The Wind-Witch (26 page)

Enna came in, flustered, to report there was a visitor in the yard. Druyan laid down her shuttle, possibilities making her heart pound.

“Who is it?” No one ever called at Splaine Garth—they had few neighbors, none near and none sociable. The road ran many leagues between towns, drawing no more than local notice. Druyan strove not to fear the worst—that her visit to Keverne had somehow drawn notice to Travic’s heirless passing. Her heart thudded nonetheless, from canter to gallop, running away with her.

“It’s a post rider, Lady,” Enna said.

“Just one?” She had not thought of Riders. “They ride paired.” Maybe `twas Robart, passing by. “Show him in here, Enna. It’s not so drafty this season, and Kellis swept it out last week.” She ran a smoothing hand over her skirt, as Enna gave the room a doubtful glance. It had been long years since Splaine Garth’s hall received any sort of guest. It looked nearly as much like a barn as the barn itself did not an obstacle to Druyan’s weaving craft, but hardly what one wished a guest to see.

“Can’t be helped, Enna,” she said, acknowledging the problem. And if the caller was her brother, perhaps it didn’t matter. “Show him in.”

Enna went, frowning.
I can’t help it
, Druyan thought.
We work, here. I have no time to keep company-best
.

“Lady Druyan!”

She
had
been assuming ’twould be Robart, so to see red hair and a more sculptured face confounded Druyan far more than it should have. After all, surely Robart would have given Enna his name and stated his connection to her. “Captain Yvain? What brings you to Darlith?” Her face felt flushed. She hoped he would not notice. And hoped, too, that there was not dust smeared across it, or slubs of wool caught in her hair last time she scooped it impatiently back.

“My route, Lady. And then my social instincts, which led me a little way off that well-ridden track, to call upon you here.”

“More than a
little
way off, Captain. I hope you will take some food—or is thirst more pressing? You will be weary from riding.” At least he wasn’t wet. The rain must have ceased. Her duty as hostess was bred into her, Druyan thought, as her lips spoke of themselves, her brain still spinning.

Yvain lifted her hand to his lips before she could guess his intent. Druyan winced inwardly as she saw his nostrils flare—bad enough their uncouth size, but her fingers were tainted with grease from the wool she wove with. The eye might not catch it, but the nose certainly did. She made light of the matter.

“I assure you, Captain, my hands may taste of the outside of a sheep, but we don’t put the wool into the soup pot along with the lamb! Enna crafts fine fare.”

“If only Keverne’s court ladies with their rosewater lotions but knew the virtues of wool, they’d all turn weavers, Lady. Your hands are soft as a babe’s cheek.”

Druyan blushed and was discomfited by her reaction as much as by his words. She withdrew her hand. “By your leave, Captain, I will go and wash them.”

“Don’t stop your work on my account, Lady,” Yvain begged, stepping smoothly to place himself between her and the door. “I have intruded upon your peace without warning, which makes me no better than a raider. And I may not tarry for a meal—my horse is fleet enough to gain a bit of time on my companion’s mount, but I knew as I came that I dared not steal more than a moment.

“For courtesy?” Druyan asked in wonderment.

“For courtesy, Lady.” His smile flashed bright as sunlight on wavecaps and suggested something more than good manners. He finally allowed Druyan to slip past him, escape out the door into the kitchen and thence the farmyard, her face still too warm for the season and the weather.

Druyan saw to it that Dalkin watered the captain’s bigboned bay, which had indeed worked hard for his master’s whim. “What have you heard of raiders?” she asked Yvain, while they watched the horse drinking.

“Naught—but the weather’s been especially foul downcoast. I think it spared us.” He hesitated, then spoke low. “All the Riders know now, Lady. We are of one mind in this matter. Should you receive any . . . news . . . you are safe to take it to the first Rider you can get to. He’ll do the rest.” Yvain smiled once more. “There are not so many of us, but that only makes it easier for us to agree together. There’s no man among us thinks we’d do well to sit back while our duke sells our remounts to buy himself useless ships.” He swung lightly into his saddle, gathered his reins expertly. “Good day to you, Lady Druyan.”

“Safe journey, Captain Yvain.”

He made her such an extravagant bow, Druyan felt she had no choice but to watch him out of sight. Sure enough, he put his horse at the wall rather than waiting for Dalkin to run and unlatch the gate, then turned to wave once more as he proceeded at a handgallop toward the road. The bay’s black tail and Yvain’s red locks streamed in the wind they made.

“Is he known to you?” Enna asked disapprovingly, as they stowed away the untasted food she’d prepared, the new bread sliced but umiibbled, the cider unsipped in the mugs.

“He serves with my brother Robart,” Druyan said blandly, as if disinterested.

“Had he a message?”

Druyan gave Enna a hard look—and got one back. She dropped her gaze. “Th-that’s what post riders
do
—carry messages,” she faltered, trying to remember that Enna really had no right to ask.

“Aye.” Enna poured the cider back into the pitcher and set the crockery in a cool spot. “Likely he’ll be back, with more messages.”

Druyan felt it would be beneath her dignity to deny or agree with that speculation, so she returned to her loom, too aware that her cheeks were flaming once more.

Pebbles rattling against the shutters waked Druyan sometime prior to the midpoint of the night. At first she took the noise for rain, but she heard wind whistling and, fearing hail, she rose from her bed hastily. When she flung the easement wide and thrust a hand out, the air was dry. And the whistling wasn’t the wind. It was Kellis.

“
Lady!
”

He stood below in the gloom, his face tipped anxiously up to her, and what she could see of his expression looked tense. Druyan whirled from the window without troubling to latch it, snatched clothing randomly from pegs on the wall, and donned it hurriedly. It might be that a horse or a cow had colicked—emergency enough—but she thought Kellis had been cradling something in his free arm, the one not flicking pebbles at the shutters. Something like a bowl.

He was just outside the kitchen door when she tugged it open, and did indeed have the bowl clutched to him. Most of the water had slopped out of it to soak his trews and the ground aroimd his boots.

“Why are you bothering with that
now
?” Druyan asked, more amazed than cross. “It’s the middle of the night.”

Kellis shoved his hair out of his face, distractedly. “If you call a thing long enough, it will come to you—at the least convenient time, just for spite. One true thing my master taught me. I woke up with a headache so fierce, I couldn’t bear to lie still. It got better—a little—when I went to the bowl, and I knew I’d been answered?”

“You saw something?” Druyan asked.

Kellis nodded and winced in pain. “Lady, I
think
it was the first place you rode to, the one with the sea stacks outside the harbor—”

“Falkerry?” But he knew too little of Esdragon to be sure, Druyan thought. Would they touch Falkerry again, having failed there? Would one captain know of a fellow’s defeat?

“It looked the same. You can better judge.” Kellis’ dark brows knotted. “But there was something odd—they sailed—rowed, the sails were down—
past
the city, up the river.”

“Surely they can’t be after Teilo again? There’s nothing left to steal.” The Eral raiders worked independently, though. It came back to that. A captain might not know of other ships recently plundering the quarry he had chosen for himself.

“I watched awhile,” Kellis said. “I was afraid when I broke away to fetch you, I’d lose my hold on it. I wanted to see whatever I could, to have that much—but I couldn’t work out where they were going. Then the image was gone, I thought that I’d fallen asleep, let it snap, but—I’ll try to show you. It doesn’t feel to me like it’s tmly over, I can hunt it down. . .”

He gripped her hand and bent his head over the dark bowl. It was dark in the yard, even when your eyes were accustomed to gloom, Druyan thought. No light but from the stars. How could Kellis see anything, even with sight beyond that of his eyes? A black bowl, dark water within, and barely a few drops of that. . .

Kellis sang an insistent phrase. After a heartbeat’s pause, he repeated the summons. The water in the bowl began to glow, faintly pink gold. Druyan could make out dark shapes against it, ships riding the current. Long, low ships, with their sails furled. Heading
downstream
.

“To take the town unawares,” she whispered in horrified understanding. “They’ll come at Falkerry quietly, from a direction they
never
use, where no one expects danger, sails down so there’s next to nothing for anyone to see. With the sun rising at their backs, Falkerry’s watch will never spot them—if they’re even looking in the right direction. The tower faces toward the sea. No one keeps a landward lookout.”

Kellis’ one hand shook in hers and the other on the bowl. The vision trembled, the dawn became merely ripples. The golden water went dark.

“But
which
dawn?” Druyan whispered, shivering as if his grasp had been a contagion she’d caught. “
This
one’s only a few hours away.”

“Did it rain yesterday, early?” Kellis was willing to grasp at any straw he could find, but he had said he felt there wasn’t much time.

“Here,” Druyan agreed. She looked skyward, to judge clouds and wind. “But at Falkerry?” There’d been no rain in the vision, that was sure. The break-of-day sky had been too vivid. Druyan started for the barn. “I can’t take the chance—I’d better warn the Riders.”

Kellis heeled her, like Rook after her flock. “Can they get there, by dawn?”

“They can try. At least—” Druyan swung her saddle down expertly from its rack. “They’ll all be lodged for the night. I won’t have to ride the routes trying to find the Riders closest to Falkerry. That will save some time.” No telling whether Falkerry had even that much grace.

Valadan whickered a greeting to his mistress and stood rock-still while he was tacked—but Druyan could feel him quivering with excitement beneath the good manners, eager rather than distressed at being rousted out of his warm stall in the middle of a cold dark night. Bless him. The other horses shifted and stamped, snorted questions to one another about the commotion.

“How many Riders are close enough to come?” Kellis wondered, securing a brass buckle handily.

“Not all of them,” Druyan admitted soberly. “I will ride to raise one pair, possibly two, and the news will go from there by relay, Rider to Rider.” The carefully arranged scheme no longer seemed likely to work—never had she supposed they’d have so little warning of need.

Let us make the most of what we have
. Valadan flared his nostrils wide and looked with his sparkling eyes over Druyan’s head, through the open door and into the darkness.

They soared over the dark moors, Valadan confident as if every inch he trod upon had been the grass of his home pasture. They had already raised the first of the farmsteads they sought and roused the post riders lodged there for what proved to be a short night. One Rider of that pair had made straight for Falkerry, while his partner sped onward to relay the dire news. Druyan’s appointed task was to race inland to alert a second pair of Riders, so the news would be more widely spread. That done, she was to return home.

Instead, she turned Valadan’s head toward the coast whilst the second team was still saddling their fractious mounts, and urged all speed upon him, striving to outrace the coming dawn. The summer nights were so much briefer than those of the winter. A few hours of darkness, and then the sky was aglow and the vision was being fulfilled as she watched helplessly. . .

They topped a rise, and the Fal shone below them, like a single loose silver thread among dark-napped wool. There was fog lying along the river’s course, just over the water—another help for the bold raiders.

Panting as if she had run the course to Falkerry on her own legs, Druyan looked about, dismayed. Where were the silent ships? Where were the Riders? The first of them at least should have reached Falkerry, should he not? Had his horse come to grief in the darkness, less surefooted than Valadan? The town didn’t look as if it had been warned. It slept, and on the headland the watchtower was dark as the sea stack a league seaward.

There
, Valadan observed coolly, dipping his head to point the direction.

Druyan saw a horse gallop ghostly out of the mist, harddriven, aiming at the watchtower. One Rider, at least, had arrived in time. But there was work aplenty to be done, and one Rider and a single warning would never be sufficient to save a town the size of Falkerry—not before the sun came up.

Indeed, a lone rider could raise no more than the watchtower—the one who was trying was at a standstill already, hammering at the portal, trying to attract the gatekeeper, who was likely asleep. The raid might be long under way ere word of it went down into Falkerry proper. The tower might signal, but who was awake to see? Druyan made a small moan of dismay.

There is a better way
, Valadan agreed with a snort, gathering himself. He leapt into a gallop, his tail bannenng behind him like a cloak flung out upon the wind. His mistress sat tight, breathing deep to be ready for her part.

They raced straight into the town, Druyan screaming, “
Raiders! Raiders on the Fal!
” at the top of her lungs, over the clatter of hooves on cobbles. She cried the warning over and over, as folk came stumbling out of houses in sleepy confusion. Most of Falkerry’s citizens automatically looked toward the sea, the danger that most commonly bore down upon them, and saw nothing, and were yet more perplexed.

There were questions called, but Druyan did not halt to answer. If she drew rein, she’d be trapped at a standstill on the outskirts, useless to the rest of the town. Enough that folk were waked, they could see the danger when it came. Valadan thundered over the cobbles, leaving a drowsy babble in his wake.