A Time of Exile (33 page)

“Oh, towns don’t come much quieter than Cannobaen!” Samwna paused to laugh. “Why, the big excitement lately was when one of Lord Pertyc’s boarhounds killed two chickens over at Myna’s farm.”

Nevyn smiled, well pleased. Idly he rubbed the front of his shirt and touched the opal hidden inside. If there’s trouble in Aberwyn, he thought, it can cursed well stay in Aberwyn! No doubt remote Cannobaen would be undisturbed by these rumors of rebellion.

“By every hell, how can you be so stubborn?”

“It comes with my family title.” Pertyc Maelwaedd touched the device worked on his shirt. “We’re Badgers, my friend. We hold on.”

“By that line of thinking, we Bears would have to stay in our holes.” Danry, Tieryn Cernmeton and Pertyc’s closest friend, perched on the edge of a carved table and considered him. “But cursed if I will.”

“Why do you think I nicknamed you the Falcon, back when we were lads? But this time you’re flying too high.”

They were sequestered in Pertyc’s small study behind a barred door, and a good thing, too, because Danry was talking treason. Since Pertyc had a taste for clutter, the room was crowded: a large writing table, a shelf with twenty leather-bound codices, two chairs, a scatter of small Bardek carpets, and on the wall, a pair of moth-eaten stag’s heads, trophies of some long-forgotten hunt of a remote ancestor. Pertyc’s helm perched jauntily on the antlers of the largest stag, and his shield was propped up against a book-laden lectern carved with intertwined dogs and badgers.

“I’ve always liked my demesne,” Pertyc remarked absently.
“So remote here on the border. Nice and quiet. Easy to stay out of trouble in a place like Cannobaen.”

“You can’t stay out of this. That’s what you don’t understand.”

“Indeed? Just watch.”

Danry sighed again. He was a tall man, with a florid face that usually simmered on the edge of rage, and thick blond mustaches that were usually damp with mead. Lately, however, Danry had been withdrawn, and the mustaches had a ratty look, as if he’d been chewing on them in hard thought. Perfyc had been wondering what was on his friend’s mind. Now he was finally hearing. Ever since the forced joining of the two kingdoms some sixty years before, there’d been plenty of grumbling in Eldidd, a longing for independence and past glory simmering like porridge over a slow fire. Now the fire had flared up; the porridge was beginning to boil over.

“I’d hoped to come around to this slowly,” Danry said at last. “But it’s hard to believe you’d be too blind to see the ale in your own tankard.”

“I’ve never much liked sour ale. What does it matter to me if I pledge to a new king or an old one?”

“Perro! It’s the honor of the thing.”

“How are you going to have a rebellion without a king to rally round? Or have you ferreted out some obscure heir?”

“That’s a rotten way to speak about him, but we have.” Danry picked up a leather dog collar from the cluttered writing desk and began fiddling with the brass buckles. “The lad is related to the old blood royal twice over on the female line, and there’s a lass who’s related on the male line. If we marry them, well, it’s claim enough. They’re both good Eldidd blood, and that’s the true thing.” He ran the end of the collar through the buckle and pulled it tight. “You know, my friend, your claim to the throne is as good as his.”

“It’s not! I don’t have a claim at all. None, do you hear me? My most honorable ancestor abdicated; I’m descended from his common-born wife, and that’s that! No priest in the kingdom would back a claim on my part, and you know it.”

“There are ways of handling priests.” Danry tossed the
collar aside. “But you’re right, no doubt I was just thinking of a thing or two.”

“Listen, even jackals pull down the kill before they start squabbling over the meat.”

Danry winced.

“When I came to my manhood,” Pertyc went on, “I swore an oath to King Aeryc to serve him well, serve him faithfully, and to put his life above my own. Seems to me I heard you and the rest of our friends swear one like it, too.”

“Ah, by the hells! No oath is binding when it’s sworn under coercion.”

“No one held a sword to my throat. I didn’t see one at yours, either.”

With a curse, Danry heaved himself up from the table and began trying to pace round the cluttered chamber.

“The coercion lies in the past. They stripped Eldidd of its rights and its independence under threat of open slaughter. It’s the honor of the thing, Perro.”

“If I break an oath, I don’t have any honor left worth fighting over.” Idly Pertyc touched the device on his shirt.

“Ah, curse your horseshit Badgers! If you don’t come in with us, what then? Are you going to run to this false king with the tale?”

“Never, and all for your sake. Do you think I’d put my sworn friend’s neck in a noose? I’d die first.”

Danry sighed, looking away.

“I wish you’d stay out, too,” Pertyc said.

“And I’d die before I’d do that. You can trumpet your neutrality to the four corners of the world, but you’re still going to be in the middle of it. What do you think we’re going to do, muster our warbands right down in Aberwyn? When the spring comes, we’re meeting in the forest, here in the west.”

“You scummy bastards!”

Danry laughed, tossing his head back and giving him a friendly slap on the shoulder.

“We’ll do our best not to disturb his lordship or trample his kitchen garden. Now here, spring’s a long way away. I have faith you’ll be mustering with us when the time comes. It might be dangerous if you didn’t. You know I’d never lift my hand against you or your dun and kin, but well, as for the others …” He let the words trail significantly away.

“Neutrals have found themselves stripped and sieged before, huh? You’re right enough. You tell our friends that I’ll protect my lands to my last breath, whether they claim to have a king on their side or not.”

“They wouldn’t expect any less from you. I warn you, though, when we win this fight, you can’t expect much honor or standing in the new kingdom.”

“I’ll take my chances on that. I’d rather die a beggar than break my sworn oath.” Pertyc smiled faintly. “And the word, my friend, isn’t ‘when’ you win. It’s ‘if.’”

Danry turned red, a hectic flush of rage across his cheeks. Pertyc held his gaze until Danry forced out a wry smile.

“Let us give the gods their due,” Danry said. “Who knows where a man’s Wyrd will lead him? Very well. ‘If it is.”

Pertyc walked outside with Danry to the ward, where his horse was standing saddled and ready at the gates. Danry mounted, said a pleasant and normal farewell, then trotted off down the road to the north. As Pertyc watched the dust disappearing, he felt danger like a cold ache in his stomach. The dolts, he thought, and maybe I’m the biggest dolt of all! He turned and looked over his dun, a small, squat broch standing inside a timber-laced wall without ramparts or barbicans. Although his demesne was continually short on coin, he decided it would be wise to spend what he had on fortifications, even if he could only afford to build some earthworks and ditches. Whatever else it may have lacked, his dun had the best watchtower in the kingdom for the Cannobaen light, where every night a beacon burned to warn passing ships of submerged rocks just off the coast. If the rebellion swept a siege his way, it occurred to Pertyc, he could perhaps parlay keeping the light into a reason for keeping his neutrality. Perhaps. The dread in his stomach turned to burning ice.

Later that same day, he was drinking in his great hall when a page came with the news that there was a silver dagger at the gates. Since he had only ten men in his warband, he had Maer shown in straightaway.

“I’ll take you on, silver dagger. I don’t know when we’ll see action, but another man might come in handy. Your keep, and if there’s fighting, a silver piece a week.”

“My thanks, my lord. Winter’s coming on, and the roof over my head’s going to be welcome.”

“Good. Uh, Maer? If you shave that mustache off, it’ll grow in thicker the next time, you know.”

Maer drew himself up to full height.

“Is his lordship suggesting or ordering?”

“Merely suggesting. No offense intended.”

Pertyc turned him over to his captain, then went up to the women’s hall, a comfortable sunny room that covered half the second story of the tower. It was the domain of his lordship’s old nurse, Maudda, all stooped back and long white hair these days, but still doing her best to serve the clan by tending Pertyc’s four-year-old daughter, Beclya. Pertyc felt very bad about keeping the old woman working, but there was, quite simply, no one else who could handle the lass. As headstrong as her mother, he thought, then winced at the very mental mention of his absent wife. He found them sitting in a patch of sun by the window, Beclya in a chair, Maudda standing behind, keeping up a running flow of chatter as she combed the lass’s hair, but as soon as Pertyc stepped in, Beclya twisted free and rushed to her father.

“Da, Da, I want to go riding. Please, Da, please?”

“In a bit, my sweet.”

“Now!” She tossed back her head and howled in rage.

“Stop that! You’re upsetting poor Maudda.”

With a visible wrench of will she fell silent, turning to look at her beloved nurse. She was a beautiful child, Beclya, with her moonbeam-pale hair and enormous gray eyes, tall and slender for her age and as graceful as a fawn when she moved.

“Now, lambkin,” Maudda said. “You’ll go riding soon enough. Your da’s the lord, you see, and we all must do what he says. The gods made him a lord, and we—”

“Horseshit!” She stamped her foot. “But I’ll be good if you say so.”

With a sigh and a watery smile, Maudda held out her arms, and Beclya ran to her. I’ve got to get the poor old dear some help, Pertyc told himself. He had this thought with the same tedious regularity with which he first enlisted young nursemaids, then watched them retreat.

“Maudda, I wanted your advice on somewhat,” he said
aloud. “I’ve been thinking about my son. Do you think my cousin would take it amiss if I rode to his dun and fetched Adraegyn home for the winter?”

“Ah. You’ve been hearing them rumors of trouble, then.”

“Ye gods, do you know everything?”

“Everything what matters, my lord.”

“Please, Da, go get him,” Beclya put in. “I miss Draego.”

“No doubt you do,” Pertyc said. “I think it might be best all round if he came home. I can train him myself, if it comes to that.”

“Da?” Beclya broke in. “I want to go with you.”

“You can’t, my sweet. Young ladies don’t go riding round the countryside like silver daggers.”

“I want to go!”

“I said you can’t.”

“I don’t care what you say. I don’t care what your dumb gods say, either. I don’t want to be a lady. I want to go riding. I want to go with you when you get Draego.” With a shriek she threw herself down on the floor and began to kick.

“If I may be so bold, my lord?” Maudda pitched her voice loud over the general noise. “Do get out and leave her to me.”

Pertyc fled the field. He was beginning to wish that he’d done what his wife wanted and let her take his daughter away with her. He’d refused only out of a stubborn honor. He could only thank the gods for making Adraegyn a reasonable and fairly human being.

“Now, you know who does have a little cottage,” Samwna said thoughtfully. “Wersyn the merchant. He had it built for his mother, you see, when she was widowed, but the poor lady passed to the Otherlands just this spring. No surprise, truly, because she was seventy winters if she was a day old. She always said sixty-four, but hah! you can tell those things, good sir. But anyway, it’s a nice stout little place with a big hearth.”

“Does it have a bit of land around it?”

“Oh, it does, because she liked her flowers and suchlike.
Besides, it had to be a good stone’s throw away from Wersyn’s house. Moligga—that’s his wife—put her foot down about that, and I can’t say I blame her, because old Bwdda was the nosy type, always lifting the lids of her daughter-in-law’s pots, if you take my meaning, good sir.”

Nevyn began to remember why he normally avoided small rural towns.

On the other hand, the cottage turned out to be both suitable and cheap, and he rented it immediately, then spent the rest of the day unpacking and settling in. On the morrow, he decided that while he’d keep his riding horse, the mule would only be a nuisance. Samwna, that font of all local information, told him to try selling it to a farmer called Nalyn.

“He lives out near Lord Pertyc’s dun. He married the farm, you see, or I should say, it still belongs to poor dear Myna—she was widowed so young, poor thing, and her with two daughters to raise on her own—but now one of the daughters is married, Lidyan, that is, and it’s good for them to have a man to work the fields again, I must say, so it’s Nalyn’s farm in a way, like.”

Nevyn made his escape at last and rode out, with the mule on a tether rope, and found the farm. When Nevyn dismounted near the shabby thatched roundhouse, he could hear someone yelling inside. A man’s voice, thick with rage, drifted out, followed by the sound of a woman weeping and pleading. Ye gods, he thought, does this Nalyn beat his poor wife? A second woman’s voice yelled back, cracking in a string of curses. A young heavyset man came stalking out of the house. Just as he took a step out of the doorway, an egg came sailing after him, caught him on the back of his head, and shattered. With an oath, the man started to turn back in, then saw Nevyn.

“My apologies,” Nevyn said. “I just heard in the village you might want to buy a mule. I can come back later.”

“No need.” The young farmer was busily trying to get the egg off the back of his head with both hands. “I do indeed need a mule, though my sister’s stubborn enough for a whole rotten herd of them. Let me just wash this off at the well.”

Laughter rang in the doorway, and a young woman, about Maer’s age, came strolling out. She was pretty, ravenhaired
and blue-eyed, but not truly beautiful, with her hair cropped off short in the way many farm women wore their hair, out of the way of hard work. Her dress was dirty, much mended, and hitched up around her waist at the kirtle to leave her ankles and feet bare.