The Spirit Stone. Katharine Kerr
came to the line of carts. Most carried provisions, ordinary stuff all of it, but those at the head of the line were loaded with mysterious-looking crates, barely visible under greased wraps of coarse cloth that would keep them dry during summer rains. Embroidered runes decorated each cloth. Blethry fell silent, studying the runes, craning his neck to get a better look at the crates.
‘Can your read our runes?’ Kov said with a small smile.
‘I can’t, truly,’ Blethry said. ‘I was just noticing the wheels of your carts here. The design is quite striking.’
Good parry! Kov thought. Aloud, he said, ‘A little innovation of ours.’
Blethry nodded, and indeed, to his eyes the wheels must have possessed a fascination of their own. Instead of the solid slab wheels of Deverry carts, dwarven craftsmen had lightened these with spokes radiating from a metal collar that attached them to the axles. Strakes, that is, strips of metal studded to give them a grip on the road, protected the wooden rims.
‘Much lighter,’ Kov said, ‘but just as strong. Easier to fix, too.’
‘Stronger, I should think. I trust you’ll not be offended if our cartwrights look them over when we reach Cengarn? I shan’t be able to keep them away.’
‘Of course not. I’m sure our men would take it as an honour if they should copy them.’
‘Would you two stop jawing?’ Brel turned on them both impartially. ‘The sun’s up, and it’ll be hot soon. Mount up, both of you! Let’s march!’
Kov and Blethry followed orders. During the long ride down from the mountains, whenever the contingent camped, Blethry found excuses to walk by the dwarven carts that contained the wrapped bundles and crates, but, Kov could be sure, no one would ever give him one word of information about their contents. The design of a set of wheels they were willing to share, but the formula for the mysterious cargo was going to remain a secret forever, if the Mountain Folk had their way.
They reached the border of Gwerbret Ridvar’s rhan when they came to the dun of one of his vassals, a small broch tower inside a high stone wall, perched on a hill wound around by a maze of earthworks. All around it stretched litter from a military camp – firepits, garbage, broken arrows, broken tent pegs, and assorted ditches, hastily filled in. The dwarven contingent drew up to camp some distance away in a cleaner area. Kov remembered this dun as belonging to the clan of the Black Arrow, but men wearing Cengarn’s sun blazon on the yokes of their shirts came trotting over to greet them.
‘What’s happened to Lord Honelg?’ Kov asked Blethry.
‘I don’t know yet.’ Blethry gave him a grim smile. ‘But I’m assuming he’s dead. He turned traitor, you see. When I left Cengarn, the gwerbret was getting ready to march on him. From the look of things, Ridvar took the dun.’
Cengarn’s men, left on fort guard, confirmed Blethry’s guess. Lord Honelg was dead, his lands attainted, his young son a hostage, his widow gone back to her father’s dun.
‘Who’s the new lord here?’ Blethry said. ‘Or has Ridvar reassigned the lands yet?’
‘He has, my lord,’ the fortguard captain said. ‘Lord Gerran of the Gold Falcon. You might remember him as the Red Wolf’s common-born captain, but he’s a lord now.’
‘I do indeed, and he’s a grand man with a sword and a good choice all round.’
‘We all feel the same, my lord. Are you marching down to Cengarn on the morrow?’
‘We are.’
‘His grace may have left already. He’s mustering his allies at the Red Wolf dun for the march west.’ The captain turned to Kov and bowed. ‘It gladdens my heart to see your people, envoy, with a war about to start.’
‘My thanks,’ Kov said. ‘But it sounds to me like the war’s already started.’
‘You could look at it that way, truly,’ the captain said, grinning. ‘But either way, we’re glad you’ve come in on our side.’
The Mountain Folk weren’t the only allies of Gwerbret Ridvar who were readying themselves for the Horsekin war. At the dun of the Red Wolf, a good many miles south-west of the dun that now belonged to the Gold Falcon clan, Tieryn Cadryc and his men were only waiting for the arrival of his overlord to ride out. Preparing the warband for that ride fell to Gerran of the Gold Falcon, its lord and so far one of its only two members, the other being his young page Clae. Despite his sudden elevation to the ranks of the noble-born, Gerran still considered himself the captain of the tieryn’s warband, mostly because none of the tieryn’s other men could fill the post. Although the tieryn had a son, Lord Mirryn, Cadryc was leaving him behind on fortguard.
Every night at dinner in the great hall, Mirryn would stand behind his father’s chair like a page. When Cadryc arrived, Mirryn would bow to his father, then without a word pull out the chair at the head of the honour table to allow Cadryc to sit down. He would wait to eat, too, until all the others at the honour table had finished their meal. After three days of this treatment, Cadryc had had enough.
‘Still sulking, are you?’ Cadryc said.
‘Well, ye gods!’ Mirryn snapped. ‘How do you think I should feel, Father, left behind out of the fighting like a woman?’
‘And what’s this business with my blasted chair?’ Cadryc continued without acknowledging the question.
‘Since I’m being treated like a servant, I thought I should act like one.’
‘Just sit down, and do it right now. You’ll drive me daft, hovering like that.’
With a grunt Mirryn sat himself down at his father’s left hand, but he crossed his arms over his chest and stared out at nothing. The tieryn swung his head around to glare at his son, who pretended not to notice. Although most of the tieryn’s hair was either grey or missing, and Mirryn still sported a thick mop of brown hair to go with his freckles and the family blue eyes, no one would have doubted they were father and son, lean men, both of them, and stubborn.
‘If you starve yourself at my table,’ Cadryc said, ‘you’ll be too weak to fight even if I should change my mind, which I won’t, so by the black hairy arse of the Lord of Hell, stop sulking and eat your blasted dinner!’
Mirryn went on studying the empty air. Finally Lady Galla, his mother, leaned across the table from her place at the tieryn’s right. ‘Mirro,’ she said, ‘please? This has been dreadful for all of us.’
‘Oh very well, Mam.’ Mirryn drew his table dagger from the sheath at his belt and placed it next to the trencher in front of him. ‘Shall I cut you some bread?’
‘If you’d be so kind.’ Lady Galla smiled at him, then favoured her husband with another smile, which he ignored.
The ‘all of us’ to whom the lady had referred were the other occupants of the honour table. Besides the tieryn, his stout, dark-haired lady, and his son, Gerran was now eating with the noble-born, who included Galla’s niece, Lady Branna, and her common-born husband Neb. Branna, with her yellow hair and her narrow blue eyes, was a pretty young woman, but Neb was the nondescript sort, brown haired, skinny, neither handsome nor ugly. Most people would have ignored him, but Gerran knew his worth.
Soon, however, Cadryc’s allies and vassals would appear to join the muster. Gerran was counting on the table filling up, allowing him to sneak back to his old place at the head of one of the warband’s tables over on the other side of the great hall, even though he had to admit that sharing a trencher with Lady Galla’s serving woman, Lady Solla, had its compensations. Every now and then her lovely hazel eyes would meet his when he offered her a slice of bread or passed her some portion of the meal. She would blush, and he would find himself at a loss for words.
The times were simply wrong for pleasantries. The coming war filled Gerran’s waking thoughts. On the morrow, messengers from their most important ally arrived at the dun. When the gatekeeper came running to tell