Warrior Scarlet Read Online Free PDF Page B

the same moment, and also in the same moment old Kea, the mother of all Drustic’s hounds, got up with waving tail, yawning her pleasure, and came to greet him. But Drustic reached him first, in a couple of strides, and caught him by the scruff of the neck and jerked him forward into the fireglow beside the hearth, demanding, ‘Son of blackness, where have you been?’
    Drem stood and rubbed his neck and glared. ‘It was a very bright night. I went to catch a fish, but they were all shy.’
    The Grandfather snorted, a snort that might mean unbelief or only derision; and Drustic said, ‘And so, because you chance to feel like catching a fish, our mother must seek you all night through the woodshore, and I must trail up along the High Chalk lest you had gone back to Doli and the sheep!’ As he spoke he took down a whip of tanned ox hide that he used for the hounds, and stood drawing the dark leash again and again through his hands. ‘You know what happens to a puppy of the dog pack when he runs off in such a way?’
    Drem faced him squarely. He had known that this must happen, and he was ready for it. ‘You thrash him.’
    Drustic glanced for an instant, questioningly, at the Grandfather, the lord of the house; but the Grandfather spat into the fire, hunching his blanket farther round his shoulders. ‘Na na, Iam too old to be troubled with the training of puppies. The thing is for you to do—and see that you do not hold your hand.’
    ‘I shall not hold my hand,’ Drustic said roughly. He was clearly very angry, his young, ruddy face dark with his anger. He reached out and fetched Drem a buffet on the side of the head that sent him sprawling across the wood pile by the fire. Drem crouched there, his head ringing from the blow, and waited with shut teeth. He knew that by the end he would be yelping like a puppy, but he would not yelp before he must. He sensed that his brother’s arm had swung up, and waited for the sting of the descending lash across his shoulders.
    But it never came. Instead, something small and fierce out of the shadows flung itself on Drustic and bit him, as last night Drem had bitten Talore the Hunter.
    Drustic yelped with surprise and pain, and shook his attacker off and cuffed her aside, then raised his whip again. But as he did so, Drem heard his mother’s voice from the doorway, crying with a rush of thankfulness, ‘Ah! You have found him!’ And then, ‘No, Drustic. No!’
    Everything was very confused and confusing, but it seemed to Drem that he might be going to escape a beating after all. He got up from where he had been crouching, as his mother came swiftly in, her heavy hair falling loose and her kirtle torn and mired. ‘Cubbling, where have you been? You were with Doli then?’
    Drustic was standing, solid and still angry and beginning to be bewildered, sucking his bitten thumb, while Blai crouched snarling silently, and holding her head, among the hounds where his cuff had sent her. He spat blood into the fire. ‘Nay, you were wrong, my mother; he has but now come in, so bold as the King himself in his high Dun, to tell me he went to catch a fish.’ Then, rounding once more on Drem, ‘Get down again. I have not finished with you yet.’
    ‘No, Drustic,’ their mother said again. ‘You shall not beat him—not this time.’
    The Grandfather raised his great grey-gold head and lookedat them with eyes that went golden when he was angry or glad, just as Drem’s did, but it was anger now. ‘Woman, this is for the Men’s side. Leave it for the Men’s side’s handling, and tend to your distaff!’
    Drem’s mother paid no heed to the old man. ‘
Not this time!
’ she said again.
    ‘But why not?’ Drustic demanded, his brows puckered with bewilderment. ‘Am I not to train the cub at all?
Why not?
’
    ‘Because I say not, I who gave both of you life!’ their mother said; and she caught the whip from Drustic and flung it into the far shadows. Then she turned to Drem, with