Read Online A Song for Arbonne by Guy Gavriel Kay - Free Book Online

his designated partner, and making his own way down the rope to check on the two clerics in the sailboat, then going off into the forest itself to listen for the return of their fellows, or for other less happy possibilities. Either of these forays would leave Luth alone for long moments at a time to cope with sounds and ambiguous shiftings in the shadows of the plateau or at the edges of the trees, with no one to turn to for reassurance.
    The truth was, Luth said to himself—and he would have sworn to it as an oath in any temple of the goddess—that he really wasn’t a coward, though he knew every man here would think him one from tonight onward. He
wasn’t
though: put him on a crag above Castle Baude in a thunderstorm, with thieves on the slopes making off with the baron’s sheep, and Luth would be fierce in pursuit of them, sure-footed and deft among the rocks, and not at all bad with his bow or blade when he caught up with the bandits. He’d
done
that, he’d done it last summer, with Giresse and Hirnan. He’d killed a man that night with a bowshot in darkness, and it was he who had led the other two back down the treacherous slopes to safety with the flock.
    Not that they were likely to remember that, or bother to remind the others of it, after tonight. If any of them lived through tonight. If they ever left this island. If they—
    What was that
?
    Luth wheeled, his heart lurching like a small boat hit by a crossing wave, in time to see Vanne making his way back onto the plateau from yet another survey of thewoods. The other coran gave him a curious glance in the shadows but said nothing. They were not to speak, Luth knew. He found their own enforced silence almost as stressful as the noises of the night forest.
    Because they weren’t just noises, and this wasn’t just night-time. These were the sounds of Rian’s Island, which was holy, and the eight of them were here without proper consecration, without any claim of right—only a drunken ex-priest’s mangling of the words of ritual—and they had laid violent hands on two of the goddess’s truly anointed before they’d even landed.
    Luth’s problem, very simply, was that he was a believer in the powers of the goddess, profoundly so. If that could really be called a problem. He’d had a religious, superstitious grandmother who’d worshipped both Rian and Corannos along with a variety of hearth spirits and seasonal ones, and who’d known just enough about magic and folk spells to leave the grandson she’d reared helplessly prey to the terrors of precisely the sort of place where they were now. Had he not been so anxious not to lose face among the other corans and his baron and the big, capable, grimly sardonic northern mercenary Mallin had brought to lead and train them, Luth would certainly have found a way to back out of the mission when he was named for it.
    He should have, he thought dismally. Whatever status that withdrawal would have cost him was nothing as compared to how he’d be diminished and mocked because of what had happened tonight. Who would ever have thought that simple piety, a prayer of thanks to holy Rian herself, could get a person into so much trouble? How should a high country man know how bizarrely far sound—a murmured prayer!—could carry at sea? And Hirnan had
hurt
him with that pincer-like grip of his. The oldest coran was a big man, almost as big as thebearded northerner, and his fingers had been like claws of iron. Hirnan should have known better, Luth thought, trying to summon some sense of outrage at how unfair all of this was turning out to be.
    He jumped sideways again, stumbled, and almost fell. He was grappling for his sword when he realized that it was Vanne who had come up to him. He tried, with minimal success, to turn the motion into one of alertly prudent caution. Vanne, his face blandly expressionless, gestured and Luth bent his head towards him.
    ‘I’m going down to check on them again,’ the other coran