“If you’ve time, I can cure them in the midden,” Silvina suggested helpfully, but her eyes gleamed with mischief.
Sebell began to chuckle at Robinton’s expressive shudder and was caught off balance when Robinton thrust the clothing into his hands and told him to see to it. “The smell will undoubtedly keep others from examining me at too close range,” he said with a long-suffering sigh. “Now, while I’m away, Sebell, you’ll tell everyone that I’ve caught a fever and keep them out of my rooms.”
Sebell nodded, though he was clearly unhappy with his Master being involved in such a subterfuge. Still, he knew when to keep his comments to himself.
Robinton waited until he got to the Red River before he put on his disguise. Black had sidled away from the saddlepack holding the reeking clothes. He left the runner-beast with the border guards and warned them to be extra vigilant.
From there Robinton made his discreet way to the beasthold at Ruatha to discover that there weren’t but two sorry-looking milch animals to be cared for. He was looking around the beasthold in dismay when a wing of dragons appeared mid-air and a frightened man came running so fast he was in danger of tripping over himself as he shrieked his message at the top of his lungs:
“Dragonriders, and Fax comes. Dragonriders …” Still yelling, he disappeared into the Hold.
In his guise of a witless drudge, Robinton could come out to stare up at the amazing sight of a full wing of dragons, some of whom had the remnants of flame still trickling beyond their muzzles, appearing in Ruathan skies. One after another, they bugled.
They sounded surprised, he thought. As the dragons wheeled to come in for a landing, he spotted a blue who had to be Tagath -which confirmed his suspicion that this was F’lar’s wing, after all.
Searching at the High Reaches would take the nerve of F’lon’s son.
Maybe he could get a word with C’gan somehow. Maybe even get a chance to meet F’lar at long last. He wondered if R’gul had authorized the Search in this area. Somehow he doubted it. Then he put his mind to the pressures of this moment.
A witless drudge would be terrified and rush to find shelter from such a frightening sight, he thought, and he shambled as fast as his assumed limp would allow him to join the other drudges milling about the courtyard.
The Warder, his face ghastly, appeared on the steps to verify the message and then started yelling conflicting orders at those near by, grabbing the nearest drudge and propelling him towards the Hold.
“We must prepare. We must do something! There has to be food!
There has to be order in this Hold … and you are … going … to … work your nuts off!” Each pause was to allow him to kick or shove some ragged body into the Hold.
Robinton managed to evade the full force of the kick aimed at him, but he went willingly into the Hold. There he paused briefly in dismay at the sight of the once beautiful entrance hall and the Main Hall seen past the broken-hinged double doors which led to it. Then someone bumped into him, and that restored him to his character.
An old woman struggled to hand out brooms and mops; another
shaggy-haired drudge distributed other cleaning equipment. They were herded up the steps to sweep and ready rooms which, to judge by the appalling condition of them, had not been used since the massacre. He was pushed into a room which had obviously had its window left open for turns: leaves, branches and dirt were piled like snowdrifts in the corners. The hearth held ashes which had hardened into rock. The bedding was soiled and damp and would have to be discarded, though what would be available to take its place, Robinton didn’t know. Nor was a single cleaning going to do much more than loosen the surface of dirt thickly caking the bare floor. The steward raced from one room to another, yelling for haste, for more clean water, for more effort from each and every drudge, bestowing kicks where he felt the cleaners faltered. How any steward worth his mark could have allowed the once graceful Hold to fall into such desuetude, Robinton could not understand.