Return of the Guardian-King by Karen Hancock Page A

old man as Abramm realized he had himself just thrown a bowl of porridge at the thing. Embarrassment squirmed in his middle.
    “I can’t believe there’s another of them,” the old man said as he headed for the dining room. “There must be a nest or somethin’ up there.”
    Marta grabbed a rag from the dish tub she’d apparently been stationed at before Abramm had entered, and cleaned up the spilled porridge. Then she gathered the spoon and now-emptied bowl and returned to the washtub without comment.
    “I’m sorry I snapped at you,” he said, following her. “You didn’t deserve that.”
    “No.” She concentrated on washing the bowl. “But since you have been doling out foulness to everyone in equal measure these days, I don’t feel especially offended.”
    Doling out foulness to everyone? He’d hardly spoken to a soul since he entered the room. And what did she mean by “these days”?
    “Speaking of foulness,” she added, dropping the bowl into a tub of rinse water, “as soon as you have a chance, you should make use of the hot springs up the hill. A bath would do you wonders.”
    “A bath?”
    “You’ve been wearing the same clothes for at least seven weeks, Alaric.”
    “I don’t have any other clothes.”
    “A fact of which we’re all very well aware.” She reached for the stack of bowls on the board beside her tub, then hesitated, glancing up at him. “Do you mind?”
    He stepped back to give her room, and she transferred the bowls to her tub of soapy water.
    “Ye know,” Kitrenna Trinley remarked from where she worked at the counter behind them, “the others went down t’ the barn some time ago. I’m sure they’d welcome those strong shoulders o’ yers, Alaric.” She didn’t look up from the side of mutton she was seasoning.
    “Without a bath?” he asked.
    “Ye can bathe once the roof is fixed.” Kitrenna tightened her lips as she rubbed salted herbs into the meat. “ ’Tis a dangerous job. You should be down there helpin’ ’fore someone gets hurt.”
    Irked anew, he gave her a nod. “By all means, then, I shall hurry down to help.” But irony rang sharply in his voice, for they both knew her husband would receive his assistance grudgingly at best.
    On his way out the door, he helped himself to an apple from the basket on the sideboard, then stepped out onto a porch completely enclosed by walls of snow. A short, narrow passage had been shoveled through it to the first of the wood-covered walkways leading down to the hay barn.
    Things did not improve as the day wore on. In the hay barn, Trinley castigated him for his lateness, for his snobbishness in going off to a private cell rather than sleeping with everyone else in the Great Room, for being obstinate, disrespectful, and foul tempered. Abramm bore it all with increasing frustration until a minor accident sent Trinley ripping into him for his carelessness, and suddenly he found himself facing the man with fists clenched, ready to grab him by the throat and throw him across the room.
    Trinley mocked his aggressive stance with an invitation to fight before Rolland stepped between them. “No one’s fightin’ anyone. Now, both of ye just calm yerselves down. . . .”
    “I have no need o’ calmin’,” Trinley said. “It’s him who’s got the fire under him.”
    Abramm glared at him, the crazy, blind rage slowly subsiding, leaving him trembling in its wake.
    Rolland’s big hand tightened about Abramm’s upper arm as he said, “We’re just about done here, Alaric. Great Room woodbox probably needs fillin’, though.”
    A moment more Abramm stood there, wrestling with the wild temper. Then he drew a deep breath and pulled himself out of Rolland’s grip, nodding and turning away.
    “Well,” he heard Cedric say as he stepped out the door, “that was right scary.”
    Trinley growled a disdainful reply about brigands and brawlers.
    Abramm stalked back up the hill to the woodyard, where he spent an hour chopping