Rod blinked and retreated a few steps, half-turning away, but she paid him no heed at all. When she was done, she bundled her clothing and boots together on the bank, took up the rushes, and climbed down into the stream.
Rod stared at her as she scrubbed at her armpits and crotch with the broken-off ends of the rushes, and then quickly looked away when she looked up at him and said quietly, "Is anyone coming? Either side of the stream? Look well, mind."
"I…" Rod gazed hard past the trees and across moonlit fields, this way and that. "No. Ah, no. Uh, isn't the water cold?"
"Icy," she confirmed tersely, scrubbing hard. The rushes seemed to be oozing a sort of foam; Rod watched with quickening interest as she lifted one breast and then the other, thrusting a rush under them both.
When she shot another quick look up at him, he didn't look away. "How can you do that?" he protested. Darkness descended on them, as a racing cloud hid the moon.
"Shh!" Taeauna hissed at him, and in the same whisper added, "I stink. And so do you. Now get those clothes off and use some of these rushes. Soon we'll have half the prowling beasts in the North following us if you don't. They track by scent, look you!"
The moon chose that moment to come out again, full and bright and clear. Bare and beautiful in the moonlight, the Aumrarr put her hands on her hips and stared up at him.
"Lord Rod Everlar," said Taeauna, somehow contriving to make her whisper sound like a sergeant's bark, "get bare and get down into this water right now. Or I'll come up there and bring you down and wash you myself."
Rod tried to grin and say something snide about welcoming that, but somehow, now that this was happening to him, it didn't seem even the slightest bit erotic. Not like in good fantasy novels.
Or even his. Wincing, Rod Everlar looked around for approaching foes in the bright moonlight, as a cold breeze rose gently out of the east and slid numbingly past him. Finding none, he sighed and started undressing.
The freshening breeze stabbed into them like daggers of ice; the guards on the bare stone battlements of Tabbrar Castle drew their weathercloaks more tightly around their shoulders, cursed softly, and started tramping toward each other, the better to keep warm.
"Any marauding dragons your end?"
"Not just now. Yours?"
"Not a one. It's the invading hosts of lorn that's scared them off, that's what it is. Lorn painted pink, dancing with each other."
"Lorn? I dream of seeing a few lorn. Just to pass the time. Watching the castle wall crumble away with age gets old after a time. If you take my meaning."
"I do, Jorduth. Indeed I do." The older guard leaned on a lichen-spattered merlon and peered over the lip of the rampart, looking out at the moon-drenched and utterly empty road below, winding up out of Arvale past the castle walls and then over the lip of the stone ridge, to begin the long descent into the kingdom of Galath.
Jorduth rested his elbows in the next embrasure, stared down at the same serene expanse of road, and said slowly, "The Dooms alone know who Lord Tharlark thinks will come galloping up here at this time of night-in either direction. Fair freeze your bones off, to be out riding just now." He lifted his head to stare at old Blaurin, more to goad an answer out of the veteran than for any other reason.
Blaurin shrugged and spat thoughtfully over the edge with the easy aim of long, long practice. They both paused to watch his offering land.
The cold almost seared his hand. Rod snatched it away from the wall, turned to Taeauna, and shook his head. "Wherever my 'right place' is, this isn't it. I knew there was a castle here, but come to think of it, I don't remember having ever heard of Tabbrar Castle before. It must be Holdoncorp work."
The Aumrarr shook her head. "Older. Far older." She drew the dungeon key back out of her scabbard again. "Come. Some journeying yet awaits us, this night."
Rod wearily followed her back into the secret passage. As they left the dungeons, Taeauna carefully locked up behind them again.
Blaurin's spittle landed with a splat, dead center, atop the great iron swivelpost of the barrier that guards below could swing out to block the road, and scratched his chin-tuft of a beard.
"Seems to me," he ventured, "that as long as we watch, no one will come. The moment we nod off, or go down off the walls, that's as when smugglers will come through the vale and down into Galath, or an army will come up out of Galath."
"The latest noble fleeing the Mad King. They'll want to get far and fast, not tarry here."
"Oh? If all that dooms them are his orders, so all as hunts them-half-hearted, like-will be other nobles. Why not stop here, one boot over the border out of Galath? Only a noble house that has a feud going with whoever took this castle would bother to break blades outside the king's writ."
"Well, isn't that most of them? I mean, aren't they all feuding with each other, every last one of them?"
Blaurin shook his head. "Not anymore. The old families, with all their chests full of good gold broons and blood-kin beyond counting, are all dead or fled; they were the ones as saw feuds as daily entertainment. All that's left now are the younger houses, and a few survivors."
Grimacing against the cold, Blaurin lurched upright and started walking again. "Not that I 'spect we'll be seeing any armies this night, nor slave-takers or the like, going either way."
"Oh? Why not?"
Blaurin pointed down into Galath. By night, to guards on the wall, it was just the vast darkness beyond the reach of the huge, chain-hung castle lanterns in one direction, as opposed to the lesser darkness of Arvale in the other direction.
"You can't see them now, but earlier on I marked six banners at the Galath guardpost. Double strength tonight, for some reason. Usually it's the king thinking some poor hunted fool is going to try to crawl past the guards and escape his clutches. There's not a silent cat as will manage to slip in or out of the Realm of the Rothryns this night."
Rod yawned and stumbled again.
"God, Taeauna, if it wasn't so damned cold, I'd have fallen asleep walking an hour ago!"
"Quite likely."
Jesus, she sounded more like a primly disapproving schoolteacher than ever.
A tireless, deadly, magnificently beautiful schoolteacher who had scrubbed Rod's backside, as firmly and briskly as if he'd been a pig or a pony she didn't think much of. And she'd been completely unconcerned about her nakedness while his face was flaming.
She went on into the darkness, drawn sword in hand, ducking and weaving among the low branches and brambles that kept whipping across Rod's face as if she really could see them. The only time she'd slowed was when he'd really torn his face open, and she had turned to lick and suck it distractingly. She wasn't slowing now.
"Taeauna, where are we going?"
"Into Galath. Whose folk aren't deaf, so be still!"
"Are we going to walk all night?"
"If we must. Now shut up, lord."
That at least made Rod snort in wry amusement. Ah, yes, always address the Lord Archwizard of the world politely, after you've snapped an order at him.
He managed to keep silent for most of the way down a difficult hillside of rocks and thorny vines and trees whose gnarled, many-jointed branches grew damnably low to the ground, before he fell down an unseen drop about the length of his own legs to land bruisingly on a jutting rock.
"Where are we heading, anyway? Galath, yes, but where in Galath?"
Taeauna whirled around so swiftly that he almost shrieked, her sword-tip glinting back moonlight right beside his ear.
"Rod Everlar," she said softly, leaning forward to fix him with solemn eyes from less than a hand-length away, "if I answer you now, will you promise-and keep your promise, by the Dooms! — to not speak again until I bid you to? We are very close to being discovered, now, and slain out of hand."