"Kerr, Katharine - Westlands 04 - A Time Of Justice v1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dragon Stories)

'Here, Mother, sit at my right, will you?' Dwaen rose to greet the dowager. 'Cado, if you'll oblige by sitting with my sister?'
Cadlew was so eager to oblige that it occurred to Dwaen that it was time he found his sister a husband. Although he glanced his mother's way to see if she'd noticed the young lord's reaction, she was staring absently out into space.
'Oh now here, Mam, Da wouldn't have wanted you to fill your life with misery just because he's gone to the Otherlands.'
'I know, but I'm just so worried.'
'What? What about?'
'Dwaen, Dwaen, don't put me off! I can't believe that a man like Beryn is going to let this thing lie.'
'Well now, it'd be a grave thing for him to break the gwerbret's decree of justice, and he knows it. Besides, he's got his own sense of honour. If he kills me, there'll be no one left to carry on the blood feud, and I doubt me if he'd do a loathsome thing like killing a man who had no hope of vengeance.'
Slaecca merely sighed, as if in disbelief, and went back to staring across the hall.
On the morrow Dwaen and Cadlew took the gwertrae out to hunt rabbits in a stretch of wild meadow land some few miles from the dun. They had no sooner ridden into the grass when the dog raised a sleeping hare. With one sharp bark, it took off after its prey. Although the brown hare raced and dodged, leaping high and twisting off at sharp angles, the gwertrae ran so low to the ground and fast that it easily turned the hare in a big circle and drove it back to the hunters. With a whoop of laughter, Cadlew spurred his horse to meet it and bent over to spear the hare off the ground with one easy stroke. All morning they coursed back and forth until the leather sack at Cadlew's saddle peak bulged bloody from their kills.
The chase took them far from the farmlands of the demesne to the edge of the primeval oak forest, dark and silent, which once had covered the whole southern border of the Gwaentaer plateau, but which in Dwaen's time existed only in patchy remnants. At a stream they dismounted, watered the horses and the dog, then sat down in the grass to eat the bread and smoked meat they'd brought with them. Cadlew cut the head off one of the hares and tossed it to the gwertrae, who stretched out with its hind legs straight behind and gnawed away.
'Oh, a thousand thanks for this splendid gift,' Cadlew said. 'I think I'll name him Glas.'
'If you like, tomorrow we can take the big hounds and ride into the forest. We could do with some venison at the dun.'
'And when have I ever turned down a chance to hunt?'
Thinking of the morrow's sport, Dwaen idly looked into the forest. Something was moving - a trace of motion, darting between two trees among bracken and fern. Even though the oaks themselves were just starting into full leaf, the shrubs and suchlike among them were thick enough. Puzzled, he rose for a better look. Cadlew followed his gaze, then with a shout threw himself at Dwaen's legs and knocked him to the ground just as an arrow sped out of the cover. It whistled over them by several feet, but if Dwaen had been standing, he would have been skewered. Growling, the gwertrae sprang up and barked, lunging forward at the hidden enemy. Another arrow sang and hit it full in the chest. With a whimper Glas fell, writhed and pawed at the air, then lay still. Another arrow hit the grass and struck quivering not two feet from Dwaen's head. He felt a cold, rigid calm: they were going to die. With neither mail nor shield, it mattered not if they lay there like tourney targets or tried to charge; it was death either way. Oh great Bel, he prayed, come to meet us on the misty road!
'Shall we charge?' Cadlew whispered.
'Might as well die like men.'
Cadlew rolled free, grabbed a spear, and jumped to his feet with a warcry. As he did the same, Dwaen could almost feel the bite of the arrow bringing his Wyrd. But the enemy never loosed his bow again. When they took a couple of cautious steps forward, he saw nothing moving among the trees but a bird on a branch.
'Well,' Dwaen said. 'I think me I've just been given a message.'
'Beryn?’
'Who else? I wager that if I'd been alone, I'd be dead by now, but no doubt he didn't want to murder you with me. He's got naught against you and your clan.'
'If he tries to kill you again, he'll have to kill me first, but I'd rather it was in open battle.'
'It might come to that.'
Cadlew picked up the dead gwertrae and slung it over his saddle, but since Dwaen didn't want his womenfolk alarmed, they asked a farmer to bury it for them rather than taking it back to the dun.
All that afternoon, even though he managed to make polite conversation with his guest and his family, Dwaen brooded. Lord Beryn's lands were only about ten miles to the west, close enough for him to haunt the edges of the demesne in hope of catching his enemy unaware. Yet he couldn't imagine Beryn using a bow instead of a sword, and besides, how had the old bastard known exactly when and where he'd gone to hunt? Not that he and Cadlew had made any secret of their plan - the question was how Beryn had heard of it, a question that was answered the very same night, when he went up to bed.
Theoretically, now that he'd inherited, Dwaen should have been using his father's formal suite on the floor just above the great hall, but since he had no desire to move his mother out of her bed, he kept to his spare, small chamber on the third floor of the broch. When he came in that night, carrying a lantern himself rather than bothering a page, he saw a lump under the blankets on the narrow bed. He threw the covers back and found a dead rat, mangled, stabbed over and over to a blood-soaked mess, and stuffed into a neck wound was the tail feather of a raven.
With an involuntary yell, Dwaen jumped back, the lantern shaking and bobbing to throw wild shadows on the walls.
'Dwaen?' Cadlew's voice came muffled through the door. 'Are you all right?'
'Not truly. Come in, will you?'
When Cadlew saw the rat, he swore under his breath, then took the poker from the hearth and flipped the foul thing onto the floor.
'Beryn's got a man in this dun,' Cadlew said.
'Obviously, unless that pedlar who was here this afternoon was actually a spy.'
'Who would have let him come upstairs? Here, on the morrow, I'll send a message home and tell them that I'm staying at your side.’
'You've never been more welcome.'
Dwaen gathered up his blankets and went to share Cadlew's chamber, but he lay awake for a long time after his friend was snoring. Although he'd realized that Beryn would hate him for demanding justice, he'd never thought the lord would seek such a coward's revenge. But he's got no choice, he thought, because if he challenges me openly, the gwerbret will intervene. A traitor in his own dun! The thought sickened him, that one of his own men could be bribed against him. It might only be a servant, of course, but still, he was forced to realize that from now on, he could trust no one.
The round, thatched farmhouse sat behind a low earthen wall about a hundred yards from the road. Out in the dusty yard, a man was throwing a bucket of slops to a pair of skinny grey hogs. When Jill and Rhodry led their horses up to the gate, he lowered the bucket and looked them over narrow-eyed.
'Good morrow,' Rhodry said. 'Would your wife happen to have any extra bread to sell to a traveller?'
'She wouldn't,' he paused to spit on the ground, 'silver dagger.'
'Well, then, could we pay you to let us water our horses in your trough?'
‘There's plenty of streams in the forest down the road. But here, that forest is our lord's hunting preserve. Don't you silver daggers go poaching in it.'
'And who is your lord?'
'Tieryn Dwaen of Bringerun, but he's too good a man to have any truck with the likes of you.'
At that the farmer picked up his bucket and turned back to his hogs. As they rode off, Rhodry was swearing under his breath.
About a mile further on, the forest sprang up abruptly at the edge of cleared land, a dark, cool stand of ancient oaks, thick with underbrush along the road. In the warmth of a spring day Jill found it pleasant, riding through the dappled shade and listening to the bird-song and all the rustling, scrabbling music of the lives of wild things - the chatter of a squirrel here, the creak of branches there, the occasional scratching in the bracken that indicated some small animal was beating a retreat as the horses passed by. That she would be riding through this splendour with her Rhodry at her side seemed to her the most glorious thing in the world.
'Shall we stop and eat soon?' Jill said. 'We've got cheese, even if hat whoreson piss-pot bastard wouldn't sell us any bread. I hear water running nearby.’
Sure enough, the road took a twist and brought them to the deep, broad Belaver, which paralleled the road. At the bank they found a grassy clearing that sported a tall stone, carved with writing. Since Rhodry knew how to read, he told Jill that it served notice that no one could hunt without permission of the tieryn at Bringerun. After they watered their horses, they ate their cheese and apples standing up, stretching after the long morning's ride, and idly watched the river flowing past, dappled with sun like gold coins. All at once Jill felt uneasy. She walked away from the river and stood listening by the road, but she heard nothing. That was the trouble: the normal forest noise had stopped.
'Rhodry? We'd best be on our way.'
'Why?'
‘Don't you hear how quiet it is? That means there's men prowling round, and I’ll wager they're the tieryn's gamekeepers. We'd best stay on the public road if we don't want trouble.'
They mounted and rode out, but as they let the horses amble down the road, Jill realized that she was still listening for something, hunting horns, barking dogs, some normal noise that should accompany gamekeepers on their rounds, but she heard nothing. In about a mile the bird-song picked up again.
As they rounded a bend, they met another party of riders ambling toward them. Two women led the way, a pretty lass in a rich blue dress and an older person in grey who seemed to be her serving woman from the deferential manner in which she spoke. Behind them on a pony rode a page carrying a big basket and bringing up the rear, a swordsman on a warhorse, their escort. Since he was wearing no mail, they could see the blazon, a stag leaping over a fallen tree, embroidered on the yokes of his shirt. Jill and Rhodry pulled off the road to let the lady past, a courtesy which she acknowledged with a sunny smile and a wave of her gloved hand.