The Gambler's Fortune (Einarinn 3) (21 page)

“You managed it,” Keisyl replied cynically. The dance music concluded on a triumphant chord.

“Doesn’t Teir deserve a chance at a decent match?” Jeirran ignored the jibe, glancing at Eirys acknowledging the bow of her erstwhile partner.

“If you want to pursue this, I won’t stop you,” decided Keisyl. “I won’t tell anyone and neither must you, especially not Eirys. If anything comes of it, good or bad, that’ll be time enough to explain.”

“Fair enough,” Jeirran offered his hand and Keisyl shook it briefly. “As soon as we’re home, I’ll send word to my sister as was.”

“She won’t come,” predicted Keisyl.

“We’ll see,” said Jeirran. Eirys walked toward them. “My love, you shine like a swan among these wood pigeons.” He rose to brush her cheek with a kiss.

Eirys curtseyed as she giggled. “Will you dance with me now?”

“Of course, my dearest.” Jeirran offered her his arm. “To remind these lowlanders that you are my wife, before they all lose their hearts to your beauty.”

Keisyl watched them join a circle with a faintly mocking smile. His face turned somber for a moment but then he rubbed his hands together in a decisive burst of energy and stood up. Crossing the room, he bowed low before one of the provocatively dressed girls, looking up and down her brunette prettiness with admiration tinged with insolence. “May I have the pleasure of your company in this dance?”

The girl was a little disconcerted but, seeing the envy of her more modestly shawled and petticoated friends, could not refuse. “You are welcome, sir,” she said boldly.

The musicians struck up a lively tune and Keisyl swung the girl into the dance, broad hand firm on her narrow waist.

Erdig’s Bridge, the Great West Road,

13th of Aft-Spring

“Do you need assistance?” The man with the throwing knives stepped forward. The copper in his hair was fading to a middling brown and, allowing for the weathering of his skin, I guessed him about Ryshad’s age, maybe a handful of years older than myself.

Frue spoke briefly in the Forest tongue, which sent a frisson running through the other travelers, faces a mix of hope and apprehension.

The knifeman spoke briefly to his companions. Two of them vanished back under the trees but the other two went to assess the state of the river. “What’s the plan, Frue?” I smiled politely at the knife man, who gave me a heartening grin.

“They’ll help people cross the river.” He stood, brushing ineffectually at the mud dried on his breeches.

“What about Zenela?” I asked. “Do we take her to Castle Pastamar or back to Medeshale?”

Frue nodded toward the tree line. A Forest woman of about my own age and with a deerskin bag slung across her body was approaching with one of the bowmen. She knelt beside the man with the broken legs. Uncovering the wounds with careful hands, her expression remained noncommittal despite the mess of torn flesh revealed. She took from her bag a small pottery jar, stoppered and sealed with wax. Cracking the seal with a thumbnail, she began spreading something on a length of clean linen, nodding as the injured man talked to her.

“What do we do now?” Sorgrad was poking wood into the embers of our fire and setting the kettle to boil on its tripod while ’Gren rummaged in an unregarded pack, unearthing a muslin-wrapped ham. He sliced me a chunk and I chewed hungrily, despite the musty taint of river water. Sorgrad unearthed his personal tisane case from the depths of a valise and checked the little jars were still tightly sealed against air and damp. “Should we offer to help? We might find out what’s going on.”

“Let’s see how the runes roll.” I watched the rest of the camp gaping at the visitors in our midst. A couple of the packmen were inclined to be disagreeable but the wagoneers and the families welcomed the newcomers readily enough. A matron with a manner as robust as her forearms soon had one of the Forest lads laying aside his bow to fetch her firewood. The woman with the herbs went to talk to her and the matron dispatched a lass to poultice the injured man’s wounds. The other travelers soon moved closer to the reassurance of this brisk organization.

The water was scarcely hot enough for Sorgrad to make a tisane when enough Forest Folk appeared to have me wondering just how close they had been. At least, I assumed they were Forest Folk; they didn’t share any startling resemblance, certainly none of the stamp of common blood marking Sorgrad and ’Gren. They were all men and women grown, no children or elders, who worked together with an ease suggesting long familiarity. One woman with an impressive array of rings and earrings, chains of silver and gold close around her neck, unwound a thin rope from around her waist.

“That’s not stout enough to hold anything,” ’Gren observed dubiously, assessing the rope with an expert eye.

“Look over there,” nodded Sorgrad, pouring boiling water on herbs in a twist of muslin. Three others had unslung ropes and were deftly twisting them into a stronger cable. Once done, they knotted theirs securely to a similar length made by another trio and stood waiting for a third to twist into a still thicker cable.

A whistle too deliberate to be a bird turned my head and I saw Folk climbing an oak tree on the far bank of the river. One stepped forward and clapped his hands and the taller of our original bowmen loosed an arrow with a fine line tied to it. It nearly spitted the feet of the man waiting on the far bank.

“He’s got steady nerves,” murmured ’Gren appreciatively. He wrinkled his nose at a sodden heel of bread and tossed it aside.

“The one shooting or the one waiting?” I quizzed him, picking a thread of tough meat from between my teeth.

A cord was tied to the line, heavier rope to the cord and, after a flurry of activity up a tree on our side, a substantial cable swung above the water. The river skulked below in sullen muddy eddies.

“They look like they know what they’re doing,” Sorgrad observed. Two more cables were strung to join the first, one hand-high and the other chest-high. The Forest Folk began to cross the river, blithe as if they were on a four-span bridge.

“How’s the minstrel’s lass supposed to manage that?” ’Gren raised an eyebrow.

I looked for Frue. He was talking to the girl with the deerskin bag as she laid a silver-ringed hand on Zenela’s bruised forehead. “I’ll bet he’d welcome a tisane to wake him up. Have you any mariseed?”

Sorgrad obliged with an unappetizing cup, scummy with dull green dust.

“I’ll take some wine if you can find any, with a little hot water and honey,” I added hopefully.

“My dear girl, how terribly old-fashioned.” Sorgrad shook his head in mock horror. “Everyone of discerning taste drinks tisanes nowadays.” But he turned to investigate a stack of bottles laid carefully aside by a merchant.

I crossed the bustling campground, careful not to slip. The surface of the mud was drying out but the ooze beneath was treacherous. I nearly lost my footing when a furious argument broke out behind me. The three we reckoned were raiders stood nose to nose. Two were shoving the third man away, threatening words backed up by gestures.

“What’s their quarrel?” I asked one of the packmen.

“They just found their mate,” he told me somberly. “Throat cut, not drowned.”

I shook my head and went on my way. Pulling a knife on ’Gren is generally the last mistake a man makes. I looked around the remaining travelers. The merchants and wagoneers were busy making beasts and vehicles fit, but the rest were staring at the rope bridge with dismay, slow to shake off the shock of the flood.

Frue was talking to a Forest lad, speed and accent defeating my slight knowledge of the tongue. The lad’s green eyes darted to me several times, warming with a hint of admiration. He was a good-looking boy, at that age where height outstrips strength but with a promising width to his shoulders. Freckled like a throstle, his hair caught the frail sun shining through the tops of the trees with a gleam like burnished copper. A necklace of white and red gold twisted around the base of his throat.

I realized the woman with the deerskin bag was looking at me with an amusement that I didn’t entirely like. She was about my own height and build but looked as if she needed more meat on her bones. No-nonsense eyes, dark beneath heavy brows and unremarkable mid-brown hair studied me.

The boy asked her some question and I was gratified to find I could understand her reply, slowly spoken with a distinctly different accent.

“She needs rest and careful nursing if she is not to succumb to the rot in her lungs. The more she is moved and distressed, the weaker she will become.”

Zenela was an unhealthy color in the strengthening daylight, struggling to suppress a soft, persistent cough. Her bruised and bloodshot eyes were wide and fearful as she glanced from Frue to the woman, unable to follow their conversation.

“Where’s the closest place we can get care for her?” I wondered if we would have to part from the minstrel.

“Orial will nurse her.” Frue’s surprise was close to a rebuke. “I am born of the blood and those in my protection are treated as such in turn.”

“I’ll go and make ready.” The woman stood up and brushed the dirt from her leather leggings. “In the meantime, steep these thoroughly in boiled water. Have her drink it hot and tell her to breathe in the steam.” She unfolded a small oilskin packet and handed Frue a handful of dried flowers, nothing more enigmatic than cowslips. I remembered the bitter taste all too well from childhood rheums, when tisanes were something you took when you were sick or not at all, not an elegant fad.

I handed Frue his tepid tisane. “May we stay with you for a day or so? We could do with some rest before moving on.”

“You’re of the blood, you’ll be welcome enough.” Frue looked at me with some asperity. “Can you save your questions about old songs for later? The sooner these out-dwellers are got over the river and sent on their way, the sooner Zenela can be moved to shelter.”

“Of course.” I gave Zenela an encouraging smile and made my way over to Usara.

“What of the beasts and the goods?” A balding carter was looking dubiously upward at Forest Folk above his head weaving thin ropes around the cables of the bridge to give an illusion of sides. “We can’t carry them over that!”

“We should probe the ford,” Usara replied with an innocent air. “The bridge pillars will have spared the riverbed from being too badly scoured.”

“I’ll cut a pole,” the carter muttered unconvinced as he walked away.

I looked pointedly at Usara’s freshly damp and dirty sleeves. “And how is the ford?”

“Sound enough for the wagons, if they take it slowly; harness up an extra pair of horses.” Usara heaved a sigh. “At least whatever was awry yesterday has abated so the water isn’t fighting me.”

“Don’t take too much out of yourself,” I warned him.

He smiled thinly. “If anyone else has the skills to rebuild a riverbed, then I’ll be delighted to accept their help.”

His gaze moved to a point behind me and I turned to see Sorgrad approaching. “Ravin says to get this lot moving. The Folk will help out travelers caught in the flood but they’re not about to take on bridgekeeping for the summer.”

“Ravin?” I asked.

“With all the knives,” explained Sorgrad.

I climbed up to test the bridge for myself. Cautiously getting the measure of the sway and the flex, I walked toward the river. I looked down to a circle of upturned, curious faces.

“It’s all very well for her, she’s one of them, climb like squirrels, everyone knows that,” said a Soluran woman, her Tormalin with the lilt common to both sides of the border. Despite the mud crusting her gown, she had found a lace cap from somewhere and made time to comb out and pin up her hair. I recognized her as the woman who’d taken charge by the fire.

“That’s hardly true of me.” Sorgrad appeared at her elbow, words thick with the accents of Col. “If I risk it, perhaps you’ll try?”

He climbed up with a convincing air of uncertainty. I offered him my hand as he got to his feet with a suitably nervous smile.

“Follow me and try not to look down,” I advised reassuringly. I walked slowly, feeling the bounce of Sorgrad’s clumsy steps behind me. “This isn’t going to work if they see ’Gren going across like a startled ferret,” I murmured. “Where is he?”

“Gone to get whatever it was he hid last night,” Sorgrad replied easily. “Will that be enough to convince the good-wife?”

“Do we tie a bell around her neck, to make sure all the rest follow?” I smiled down at the open-mouthed crowd.

Sorgrad turned around with exaggerated care. “It’s a sight easier than it looks,” he said loudly, “and I’ll go for crossing dry shod than risk a second soaking!”

“Come on, Ma.” An eager lad was urging the woman on; he was nearly grown but his face had been scoured pink and clean by his mother, same as any other morning. His sisters were rolling over a sprung cask of wine discarded from a wagon, practicality doubtless learned at their mother’s knee.

The goodwife looked up, face grim but determined. Tucking the hem of her skirts into the sash at her waist, she climbed onto the cask and hauled herself clumsily onto the bridge. A timely boost to her rump from a carter surprised an oath from her that set her daughters giggling.

“Get your balance.” I gave her an encouraging smile. “Take it very slowly, one step at a time, don’t look down, that’s right, look at me, just one hand or one foot at a time.”

I continued this litany of reassurance as the woman planted one sturdy shoe in front of the other, dirty stockings over thick ankles wobbling a little, knuckles white as she gripped the ropes. She murmured a stream of prayer to Drianon as we proceeded. I added a brief request of my own; if she slipped, there was no way I could hold her.

“That’s fine, just keep going, we’ll be over the river in no time.” She glanced down for an instant at the turbid ocher waters below. “Don’t look down,” I snapped. That brought her head up in indignation. “If you don’t do this, no one will,” I told her. “You’ll be stuck for Trimon only knows how long. It’ll be days before that ford’s low enough to risk your children in.”