Days of Blood and Fire Read online

  “I will, then,” Rhodry said. “But I wouldn’t strut like this around Lord Matyc and his ilk, if I were you.”

  The boy ducked his head and looked away. Rhodry turned to go, but the gwerbret himself made the point moot by coming in, trailed by the equerry and the chamberlain. Even though he limped badly on a twisted right leg, Gwerbret Cadmar was an imposing man, standing well over six feet tall, broad in the shoulders, broad in the hands. His slate-gray hair and mustaches bristled; his face was weather-beaten and dark; his eyes gleamed a startling blue under heavy brows. As he made his way over to the table of honor, the page bowed, and Rhodry knelt.

  “Get up, silver dagger, no need to stand on ceremony.” The gwerbret favored him with a brief smile. “You’re back, are you? I’ve heard that you brought prisoners. I take it Jill was right, then, and there were spies prowling round my borders.”

  “Well, Your Grace, we found a couple of prowlers, sure enough, but I doubt me if they’re truly spies. One’s but a lad, you see, and the other’s blind.”

  The equerry and chamberlain exchanged startled looks, and Cadmar himself grunted in surprise.

  “Cursed strange, then. Why were they riding in my lands?”

  “I have no idea, Your Grace. I do know that Jill has great hopes of getting information out of them.”

  “No doubt she’d like me to leave the matter in her hands?”

  “If his grace agrees, of course.”

  “Well, most likely I will.” The gwerbret turned to the page. “Alli, run up to Jill’s chambers and ask her, and politely, mind, but ask her to come down for a word with me.”

  Although the boy bowed and ran off fast, he was obviously smarting at the vertical hike ahead of him. Cadmar glanced at the chamberlain.

  “Think he’ll learn courtesy one of these fine days?”

  “I can only hope so, Your Grace,” the old man sighed, “I’m doing my best to teach the wretched little snot.”

  Cadmar laughed, then remembered Rhodry and turned to him with a quick wave of one hand.

  “You may go, silver dagger. No need for you to be standing round here.”

  “My thanks, Your Grace.”

  Rhodry went out to the barracks, those structures built into the walls that had so puzzled Jahdo, and drew himself water at the stable well for a cold bath. Once he was shaved and reasonably clean, he went back to the great hall to keep an eye on things. He got himself some ale, dipping his own tankard to avoid giving a servant lass the chance to snub him, then found himself a seat at a table on the far side of the hall, where he could watch the noble-born from a proper distance. A few at a time, the honor-bound men in the various warbands quartered at the dun came drifting in, chivvying the lasses and settling down at one table or another to wait for the evening meal. Unlike the servants and the noble-born, most of the men had a friendly greeting for Rhodry or a jest to share. They’d seen him fight, after all, and judged his worth on that.

  The hall filled up fast. For the war against the raiding party captained by Meer’s brother, Cadmar had called in two of his closest vassals, Lord Matyc and Lord Gwinardd, and as their oaths of fealty demanded, they’d brought twenty-five men apiece with them to add to Cadmar’s oath-sworn riders. One of the latter, a young, brown-haired lad named Draudd, sat himself down beside Rhodry.

  “Where’s Yraen?”

  “Don’t know, but he’d better be cleaning himself up,” Rhodry said. “I thought he’d be in by now. Why?”

  “Just asking, wondering if he’s up for a game of carnoic or suchlike.” Draudd yawned profoundly. “He plays cursed well Here, Rhodry, some of the men have a wager on, like, that Yraen’s noble-born.”

  “Do they now? I hope they don’t go asking him outright and hope to live to collect it. Prying into a silver dagger’s past is bad for a man’s health.”

  Draudd snorted into his ale.

  “I’m not having a jest on you,” Rhodry spoke quietly, levelly. “Tell them to lay off.”

  Draudd looked up sharply, his good cheer gone.

  “And another thing,” Rhodry went on. “Am I included in this little game?”

  Draudd turned beet-red in silent confession. Rhodry grabbed him by a twist of shirt that nearly choked him and hauled him face-to-face.

  “Lay it off, lad. Do you understand me?” He let Draudd go with a thrust of his wrist that sent the lad reeling. “Do you?”

  “I do, and I will, then.” He hesitated, rubbing his throat with one hand, then swung himself free of the bench. “I’ll just go have a word with the captain, like.”

  Rhodry realized that a clot of men were hovering in the door and watching. He ignored them and picked up his tankard again. When he checked a few moments later, he found them gone.

  Soon after Jill appeared at the far side of the great hall and hurried up to the gwerbret’s table, where Cadmar himself rose to greet her, insisting she take the place of honor at his right hand. Although he was too far away to hear their talk, Rhodry could guess that the gwerbret was trying to winkle information out of her—never the easiest task in the world. Rhodry suspected that she knew a great deal more than she was saying about this mysterious bard from so far away. In a few minutes the gwerbret’s other vassal in residence, Lord Gwinardd, joined the honor table, a young man, brown-haired and bland, his title newly inherited, sitting diffidently at the far end from his overlord and not saying a word.

  As the afternoon drowsed on, Rhodry started keeping a watch for Lord Matyc, who would be expected to join the other noble-born men for the evening meal if not before, but he had a long wait before Matyc finally strode in. Right behind him came Yraen. Rhodry allowed himself a small smile as the two parted company, Matyc to greet his overload, Yraen to stroll down and join Rhodry.

  “And where have you been?” Rhodry said.

  “Keeping an eye on his lordship. What do you think? I caught him showing a bit too much interest in those prisoners for my taste, so I stood on guard for a while. When he kept hovering round, I distracted him, like, with talk of horses, and maneuvered him into taking a look at the gwerbret’s new mare and suchlike.”

  “And how did our lordship take that?”

  “Badly.” Yraen shrugged. “Let him. I don’t like the look of the man. Somewhat about him turns my gut.”

  “Mine, too. I’ll try to get a word with Jill, and as soon as I can. I wouldn’t mind having our prisoners moved to some fresh place, and that without our lordship knowing.”

  Round sunset the jailor brought Jahdo and Meer a fresh loaf of bread, more water, chunks of cheese, stiff with rind but not bad tasting and plenty of it, and a couple of fresh peaches, which, he said, came by Rhodry’s direct order. Although he was glad of the food, thinking that they were dependent on the goodwill of the man who’d killed Meer’s brother and then captured them made Jahdo profoundly uneasy.

  “I do feel that we shouldn’t eat it,” he said to Meer.

  “Slaves take what they can get, lad.”

  “I know that, but then it really creeps my flesh, thinking what will happen to us if Rhodry’s killed or suchlike. How will someone else treat us?”

  “Slaves live one day at a time, as well.”

  While they ate, sitting in the straw, Jahdo looked up and out the barred window on the opposite wall Outside the sky, streaked here and there with gold clouds, was darkening to a velvet blue. He could hear voices passing, harried servants, laughing men, the occasional bark of a dog or whinny of a horse. When he was done, he walked over to the window and found below it on the wall a couple of uneven stone blocks. By stepping on them and grabbing the window bars to hoist himself up, he could look out to a view of two storage sheds, the pigsty, and in the distance the massive outer walls of the dun, all of which he described to Meer, mostly to pass the time.

  “And then round the top of the dun there’s these wooden catwalks, like we have back home, for the militia to walk round on and guard things. These are kind of broken in places, though, like they haven�
�t been kept up right. Maybe they don’t have a lot of wars here or suchlike.”

  “This dun seems to be the strong point of the entire area and not very likely to be attacked. I wonder what a gwerbret is? The lord of this place, obviously, but I’ve never heard the word before.”

  “Neither have I.”

  Meer considered the problem for a moment, then felt for his staff, lying near him in the straw.

  “Do you need the bucket?” Jahdo said.

  “I don’t. Help me to stand, lad.”

  When Jahdo did so, Meer tapped his way to the door and felt for the little window. Once it was found, he put his face close to the bars.

  “Jailor!” he roared. “Jailor! Come here!”

  He kept it up until the old man appeared, cursing and complaining as he stumped down the hallway. A whiff of sour ale came with him.

  “And what’s wrong with you, you hairy cow? Disturbing an honest man at his hard-earned meal, not that I’ll be making much of a profit feeding the likes of you, and that worm-riddled silver dagger giving me orders.”

  “I require the meaning of a word.”

  The jailor stared, his mouth flopping open and silent.

  “I am Meer, bard and loremaster,” Meer bellowed. “Tell me what this word gwerbret means. Such lore is my due.”

  With a shake the jailor recovered himself.

  “Oh, is it now? Since when do hairy dogs have bards?”

  “You better watch your tongue!” Jahdo snapped.

  “Hush!” Meer waved him away. “Old man, first you called me a cow, now a dog. In my homeland you would have been publicly strangled for those insults. Here, as a slave, I have no choice but to forgive you. Yet even a slave-bard is a bard still. You will answer me my question, or I’ll call down the wrath of the gods.”

  “Call away. FU not be telling you one wretched thing.”

  As the jailor turned to go, Meer sang a high, piercing note whose harsh texture made Jahdo squirm. Louder and louder he sang, and longer and longer, until the jailor shrieked.

  “Very well! Hold your ugly tongue, bard! FU tell you. I should have known that hairy savages like you would be as ignorant as you are ugly. A gwerbret’s a kind of lord, see, the most powerful lord there is, except for the princes and suchlike of the blood royal. He’s got vassals what owe him service and pay him dues. And he judges criminals and suchlike, and I hope to every god that when it comes to the judging of you, he hangs you good and proper.”

  This time when the old man hurried off, Meer let him go

  “May his heart burst within him,” Meer remarked. “Or better yet, may the gods plug his kidneys so that he dies in a stink of piss. Ah well. At least I’ve got my bit of new lore.”

  Jahdo felt a profound relief Obviously Meer had truly decided to live if he’d go worrying about some funny name. He got the bard settled, then climbed back to his window perch to watch the twilight fading. After a few minutes he saw a familiar figure come striding out of the main broch.

  “Someone’s coming. It be Rhodry, and he’s got Yraen and a couple of men from the squad with him.”

  When he heard Rhodry’s voice in the corridor, and the jailor’s sniveling answers, Jahdo climbed down from his perch and handed the Gel da’Thae his staff. Meer rose to his feet just as they lifted the bar and opened the door. Rhodry made them a formal bow, but he was grinning all the while.

  “Feel like a stroll in the evening air?” Rhodry said. “The ward’s nice and quiet at the moment, because most everyone’s still eating. I think we can get you across to the broch safely, if you hurry and if you cause me no troubled Agreed?”

  “We don’t have any choice, do we?” Jahdo said.

  Rhodry laughed as hard as if the world were one daft jest.

  “None,” Rhodry said. “So march.”

  Jahdo caught Meer’s arm, and they hurried out, striding fast across the ward with the men disposed around them— not that they could hide Meer, tall as he was, of course. Jahdo, however, had trouble seeing through them, although he could just make out the many-towered broch complex, looming against the darkening sky and drawing closer and closer. They ducked suddenly into a door, which Rhodry slammed behind them, turning wherever they were as dark as pitch.

  “Curse you, Rhodry!” Yraen snarled. “I’m not climbing all those stairs in the dark.”

  “Then get yourself into the great hall and grab us a candle-lantern. The servants should be lighting them about now. Draudd, Maen—when Yraen returns, you’re dismissed, but say one word about this, and you’ll have me to deal with.”

  “I’ve forgotten already,” Draudd said. “Even though I’m still here.”

  Once Yraen came back with a punched tin lantern, they climbed the staircase by its mottled and flickering light, up and up, round and round, until Meer and Jahdo both were panting for breath. At the landing up top, Rhodry let them pause among the heaped sacks.

  “Now mind your manners in here,” he whispered. “We’re going to see Jill, and she holds your fate in her hands.”

  Jahdo immediately pictured some great queen out of the ancient tales. He was not, therefore, prepared for the reality when Jill flung open the door. The chamber behind her glowed with a peculiar silver light that clung to the ceiling and sheeted down the walls as if it were water, and backlit as she was, he honestly thought her a skeleton or corpse. He screamed, making Meer grab his shoulder hard.

  “What is it?” the bard snapped. “What is it?”

  Jahdo tried to speak but could only stammer. When Rhodry howled with his usual crazed laughter, the boy burst into tears.

  “What are you doing to him?” Meer bellowed with full bardic voice. “He’s done no harm to aught of you.”

  “It’s all right,” Yraen broke in. “Jahdo, stop sniveling.”

  “Ye gods,” Jill snarled. “Will you all hold your wretched tongues? Do you want half the dun running up here to see what the commotion is?”

  That sensible question silenced everyone.

  “Much better,” Jill said. “Come in, come in, and my apologies for frightening you, lad.”

  With new courage Jahdo led Meer straight into the chamber. Now that he could see that she was a perfectly normal woman, though certainly not an ordinary one, he was expecting to find the peculiar glow just some trick of moonlight or torches. Unfortunately, it was nothing of the sort,

  “Meer, there be magic at work here,” he whispered. “The light does shine all over everything, like dust or suchlike, I mean, if moonlight were dust it would look like this, and she’s got books, great big books. There must be twenty of them.”

  Jill grinned at that. The Gel da’Thae was turning his huge head this way and that, listening to every sound he could register, and his nostrils flared, too, as if he were sniffing the air like a horse. Since his hand lay on Meer’s arm, Jahdo could feel him trembling. All at once Jahdo remembered hearing Rhodry and Yraen speak of this woman during the long ride back to Cengarn.

  “You be the mazrak!” he burst out. “The falcon I did see following us.”

  Meer clutched his staff hard between both hands and growled under his breath.

  “I have no idea what a mazrak may be,” Jill said mildly. “So how could I be one?”

  “But the falcon. We did see it, and then Rhodry and Yraen did come with the squad, and they knew right where we’d be, didn’t they? They did speak of you and said your name, and I could tell they were following your orders.”

  Jill glanced at Rhodry.

  “I agree with you,” she said. “This child’s much too bright to be locked in a stinking dungeon.”

  She was admitting he’d guessed right, that indeed, he was facing a real sorcerer. Jahdo clutched the talismans at his neck.

  “I understand that you’re a bard,” Jill said to Meer. “So you shall have the only chair I’ve got. Rhodry, Yraen, if you’ll just stand by the door? In fact, Yraen, if you wouldn’t mind standing on the other side of it to keep the curious away, I’d b
e grateful. Jahdo, get your master settled, and then, I think, it’s time for some plain talk.”

  Jahdo helped Meer sit, then knelt beside him on the floor, which was covered with braided rush mats and reasonably comfortable. The room itself seemed ordinary, except for the presence of books, containing only a small table, a chair, a charcoal brazier, an alcove with a narrow bed, a pair of carved storage chests. Jahdo realized that he’d been expecting sorcerers to live somewhere grand and cluttered, with demons standing round in attendance, not in an everyday sort of room like this. There was, however, no explaining away the silver light. When Jill leaned against the wall facing him and Meer, the drape of light parted, as if dodging her.

  “Well, good bard,” she said. “My apologies for the rough treatment you’ve received, but your people are not so well liked round here, thanks to the raiders.”

  “So I’ve noticed.” Meer’s voice was stiff and cold. “Wait. What do you mean, raiders?”

  “A band of men, led by one of the Horsekin, have been raiding hereabouts, burning farms, killing the men and any pregnant women, enslaving the rest.”

  “What?” Meer tried to speak, sputtered, caught his breath at last. “Lies! Disgusting, demon-spawned lies! No man of the Horsekin would ever harm a pregnant female, no matter whether she were kin or utter stranger, horse or Horsekin, human or hound, and he’d kill any man under his command in an instant for doing the same. Never! The gods would send down vengeance on him and strike him dead.”

  “Well, in a way they did,” Rhodry said, rubbing his chin with one hand. “But, Meer, I’ll swear to you it’s true. I saw one victim myself, a woman not far from giving birth, lying dead in the road from a sword slash, and her babe butchered inside her.”

  Meet turned toward the sound of the silver dagger’s voice, then hesitated, his mouth working, Jill stood utterly still, watching all of this with her blue eyes as cold and sharp as thorns, as if she could bore through the faces of the men into their very souls,