A Time of Exile (44 page)

It was about a month later when Yvmur showed up at Danry’s gates for a visit. All that day, they both kept up the fiction that Yvmur was paying a mere social visit to satisfy the tieryn’s natural curiosity about the preparations for the kingship rite. Late that evening, though, when Danry’s family had retired to their chambers and the warband was back in the barracks, they lingered at the table of honor in the great hall and drank a last goblet of mead by the dying fire.

“I’ve had no word at all about Leomyr’s doings,” Danry said. “Have you?”

“None, which worries me. It’s been a long time since he rode to Aberwyn last, but I doubt me if he’s been thinking only of his own affairs. I’ve sent him a message, just a friendly sort of thing, wondering if we’re to have the honor
of his taking part in the ceremonies. There’s always room for another honored equerry or escort in affairs like this if he does agree.”

“Good. Let me know how he answers.”

On the morrow, when the pale sun dragged itself up late, it glittered on frost, a white rime thick on fallen leaves and dying grass alike. With a pack of dogs and a band of beaters, Danry took his guest hunting, but just as their little procession reached the edge of a leafless woodland, a rider came galloping after. It was a man from the dun, yelling Lord Danry’s name over and over.

“Your Grace,” the man panted out. “Urgent news. Your lady sent me to fetch you. A messenger at the keep.”

With a wave of his hand, Danry turned the hunt around and galloped for home. As they rode, he felt a foreboding, as icy as the morning, clutching at his very heart, an omen that was more than justified by the message from Mainoic.

“It’s truly urgent, Your Grace,” the carrier told him. “I beg you, fetch your scribe straightaway.”

Instead, Danry broke the seal and pulled out the roll of parchment himself. As he read, he could feel the blood draining from his face. The merchant Gurcyn had come rushing back from one last trading trip with horrible news. The king had men in Cerrmor—worse yet, the king himself was in Cerrmor, and everyone said that he was riding for the Eldidd border with his entire army behind him before the rebels could declare Cawaryn king. Mainoic was begging every man in Eldidd to collect his warband and muster in Aberwyn, where they would declare the lad and march to meet the invader.

“Ah, ye gods,” Danry said. “Well, your nephew won’t have the splendid ceremonies we’d planned, my friend.”

“As long as he’s king, the Lord of Hell can take the ceremony. So—the cursed Deverrian thinks he can beat us out like stags from a wood, does he? We’ll be fighting on our ground, not his, and we’ll give him the same fight of it now as we would later.”

Danry nodded in agreement, but he knew, just as Yvmur doubtless knew, that the words were bluster. They’d held no councils of war, planned no supply lines, done no work on their fortifications. Here at the edge of winter’s famine Aeryc could depend on the surplus of a rich kingdom
while they would be extorting provisions from a reluctant populace.

“I’d best leave straightaway,” Yvmur said.

“Of course. We’ve all got our preparations to make. I’ll see you in Aberwyn as soon as ever I can.”

All that day and on into the night Danry worked side by side with his chamberlain and captain to ready his warband and procure supplies. He slept for a few fitful hours, then rose long before the tardy dawn to finish. Just as the sun was breaking over the horizon he ran upstairs for the last time to say farewell to his wife. Ylanna threw herself into his arms and wept.

“Here, here, my love,” Danry said. “You’ll see me again soon enough. The gods will fight on the side of a just cause and a true king.”

Although her pale face was wet with tears, she looked up and forced a smile.

“So they will. Then fight to a true victory, my love, and bring our lad home safe to me.”

“I’ll swear it. Someday you’ll have the favor of a true Eldidd queen.”

Out in the ward their elder son, Cunvelyn, paced back and forth while he waited, grinning as if his face would split from it. At fifteen, the lad was riding to battle for the first time.

“And who are we riding for, lad?” Danry said.

“The true king. The one true king of Eldidd.”

The warband broke out cheering: to the king, the king! Danry was laughing as he mounted his horse. As they trotted out of the gates, the sun was just beginning to rise, a new day dawning for Eldidd.

By riding hard they reached Aberwyn in three days, and as they rode, they picked up men and allies until Danry, by a mutual consent among the lords, led an army of close to four hundred into the city. They found the gwerbret’s dun a seething confusion of men and horses. Supply carts clogged the main ward, horses stood tethered in walled gardens, bedrolls lay scattered on the floor of the great hall, battle gear overflowed the tables while warriors stood to drink and eat, servants ran endlessly back and forth with food and messages and spare bits of armor. Danry shoved his way through and found a council of war in progress in the gwerbret’s
private chambers at the top of the main broch. Ordinary lords hovered outside while tieryns crammed the half-round room; Mainoic and Gatryc stood at either side of the pretender and talked urgently, often at the same time. Danry sought out Leomyr and found him leaning into the curve of the wall out of the way. Danry was tired and exasperated enough to dispense with fencing.

“There’s no time now for your cursed factions. Let the Badger stay in his den.”

“I know it as well as you do, but it might be too late for the Maelwaedd anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

“Listen. Just listen to the talk, Falcon.”

Danry left him and worked through the crowd, stopping to say a word here and there to a friend. Everyone was full of the same question: how did Aeryc come to know so much about their plans?

“He even knew about that blasted cauldron the guilds gave the king,” Ladoic of Siddclog said. “Treachery, lads.”

The men around nodded grimly, staring at Danry in a decidedly unpleasant way. Danry was struck breathless, wondering if they doubted him, but then Ladoic went on.

“Neutral, was he? This Badger friend of yours, I mean. I think Pertyc has blinded you good and proper, Danry. We should have ridden to Cannobaen and wiped him out the day he refused to join us.”

Most of the room was turning to listen. When Danry glanced around, he saw cold eyes, grim eyes, eyes filled with a bitter hatred.

“Pertyc swore a vow to me,” Danry snarled.

“Oh, no doubt,” Ladoic said. “No one’s blaming you, my friend. Vows have been broken before, haven’t they? Someone sent the pus-boil Deverrian all the news he needed.”

Nods—grim smiles—Danry felt as if he were being cut with a thousand knives.

“By the hells, Pertyc would rather die than lie to me. It must have been someone else!”

“No time for that now, anyway!” Yvmur came striding down the room, pushing men aside to reach Danry. “It doesn’t matter who slit the wineskin—what counts is stitching
the leak. Later we can deal with whoever this traitor might be.”

More nods—a few mutters—a sullen defeated agreement. For the rest of the day, Danry kept to himself. Although he refused to believe Pertyc capable of treachery, the wondering ate at him like poison.

Instead of the feasts and entertainments, instead of a hall draped with blue and gold and filled with lovely women, instead of the long processions and the temples, Cawaryn was declared king in Gwerbret Gatryc’s ward on a dark cold morning. Torches flared, sending their scarlet light over the grim faces of the men, lords to the front, riders to the rear, packed close together, armed for war and ready to ride. Up on an improvised dais, the lad stood straight, flanked by the gwerbrets and his uncle, while the priests of Bel draped the blue, gold, and silver plaid of Eldidd round his shoulders. Cawaryn knelt while the priests lifted up their hands and prayed over him. Danry listened grimly, glad of every prayer they had on their side. At last, the head priest took from its coffer the massive ring brooch of Eldidd, kept hidden for over fifty years in the vaults of his temple. It was eight inches across, solid gold, chased and worked on both sides with delicate knotwork fit for a king, and bearing in the middle the locked dragon and hippogriff twined round an enormous sapphire. As he held it high in both hands, the crowd gasped. Slowly, with due ceremony, the old priest pinned it to the shoulder of the cloak.

“Rise, Cawaryn,” the priest called out, “king of all Eldidd in her hour of need.”

As the lad stood, the men cheered and howled. Wave after wave of shrieking, hysterical laughter echoed off the walls as the sun rose on the war.

The army rode out that very morning. Besides the easy coast road, there were two mountain passes into Eldidd from Deverry. The one to the north was high, doubtless choked with snow. The southern pass was just barely open to a determined army. Although scouts had been sent out long before, everyone was assuming that the Deverry forces would come along the coast from Cerrmor.

Two days’ forced march brought an Eldidd army of
nearly a thousand men close to the mountain border. On that first march, there was hope. They had plenty of men, who would fight not merely at orders but because they believed in the fight. They’d been warned of Aeryc’s advance in time to take up a good position of their choosing for the first confrontation. They had, for a couple of weeks at least, plenty of food and fodder to keep the army strong. Scouts rode out and returned from the southern pass, bringing the news that, as yet, there was no sign of the Deverrians. Late on the second night, after a weary army had made camp, Yvmur summoned Danry to a small council of war round the fire in front of the king’s tents. While the older men talked, Cawaryn paced, his brooch bright at his shoulder.

“If we catch Aeryc on the sea road,” Yvmur said, “we’ve got him in a cursed bad spot. We can pin him against the cliffs where there’s no room to maneuver.”

“And shove him over the edge, may the gods allow,” Gatryc said, grinning. “Have those scouts come in?”

“Not the last lot.” The king finally spoke. “We have sent men across the border, you see, in hopes that they can tell us how far away the enemy lies.”

The men nodded gravely, trying to ignore the king’s frequent glances to his uncle for reassurance.

“My liege?” Danry said. “And what of the scouts from the north?”

“No word,” Yvmur put in. “We’ve sent men after them, but I’ll wager that Aeryc’s not risking that pass.”

Yvmur was right about that, but the rebel lords had overlooked what, in fact and to be fair, everyone in Eldidd but Ganedd of Cannobaen had overlooked: the king had ships in Cerrmor, a vast fleet of ships, enough to ferry him and an army of over fifteen hundred to Abernaudd. The rebels heard of the landing round noon on the morrow, when a hysterical rider on a foundering horse caught up with the rear guard as the rebel army marched east. Danry rode back with Yvmur and Leomyr to see what the shouting was about and found one of the men left behind on fort guard in Abernaudd.

“My lords, he’s invested the city. I got out just in time.”

“What?” Yvmur snapped. “Who?”

“The king. The Deverry king. Aeryc. With a fleet. They landed in the harbor at dawn yesterday. They’ve got the
harbor, my lords, but the city’s holding firm. They haven’t even tried an assault. They’re just camping at the gates.”

Even as the men around him swore and wondered, Danry knew with an awful certainty why Aeryc was biding his time.

“Then we’ve got to ride back straightaway.” It was Mainoic, pushing his way through the knot of men around the messenger. “My city! He’ll burn it to the ground.”

“Naught of the sort,” Danry snarled. “That’s what he wants us to think and the worst thing we can do.”

“Hold your tongue,
Tieryn
Danry! I say we ride back straightaway.”

“Let Danry finish.” Much to everyone’s surprise—even his own, perhaps—Leomyr was the defender. “He knows war, my lord, in his heart and blood and bone.”

There was a moment’s silence; then Mainoic made a grudging nod and let Danry speak.

“He only wants us, my lords. He doesn’t want to harm one soul in that city and turn Abernaudd against him. He wants to break us and the rebellion, and then offer his ever so majestic pardons to everyone else in Eldidd, so there’ll never be a rebellion here again. If we go rushing back to Abernaudd, he’ll be waiting on ground of his choosing with well-rested men.”

The arguments broke out like a summer storm, thundering, violent, and over very fast.

“True enough, Falcon,” Mainoic said at last. “What shall we do, then? Find a good position and wait for him to come after us? Our men could starve before he decides to move.”

“I know that, Your Grace. I say we march for Aberwyn. Let Aeryc sit on his behind in ‘Naudd and wait for us. By the time he moves, we’ll be entrenched in a walled town with fortifications that seal the harbor off from the countryside. We can send ships out for provisions if we need to, or use ships to get men in and out safely. Then we can try to rally the countryside.”

Everyone turned to look at Gatryc. He shrugged and turned both hands palm upward.

“Leomyr was right,” Aberwyn’s lord remarked. “The Falcon lives and breathes war. My lords, allow me to offer you the hospitality of my dun.”

There was laughter, but it was only a grim kind of mutter. Even so, as they dispersed to give orders and turn the line of march, there was still hope. The men and horses were fresh, and even if they rode by a long route to throw Aeryc off, Aberwyn was only some hundred miles away while the Deverry king was stuck holding Abernaudd. Unfortunately for the rebellion, Abernaudd, guarded only by some fifty aging or ill culls from the rebel army and a reluctant and whining citizen watch, surrendered that very afternoon.

When the town militia threw open the gates of Abernaudd, Aeryc suspected a trick, but a carefully chosen detachment occupied the city with no trouble. Leading the rest of the army, Aeryc rode through unmanned gates and down silent streets where the few townsfolk he saw were huddled behind upper windows. Finally, near the gwerbret’s dun, he saw one old woman standing openly on the street corner. As he started to pass by, she grabbed her rags of a skirt and dropped him a perfect curtsy. Aeryc threw up his hand and halted the march. While the army milled around and sorted itself out, he bowed gravely from the saddle to the wrinkled old crone.