The Spirit Stone. Katharine Kerr
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a moment,’ Gwairyc interrupted. ‘There haven’t been any bandits near Dun Deverry for a cursed long time.’
‘True spoken. This incident happened when my master’s master was young, or so he said.’ Nevyn paused to count something out on his fingers. ‘It must have happened not long after the Civil Wars, now that you mention it.’
‘Ah, now that makes more sense.’
‘Anyway, this fellow was a fine swordsman, but he and the warband had never had to dismount and fight among trees before.’
‘That’s doubtless why the bandits made a stand there.’
‘Doubtless, but would you let me finish?’
‘Apologies, my lord. Go on.’
‘So he was too used to trusting his skill. He was an arrogant lad, all in all, but he had reason to be, I suppose. He rushed in and got himself severely wounded. Well, my master’s master managed to stop the bleeding, and the fellow was a strong man, so he assumed that the captain – he was the captain of the king’s personal guard, you see –’
‘Silver daggers, weren’t they?’
‘That’s right. You’ve heard about them, then?’
‘Many a time.’
‘Well and good. That’ll shorten the tale. So just when this captain should have been starting to recover, a truly strange thing happened to his wound. It turned foul and corrupted, but in a way the chirurgeons had never seen before. The flesh turned black at the edges of the wound, like a bit of parchment held too close to a candle. The blackness spread, and the stench was truly horrible. Had he been wounded on an arm or leg, they could have amputated and saved him, but it lay on his thigh too close to the body for any such thing. It must have been a sickening thing, to see the corruption spreading through the captain’s body with naught anyone could do to stop it. Finally he died, so mayhap the blackness reached the heart. My master didn’t know nor did his master. The rest of the silver daggers called it evil sorcery, and for all I know, they were right.’
Gwairyc shuddered. The tale affected him far more deeply than it should have. He’d seen many a man die in battle and others die from wounds afterwards, but none like this, from some black rot that crept along, conquering new territory on a man’s body. It seemed to him that he could almost smell it, just from hearing the description, a rank acid smell like rotting meat. Well, it was rotting meat – the thought nearly made him gag.
‘Are you all right, lad?’ Nevyn was studying his face.
‘I am, my lord. My apologies. It just touched my heart somehow, hearing about Owaen dying like that. Or – wait – was that his name?’
‘Owaen? It was indeed, and oddly enough, his device was a falcon, just like yours.’
‘That’s a horrible wyrd for a man to have!’ Gwairyc paused for a cold shudder. ‘And here he was, the survivor of all those battles and years of war.’
‘He’d survived many, indeed. You must have heard about him in a bard song or the like.’
‘I must have, truly. I –’ Gwairyc realized that he could call up no memory of having heard so much as the name. ‘Well, I don’t remember him turning up in the bard songs, but he must have. How else would I know his name?’
‘Indeed.’ Nevyn smiled, just briefly. ‘How else, truly?’
Yet for the rest of the evening, Gwairyc felt troubled, wondering how he knew so much about this Owaen. He was sure, for instance, that the Silver Daggers’ captain had originally been an Eldidd man. That fact suddenly rose in his mind along with the sound of a voice lisping at the beginning of words like gwerbret. Werrbret, they would say in Eldidd. He knew it, and yet there was no way he could have known it. Finally he managed to put the matter out of his mind, but that night he had a confused dream, flashing by in fragments, about fighting with a red wyvern on his shield.
In the morning light Gwairyc, Tirro, and a couple of the muleteers searched the area around the snare. They found only a single trace of the man or men who might have set it. Tirro suddenly stooped and reached into a pile of dead leaves to pull out some small shiny thing.
‘It’s a coin,’ he announced. ‘A Bardek coin.’
‘A what?’ Gwairyc held out one hand. ‘How can you be sure?’
‘It’s just like the ones my da’s friends bring home from Myleton.’ Tirro gave it to him. ‘They call it a sesturce.’
The coin proved to be barely big enough to cover one of Gwairyc’s fingernails, but its green tarnish showed that it contained at least some silver. Gwairyc could just make out a few foreign-looking letters. When they brought it to Nevyn, the old man rubbed it clean on his sleeve.
‘It’s from Bardek, sure enough,’ Nevyn said. ‘Do you see the device upon it? A man’s head in profile. It must one of their archons, as they call their leaders, but I’ve not the slightest idea which one.’ He handed the coin back to Tirro. ‘You’ve got sharp eyes, lad.’
‘I’m sorry about yesterday, sir, really I am.’ Tirro stared at the ground. ‘I didn’t mean to.’
This outburst seemed to make Nevyn as puzzled as Gwairyc felt. He considered the lad for a moment with his head cocked to one side.
‘Um, what?’ Nevyn said finally.
‘The way I looked after you told me not to. Isn’t that what you just meant by mentioning my sharp eyes?’
‘Naught of the sort! I was complimenting you, as a matter of fact.’
Tirro blushed scarlet, started to speak, then merely bolted, running back towards the camp before either Gwairyc or Nevyn could say a word.
‘What by all the ice in all the hells was that about?’ Gwairyc said.
‘I don’t know,’ Nevyn said, ‘but I’d guess that his father was given to making cruel remarks, and frequently to boot.’
‘Oh.’ Gwairyc shrugged the problem away. ‘Anyway, that coin is the only thing we found, other than trees and a cursed lot of rocks. The banks of the stream are low and damp, but the only tracks we saw were made by deer and then some sort of small creature, a badger, most likely.’
‘How very odd,’ Nevyn said. ‘The snare had to be fairly new, because it hadn’t rusted. Well, we can’t stay here to keep hunting. Wffyn and his men are ready to move out, and we’d best join them.’
‘Well and good, then. What about the injured fellow?’
‘They shifted the load of one of the mules to the other packs and tied him to the saddle instead. This way, if he faints, he won’t fall. He’ll have to stay behind, though, once we get to a town.’
It took the caravan most of a day to travel down from the mountains. Towards sunset it reached a prosperous-looking farm, where Wffyn stopped to barter with the farmwife for peaches and cabbages to freshen up the communal meals. After the haggling, the merchant described the accident his muleteer had suffered.
‘Do you know who might have set that snare?’ Wffyn said. ‘It was a cursed dangerous thing to do.’
The farmer and his wife exchanged a glance, but their eyes showed no feeling at all.
‘I don’t,’ the man said at last. ‘You’re right enough. It’s too close to the road for someone to be setting snares.’
‘Let me get you a sack for them cabbages.’ Without looking at any of the men, the wife turned away and hurried into the farmhouse. Wffyn raised one eyebrow but said nothing.
Once they were back on the road, Wffyn manoeuvred his horse to ride next to Gwairyc and Nevyn.
‘What did you think about those people?’ the merchant said. ‘It looked to me like they knew plenty about that snare.’