‘I think not,’ Dera said again. ‘Two may hide among the stones and hope not to be seen, but our chances of being revealed too soon would increase with a greater number. And besides, we two may quit Pengwern unremarked, but if all the Gwyn Braw leave, word will get back to Prince Llew, and his suspicions be roused.’
Branwen frowned. ‘There’s sense in that,’ she admitted. ‘But what of the twenty-five that will follow? How shall we keep them at bay?’
‘If Llew is dead, I believe they will kneel to the king,’ said Dera.
Branwen smiled grimly. ‘Then Llew shall die,’ she said. ‘At my hand shall the treacherous prince meet his end – and if fate allows, my second blow will be to the heart of General Ironfist!’
Leaving Pengwern at dead of night was accomplished without too much difficulty, despite the guards on the gates. For Branwen the hardest part was creeping past the long house of the Gwyn Braw to secure their horses, without rousing her comrades for the adventure that was to come. But Dera was probably right – six riding out together would cause too much of a stir. And there was another, perhaps stronger reason why Branwen was prepared to leave her followers slumbering while she and Dera departed.
She feared that more of her comrades might die. If the Shining Ones had chosen not to protect Linette, why should Branwen assume any others of the Gwyn Braw were safe now? Better to ride into danger with Dera alone, than to drag her friends to potential destruction.
‘Who seeks to pass?’ demanded the gate guard, standing besides a blazing iron brazier and wrapped head to foot in a cloak of thick furs. His eyes narrowed as he saw who it was that had led their horses to the outer bailey. ‘What is your business outside in the deeps of the night?’
‘I have heard word,’ Branwen said, reciting the explanation that she and Dera had practised. ‘The Shining Ones wish to speak with me.’ She regarded the guard captain with a cold eye. ‘The Old Powers will not be denied, master gate warden,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Either you let us out to speak with them, or they will come here. The choice is yours.’
The man’s eyes widened in panic and a few moments later one of the gates was opened a fraction to allow Branwen and Dera to lead their two horses out into the night. As they mounted up and rode along the causeway, they heard the timber bars being thrown into place. None in Pengwern wanted to have dealings with the Shining Ones. Let the shaman girl go and meet with the old demons, if she was moonstruck enough to wish it!
The wind had shifted in the evening so that now it flowed down like an icy river from the north, bringing thick snow clouds along with it, although for the moment no fresh snow was falling. If Caradoc had sent the blessing of that warm, bright day to them so that they might bury Linette in peace, then his benison had ended with the sunset, and the weather had turned foul again.
So, under a deep and starless night sky, Branwen and Dera turned their horses to the north and rode at the canter around the high walls of Pengwern, taking then an eastward path towards the banks of the frozen River Hefren.
They arrived at the isolated mound of Bwlch Crug-Glas a little before dawn. It rose before them, a smooth flat-topped hillock, its crest lifting some five fathoms above the snow-clad fields and forests that surrounded it. It stood there, brooding under the heavy sky, bare and white and eerie in the strange winter’s night. It was crowned by a ring of age-old standing stones, erected there in the far-flung mythic times ere even the Romans came to conquer and to settle.
Legends swarmed about the place, legends of ancient rites and festivals, legends of the Druid priests of old, wielding their magic sickles, brewing their spells with the aid of mistletoe and myrtle. Calling on the stars for power, gathering at the four quarters of the year to speak the lost words and to perform the forgotten rituals at sunrise and sunset. Branwen had heard these forbidden tales from her brother, whispered in the dark night when all others slept. She had never forgotten them – she had never forgotten the images that capered in her mind when she thought of them.
Of course, in these days of the Three Saints, when men denied and feared the Old Ones in equal measure, the hoary old hill had lost much of its magic. It lay abandoned and unheeded in disputed lands where the borders waxed and waned between Powys and Mercia.
The old stones, leaning now at odd angles against the horizon, were no more than curiosities. But as Branwen tethered Terrwyn in a hidden forest glade and climbed with Dera at her side up the soft, swelling slope to the top of the hill, she was sure that she could feel a subdued power still, the slow heartbeat of the hill, throbbing under her feet as she trudged through the snow.
Dera carried a bunch of twigs with her, using their whipping ends to sweep the snow level behind them so that their tracks would not be seen.
They came to the crown of the hill just as the first gleam of sunlight glowed in the far east.
‘Shall we hide together or apart?’ asked Dera in a rush of white breath.
‘Apart would be better,’ said Branwen. She pointed northwards. ‘Go find a stone where you can see but not be seen,’ she said. She turned towards the opposite side of the ring. ‘I’ll do the same. When they arrive, do nothing till you hear me cry out – then move swift and sure and have your sword ready.’ She looked into her comrade’s face. ‘If I fall, you must kill Llew ap Gelert.’
Dera nodded. ‘I shall.’ She handed Branwen half of the twig bundle.
‘So. We hide and we wait,’ said Branwen. She almost added may the Shining Ones look over you! but left the words unsaid.
Cold! So cold! Cold to the very marrow of her bones. Branwen huddled in the lee of one of the standing stones of Bwlch Crug-Glas as the sun slowly crawled up over the clouded horizon and a pale, colourless light began to creep across the land.
She tucked her hands into her armpits to try and keep some shred of heat in her fingers. There would be little point in leaping out to reveal Llew’s treachery if her hands were too numb to grip a sword.
She wished Iwan and Aberfa and the others were hidden nearby. Had she been wrong to agree to Dera’s plan? Was it a bad idea that the two of them were here alone?
She lifted her head so that her eyes peered over a nick in the stone. How long before something would happen? How long before Llew ap Gelert’s blood would stain the snow?
Branwen heard the faint thud of hooves in the snow. The creak of leather. The dull rattle of metal. Cautiously, hardly daring to breathe, she lifted her eyes over the stone.
Two horsemen were approaching from the east.
One of them was a bearded Saxon man she had never seen before, bearing in his hand a Saxon pennant: a rearing white dragon on a field of blood red.
The other was General Ironfist. He was riding a tall black stallion, his red cloak spread out over the horse’s rump. There was gold at his neck and wrists, and upon his head was a round helmet chased with filigree patterns of gold and silver. But it was his face that held Branwen’s attention. A face she knew too well – a black bearded face scarred from hairline to jaw on the right side, a brutal face with a reddish blemish where once a cruel blue eye had stared. A ruined face clawed to the bone by Fain the falcon.
Branwen sought for some sign of weapons on the Saxon general, but no sword hung from his belt and she saw no axe or spear or seax knife. Not that he wasn’t capable of hiding a dagger in his clothes!
The two riders brought their horses slowly to the very centre of the ring of stones, and there they halted, the horses snorting clouds, the men breathing white mist. Neither spoke. Against the formless grey of the clouds, they sat there in silence, staring into the west.
Time passed.
The standard-bearer spoke and Ironfist replied tersely. Branwen had no idea what had passed between them. Maybe the other had asked will they come? and Ironfist had replied yes, be patient! Or might it have been: my dagger is to hand, with the response good! Strike swift and hard!
The steady, snow-muffled beat of hooves came out of the west. Branwen turned her he
ad and saw two riders slowly lifting above the curve of the hill. Her breath hissed and her right hand slipped to grasp her sword hilt, her left tightening on her shield.
Riding side by side, Prince Llew and King Cynon made their way through the stones and out on to the flat hilltop. Both were dressed in fine cloaks and clothes, and the king had the crown of Powys on his head.
Ironfist sat up erect in the saddle, watching with a glittering eye as the king and the prince approached.
Ironfist was the first to speak. ‘Nytan laedenspraec, cyning?’ he called.
Cynan brought his horse to a halt some three paces from the two Saxons.
‘General Herewulf,’ he said. ‘Forgive me. I do not understand you.’
Ironfist grinned like cold iron. ‘I asked whether you speak my language, King of Powys,’ he said in his heavy accent, a hint of mockery in his voice. ‘The question is answered.’ He looked at Prince Llew. ‘It is good to meet at last, my lord prince,’ he said. ‘Let us hope this meeting will bring us all that we would wish.’
‘I believe it will, my lord general,’ replied Llew. Did Branwen detect a hint of deference in the prince’s voice? Like a man speaking to his overlord rather than to his sworn enemy?
‘So is the tribute to hand, King of Powys?’ asked Ironfist. ‘Have you come here with the thing I requested of you?’
‘I do think it is so,’ said Cynon. ‘My scouts tell me it is close by.’
Branwen frowned. That was strange. Surely this was a meeting to discuss what lands might be handed to the Saxons to prevent their invasion? So, what ‘thing’ was it that they were talking about?
‘And when the tribute is in your possession, General Herewulf, shall we have peace?’ asked the king.
‘Say rather that we shall be upon the road to peace,’ Ironfist replied. ‘I shall hold back my armies for now, and our counsellors and wise men shall debate the question of the disputed borders between Mercia and Powys.’ Ironfist lifted his chin, his single eye flashing. ‘While the talks last, I shall not strike, you have my word.’
‘Agreed, my lord general,’ said King Cynon.
Ironfist leaned forward in the saddle now, and there was a wild and hungry look on his face, like a wolf that has scented prey. ‘Give her to me, King of Powys! I would have her now!’
Her? Branwen’s mind spun. The tribute that the king was to hand over to Ironfist was a woman?
A moment later, Branwen heard a stifled cry from the far side of the circle of stones. There was a flurry of movement. Dera plunged into view, running hard, her face livid with dread and anguish.
‘Branwen, we have been tricked!’ she screamed. ‘Fly! It is a trap!’
A large dark shape loomed up from behind the same stone. It ran forward, snatching at Dera, grasping her around the waist, the other hand coming up over her mouth.
Dagonet ap Wadu!
Dera’s father lifted her off her feet, stifling her cries with one hand while she struggled and kicked in his grip.
Branwen rose to her feet, drawing her sword with a single hissing motion. But she had not taken a single step before she heard a rushing sound at her back. She turned to see a dozen armed men pounding up towards her. Not Saxon men – but warriors of Powys.
And at the same instant, more soldiers rose from behind the stones – Saxon archers, each with an arrow on the string.
Each aiming their arrows at Branwen.
She spun this way and that, her mind reeling as she tried to take in what was happening. The archers must have slipped up here as the sun rose, stealthy as spiders, lurking in silence to spring the trap on her.
‘Take her alive!’ roared Ironfist. ‘The man who kills her forfeits his own life!’ Then he shouted again in his own language – as though giving the same command to the Saxon bowmen.
Branwen put her back to the standing stone, lifting her shield to her eyes, hefting her sword in her fist – standing ready as the swordsmen approached her up the hill.
‘Branwen ap Griffith,’ shouted Llew. ‘If you fight you will die, that is most certain – but you will not die alone! Listen to me, witch girl! Throw down your sword, or when I return to Pengwern I will have all of the Gwyn Braw slaughtered. Do not doubt me!’
Branwen hesitated, her heart flooded with anger and despair. How had she misjudged the situation so catastrophically? How had it never occurred to her that this might happen?
The men were close to her now, moving more slowly, their eyes uneasy as they came forward. They knew too well her prowess in battle. None wished to be the first to feel her sword.
‘I have archers with me who can shoot a cherry from the branch at fifty paces, shaman girl of the waelisc!’ called Ironfist. ‘If you do not drop your sword, I will order them to fire at your hands. Consider how well you will fight with nothing but the stubs of fingers!’
She lunged forward, shouting, sweeping the air with her sword. The soldiers drew back, fear in their faces. She turned and scrambled up on to the head of the tall stone, planting her feet firmly, turning to face the four horsemen.
‘Am I to be sacrificed?’ she called out to them, her eyes on the king. ‘Am I the price of peace, my lord?’
King Cynon looked at her, his face calm and emotionless. ‘You are,’ he said.
‘I will not surrender!’ Branwen cried. ‘I’ll die before I am handed over to the Saxons!’
‘So be it,’ called Llew. ‘Then we shall ride back to Pengwern over your dead body and cut the throats of all who followed you.’ His voice was raven-harsh in her ears. ‘And then we shall ride north to Garth Milain and we shall cut out your mother’s heart for having cursed this land with such a fiend as you!’
Branwen gaped at him. Not for a heartbeat did she doubt his word. He would do these things. He would murder Iwan and Aberfa and Banon and Rhodri – and then he would go to her homeland and kill her mother.
He would! She knew it as certainly as if she could already see their bleeding corpses in front of her shrinking eyes.
She looked down to where Dagonet still held the squirming and kicking Dera.
So it’s all done, is it? At least I die knowing that Dera did not betray me. She was as fooled as was I, that much is plain. The conversation between Llew and Angor must have been staged for her ears. They knew she would come to me, and they knew I would act as I did. And so I walked open-eyed into the trap they prepared for me. Branwen the honourable fool. And what of my ancient guardians now? Where are they when the Emerald Flame is about to be snuffed out, when the Bright Blade is to be broken? Maybe this is how the Shining Ones punish those who turn away from them.
Or perhaps this was always the end of destiny’s path for me.
Her heart breaking, she threw down her sword and let her shield drop from her grip.
Ironfist smiled. Saxon swordsmen surrounded the stone upon which she was standing.
Dera finally wrenched herself free of her father’s hands. She dropped to her knees. ‘Branwen! I’m sorry! I did not know!’
‘But your father knew you well enough, Dera ap Dagonet, the saints help you to come to your true senses!’ said the king. ‘He said you would act as you did – and he was right.’ He smiled a cold smile. ‘Happy is the father who knows his child so well.’
‘No!’ screamed Dera. ‘No!’
Dagonet hauled his daughter to her feet, ripping her sword from her belt.
‘Silence, child!’ he growled. ‘It’s done!’ He gestured to a couple of warriors, who came forward and dragged the weeping Dera away between them.
‘We return to Pengwern,’ said the king. ‘Farewell, General Herewulf. I shall send ambassadors to Chester in due time to debate the terms of a full and final peace between us.’
‘And I shall welcome them, King of Powys,’ Ironfist replied.
The king and Prince Llew turned their horses and rode away down the snowy hillside, the warriors of Powys following after them without a backward glance.
Branwen was alone, desolate
and unarmed among her enemies.
Ironfist rode up to the stone where Branwen was standing.
‘Well now,’ he said. ‘I have got what I came for.’ The chilling smile widened across his ravaged face. ‘Will you return with me to my camp willingly or bound to a horse’s tail? Either way, I will not be denied the joy of your company.’ His voice hardened. ‘We have much to discuss – we must speak of how you murdered and mutilated my only son. We have that and many another deeds of yours to debate.’ His pale-blue eye flashed with an evil that made Branwen’s heart falter in her chest. ‘I have a welcome prepared for you in Chester,’ he continued with horrible relish. ‘A welcome the like of which you cannot even begin to imagine!’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Branwen huddled under scabby furs, her head tucked into her shoulders, her knees clamped to her chest, her arms wrapped around her empty belly. She stared up at a single narrow slot high in the stone wall, a thin, raw gap just under the ceiling through which the meagre, watery daylight oozed. It was the only glimpse she had of the world outside her cell.
That lean sliver of light was a blessing and a curse. Through it she could see a fraction of the sky. On good days when the clouds were being herded along under the whip of the wind, she would sit staring up for hours at the constantly changing shapes that coiled and rolled across her field of vision. On bad days, it was blank white or grey or yellowish and had no life to it at all. Early on in her imprisonment, snow had fallen frequently, sometimes so thickly that it almost blocked her view. But more recently there had been no snow. She guessed that in the world outside her prison, the long hard winter was finally coming to an end.
Sometimes the cold air would trickle down the wall from the raw slot and come creeping across the floor like icy water. Sometimes the gap allowed a vicious wind to gust into the cell and bite at her with its frozen teeth.
Voices and other sounds of everyday life in Chester bled down to her in her chilly cell. The shouting and calling of Saxon men and women – sometimes the laughter of a child. The pattering of feet. The creak of wheels. The clop of horses or the muddled percussion of hooves and the plaintive bleating of animals being driven to market. On days when the bustle of the busy townsfolk was especially loud, she longed for the absolute silence of the black night. To know that people were living free lives just beyond her reach was a torment that she found hard to bear. And yet, in the throbbing dark, she yearned for some sound to prove she was not dead and in her grave. By day and by night the torture in her mind never ceased.