She stared at him, nonplussed, bereft of hope, feeling herself standing at the brink of some dreadful precipice. ‘What word would you have me say?’
He smiled. ‘It is as they say – Branwen aefter Ragnar – Branwen for Ragnar.’
‘And what of my friends? What of my mother?’
‘You have my word that you will be reunited with the Gwyn Braw, and that they shall not be harmed.’ He nodded enthusiastically, as if all the wine he had quaffed was getting the better of him. ‘Indeed, if they agree to remain under your command, they shall keep their weapons and ride with us to victory. And your mother shall be allowed to dwell in rebuilt Garth Milain in honour and peace.’ He thumped his chest, spilling wine. ‘My oath upon it!’
‘And all this shall come to pass if I turn from the Shining Ones and pledge myself to Ragnar?’ Branwen asked. ‘I’ll be revenged on those who hate me, and I will be revered among the Saxons?’
‘Oh, but you will, Branwen,’ said Ironfist.
She looked closely at him. ‘And I have your oath on this?’
‘You do!’ She saw his eye shining now, as though he knew his triumph was close.
‘And if I refuse?’ she asked.
He frowned. ‘Do not refuse,’ he said. ‘Be true to yourself, Branwen – do not turn from this new life I am offering you.’
She leaned back in the chair, her forehead creasing, her eyes roving over the revelling Saxons that hemmed her in on all sides. She had a very clear vision of the options that lay in front of her. To do as Ironfist asked and to live, or to deny him and probably die.
And who in Powys would care if she died? Not the king, for sure – and certainly not Prince Llew. Not Dagonet ap Wadu, nor any other of the soldiers of Powys. They would be glad to be rid of her. The Gwyn Braw would mourn of course, and Dera would never forgive herself for having led Branwen to this end. But what would it matter? Ironfist’s army would still sweep over Powys – the Gwyn Braw would most likely die in the defence of Pengwern. Garth Milain would fall and her mother’s grief would be brought to a swift and sharp end.
And if she agreed to become a priestess of Ragnar? What then?
The Shining Ones did not deserve her loyalty – they had shown precious little of that to her in her time of great need. They had discarded her, after all the things she had done for them. They had left her to rot in a Saxon prison.
She saw Blodwedd’s face in her mind – rounded, huge-eyed, framed by the feathery fall of tawny hair. The amber eyes pierced her and she heard the owl-girl’s voice quite clearly in her head over the cacophony of the Saxon feasters.
‘Do not do this thing, Branwen. Remain true to your homeland. Remain true to your heart.’
Yes, that was the one thing she could cling to in all her misery and despair and loss. The true voice of her own heart.
The heart of a warrior maiden. The heart of a child of Powys. The heart of the proud daughter of Griffith ap Rhys and Alis ap Owain.
Branwen turned her head to look at Ironfist. There was greed in his face, and a hint of the victory that he seemed certain would be his.
‘Do I have your oath on all that you have told me?’ she asked. ‘Your deathless oath, General Ironfist?’
‘You do!’
She laughed then, throwing her head back. ‘Then I understand fully the value of all these things you offer, Saxon!’ she shouted, her eyes flashing hatred at him. ‘They are as worthless as your word, faithless and vile lord of a brutal and merciless people!’ She sprang up, seething with anger. ‘Do as you will, you filth! I’ll never turn away from the land of my birth! I’ll never worship Ragnar!’
Ironfist surged up out of his chair, his face contorted by frustrated anger, his hand rising, a metal goblet in his fist.
She laughed in his fuming face. ‘So now your true aspect is revealed once more, Saxon cur!’ she shouted. ‘That is good – your pretences of civility sickened me to my stomach!’ She spat at him. ‘Know this – I would gladly die a thousand deaths before I betrayed Brython.’
‘Then die you shall, shaman of the waelisc!’ Ironfist bawled. ‘Die and be damned!’
He brought the heavy cup down with vicious strength against her skull. White agony exploded in her head and Branwen fell forward into oblivion.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
To awake at all was something of a surprise to Branwen. She had expected to die, her head hammered to a pulp by Ironfist in his thwarted rage – her life snuffed out in a few frenzied moments. But she was alive – the agony that pulsed in her head was proof enough of that, not to mention the cold stone floor under her and the hideously familiar stench in her nostrils.
She lay still for a few moments, gathering herself. Then she sat up and saw that she was back in her cell and that her grand clothes had been torn off her and the filthy, ragged shift thrown over her body once more.
She shivered, pulling her furs around herself as she sat there in the dim light. It was day. The day following the feast, she assumed.
Despite her wretchedness, a steady, clear flame burned deep within her. Not hope – nothing like hope – but resolve and determination. She had thrown Ironfist’s temptations back in his face. No matter what was to come, she had bested him, and that small victory tasted sweet in all the sour debris of her life
But now what?
Was Ironfist dreaming up some appropriate way to punish her for her impudence? Would she starve to death in here now? Or would she be dragged out for some more public penance and execution?
‘Caw!’
She turned at the sharp croak. A bird stood watching her from the far side of the cell. She puckered her eyes, trying to make sense of the large black shape.
How had it got in here? It was too large by far to have flown in through the stone slit. And yet, here it was.
The bird stepped towards her, its heavy body swaying, its eyes so bright and fierce a red that it was as though its head were filled with fire.
She knew the malevolent stare of those red eyes. She had encountered this evil creature before.
‘Mumir …’ she murmured.
It was the raven that Ragnar had gifted to the great warrior Skur – a terrible creature with a dark heart and a beak sharp enough to peck out the very soul.
‘No, child,’ came a sinister, rasping voice from the raven’s mouth. ‘Not Mumir … although I have taken his form so that we may speak awhile together.’ The eyes flared. ‘I’d have you know your doom, child of the Dying Gods.’
‘… Ragnar …’ Branwen mouthed the cursed name, her heart freezing in her chest. But she would not give the terrible Saxon god the satisfaction of knowing how she dreaded him. ‘I do not fear you,’ she said defiantly. ‘I saw you bested in the mountains. I saw you flee from the Shining Ones.’
The monstrous bird moved towards her, and as it came closer so Branwen saw that its body seemed to boil and billow, to swell and heave as though some inner force were trying to break free – as though the dark spirit of Ragnar could hardly be contained within the feathered form. Where it stepped, the ground burned black.
‘Upon the morrow, will you be utterly destroyed,’ the bird croaked. ‘My faithful servant Herewulf has invented a new manner of execution especially for you. Your body will be mutilated and ruined while the crowds cheer and mock.’ The sinister eyes shone like furnace fires as the black bird rose on ponderous wings, forcing Branwen’s eyes to follow as it drifted across the cell and came to rest on the lintel above the door.
‘But you shall not die, Branwen of the Weak Gods … I will keep you alive, even though your body be ripped into bloody-boned pieces. I shall have them cut off your head, my child, and impale it upon a spike.’ Branwen stared up at the evil raven, sick with horror. ‘Even then you shall not die,’ continued the hideous voice as the raven took to the air again, swooping low so that Branwen was forced to flinch as its wings brushed past her. ‘I will have them slice off your eyelids and bear your living head before them as they ride into the
west to the conquest of Brython,’ intoned the creature as Branwen turned again, unable to tear her eyes away from the deadly apparition. ‘And thus shall you see all! And even then, when all of Brython squeals and writhes under the heel of my faithful servants, and when the Shining Ones are thrown down into the deepest pits of Hel, never more to rise, even then I will not let you die, child. A temple will be set up in my honour – a temple upon the hill that is called Garth Milain. And that temple will be named Neahdun Cirice Ragnar – the Hill of Ragnar’s Temple. And your head will be placed in that temple, child – alive yet not alive, trapped for ever in the limbo between life and death.’ The voice rose to a dreadful, harsh crescendo as the monstrous bird loomed above her, fouling the air with the slow flap of its wings. ‘And there you will dwell, child!’ it screamed. ‘For all time!’
As the ghastly scream echoed in Branwen’s skull, so the bird’s body finally split apart from the inner pressure and Ragnar’s boiling darkness gushed through the tiny cell, as heavy and dense as floodwater, driving Branwen to the floor and holding her there as she gasped for breath.
Two great burning red eyes glared down on her as the darkness penetrated her body and writhed in her mind, blotting out all memory of sun and warmth and life and love.
Ragnar was the only thing that existed in the world.
Ragnar was everything Branwen had ever known.
Ragnar was all.
‘So, Branwen, how have you been?’
The well-loved, impossible voice woke Branwen from a sleep as heavy and suffocating as deep water.
She sat up. ‘Geraint?’
‘Who else?’
The world about her was still pitch black, but her dead brother stood in the utter darkness, as bright as a candle flame.
She scrambled to her feet. ‘Geraint!’
She ran forward, then paused, puzzled. She took another step towards him. Without having moved, he was still the same distance away from her. She reached out but could not touch him.
‘Are you a ghost?’ she breathed.
Geraint grinned and rubbed his nose. ‘I have no idea,’ he said cheerfully. He shook his head and rested his two fists on his hips. ‘What kind of a mess have you got yourself into, little sister?’ he asked. ‘Can I not leave you alone for half a day?’
‘Half a day?’ gasped Branwen. ‘You have been dead for half a year or more, Geraint!’ Anger rose in her throat. ‘How could you?’ she demanded. ‘How could you have been so stupid as to attack those Saxons at Bevan’s farm? Did you think you’d be a hero? You weren’t, Geraint. You were just another dead boy covered in blood.’ Tears pricked behind her eyes. ‘And I had to sit with you, and guard your body. How could you leave me like that?’
Geraint sighed and shrugged. ‘These things happen in war, Branwen,’ he said. ‘I was doing well. Two arrows loosed and two targets hit. That’s not bad, is it? Admit it – that was pretty good shooting on the run.’
‘But they killed you!’ wailed Branwen. ‘And I was all alone!’
‘You still had mother and father,’ Geraint replied, an achingly familiar tone coming into his voice. Peevish and stubborn – just as she remembered him. Eight months in Annwn had not changed him, it seemed. ‘I’d taught you all that I knew. It was time for you to strike off on your own.’
‘Was it?’ she cried. ‘Do you see where I am? Do you see what I’ve made of my life?’
Geraint wrinkled his nose. ‘You have made some curious choices, I’ll admit,’ he said. ‘Those Old Gods, now. Who would have thought they’d come awake all at once like that and join in the fight against the Saxons? I wish I’d survived to meet them. What was it like, Branwen – coming face to face with the Shining Ones?’
‘Don’t burden her with such questions,’ came her father’s voice, and Branwen saw that he was standing at her brother’s side, although she could not have said when he had appeared. ‘Can’t you see she has enough to think about?’
‘Papa?’ Branwen gasped. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’ Perhaps she could have saved him in the battle under the walls of Garth Milain – but she had chosen to go to her mother’s aid, and so he had died.
‘I know, child,’ he said gently. ‘You did the right thing. How could I have lived on if your mother had fallen? It would have been worse than death.’ He smiled. ‘And things are not so very bad in this place. We feast and we hunt and we tell old tales here.’
‘As you shall soon discover for yourself,’ added a third voice. Gavan ap Huw stood now with her brother and father, the old warrior of the old wars, come to visit her from beyond death in the nothingness of her prison cell.
Branwen stumbled forward, desperate for absolution. The three forms floated away without movement in the black void. ‘You were right!’ she cried, weeping now as she looked into Gavan’s weathered, scarred old face. ‘We should never have gone into the woods. I should have listened to you. You died because of it. My fault!’
‘Hush now, child,’ said Gavan. ‘My death is not on your hands. With eyes wide open I chose to go into the woods. I was the author of my own fate. As are we all. As are you.’
She trembled. ‘Will I die tomorrow?’ she asked in desperation. ‘Or did Ragnor speak the truth? Will I never be allowed to die?’
‘Ravens aren’t the only birds,’ said Gavan.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Saxons aren’t the only horsemen,’ added her father.
‘Ragnar isn’t the only god,’ said Geraint with a smile. ‘Remember what I told you, little sister. Be calm, be silent, be swift, be still.’
The three men began to fade from sight.
‘And remember what the goraig told you!’ called Geraint, almost as an afterthought, his voice echoing from a vast distance. ‘Beware the eyes like two black moons!’
‘Caw!’
The harsh sound brought Branwen to her senses. The darkness in her cell was not so impenetrable as in her dream … or her vision … or whatever it had been when the three dead men from her past had spoken with her. A sliver of grey striped the dark above her head and a faint light filtered in.
‘Leave me be!’ Branwen shouted. ‘Are you so petty a god that you must taunt me even on the day of my doom?’
‘Caw! Caw!’
But it was not the deep, guttural cry of the raven – it was a lighter, more carping, more insistent voice. She frowned, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes with her hand.
‘Fain?’
A grey sickle shape flew down from the slot of dawning light. Instinctively, Branwen raised her arm and the falcon came to rest on her wrist, his claws digging into her flesh.
‘Caw! Caw! Caw!’
Shaking with the thrill of absolute astonishment, Branwen raised her other hand and gently stroked the falcon’s chest feathers with the back of her fingers. ‘Are you real?’ she murmured.
Fain pecked at her hand.
‘Ow!’ The pain was sharp and immediate, and there was a spot of blood on the side of her thumb where his beak had struck.
The falcon let out more cries, his eyes bead-bright and knowing.
‘I don’t understand you, my friend,’ she crooned, delighting in the exquisite pain in her hand, her spirits lifted by the arrival of the bird. ‘Would that Blodwedd were here to translate. But you have found me at last, and that is a fine thing.’
‘Caw! Caw!’
But does Fain bring me good news, or is he here to say farewell? she wondered, as the reality of her situation drowned her hopes. I am in the middle of an army of thousands, and I fear that I shall die today. Her forehead contracted as she remembered the words of the Saxon god. Or worse than die. Far, far worse.
Fain stared at her, treading with his claws, his eyes diamond-hard on her.
There were so many questions she would have asked if she could. What became of my Gwyn Braw when Llew and the king returned from betraying me? She knew she would die without ever learning the answer. Were they allowed to live? Were they killed for fear that
they would avenge me? And Dera, poor Dera. I wish I could speak with her. One word. One word of forgiveness, so that she might know I do not blame her for what happened. She drew the falcon to her face and pressed her cheek to its warm chest feathers. Fain endured this familiarity without resistance, as though he knew how it comforted her.
Did Blodwedd return from the west? Does she know why the Shining Ones turned from me?
Branwen spoke aloud at last, her voice choking hopelessly in her throat. ‘Fain, Fain! Will Powys endure? Or will Ironfist destroy my homeland as he has threatened?’ Her whole body shook. ‘Please, do not let Ragnar take me. Please!’ She did not know whom she was pleading with – the Shining Ones, or some other, greater power? The ‘She creator’ that Merion had spoken of long ago in her mountain cave?
Was there any power in the world that could save her now?
Clank!
Branwen twisted her head at the sudden noise.
It was the sound of the door being unlocked.
Fain flew from her wrist. In a flurry of grey wings, he headed for the rectangle of light and was gone from the cell before Branwen had time to draw breath.
She stood, turning to face the opening door.
Three Saxon guards stood there, two armed with spears, the third with a sword. Their faces were forbidding and pitiless.
‘Will you give me a weapon?’ she asked, her voice firm and steady although her heart was faltering in her chest. ‘So that I may die like a warrior.’
A fourth and fifth man appeared through the doorway, one with an axe, the other with a net in his hands.