The Armies of Daylight - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,83
floor. Alde put her arm through Rudy's. "Come on!"
The Icefalcon led one of his numerous girlfriends into the set; a moment later, they were joined by Maia of Penambra, leading the silent, red-haired witchchild Ilea by the hand.
"Come on!" Alde insisted, and Rudy allowed himself to be dragged into the line. She waved her hand and called out, "One more couple!" Tomec Tirkenson, looming suddenly out of the crowd like Godzilla emerging from Tokyo Bay, put an arm around Kara of Ippit's waist and drew her, startled and stammering, into position.
Rudy sighed. "What the hell. You'll have to tell me what to do."
"Oh, don't be such a wet goose. It's easy."
It was not easy.
Rudy yelled over his shoulder, "You lied to me!" But he was swept through stars and figures of eight while Aide, swinging in the crook of Ingold's powerful arm, laughed at him with her eyes.
"I'm sorry!" she gasped as he released Gil and caught her hand in one flashing figure, and then she was gone.
People were yelling to him, "Right hand! Right hand! Your other right hand!" He went flinging off through a grand right-and-left that reminded him vaguely of a Marx Brothers movie, with the women weaving like a chain of bright ribbon among the laughing men. The music, or maybe the gin, flamed around and through him, sharpening his awareness and altering his time sense; he found himself half in love with all the women-with Kara, who moved with such surprising grace in the brief circle of his arm, and with this startlingly pink-cheeked and giggling Gil. Brief, confused visual impressions tangled in the springing flood of the music. The Icefalcon reminded him of a cheetah, cold and precise; Ingold plunged through the mazes of the game with an agility and an abandon that were alike surprising; and Tomec Tirkenson swung the tall Kara effortlessly off her feet in a frothing skirl of tattered petticoats.
The smell of snow and pines was as intoxicating as the vast quantities of gin he'd consumed; the slurp of the muddy ground underfoot was a delight. Hands caught at his-long hands, scarred hands, fine, dainty hands, or bony ones. Blond and red and black hair tangled in the whirlpool of the music, faster and faster, while the crowd laughed and cheered and faces familiar and half-familiar swirled by in passing.
Rudy found Alde in his arms once again, the light strength of her body against his, and the music circled to its close. Someone was yelling, laughing, and pressing a bottle of spiced Blue Ruin and water upon them, and Rudy took a long drink of it between his gasps for breath. Yells broke out. "Kiss 'em, men! They've earned it!"
He looked down, laughing at the girl leaning in the crook of his arm, her black hair undone and streaming over the bright colors of her painted vest. She dared him with her eyes, and he caught her tight against him, tasting the gin and candied apples on her lips and the kindling sweetness of possession. Her hands slid up around his neck, tangling in his hair. The crowd applauded in delight, and for an endless second there was nothing, no one, but the fire of the dance in his blood and the warmth of the girl in his arms.
And then there was sudden, utter silence.
Rudy looked up, startled. He saw that the crowd around them had parted. Standing out alone in its forefront was the dark, starved face and steel-gray eyes of the man he had last seen in the Nest of the Dark!
Rudy was so startled to see him there that he wondered for a moment if he could be mistaken. But a second glance showed him that the prisoner of the Dark must have just come up from the road to the valleys below. Rudy had a momentary confused impression of a skull-gaunt face and dark wolf eyes, a shaggy gray mare's-tail of dirty hair, and filthy black rags of clothing.
And glittering under the muck of those rags were the torn remnants of a gold eagle embroidered on the breast of his filthy surcoat, like the one Rudy had painted on Aide's vest.
The eagle of the House of Dare.
All this Rudy absorbed in a few confused seconds, while he felt Alde turn to stone in his arms. Then someone pushed past him. Ingold fell to one knee before the stranger, bending his head as Rudy had never seen him do homage to anyone.