The Red Wyvern: Book One of the Dragon Mage. Katharine Kerr
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looking to the men’s fire, some twenty feet away, where Peddyc and Daeryc paced back and forth, talking together with their heads bent.
The third evening, then, they rode up to Lord Camlyn’s dun with dread as a member of their entourage, but the gates stood open, and Camlyn himself, a tall young man with a shock of red hair, came running out to the ward to greet them with four grey boarhounds barking after him. He yelled the dogs into silence, then grabbed the gwerbret’s stirrup in a show of fealty and blurted, ‘Your Grace, what greeting did you get at Ganedd’s door?’
‘A cursed poor one,’ Daeryc said. ‘I’m glad to see you held loyal to the true king. This autumn, when we ride against Ganedd, his lands are yours.’
At dinner that night the talk centred itself upon broken fealties – who had gone over to the Usurper, who was threatening neutrality, who was weaselling any way he could to get out of his obligations for fighting men and the provisions to feed them. Since in the poverty of Camlyn’s hall stood but one honour table, Bevyan heard it all. She shared a trencher with Camlyn’s wife, Varylla, at the foot of the table. In unspoken agreement the two women spoke little, merely listened. By the time the page poured the men mead, Gwerbret Daeryc had forgotten tact.
‘It’s the cursed Boar clan that’s the trouble,’ he snarled. ‘Men would rally to the King, but why should they rally to the Boar?’
‘Just so,’ Camlyn said. ‘The wars have made them rich while the rest of us – huh, we’ll be out on the roads like beggars one fine day.’
The two men were looking at Peddyc and waiting.
‘I’ve no love for Burcan or Tibryn,’ he said. ‘But if the King had chosen them, I’d serve in their cause.’
‘I like that if –’ Daeryc paused for a careful bite of food; he could chew only one side of his mouth, since most of his teeth were gone. ‘I’d do the same. If –’
Peddyc glanced down the table and caught Bevyan’s glance. She answered the unspoken question with a small shrug. It seemed safe enough to voice their long doubts here.
‘Well,’ Peddyc went on. ‘They say that King Daen made Burcan regent when he was dying. I wasn’t there to hear him.’
‘No more was I,’ Camlyn snapped.
‘Nor I either. And with Daen’s widow such close kin to the Boar …’ Daeryc let his words trail off into a swallow of mead.
‘Hogs root,’ Camlyn said, seemingly absently. ‘If you let hogs into a field, they’ll tear it up with tusk and trotter till the grass all dies.’
‘There’s only one thing to do in that case,’ Peddyc said. ‘And that’s turn them out of it.’
‘Only the one, truly.’ Daeryc hesitated for a long time. ‘But you’d best have a swineherd with well-trained dogs.’
The three men looked back and forth at one another while Bevyan felt herself turn, very slowly, as cold as if a winter wind had blown into the hall. She glanced at Varylla.
‘I should so like to see the embroideries you’ve been making,’ Bevyan said. ‘You do such lovely work.’
‘My thanks, my lady.’ Varylla allowed herself a shy smile. ‘If you’ll come with me to my chambers?’
As they headed for the staircase up, Bevyan caught Peddyc’s eye. He winked at her in thanks, but his smile was forced. Why shouldn’t it be, she thought, if they’ll be talking treason?
Late on the next day, with Lord Camlyn and his men as part of the army, Gwerbret Daeryc’s entourage came to the city, which rose high on its four hills behind massive double rings of stone walls, ramparted and towered. A cobbled road led up to the main gates, ironbound and carved with the King’s blazon of the wyvern rampant. To either side honour guards in thickly embroidered shirts stood, bowing as the gwerbret and his party rode through. Yet as soon as they came inside to the city itself, the impression of splendour vanished.
Ruins filled the space inside the walls – heaps of stone among rotting, charred timbers from the most recent siege; heaps of dirt covering stone razed long years past. Most of the remaining houses stood abandoned, with weed-choked yards and empty windows, the thatch blowing rotten through the streets. In the centre of the city, though, around and between the two main hills, Bevyan did see some tenanted homes, surrounded by kitchen gardens. A few children played in the muddy lanes; more often the people she saw were old, stooped as they tended their produce or sat on a bench at their front door to watch the gwerbret’s army ride by. No one called out a greeting or a cheer. Bevyan turned in her saddle to look her husband’s way.
‘It’s even worse this summer,’ she remarked. ‘The city I mean. It’s so desolate.’
‘Just so,’ Peddyc said. ‘Everyone who could get out of here did.’
‘Where did they go?’
‘To kinsfolk, I suppose. The gods all know that there’s plenty of farmland lying fallow these days. Hands to work it would be welcome enough.’
‘It’s so eerie, seeing all these empty houses. There can’t be any militia left to help hold the city walls.’
‘There’s not, truly.’ Peddyc looked abruptly away. ‘If there’s a siege this summer, we’ll have to cede the Usurper the town and hold the dun.’
Or try to – Bevyan seemed to hear that thought hanging in the air like a rebel lord. All at once she realized that this summer could easily bring her husband’s death. She had faced widowhood for so many years that the thought merely angered rather than frightened her.
The dun at least seemed in good repair. Through ring after ring of warding stone they rode, winding round on a spiral path to the top of the hill. A small village huddled around the final wall – the houses sheltering the King’s important servants, the blacksmiths and the like. Inside the palace ward itself Bevyan saw plenty of armed men, and these did cheer when they saw Gwerbret Daeryc and his contingent. Outside the double doors to the great hall, pages and servants stood waiting to take horses and unload carts. Bevyan waited until Peddyc had dismounted, then allowed him to help her down.
‘I have to attend upon the gwerbret,’ Peddyc said.
‘Of course, my love.’ Bevyan patted his arm. ‘I’ve been here often enough to take care of myself and my women.’
With a nod Peddyc strode off, yelling orders to his men. Anasyn followed his father without even a look back. Bevyan smiled – her son was growing up, all right, at home in the King’s own dun.
‘Bevva!’
Dashing like a dog greeting its master, Lillorigga raced across the ward and flung herself into her foster-mother’s arms. Laughing, half on the edge of tears, Bevyan hugged her tight, then held her by the shoulders.
‘Let me look at you, dear,’ Bevyan said. ‘Oh, you are so tall now! Oh, it’s so good to see you!’
Lillorigga beamed. She was tall, yes, and far too thin, far too pale, with her long blonde hair hanging limp and dead around her face. Bevyan first suspected roundworms, always a problem in a winter dun, even the King’s, but then she wondered, thinking of Lady Merodda. In the bustle of the open ward, with armed men trotting by, with servants flocking around, they could not talk openly, not even of matters of health.
‘Come with me, dear,’ Bevyan said. ‘I’ve got to get our things into our chambers, and then we can talk.’
At the Queen’s orders, or so the servant said, Lady Bevyan and her serving woman had been given a large suite in the King’s own broch. While the servants hauled up chests and satchels, and Sarra fussed over each, Bevyan and Lilli stood by a window and looked down into the inner ward. This high up, sunlight could gain the walls and stream into the room. Lilli held her hands out to the warmth and laughed.
‘It’s been a hard winter, has it?’ Bevyan said.
‘It