Bristling Wood (30 page)

“Well, here, maybe you should go to Dun Deverry. I’ve been told there are ancient temples there where the priests know everything there is to know. I’ll wager there’s a book or suchlike, and you could maybe hire someone to read it to you.”

“Now there’s a thought!” He smiled at her. “You’re actually taking me seriously, aren’t you?”

“Of course. My father always said that if a man wants to be a priest, the gods will favor those who help him.”

“Your father sounds like a splendid fellow. But it’s just that no one ever takes me seriously, not even Nedd. I mean, he cares about me and defends me and suchlike, but he thinks I’m daft, you see, even though he won’t admit he does.”

“Well, I don’t think you’re daft.”

“Truly?”

“Truly. I’ll be honest with you. I think you’re a truly eccentric man, but I’ve met stranger fellows than you along the long road. Compared to some of them—why, you’re perfectly ordinary.”

With a toss of his head, he laughed. She was surprised at his laughter, deep, smooth, genuinely humorous, and realized that she’d been expecting it would be as halting and strange as his way of speaking.

“Well, then, maybe I should ride to Dun Deverry and see more of the world,” he said at last. “I could scrape up some coin from my brothers. They’d probably give me a bit, you see, just to be rid of me for a while. My thanks, Jill. I never thought of that. I hate cities, and it never occurred to me that there’d be anything worth having in one.”

“Well, I like them myself. They stink, but there’s always so much to see among the smells.”

He smiled, watching her so warmly that she went on her guard, mindful that they were alone and hidden. Since she could have bested him easily in any sort of fight, she wasn’t afraid of him, but she refused to give him the slightest encouragement that might cause trouble with Rhodry. She had no desire to see poor Perryn dead at the hands of her jealous man. Aware that her mood had changed, he sighed and looked away.

“Oh, er, ah, well, I might have made a good priest. I’m certainly not much of a warrior.”

“Oh, now, don’t smear mud on your name.”

He nodded absently. She waited for him to go on and waited and waited, until in some twenty minutes she realized that he was capable of sitting silently for hours. Although she felt no interest in him as a man, as a puzzle he was fascinating.

That night, the army made camp about twenty miles north and east of Graemyn’s dun, on the very spot of land that was the cause of the war, where they would remain while a messenger went ahead to Naddryc’s brother. Since the weather was warm, the cart containing the noble remains was stowed a good bit downwind of the camp itself. As Nedd remarked to Rhodry, it was possible that Aegwyc wouldn’t even unwrap his brother’s corpse to see how it had been mutilated.

“So we can hope, my lord,” Rhodry said. “How far away is it to Lord Aegwyc’s dun?”

“Just ten miles. With luck, he’ll come by sunset tomorrow.”

Together they walked back to the camp, sprawled over a meadow. Although the dust was thickening to a velvet gray, Rhodry, of course, could see quite well with his half-elven eyesight. As they passed a clump of scrubby bushes, he saw something move within it and stopped for a better look, as it was unlikely that a rabbit or other animal would come this close to so many human beings. Cowering among the twisted trunks was one of the Wildfoik, but he’d never seen one like it: a blackish, deformed gnome with long fangs, bulging eyes, and red claws. For a moment it stared at him in terror, then vanished.

“Somewhat wrong?” Nedd said.

“Naught, my lord. It just looked like . . . oh, like someone had dropped a bit of gear in there, but it was only a rock.”

Later, as they sat by the campfire, Rhodry had the distinct feeling that he was being watched, but although he looked carefully around him, he never caught either man or spirit looking his way.

“Using the Wildfolk to spy could be cursed dangerous,” said the man who was calling himself Gwin.

“I know that, but there’s naught else I can do until I get a look at Rhodry in the flesh.” His companion looked up from the scrying mirror, laid out on a square of black velvet on the table in front of him. “At least he’s got out of that siege. That stinking little feud could have been the ruin of all our plans.”

Gwin merely nodded, well aware how close they’d come to losing their prey to a warrior’s Wyrd. The man who was using the name Merryc carefully wrapped up the mirror and put it back into the secret pocket of his saddlebags. Although they were both Bardek men, they’d been chosen for this hunt because there was Deverry blood in their families. Both had straight, dark brown hair and skin light enough to go unremarked in the kingdom, especially in the northern provinces, where men of their homeland were rarely seen. Gwin’s mother, in fact, had been a Deverry girl, sold by her impoverished clan to a Bardek merchant as a concubine. As he vaguely remembered, his father had been fairly pale by Bardek standards, too, but then he’d only seen the man a handful of times before they’d sold him off as an unwanted slave child at the age of four. He knew nothing about Merryc’s background nor in fact, his true name. Men who were chosen for the Hawks of the Brotherhood kept their own secrets and allowed others theirs.

“Do you know where he is now?”

“I do,” Merryc said, buckling the saddlebag. “It’s not far. I think it’ll be perfectly safe for us to ride by on the morrow. We can stop and gawk at the army for a few minutes. No one will think much of it. What traveler wouldn’t stop and stare at the doings of the noble-born?”

“True-spoken. And then?”

“We watch. Naught more. Remember that well. All we do is watch from a distance until Rhodry and the lass are out on the road alone. Then we can summon the others and make our move.”

“Well and good, then, but there’s somewhat about this plan that vexes me. It’s too complex, all twisted, like a bit of those interlaced decorations they favor here.”’

“Well, and I have to admit I feel the same, but who are we to argue with our officers?”

“No one, of course.”

“That jest wasn’t funny in the least.”

“I didn’t mean it to be a jest.”

Gwin felt a sudden shudder of fear, as if by saying the ordinary phrase “nev yn” he might have summoned Nevyn into their inn chamber like a demon, rising at the very sound of its name. Then he brushed the irrational thought aside. It was only a symptom of his unease with the convoluted scheme which his superiors in the blood guild had laid upon them. It was all very well for them, safely back in the islands, to talk of kidnapping Rhodry unharmed without attracting the attention of the dweomer of light.

“Has anyone told you, what we’re supposed to do about that lass of his?” Merryc said.

“They have. Kill her. If there’s time, we’re allowed to have a bit of sport with her first.”’

“Splendid. By all accounts, she’s lovely.”

“But only if it’s safe. She’s not important at all to whatever the point of all, this is, or so I was told. She just needs, to be gotten out of the way.”’

Merryc nodded, considering this new bit of information. They were both too low in, the Hawks’ guild to have been given more than what they absolutely needed to know. Although he accepted his ignorance as part of the discipline, privately Gwin wondered just what the blood guilds intended to do with Rhodry once they had him safely back in Bardek. Naught that was pleasant, no doubt, but that was no affair of his. In fact, neither he nor Merryc had any idea of who had hired their guild and sent them on this errand. The blood guilds took work from whoever could pay their high price, and there were men in Deverry as well as Bardek who knew it.

On the morrow they rode out of Bobyr, the village in which they’d been staying, and headed northeast. Some two hours after noon, they came to a wide meadow and the army camp, a sprawl of tents thirty feet off the road, with the horses grazing beyond them. Although most of the men were sitting on the ground, most of them dicing, there were guards spaced at regular intervals around the encampment.

“Let’s hope Rhodry isn’t off beyond the horses,” Merryc muttered.

In a moment they had worse things to worry about than where Rhodry might be. As they walked their horses slowly along, stopping now and then to stare in feigned amazement, they heard someone yell in the camp. A mounted squad of ten galloped out from behind the tents, split into two, and surrounded them before they could think of running. Trying to escape, in any case, would have been a mistake. The leader of the squad, a gray-haired man in the plaid brigga of the noble-born, guided his horse up to them.

“No need for trouble, lads,” he said. “I just want to know who you are, and who you ride for.”

“My name’s Gwin, and this is Merryc, my lord, and we don’t ride for any noble lord. We work for the merchant guild down in Lyn Ebon, mostly as caravan guards, but they sent us up here with letters and suchlike for the new guild in Dun Pyr.”

“Got some proof of that, lad? There’s a war on, and for all I know, you’re spies.”

Gwin reached into his shirt and pulled off a thin chain with a stolen seal ring of the guild in question. The lord examined it, grunted in approval, and handed it back.

“My apologies, then. Ride on, but be careful on the road. Most like, you won’t meet any trouble, but it pays a man to keep his eyes open.”

“It does, my lord, and my thanks.”

The lord waved his arm, the squad parted and let them through, directly by a man who had to be Rhodry from his description. Luck and twice luck, Gwin thought, but he let nothing show on his face but a careful indifference as he casually glanced the silver dagger’s way. With the same indifference, Rhodry looked back, then turned his horse and followed the squad back to camp. Neither Gwin nor Merryc spoke until they had gone another mile or so; then Merryc laughed, a dark chuckle under his breath.

“Well and good, then. I won’t need to be ordering the Wildfolk about from now on.”

“Have the others seen him yet?”

“They haven’t. I talked to Briddyn through the fire last night, and they’re still too far south. They won’t need to do their own scrying, anyway, unless somewhat happens to me.”

“It won’t. That’s why I’m along.”

“Arrogant, aren’t you?” Merryc turned in the saddle and smiled at him. “But I won’t deny that you’re the best swordsman in the Brotherhood. Let’s hope you can best Rhodry if things come to that.”

“Let’s hope they don’t. Remember, they want him alive.”

During the first days after the army rode out, while the dun waited tensely for news, Jill spent a fair amount of time with Perryn, usually out in the woods. The cure, if such it was, of sun and open air was doing him far more good than bed rest. Soon the dark circles were gone, and he could spend a whole day awake. Yet no matter how much time she spent with him, she never felt that she was getting to know him, because he was as guarded and private as one of the wild animals he loved so much. After that first day he never mentioned his longing for Kerun’s priesthood again. When she tried to talk about his kin or the life of the dun, he always drifted into saying some daft thing that put an end to the conversation. Although he seemed to be glad of her company, at times she wondered if he would prefer to be alone. On the third day, however, she had a disturbing revelation of his feelings.

In the afternoon they went out for their usual walk, but this time he told her to lead the horse a little farther into the forest, where there was a tiny stream bordered by ferns that he wanted her to see. After she watered his gray, Jill dutifully admired the ferns, then sat down next to him in the cool shade.

“We should be getting news of the army soon,” he remarked. “If here was a battle, they’d send messages.”

“Let’s pray they’re on their way home, and without another army chasing them.”

“True-spoken. Though . . . ah, er, oh, well . . . ”

Jill waited patiently while he collected his thoughts. She was beginning to get used to his lapses.

“Er, ah, it’s been splendid sitting out in the woods with you. No doubt we won’t be able to when Rhodry rides home.”

“Of course not. Rhodry can turn rotten jealous, even though he’s got no reason to be.”

“Oh. Er, ah, he doesn’t have any reason to be?”

“None, my lord.”

She went on guard, waiting to see how he would take her firm dismissal. For a moment, he considered the ferns sadly.

“None, is it?” he said at last. “Truly?”

He turned his head and smiled at her, a peculiar sort of smile, open and intense, that seemed to reach out and wrap round, troubling her will with a warmth as palpable as a touch of a hand. When she wrenched her eyes away, he laid a gentle hand on her cheek. She twisted away and knocked his hand off, but he smiled again in a way that made him seem to glow. She stared at him, because for a moment she was incapable of moving. When he kissed her, his mouth was soft, gentle, but sensual with a thousand promises.

“You truly are beautiful,” he whispered.

With a wrench of will, she shoved him away.

“Now, here,” she snapped. “There can’t be any more of this between us.”

“And why not?”

His smile was so disturbing that Jill scrambled up and stepped back as if he were an enemy with a sword. He made no effort to follow, merely watched her with his head tilted in a childlike, questioning way. When she stepped back a few more feet, she felt the spell break.

“I’m going back to the dun,” she snarled. “Obviously you’ve got the strength to ride back alone.”

As she jogged back to the dun, she was debating the problem. He can’t be dweomer—he must be dweomer—where would he even have learned it—but what else could that be? Now that she was away from him, the incident was oddly blurred in her mind, as if it had never truly been registered in her rational memory. She decided that, dweomer or not, she was going to avoid being alone with Perryn from now on. When he returned, late in the afternoon, she saw him from across the great hall. He was so bland, so vague and awkward, that she found herself wondering if she’d dreamt the incident by the stream.