Deverry #06 - The Westlands 02 - A Time of Omens
Page 44
“Is Jill with you?” Carra said.
“The Wise One?” Dar said. “She’s not. She left us before we reached the city. There’s Rhodry, though. Look, right behind him, see that horse Yraen’s leading? We captured him from the raiders. He belonged to their leader.”
Carra looked, then caught her breath in a little gasp. Never had she seen such an enormous animal, fully eighteen hands high and broad, too, with a deep chest and huge arch of neck. A blood bay with white mane and tail, he walked solemnly, gravely, planting each big foot down as if he knew that everyone watched him. Rhodry turned his own horse over to a page, then worked his way free of the mob to join them.
“Otho,” Rhodry said. “I’ve a bone to pick with you.”
“You remembered, did you?” Otho looked sour. “Well, I owe you your hire, I suppose, though with all the trouble you got me into, that ambush at the ford and all, I don’t see why I should pay you one blasted coin.”
“Because if you’d ridden north without me and Yraen, you’d have been dead long before you reached the cursed ford.”
“That has a certain logic to it, truly. Well, I’ve got the coin back at my inn.”
“Good. Make sure you fetch it, then.”
And Carra was honestly shocked that a man like Rhodry, whom she was starting to consider as fine and noble as any man in the kingdom, would worry about a handful of coin.
That night in the great hall the gwerbret held a feast for their victory, and his lady made sure that it also served to solemnize Carra’s wedding in the human way. Before the bard sang his praise-song for the raid and the true drinking began, the gwerbret himself made a fine flowery speech and toasted the young couple with a goblet of mead. The bard performed a solemn declamation, cobbled together from other occasions, perhaps, but elegant all the same. Their arms twined round each other, Carra and Dar took turns drinking mead from a real glass goblet, traded all the way north from Bardek through Aberwyn. Although custom demanded that they smash the thing, it was far too valuable, and besides, as Carra pointed out to her new husband, she certainly wasn’t a virgin anymore anyway. With a laugh Dar agreed and handed the goblet back unharmed to the hovering seneschal.
Later, after the bardsong and the assigning of praise, after the mead and the feasting, the gwerbret called for music, and there was dancing, the circle dances of the border, half-elven, half-human, stepped out to harp and drum. For the ritual of the thing, Carra danced one with Dar, then sat down again beside the gwerbret’s wife, who caught her hand and squeezed it.
“You have my thanks, my lady,” Carra said. “For honoring me this way.”
“Well, you’re most welcome, and truly, I thought we’d best take our merriment while we can.” Labanna’s dark eyes turned haunted. “The omens are poor, and the news worse.”
Carra nodded, moving instinctively a little closer to her. Out in the center of the great hall, the music pounded on, and the dancers moved gravely, circling round and round. In her grim mood it seemed that they were weaving an immense and ancient spell rather than celebrating an event as common as a wedding. Yet, even over the music, when Carra turned toward the window she heard or thought she heard the harsh cry of a hawk, as if some huge bird drifted overhead on the rising night wind.