‘My thanks. It would be a splendid thing if the child were a son.’ His smile vanished. ‘I’d ride with a lighter heart if I knew Hendyr had an heir.’
‘Just so.’ Lilli felt her voice catch and looked away.
Murmuring among themselves, the grooms were leading away the horses, while Anasyn’s guard waited patiently by the door of the main broch. While Lilli watched, the view suddenly blurred. With a muttered oath she reached up and wiped the tears away.
‘Don’t weep, little sister.’ Anasyn laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘It’s in the hands of Wyrd, and what man knows the ways of that?’ He shrugged the moment away. ‘I’d best go present myself to the prince, but dine with me tonight, will you? You can tell me how things stand here in the dun.’
Thinking of Bellyra, Lilli hesitated, but only briefly. ‘Of course, gladly. And you can tell me how Hendyr fares.’
Since as a mere tieryn Anasyn was seated some distance from the royal table, Lilli managed to keep a safe distance from the prince and princess both, though, just as the meal finished, she did see Degwa making her way through the crowded hall. Lilli smiled and waved, but Degwa hurried right past their table without a word.
‘And just who was that fine lady,’ Anasyn muttered, ‘to treat you so coldly?’
‘Someone who’s been my enemy from the day we rode into Cerrmor,’ Lilli said. ‘She’s a daughter of the Wolf clan, and she’s never forgiven me for having been born a Boar.’
Anasyn was about to reply when Gwerbret Daeryc strolled over. During the muster Lilli had only seen him from a distance, and now she noticed that he’d lost more teeth over the winter – one side of his face looked positively caved in. Anasyn scrambled up and bowed to his overlord, but Daeryc motioned to Lilli to stay seated.
‘I only want a word with your brother,’ Daeryc said, ‘about this business of the white mare.’
‘They’ve not found one, have they?’ Anasyn said.
‘They’ve not, or so they say.’ Daeryc looked profoundly gloomy. ‘Who can trust what priests say, eh? But without the mare, the temple won’t perform the kingship rite before the campaigning begins.’
‘Indeed?’ Lilli put in. ‘That’s a pity, but is it all that important?’
‘Important?’ Daeryc snorted. ‘You could say that twice and loudly, too.’
‘If the wretched priests of Bel,’ Anasyn said to her, ‘would condescend to proclaim our liege king before we all rode out, we could count on plenty of deserters from Braemys’s army. I’m willing to wager high that a lot of the lords still loyal to the Boars would come over if they had some noble reason to do it. They don’t want to besmirch their honour, but if Maryn were the king? Well, then.’
‘I’d wager along with you,’ Daeryc said. ‘Braemys just might have found his army disappearing like food on a glutton’s table. But now?’ He shrugged. ‘The good men will hold loyal till the end, most like.’
After the meal Lilli went up to Nevyn’s tower room, where she discovered that the delay in confirming Maryn’s kingship was preying upon her master’s mind as well. Nevyn delivered himself of a few choice oaths on the subject before explaining.
‘They have their reason all polished and ready, of course. The lack of the proper white mare for the rites. Huh. Let Maryn win the summer’s war, and white mares will doubtless pop up all over the landscape.’
‘There’s somewhat I don’t understand,’ Lilli said. ‘Does great Bel really care about the colour of Maryn’s horse? Would we really be cursed if he rode a grey mare in the procession?’
‘Of course not. But the lords and the priests and perhaps even the common folk would believe that he was cursed, and they’d look at him with different eyes. And Maryn himself – he’s as pious as any great lord is, which is to say, as pious as the times are hard, but he truly does believe that the gods have power over him. If he thought himself cursed, wouldn’t he doubt his judgment and his luck?’
‘I see. And he might do a reckless thing, or shrink back from a fight, and his men would think he’d lost his dweomer luck.’
‘Exactly. And they’ve followed him for many a long year now, through famine and battle, mostly because they believe in his luck and the gods both.’
Lilli considered this while the old man watched her from his seat on the window sill. ‘But then,’ she said finally, ‘the gods don’t truly care what happens to their worshippers. It that what you mean?’
‘Close enough. In time, I’ll tell you a great deal more about the gods – this autumn, when we have more leisure. But for now, remember that the gods want homage and little else from their ordinary worshippers. Does the high king care about each and every man who tends his fields? Not so long as that man hands over his taxes and dues.’
‘That makes the gods seem so cold, though, and so very far away.’
‘They are. Think well on this. Which you’ll have plenty of time to do once I’ve gone with the prince.’
‘Anasyn was the last lord to ride in, wasn’t he?’ Lilli felt her heart turn over. ‘You’ll all be marching on the morrow.’
‘I’m afraid so.’ Nevyn glanced away, abruptly sad. ‘And may the gods all grant that this summer sees the end of it.’
As she walked down the stairs of Nevyn’s tower, Lilli was thinking of Branoic. Although she wanted to say farewell to him, her rank kept her from going to a place as lowly as the silver daggers’ barracks. She stepped inside the great hall, stood in the doorway on the riders’ side, and tried to catch the attention of one of the servant lasses, who would be glad to carry a message for her in return for a copper. In the smoky room, crammed with fighting men of every rank, the lasses were trotting back and forth, bringing ale, serving bread, dodging the men’s wandering hands and answering back as smartly as they could to the various remarks they were getting. Lilli found herself thinking that she was as lucky as Prince Maryn. The summer past her clan had been destroyed, and she herself might have ended up carrying slops in some lord’s hall had it not been for Princess Bellyra’s generosity.
‘Lilli?’ A dark voice sounded behind her.
With a little shriek Lilli spun around to find Branoic grinning at her.
‘I didn’t mean to scare you out of your skin,’ he said. ‘I got one of my feelings, like, that mayhap you wanted to talk with me.’
‘I do.’ She managed a laugh. ‘I was just remembering last summer. It seems like a twenty’s worth of years ago, not just one.’
‘The best summer of my life, it was.’
‘Truly? Why?’
‘You silly goose!’ Branoic was grinning at her. ‘Because I met you, of course.’
‘I don’t deserve you, I truly don’t.’
‘Spare me that, if you please.’ Branoic reached out and engulfed her small soft hands with his, all battle-hard and callused. ‘If our
