, afraid of tears. “I should be happy.”

“Nah, nah, nah, no one expects that of you, little sister. You’ve lost the clan of your birth, and I’ve lost a lot of good men today, and ye gods, I’ve lost friends, too! It would be best for me to mourn instead of gloating.”

At the honest pain in his voice she could look at him again. They clasped hands, and he drew her close. In that moment he looked so like Peddyc that she feared she would choke on tears.

That night the last of the silver daggers gathered around a fire in front of Maddyn’s tent—twenty-three out of the hundred who’d left Cerrmor in the spring, and two of those were wounded. Otho and Caudyr joined them, and Otho had loot, a whole barrel of mead.

“I figure the cursed false king owes it to us,” Otho said, and he was actually smiling. “I had a bit of a struggle getting it away from one of Gwerbret Daeryc’s servants, but in the end I won.”

With a kindling axe Owaen broke open the top of the barrel, and they dipped mead out like ale into whatever cups they could find. Maddyn raised his high.

“To our dead!” He splashed a few drops into the fire. “And to our captain.”

“For Caradoc,” the murmur and the libations went round. “And all our dead.”

Everyone drank, then merely stood, looking at each other. Maddyn was remembering another time when the silver daggers had numbered so few—after the first battle he’d ever ridden with Caradoc, far away in Eldidd and a long time ago. Then they’d been dishonored scum and taken the brunt of the fighting; now, even as honor-bound warriors, they’d taken it again.

“Otho?” he said. “Do you remember making these knives of ours? And the battle that gave Caradoc the idea of them?”

“I do, at that. It was a feud over a bridge, wasn’t it? I remember that we took it in the end, and the lord who wanted the cursed thing paid us dearly.”

“That’s how I was remembering it, too.” He glanced at the younger men. “And so Otho borrowed his lordship’s blacksmith’s forge and made up the first daggers.”

They nodded, smiling a little, and Branoic drew his dagger from his sheath and held it up. In the firelight the peculiar alloy gleamed as if it burned from within.

“Our honor and our curse,” Branoic said. “To the long road that brought us here!”

Everyone drained their drink, whether it was from wooden cup or looted goblet.

“Let’s fill them up again,” Maddyn said. “Who knows what our Wyrd will bring us next, eh?”

They drank late into the night, and yet no one could think of a jest, it seemed, or start a song that didn’t trail away into miserable silence. From the rest of the camp they heard laughter and singing, or ragged outbursts of cheers for no particular reason, but none of them found the heart to join in. Finally toward dawn the celebrations died into silence. One at a time the other silver daggers drifted away, leaving Maddyn alone to tend a dying fire. He put on the last few sticks of wood just for the light and poked the coals around them, then knelt in the dirt to watch the salamanders playing in the flames and the sylphs that hovered in the smoke above. His little blue sprite appeared and leaned against him while she sucked on her forefinger.

“They say the Wildfolk can travel to the Otherlands and back again,” Maddyn said. “Go tell Caradoc that the prince has his victory, will you?”

She looked up at him and nodded, then disappeared.

“Ye gods, Maddo lad,” Maddyn told himself. “You’re drunk, aren’t you? And a cursed good thing, too.”

He dropped his face to his hands and wept.

•   •   •

Just at dawn Merodda wrenched herself awake from an uncomfortable sleep to find herself on the edge of screaming. Someone had come into the chamber. He was standing by the door and threatening her—except that no one was or had. The sensation lingered so strongly that she knew she’d not been having anything as ordinary as a dream. A dweomer-warning, more like, and a logical one, that some of the new king’s men would be searching for her.

And what would they do when they found her? She would have to plan her escape carefully, and get out of the dun as soon as possible, too, before they found her. She got up and went to look out the window of the women’s hall. The gates were still shut and guarded. Soon they would open, and she’d have to be ready when she saw her chance.

The soldier shoved the tent-flap aside and let the grey dawn light in with him.

“My Lord Nevyn?” He carried something in his arms, wrapped in a bit of sacking. “Councillor Oggyn sent me to give this to you. He says it has your name written inside it.”

“Indeed?” Nevyn took the parcel, and the moment his fingers felt the smooth leather binding through the sack, he laughed. “I’ll wager it does, at that. Let me just get this off—hah! It’s my book indeed, one that was stolen from me many a year ago now.”

Nevyn ran his hand down the leather and gloated. Aside from a bit of mildew, the lore-book seemed unharmed. The soldier, still in his filthy mail, smiled indulgently at the way he clucked over it.

“Where did Oggyn find this?” Nevyn said.

“He told me that one of the men brought it to him, and some other odd stuff as well, from that room where we captured the queen and her women. Since it was a book, they figured he’d want it, but he opened it, and here it was yours. A weird thing, that, he said.”

“Mayhap it was Wyrd, indeed. My thanks for bringing it, and I’ll give the councillor a thousand thanks when I see him.”

Nevyn stowed the book away in his campaign chest, then left his tent. In the early morning the king’s men were hard at work, digging long trenches to bury the dead from the last battle in the dun and royal broch. They would pile the earth high over them, here in the parkland outside the dun walls, in memory of the slaughter that put the true king upon his throne. When he walked through the gates, he found more dead, laid out in tidy lines to wait for burial. Beyond them stood the army’s horses, tethered in close rows, with soldiers taking them a few at a time to water.

Back and forth across the innermost ward, servants hurried to follow the orders of the new masters of the dun. As Nevyn was crossing the ward, he asked each servant he met if they knew the whereabouts of Lady Merodda of the Boar. None did, or at the least, none admitted it. Nevyn was determined to find her, assuming she hadn’t fled the dun, of course. He was already planning out how to question her about the curse-tablet back in Cerrmor. Unfortunately, his place during the day’s events was at the prince’s side. Time to search would be hard to come by.