A Time of Omens

by Katharine Kerr

  “Here’s an odd thing. She knew our names, Rhodry. The old herbwoman, I mean. She asked if you were still alive.”

  Rhodry flung his head up like a startled horse and swore.

  “Oh, did she now? What does she look like?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, she’s just this old woman, all white and wrinkled.”

  Rhodry scrambled up, gesturing for him to follow.

  “Let’s go find her, lad. I’ve got my reasons.”

  Eventually, just as the falling night forced the exhausted men to their feet to tend to fires and suchlike, they found the herbwoman at the edge of the camp. By then the carts had come in, and she was using one of them as a table for her work while servants rushed around, fetching her water and handing her bandages and suchlike. As bloody as a warrior, she was bending over a prone man and binding his wounds by firelight. Yraen and Rhodry watched while she stitched up a couple of superficial cuts for one of Adry’s riders, then turned the prisoner back over to his guard.

  “Old woman?” Rhodry said. “Have you taken leave of your senses?”

  “I’ve not. Have you? I mean, what are you talking about? She looks old to me.”

  “Does she now?” All at once Rhodry laughed. “Very well. I’ll take your word for it.”

  “Rhodry! What by the hells are you talking about?”

  “Naught, naught. Here, I thought for a while there that it might be someone I know, you see, but it’s not. Let’s go pay our respects anyway.”

  Wearing only a singlet with her brigga, Dallandra was washing in a big kettle of warm water while a servant carried off her red and spattered shirt. To Yraen she looked even older with her flabby, wrinkled arms and prominent clavicle exposed, but Rhodry was staring at her as if he found her a marvel.

  “Well met, Rhodry,” she said, glancing up. “I’m glad I didn’t find you under my needle and thread.”

  “And so am I, good herbwoman. Have you ridden here from the Westlands to find me?”

  “Not precisely.” She shot a warning glance in the servants’ direction. “I’ve too much work to do to talk now, but I’ll explain later.”

  “One last question, if you would.” Rhodry made her a bow. “How fares Lord Comerr?”

  “I had to take his left arm off at the shoulder. Maybe he’ll live, maybe not.” Dallandra looked doubtfully up at the hills. “The gods will do what they will, and there’s naught any of us can do about it.”

  Yraen and Rhodry made a fire of their own, then ate stale flatbread and jerky out of their saddlebags, the noon provisions they’d never had time to eat before the battle. Yraen found himself gobbling shamelessly, even as he wondered how he could be hungry after the things he’d seen and done that day.

  “Well, my friend,” Rhodry said. “You’ve made a splendid beginning, but don’t think you know everything you need to know about warfare.”

  “I’d never be such a dolt. Don’t trouble your heart”

  “Is it what you’d been expecting?”

  “Not in the least.”

  Yet he was snared by a strange dreamlike feeling, that indeed it was all familiar—too familiar. His very exhaustion opened a door in his mind to reveal something long buried, not a memory, nothing so clear, but a recognition, a sense of familiarity as he looked at the camp and his own bloodstained clothes, as he felt every muscle in his body aching from the battle behind them. Even the horror, the sheer disgust of it—somehow he should have known, somehow he’d always known that glory demanded this particular price. For a moment he felt like weeping so strongly that only Rhodry’s appraising stare kept him from tears.

  “Why don’t you just ride home?” Rhodry said.

  He shook his head no and forced himself to go on eating.

  “Why not?”

  He could only shrug for his answer. Rhodry sighed, staring into the fire.

  “I suppose you’ll feel like a coward or suchlike, running for home?”

  “That’s close enough.” Yraen managed to find a few words at last. “I hate it, but it draws me all the same. War, I mean. I don’t understand.”

  “No doubt, oh, no doubt.”

  Rhodry seemed to be about to say more, but Dallandra came walking out of the shadows. She was wearing a clean shirt, much too big for her, and eating a chunk of cheese that she held in one hand like a peasant. Yraen was suddenly struck by the strong, purposeful way she strode along; if she were as old as she looked, she should have been all bent and hobbling, from the strain of her day’s work if nothing more. Without waiting to be asked she sat down next to Rhodry on the ground.

  “Yraen here tells me you know our names,” Rhodry remarked, without so much as a good evening. “How?”

  “I’m a friend of Evandar’s.”

  Rhodry swore in a string of truly appalling oaths, but she merely laughed at him and had another bite of her cheese.

  “Who’s that?” Yraen said. “Or wait! Not that odd fellow who gave you the whistle!”

  “The very one.” Rhodry glanced at the herbwoman again. “May I ask you what you want with me?”

  “Well, only the whistle your young friend mentioned. It’s a truly ill-omened thing, Rhodry, and it’s dangerous for you to be carrying it about with you.”

  “Ah. I’d rather thought so myself. The strangest people—well, I suppose that people isn’t the best word—the strangest creatures keep showing up, trying to steal it from me.”

  At that Yraen remembered the peculiar shadow that he’d seen out in Lord Erddyr’s ward.

  “You really would be better off without it,” Dallandra said. “And Evandar never even meant to leave it with you. He’s been much distracted of late.”

  Rhodry made a sour sort of face and glanced round, finding his saddlebags a few feet away and leaning back to grab them and haul them over. He rummaged for a few moments, then pulled out the whistle, angling it to catch the firelight.

  “Answer me somewhat,” he said. “What is it?”

  “I have no idea, except it feels evil to me.”

  When she reached for it, he grinned and snatched it away, slipping it back into the saddlebag.

  “Tell Evandar he can come fetch it himself.”

  “Rhodry, this is no time to be stubborn.”

  “I’ve a question or two to ask him. Tell him to come himself.”

  Dallandra made some exasperated remark in a language that Yraen had never heard before. Rhodry merely laughed.

  “Well, I don’t want to see you dead over this wretched thing,” the herbwoman went on. “So I’ll give you somewhat for protection.” She fumbled at her belt, where something heavy hung in a triangular leather sheath. “Here.”

  When Rhodry took the sheath, Yraen could see a wooden handle—you couldn’t really call it a hilt—sticking out of the stained and crumbling leather. Rhodry slid the sheath off to reveal a leaf-bladed bronze knife, all scraped and pitted as if it had been hammered flat, then sharpened with a file like a farmer’s hoe.

  “Ye gods, old woman!” Yraen said. “That wouldn’t protect anyone against anything!”

  “Hold your tongue!” Rhodry snarled. “Better yet, apologize to the lady.”

  When Yraen stared in disbelief, Rhodry caught his gaze and held it with all his berserker force.

  “You have my humble apologies, good herbwoman,” Yraen stammered. “I abase myself at your feet in my shame.”

  “You’re forgiven, lad.” She smiled briefly. “And I know it looks peculiar, but then, Rhodry’s enemies are a bit on the peculiar side themselves, aren’t they?”

  “Well, the one I saw was. I mean, I didn’t actually see it, just its shadow, but peculiar’s a good enough word.”

  Rhodry nodded his agreement; he was busily attaching the sheath to his belt at the right side to balance the dagger at the left. With a shake of her head the old woman got up, stretching her back and yawning.

  “Ych, I’m exhausted,” she remarked. “Well, have it your way, Rhodry ap Devaberiel. But I’ve
got obligations here and now, at least till we get these wounded men to a chirurgeon, and it may be a longer time than you think before I can tell Evandar to come fetch it back. Until then, you’ll be in danger, no matter how many knives I give you.”

  “I’ll take my chances, then. I want some answers from your friend, good herbwoman.”

  “So do I.” She laughed, as musically and lightly as a young girl. “But I’ve never gotten any from him myself, and so I doubt very much if you will either.”

  She turned on her heel and walked off into the darkness, leaving Yraen staring after her. Smiling to himself, Rhodry laced the saddlebag up again, then laid it aside right close at hand.

  “Why didn’t you give her the blasted thing?” Yraen said.

  “I don’t know, truly. She’s probably right enough about Evandar not answering my questions.”

  “Who or what is this Evandar, anyway?”

  “I don’t know. That’s one of the questions I want to ask him.”

  “Oh. Well, he and this strange hag seem to know you well enough. Here, wait a minute. She called you Rhodry ap Deva-something. What kind of a name is that? Your father’s, I mean.”

  Rhodry looked at him for a long, mild moment.

  “Elven,” he said at last, and then he tossed back his head and howled with laughter, his icy berserker’s shriek.

  Demanding an explanation from him in that mood was the furthest thing from Yraen’s mind.

  “I’ll just go get some more firewood.” He got to his feet. “Fire’s getting low, and I wouldn’t mind some light.”

  As he hurried off to the area where the provisions were stacked, Yraen was remembering all the old children’s tales he’d fever heard about the people called the Elcyion Lacar or elves. If any such race did exist, he decided, Rhodry was the best candidate ever he’d found to be one of them, simply because he seemed so alien at his very heart.

  When he went to sleep that night, Rhodry tucked the bone whistle into his shirt. Although he doubted very much if Dallandra would stoop to stealing it, he was expecting one of the strange creatures to take advantage of his weariness, and he put the bronze knife right beside his blankets, as well. Sure enough, he woke suddenly in the middle of the night at the sound of someone or something dumping out his saddlebags. When he sat up, grabbing the knife, whatever it was fled. He could see nothing but his strewn gear, and the whistle was still safely in his shirt. Moving quietly he got up, knelt and put the gear away again, then pulled on his boots for a look round and a word with the night watch. Although the camp was ringed by sentries, none of them had seen anything moving, either in the camp or out in the silent valley.

  About halfway between two sentries, Rhodry paused, rubbing his face and yawning while he considered offering to stand someone’s watch for them. From where he stood he could see the bleak lines of dead men, waiting under their blankets for their burying on the morrow. With a sharp sigh he turned away, only to find Dallandra walking toward him. In the moonlight he could see her quite clearly as a young and beautiful elven woman. With her long silvery-blond hair carelessly pulled back with a thong, she seemed no more than a lass, in fact, but he’d heard enough tales to know who she was.

  “Good evening,” he said in Elvish. “Looking for me?”

  “No, I just couldn’t sleep.” She answered in the same. “Ych, this slaughter! I feel like crying, but if I let myself start, I’d weep for hours.”

  “It takes some people that way, truly.”

  “Not you?”

  “It did at first. I grew past it, as, or so I hope, our young Yraen will. If he insists on riding with me, he’ll see plenty of this sort of thing.”

  She merely nodded, staring out over the field with her steel-gray eyes.

  “Tell me something,” Rhodry said. “You have dweomer, don’t you? Every other man in this camp thinks you’re an ugly old crone.”

  “That’s Evandar’s dweomer, not mine. I should have known that a man of the People would see through it. You’ve met me before, Rhodry, in a rather odd way. I think you might have seen me, anyway, even though I wasn’t truly on the physical plane. It was a long time ago, when Jill and Aderyn pulled you free of that trouble you’d got yourself into.”

  Rhodry winced. Silver dagger or no, there were a few shameful things in his life that he didn’t care to remember.

  “I wasn’t truly aware of much, then,” he said at last. All at once a thought struck him. “Oh, here, I’ve sad news for you. Or did you know about Aderyn?”

  “Is he dead then?”

  “He is, of old age and nothing more.”

  Her eyes spilled tears, and she spun round, hiding her face in the crook of an elbow. When Rhodry laid a hesitant hand on her shoulder to comfort her, she turned to him blindly and sobbed against his chest.

  “That hurts,” she choked out. “I’m surprised at how much.”

  “Then forgive me for being the bearer of the news.”

  She nodded, pulling away, wiping her face vigorously on the hem of her shirt.

  “I’ll talk to you later,” she said, her voice still thick. “I need a moment or two alone.”

  She strode off, walking so fast and surely, even in her grief, that he wondered at the blindness of men for believing in the dweomer cloak that Evandar had fashioned for her.

  On a bed of blankets, Lord Comerr lay beside Lord Erddyr’s fire. His face was dead-pale, his breathing shallow, and his skin cool to the touch—a trio of omens that troubled Dallandra deeply. While she changed the bandages on his wounds, Erddyr knelt beside her and did his best to help, handing over things as she asked for them. Comerr stirred once or twice at the pain, but he never spoke.

  “Tell me honestly,” Erddyr said. “Will he live?”

  “Maybe. He’s a hard man, and there’s hope, but he’s lost a terrible lot of blood.”

  With a grunt, Erddyr sat back on his heels and studied Comerr’s face.

  “Let me ask you a presumptuous question, my lord,” Dallandra went on. “Have you ever thought of asking the gwerbret for his intervention? Lord Adry is dead, and Comerr close enough to it. Fighting over which of them will be tieryn someday seems a bit superfluous, shall we say?”

  “True spoken. And they aren’t the only noble lords fallen in this scrap. I’ve been thinking very hard about sending that message.”

  “That gladdens my heart. Do you think the other side will submit?”

  “They’ll have cursed little choice if the gwerbret takes the matter under his jurisdiction. Besides, Nomyr’s the only lord left on their side, and he’s in this only out of duty.”

  “Didn’t Adry have a son?”

  “He does, but the lad’s only seven years old.”

  Dallandra muttered an oath under her breath. Erddyr studied his mercifully unconscious ally.

  “Ah, by the fart-freezing hells, it aches my heart to see him maimed like this.”

  “Better than dead. The arm wasn’t worth saving, and I never could have stopped the bleeding in time.”

  “Oh, I’m not questioning your decision.” Erddyr shuddered like a wet dog. “I think I’ll take my chance to get him out of this while he can’t speak for himself. I’ll send messengers tomorrow.”

  “The gods will honor you for it. You know, my lord, I happen to have a letter of safe conduct with the gwerbret’s seal upon it. You’d be most welcome to make use of it.”

  “My thanks a hundredfold. I will.”

  “I wonder if his lordship would do me a favor. I’d just as soon have my friend Rhodry out of this. Could you send your pair of silver daggers as the messengers?”

  “Oh, I’d grant your favor gladly, but they’d be in worse danger there than here. You’re forgetting that Rhodry is the man who killed Lord Adry. If any of Adry’s men catch Rhodry on the road, they’ll cut him down even if he’s carrying letters from the Lord of Hell himself.”

  “I hadn’t realized that, my lord.”

  Erddyr rubbed his beard and looked at
Comerr, who tossed his head in his sleep and grunted in pain. Suddenly too weary to stand, Dallandra sat down right on the ground and cradled her head in both hands.

  “A thousand apologies, good herbwoman,” Erddyr said. “I never should have kept you here like this. You need your sleep at your age and all.”

  “So I do. Since my lordship excuses me?”

  Yet, once she was lying down in her blankets, she found herself thinking about Aderyn instead of falling asleep. The surprise of her grief troubled her more than the grief itself, until she realized that she was mourning not so much the man himself, as what their love might have been if only Evandar and his doomed people hadn’t claimed her instead. Another painful thing was Rhodry’s news that he’d died of simple old age. Even though she’d spent a few months with him when he was already old as men reckon age, in her mind and heart she always saw him as her young lover with his ready smile and earnest eyes. Once more she wept, crying herself asleep, alone at the edge of the armed camp.

  It took two days for the army to return to Comerr’s dun, simply because the lord’s life hung by a thread. Being jolted in a cart tired him so badly that every now and then the line of march was forced to stop and let him rest. At last, close to sunset on the second day, they rode into the great iron-bound gates, where Comerr’s young wife waited weeping to receive her husband. Dallandra helped the lady settle Comerr in his own bed and tend his wounds, then went down to the great hall for a meal. Crowded into one side of the great hall, the men were sitting on the floor or standing as they ate. At the table of honor, Lord Erddyr dined done. When Dallandra went for a word with him, the lord insisted that she join him.

  “What do you think of Comerr’s chances now?” Erddyr said.

  “They’re good. He’s lived through the worst, and there’s no sign of either gangrene or lockjaw.”