Valor by John Gwynne

Author:John Gwynne [GWYNNE, JOHN]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction / Fantasy / Epic, Fiction / Fantasy / Historical, Fiction / Action & Adventure
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2014-07-22T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

CYWEN

Cywen was riding in a sprawling column. Behind her Rhin’s warband stretched all the way to the sea, the slate-grey waters merging with the horizon. The ships they had arrived on were just a mass of small dots bobbing upon the white-flecked waves. A little way ahead of her Nathair rode atop his lumbering draig, its head low to the ground, tail swaying from side to side. Beyond him Rhin’s warriors marched northward into undulating foothills.

Cywen leaned forward in her saddle and ran her hand down Shield’s shoulder, her fingers searching out the smooth circle of scar tissue. It was all that was left of the horse’s arrow wound. From his movement you would never know he had been injured at all.

Those Jehar are gifted–cursed but gifted, she thought, looking about instinctively to catch a glance of them. Amazing riders. She had been shocked to see that so many of them were women, and remembered them on the night Dun Carreg had fallen, how she had thrown knife after knife at them, seen the way they fought. She remembered their leader, Sumur, asking her questions about Gar. Why is he so interested in Gar?

Surrounding Nathair was a circle of the Jehar, all mounted, a substantial space between them and the draig. She had seen Nathair feeding it earlier, but it seemed very fond of horse, so the Jehar were wise to keep their distance.

The rest of the Jehar, and there were many of them, thousands, Cywen had noted, were riding out on the wings of this disordered column, appearing fleetingly between rolling hills and stretches of woodland. No one was likely to ambush Rhin’s warband in Cambren, her own realm, but the Jehar, apparently, were not inclined to leave such things to chance.

The sound of hooves grew behind her, out of time with the rest of them–faster. It was Veradis, the giant with the black axe striding easily next to him. Veradis pulled up beside her and glanced at her wrists. They bore red marks where she had been bound, though the ropes were cut now.

‘Bos, is she behaving?’ he asked the warrior who rode close to Cywen, her guard since the night she had tried to kill Morcant. He was a big man, bald though young and not as dim as she had first thought.

‘So far,’ Bos said. ‘Biding her time, maybe.’ He said it with the flicker of a smile.

‘Can you be trusted to not cause any trouble?’ Veradis asked her.

‘There’s a sea between me and Morcant now,’ she said, scowling. She had hated seeing him standing on the beach at Dun Carreg–her home–as she had sailed away. Just another thing to put on the long list of wrong in her recent past.

‘I know. But now that he’s not here for you to obsess over, I am thinking you might turn your attentions onto someone else.’

‘Starting to regret cutting my bonds?’

‘A little. Should I?’

‘I hate you all,’ she said with conviction, ‘but there’s no one here I’d pick out above the rest to try and kill.

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