A Time of War. Katharine KerrЧитать онлайн книгу.
way, but if he can’t see, then the secret’s safe enough.’
Meer bared his fangs but said nothing.
‘Can’t bring the horses through.’ Jorn stepped forward. ‘What about having Yraen and the squad take ’em up to the dun?’ His voice turned contemptuous. ‘You don’t need twelve men to guard a blind man and a boy.’
‘Ah, but they’re wily, wily.’ Rhodry was grinning. ‘Yraen, the rest of you – I’ll see you back in the great hall.’
Collecting the horses, including Baki and Gidro, the squad moved off, leading the stock up the steep hill. As he watched, Jahdo realized that he was sorry to see them go. Even though he hated each one for helping capture him, they were at least familiar, men he’d grown used to in the horror of the past few days.
‘Come round here.’ Otho gestured at a twisting lane that led behind the guardhouse.
With Jorn in the lead they walked to the base of the hill just beyond the gates, where the slope had been cut to the vertical, then faced with stone blocks to produce an artificial cliff. When Jorn pounded on one block with his axe, a good quarter of this structure creaked back three inches to reveal a sliver of face and a suspicious eye.
‘Ah, it’s you already,’ said a voice from inside. ‘Stand back, and I’ll open up.’
With much groaning and the crunching of dirt and the bouncing of pebbles the massive door opened just far enough for everyone to slip in sideways, one at a time. The two younger men ushered them down a long, cool tunnel of worked stone, a good ten feet wide but a bare six tall, so that both Meer and Rhodry were forced to walk stooped. Once everyone was safely in, the doorkeeper seized an enormous lever and pulled. The door inched shut to groan into place so tightly that Jahdo could see not the slightest crack of sunlight round it. The only light, a sickly blue glow, oozed from phosphorescent mosses and fungi, gathered into baskets and hung from iron pegs in the wall. Jahdo shuddered, wondering if a rat felt this way, caught in one of his family’s traps. Remembering how the creatures squealed and clawed when the trap splashed down and water rose to cover them made him want to weep.
‘Come along, come along,’ Otho snapped. ‘Stop goggling, lad. Haven’t got all day.’
The tunnel ran straight for some ten feet, then turned into a flight of stairs, climbing steep and narrow for an ordeal of hundreds of yards. Before they’d gone halfway up Jahdo’s heart was pounding, and he fought for breath in the stuffy air. Once he stumbled, and his sore and sweaty hands slipped from the narrow stone ridge that did for a railing. For a brief moment he thought of letting himself fall backwards and plunge down to die, but Rhodry caught his arm and yanked him up.
‘No hurry, lad,’ the warrior said. ‘Get your feet under you.’
Jahdo had no choice but to keep climbing. By the time they reached the top, everyone was panting for breath, but Meer was downright sobbing. Rhodry allowed them a few moments of rest.
‘Tell me somewhat, lad,’ Otho said. ‘You seem to have great respect for this creature you serve. Were you raised among his kind?’
Jahdo started to tell him the truth; then it occurred to him to wonder if he truly wanted these people to know about his homeland.
‘I was,’ he said instead. ‘But he be a bard, and it’s needful that you respect him, too.’
Otho shrugged in insulting dismissal.
Another corridor, another stair, another massive door – at last they came blinking out into the sunlight before another pair of guarded gates, as massive and iron-bound as the first. Behind these rose the towers, as grim as a giant’s clubs, stuck into the earth.
‘There you are,’ Otho said. ‘We’ll be heading back now.’
As the three dwarves started back into the tunnel, Rhodry called after them.
‘Remember that coin you owe me, Otho.’
It struck Jahdo as viciously unjust that these people would be haggling over the ordinary details of their lives, something as petty as a gambling debt, probably, while they were dragging him off to slavery.
As they walked through the gates, Rhodry laid a heavy hand on Meer’s shoulder, and Jahdo took the bard’s arm, because his blind man’s staff made a poor guide for leading him through the confusion in the vast ward. Clustering round the towers and the inside of the walls stood wooden sheds, mostly round and thatched. Incorporated into the outer walls were long rectangles of buildings, stables on the lower level, though Jahdo couldn’t see into the upper. Scurrying round through the midst of this jumble were servants – tending horses, carrying things like firewood or sacks of what seemed to be vegetables, or even pulling a squalling goat along or driving a couple of pigs before them. Somewhere close by a blacksmith’s forge rang with hammering; dogs barked; people yelled back and forth. Every now and then an armed man strolled by, knocking any servant in his way out of it.
‘Straight ahead,’ Rhodry barked. ‘Quick like, before I find myself defending you. See that long straight building there past the pigsty, lad? That’s where we’re heading.’
Fear made Jahdo co-operative. He hurried Meer along while Rhodry kept a nervous watch behind them, and the various servants all shrieked at the very sight of them and rushed to goggle. When the armed men started jeering, Jahdo was more than glad to duck into the long stone structure, even if it did reek of the nearby hogs and something worse, too, an undertone of human filth. Inside he found a narrow passageway, lined with doors, each with a small opening near the top and a heavy oak bar across to lock them.
‘The dungeon keep,’ Rhodry remarked, confirming Jahdo’s worst guess. ‘With luck you won’t be here long.’
An elderly man, dressed in brown tatters that had once been clothes, came hobbling out of a room at the far end of the corridor.
‘Prisoners of war,’ Rhodry said to him.
‘Put them here, silver dagger.’ With arthritic hands he lifted a bar and swung a door back. ‘Shove them right along.’
Jahdo helped Meer cross the high threshold, then stepped in after, his heart pounding as badly as it had on the underground stairs. He was profoundly relieved to find a small window, barred, on the opposite wall, and thick straw, reasonably clean, on the floor. In one corner stood a leather bucket, crawling with flies – otherwise, nothing, not so much as a blanket.
‘I want them decently treated,’ Rhodry was saying to the old man. ‘Plenty of food, mind you, and clean water, and none of that mouldy bread, either. I’ll be stopping by now and again to see that you’ve made it so.’
‘It’ll be done, it’ll be done.’
The door eased shut, and the bar fell down with a thump. Jahdo could hear Rhodry and the old man squabbling down the corridor for a moment; then the old man returned.
‘Lad, lad! I’m handing you water in through the window.’
A clay pitcher appeared in the slit in the door. Jahdo could just pull it through. A clay cup with a broken handle followed, and after that a loaf of brown bread, reasonably fresh.
‘There,’ the old man snapped. ‘Cursed arrogant bastard of a silver dagger, giving an honest man orders like that.’
‘Bain’t Rhodry a lord, then?’
‘What did you say, lad?’
‘Bain’t Rhodry a lord?’
After a moment the old man laughed, and hard.
‘Not half, lad, not half. A stinking mercenary and naught more, fighting for coin, not honour like a decent man. Little better than thieves, all of that lot. Got into trouble young, they did, or they wouldn’t be riding the long road at all, would they now?’ There was the sound of him spitting onto the floor. ‘The gall, a silver dagger giving me orders.’
Muttering under his breath, the fellow stumped away,