A Time of Omens. Katharine Kerr

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      With a grunt of near-physical pain Nevyn leaned back against the cold stone wall.

      ‘How long ago were they killed?’

      ‘Oh, a ghastly long time.’ Maryn looked half-sick at the memory. ‘Maddyn says it was probably a couple of months. They froze first, he said, and then thawed probably just last week. The ravens have been working on them. It was truly grim. And all their gear was pulled apart and strewn around, as if someone had been searching through it.’

      ‘Oh, no doubt they were. Could you tell anything about these poor wretches?’

      ‘They were Cerrmor men. Here.’ Maryn reached into his shirt and pulled out a much-tarnished message tube. ‘This was empty when we found it, but look at the device. I rubbed part of it clean on the ride home.’

      Nevyn turned the tube and found the polished strip, graven with three tiny ships.

      ‘You could still see the paint on one shield, too,’ Maryn went on. ‘It was the ship blazon. I wish we had the messages that were in that tube.’

      ‘So do I, your highness, but I think me I know what they said. We’d best go down and collect the entire troop. No doubt we’re months too late, but I won’t rest easy until we have a look round for the murderers.’

      As they hurried back to the broch, it occurred to Nevyn that he no longer had to worry about communicating with his allies by dweomer. It was obvious that their enemies already knew everything they needed to know.

      Even though Maddyn considered hunting the murderers a waste of time, and he knew that every other man in the troop was dreading camping out in the chilly damp, no one so much as suggested arguing with Nevyn’s scheme. If anyone had, Maddyn himself would have been the one to do it, because he was a bard of sorts, with a bard’s freedom to speak on any matter at all, as well as being second in command of this troop of mercenaries newly become the prince’s guard. The true commander, Caradoc, was too afraid of Nevyn to say one wrong word to the old man, while Maddyn was, in some ways, the only real friend Nevyn had. Carrying what provisions the dun could spare them at the end of winter’s lean times, the silver daggers, with the prince and old Nevyn riding at the head of the line, clattered out of the gates just at noon. With them was a wagon and a couple of servants with shovels to give the bodies a decent burial.

      ‘At least the blasted clouds have all blown away,’ Caradoc said with a sigh. ‘I had a chance of a word with the king’s chief huntsman, by the by. He says that there’s an old hunting lodge about ten, twelve miles to the north-east, right on the river. If we can find it, it might still have a roof of sorts.’

      ‘If we’re riding that way to begin with.’

      They found the murdered men and their horses where they’d left them, and it ached Maddyn’s heart to think how close they’d been to safety when their Wyrd fell upon them. While the servants looked for a place where the thawing ground was good and soft, Nevyn coursed back and forth like a hunting dog and examined everything – the dead men, the horses, the soggy ground around them.

      ‘You and the men certainly trampled all over everything, Maddo,’he grumbled.

      ‘Well, we looked for footprints and tracks and suchlike. If they’d left a trail we would have found it, but you’ve got to remember that the ground was frozen hard when this happened.’

      ‘True enough. Where’s the third lad, the one who almost got away?’

      Maddyn took him across the field to the sprawled and puffing corpse. In the warming day the smell was loathsome enough to make the bard keep his distance, but Nevyn knelt right down next to the thing and began to examine the ground as carefully as if he were looking for a precious jewel. Finally he stood up and walked away with one last disgusted shake of his head.

      ‘Find anything?’

      ‘Naught. I’m not even sure what I was hoping to get, to tell you the truth. It just seems that …’ Nevyn let his words trail away and stood there slack-mouthed for a moment. ‘I want to wash my hands off, and I see a stream over there.’

      Maddyn went with him while he knelt down and, swearing at the coldness of the water, scrubbed his hands in the rivulet. All at once the old man went tense, his eyes unfocused, his mouth slack again, his head tilted a little as if he listened to a distant voice. Only then did Maddyn notice that the streamlet brimmed with glassy-blue undines, rising up in crests and wavelets. In their midst, and yet somehow beyond them, like a man coming through a doorway from some other place, was a presence. Maddyn could barely see it, a vast silvery shimmer that seemed to partake of both water and air like some preternatural fog, forming itself into shapes that might not even have existed beyond his desire to see it as a shape. Then it was gone, and Maddyn shuddered once with a toss of his head.

      ‘Geese walking on your grave?’ Nevyn said mildly.

      When Maddyn looked around he saw Owaen and the prince walking over to them and well within earshot.

      ‘Must be, truly. Here, Owaen, did you and the lads find anything new?’

      ‘Doubt me if there’s aught to find. Young Branoic did come up with this, though. Insisted it might be important, but he couldn’t say why.’ Owaen looked positively sour as he handed Nevyn a thin sliver of bone about six inches long, barely a half-inch wide, but pointed at both ends. ‘Sometimes I think that lad is daft, I truly do.’

      ‘Not at all.’ Nevyn was turning the sliver round and round in his thin gnarled fingers. ‘It’s human bone, to begin with. And look how someone’s worked it – smoothed it, shaped it, and then polished it.’

      ‘What?’ Owaen’s sourness deepened to disgust. ‘What is it, some kind of knife handle?’

      ‘It’s not, but a stylus to rule lines on parchment.’

      ‘A stylus?’ Maddyn broke in. ‘Who would make a thing like that out of human bone?’

      ‘Who indeed, Maddo lad? That’s the answer I’d very much like to have: who indeed?’

      In his role as a learned man Nevyn recited a few suitable lines of Dawntime poetry over the corpses; then the silver daggers mounted up and left the servants to get On with the burying. Since, when they rode out they headed for the river, Maddyn spurred his horse up next to the old man’s and mentioned the decrepit hunting lodge.

      ‘It’ll be better shelter than none, truly,’ Nevyn said.

      ‘You don’t suppose our enemies camped there, do you?’

      ‘They might have once, but they’re long gone by now.’ He gave Maddyn a wink. ‘I have some rather reliable information to that effect. Tell the men we won’t be out hunting wild geese long, Maddo. I just want one last look around, that’s all.’

      Only then was Maddyn sure that he had indeed seen some exalted personage in the stream.

      Just at sunset they reached the lodge, a wooden roundhouse, its thatch half-gone, standing along with a stable behind a palisade that was missing as many logs as a peasant has teeth. As soon as they rode within five hundred yards of the place the horses turned nervous, tossing their heads and blowing, dancing a little in the muddy road. Maddyn had the feeling that they would have bolted if they hadn’t been tired from their long day’s ride.

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