Read Online The Gold Falcon by Katharine Kerr - Free Book Online Page B

Somewhere out there the Horsekin were camping with their miserable booty.
    “On the morrow, Captain,” Salamander said, “do we ride after the raiders?”
    “I hope so,” Gerran said. “We doubtless don’t have a candle’s chance of warming hell, but it would gladden my heart to get those women and children back. Better a free widow than an enslaved one.”
    “True spoken. You know, there’s somewhat odd about this raid, isn’t there? At least thirty fighting men and their heavy horses—that’s not an easy lot to feed on a long journey. And they’ve traveled all this way to glean a handful of slaves from a couple of poor villages?”
    “Huh. I’d not thought of it that way before. I suppose they brought a good number of men because they knew we’d stop them if we could.”
    “Mayhap. But why run the risk at all? Now, far to the south, down on the seacoast, there are unscrupulous merchants who’ll buy slaves at a good price, transport them in secret, and sell them in Bardek. But that’s a wretchedly long way away, and how could the Horsekin move a small herd of slaves unnoticed? They’d have to ride through Pyrdon and Eldidd, where every lord would turn out to stop them, or else travel through the Westfolk lands. The Westfolk archers would kill the lot of them on sight. They hate slavery almost as much as they hate the Horsekin.”
    “So they would. I’ve got a lot of respect for their bowmen. Your father’s folk, are they? Or your mother’s?”
    Salamander tipped his head back and laughed. “My father’s,” he said at last. “You’ve got good eyes, Captain.”
    “So do you, and that’s what gave you away. But here—” Gerran thought for a moment. “The Horsekin have plenty of human slaves already, from what I’ve heard, and they let them breed, to keep the supply fresh, like. They don’t need to raid. You’re right. Why are they risking so much for so little?”
    “It’s a question that strikes me as most recondite, but at the same time pivotal, portentous, momentous, and just plain important. Tell me somewhat. These raids, they started when farmers began to settle the Melyn river valley, right?”
    “A bit later than that. When the farms reached the river.”
    “Oho! I’m beginning to get an idea, Captain, but let me brood on it awhile more, because I might be wrong.”
    At dawn, Gerran joined the noble-born for a council of war over breakfast in Samyc’s great hall. The three lords wanted to track the raiders down, but they ran up against a hard reality: they lacked provisions for men and horses alike. The crop of winter wheat was still two weeks from harvest. After a bit of impatient squabbling, someone at last remembered that the farther village’s crops would be milk-ripe and of no use to the poor souls who’d planted them.
    “Here, what about this?” Lord Samyc said. “I’ll give you what supplies I’ve got left from the winter. Then my farm folk can go harvest the milk-ripe crops to feed my dun when I get back to it.”
    Cadryc glanced at Gerran. Over the years, whether as father and stepson or tieryn and captain, they’d come to know each other so well that they could exchange messages with a look and a gesture. Gerran, being common-born, had no honor to lose by suggesting caution, and since he was the best swordsman in the province, no one would have dared call him a coward. The other two lords were also waiting for him to speak, he realized, though no doubt they would have denied it had anyone pointed it out.
    “Well, my lord,” Gerran said, “Didn’t Lord Samyc’s man tell us that thirty Horsekin rode to the dun?”
    “He did,” Cadryc said.
    “So I’ll wager their warband numbers more than that.
    Someone must have been guarding the prisoners from the first village while the raiders rode to the second one. We’ve got thirty men ourselves, and Lord Samyc can give us only a few more.”
    “Ah!” Samyc held up one hand to interrupt. “But some of my