SIAWN AND HIS MEN knew exactly where they were going, heading up the slope. They also had torches. Ceinion, though he preferred to walk, had been riding all his life. They came to the place where the trail from the ridge met the path, stopped there, the horses stamping. The cleric, though much the oldest, was the first to hear sounds. Pointed into the woods. Siawn led them there, cutting a little north of where Alun had tried to force his way through. There were nine of them. The other young Cadyri, Gryffeth ap Ludh, had joined them, fighting sorrow. They found the two dead Erlings and a dying one almost immediately.
Siawn leaned over in his saddle and killed the wounded man with his sword. He’d needed to do that, Ceinion thought: Brynn’s captain had come into the yard too late, after the fighting was done. The cleric said nothing. There were teachings against this, but this wood tonight was not the place for them.
By the light of their smoking torches they saw signs of passage through the far side of that small glade. They went straight through and out the other side, and so came to the wider clearing, the pool of water under stars. Stopped then, all of them, without words. It became very quiet, even the horses.
The man next to Ceinion made the sign of the sun disk. The cleric, a little belatedly, did the same. Pools in the wood, wells, oak groves, mounds … the half-world. The pagan places that had once been holy before the Cyngael had come to Jad, or the god had come to them in their valleys and hills.
These forest pools were his enemies, and Ceinion knew it. The first clerics, arriving from Batiara and Ferrieres, had chanted stern invocations, reading from the liturgy beside such waters as this, casting out all presence of false spirits and old magics. Or trying to. People might kneel today in stone chapels of the god and go straight from them to seek their future from a wise woman using mouse bones, or drop an offering in a well. Or into a pool by moonlight, or under stars.
“Let’s go,” Ceinion said. “This is just water, just a wood.”
“No it isn’t, my lord,” said the man beside him, respectfully but firmly. The one who had made the sign. “He’s here. Look.” And only then did Ceinion see the boy on his horse, motionless in the water, and understand.
“Dear Jad!” said one of the others. “He went into the pool.”
“No moons,” said another. “A moonless night—look at him.”
“Do you hear music?” said Siawn abruptly. “Listen!”
“We do not,” said Ceinion of Llywerth, fiercely, his heart beating fast now.
“Look at him,” Siawn repeated. “He’s trapped. Can’t even move!” The horses were restive now, agitated by their riders, or by something else, tossing their heads.
“Of course he can move,” said the cleric, and swung down from his mount and went forward, striding hard, a man used to woods and nights and swift, decisive movement.
“No!” cried a voice from behind him. “My lord, do not—”
That he ignored. There were souls here, to save and defend. His entrusted task for so long. He heard an owl cry, hunting. A normal sound, proper in a night wood. Part of the order of things. Men feared the unknown, and so the dark. Jad was Light in his being, an answer to demons and spirits, shelter for his children.
He spoke a swift prayer and went straight into the pool, splashing through the shallows, calling the young prince’s name. The boy didn’t even turn his head. Ceinion came up beside him, and in the darkness he saw that Alun ab Owyn’s mouth was wide open, as though he was trying to speak—or shout. He caught his breath.
And then, terribly, there was the sound of music. Very faint it seemed to Ceinion, ahead of them and to the right. Horns and flutes, stringed instruments, bells, moving across the unrippled stillness of the water. He looked, saw nothing there. Ceinion spoke Jad’s holy name. He signed the disk, and seized the reins of the Erling horse. It wouldn’t move.
He didn’t want the others to see him struggling with the animal. Their souls, their belief, were in danger here. He reached up with both arms and pulled Owyn’s son, unresisting, from the saddle. He threw the young man over one shoulder and carried him, splashing and staggering, almost falling, out of the pool, and he laid him down on the dark grass at the water’s edge. Then he knelt beside him, touched the disk about his throat, and prayed.
After a moment, Alun ab Owyn blinked. He shook his head. Drew a breath and then closed his eyes, which was a curious relief, because what Ceinion saw in his face, even in the darkness, was harrowing.
Eyes still closed, voice low, utterly uninflected, the young Cadyri said, “I saw him. My brother. There were faeries, and he was there.”
“You did not,” Ceinion said firmly, clearly. “You are grieving, my child, and in a strange place, and you have just killed someone, I believe. Your mind was overswayed. It happens, son of Owyn. I know it happens. We long for those we have lost, we see them … everywhere. Believe me, sunrise and the god will set you right on this.”
“I saw him,” Alun repeated.
No emphasis, the quiet more unsettling than fervour or insistence would have been. He opened his eyes, looking up at Ceinion.
“You know that is heresy, lad. I do not want—”
“I saw him.”
Ceinion looked over his shoulder. The others had remained where they were, watching. Too far away to hear. The pool was still as glass. No wind in the glade. Nothing that could be taken for music now. He must have imagined it himself; would never claim to be immune to the strangeness of a place like this. And he had a memory of his own, pushed hard away, always, of … another place like this. He was aware of the shapes of power, the weight of the past. He was a fallible man, always had been, struggling to be virtuous in times that made it hard.
He heard the owl again; far side of the water now. Ceinion looked up, stars overhead in the bowl of sky between trees.
The Erling horse shook its head, snorted loudly, and walked placidly out of the pond by itself. It lowered its head to crop the black grass beside them. Ceinion watched it for a moment, the utter ordinariness. He looked back at the boy, took a deep breath.
“Come, lad,” he said. “Will you pray with me, at Brynn’s chapel?”
“Of course,” said Alun ab Owyn, almost too calmly. He sat up, and then stood, without aid. Then he walked straight back into the pool.
Ceinion half lifted a hand in protest, then saw the boy bend down and pick up a sword from the shallows. Alun walked back out.
“They’ve gone, you see,” he said.
They returned to the others, leading the Erling horse. Two of Brynn’s men made the sign of the disk as they came up, eyeing the Cadyri prince warily. Gryffeth ap Ludh dismounted and embraced his cousin. Alun returned the gesture, briefly. Ceinion watched him, his brow knit.
“The two Cadyri and I will go back to Brynnfell,” he said.
“Two of them escaped from me,” Alun said, looking up at Siawn. “The one with the bow. Ivarr.”
“We’ll catch him,” said Siawn, quietly.
“He went south, around the water,” Owyn’s son said, pointing. “Probably double back west.” He seemed composed, grave even. Too much so, in fact. The cousin was weeping. Ceinion felt a needle of fear.
“We’ll catch him,” Siawn repeated, and cantered off, giving the pool a wide berth, his men following.
Certainty can be misplaced, even when there is fair cause for it. They didn’t, in fact, catch him: a man on a good-enough horse, in darkness, which made tracking hard. Some days later, word would come to Brynnfell of two people killed, by arrows—a farm labourer and a young girl—in the thinly populated valley between them and the sea. Both the man and the girl had been bloodeagled, which was an abomination. Nor would anyone ever find the Erling ships moored, Jad alone knew where, along the wild and rocky coastline to the west. The god might indeed know, but he didn’t always confide such things to his mortal children, doing what they could to serve him in a dark and savage world.
CHAPTER IV
Rhiannon had known since
childhood (not yet so far behind her) that her father’s importance did not emerge from court manners and courtly wit. Brynn ap Hywll had achieved power and renown by killing men: Anglcyn and Erling and, on more than one occasion, those from the provinces of Cadyr and Llywerth, in the (lengthy) intervals between (brief) truces among the Cyngael.
“Jad’s a warrior,” was his blunt response to a sequence of clerics who’d joined his household and then attempted to instill a gentler piety in the battle-scarred leader of the Hywll line.
Nonetheless, whatever she might have known from harp song and meadhall tale, his daughter had never seen her father kill until tonight. Until the moment when he had slashed a thrown and caught sword deep into the Erling who’d been trying to bargain his way to freedom.
It hadn’t disturbed her, watching the man die.
That was a surprise. She had discovered it about herself: seeing the sword of Alun ab Owyn in her father’s thick hands come down on the Erling. She wondered if it was a bad, even an impious thing that she didn’t recoil from what she saw and heard: strangled, bubbling cry, blood bursting, a man falling like a sack.
It gave her, in truth, a measure of satisfaction. She knew that she ought properly to atone for that, in chapel. She had no intention of doing so. There were two gashes on her throat and neck from an Erling axe. There was blood on her body, and on her green gown. She had been expecting to die in her own chambers tonight. Had told Siawn and his men to let the Erling kill her. She could still hear herself speaking those words. Resolute then, she’d had to conceal shaking hands after.
Had, accordingly, little sympathy to spare for Erling raiders when they were slain, and that applied to the five her father ordered executed when it became evident they were not going to bring any ransom.
They were dispatched where they stood in the torchlit yard. No words spoken, no ceremony, pause for prayer. Five living men, five dead men. In the time one might lift and drink a cup of wine. Brynn’s men began walking around the yard with torches, killing those Erlings who lay on the ground, wounded, not yet dead. They had come to raid, take slaves, rape and kill, the way they always came.
A message needed to be sent, endlessly: the Cyngael might not worship gods of storm and sword, or believe in an afterworld of endless battle, but they could be—some of them could be—as bloody and as ruthless as an Erling when need was.
She was still outside when her father spoke to the older, red-bearded raider. Brynn walked up to the man, held again between two of their people, more tightly than before. He had broken free once—and saved Brynn from an arrow. Her father, Rhiannon realized, was dealing with a great anger because of that.
“How many of you were here?” Brynn bit off the words, speaking quietly. He was never quiet, she thought.
“Thirty, a few more.” No hesitation. The man was almost as big as her father, Rhiannon saw. And of an age.
“As many left behind?”
“Forty, to guard the ships. Take them off the coast, if necessary.”
“Two ships?”
“Three. We had some horses, to come inland.”
Brynn had dressed by now, was holding his own sword, though there was no need for it. He began to pace as they spoke. The red-bearded Erling watched his movements, standing between two men. They were gripping his arms tightly, Rhiannon saw. She was certain her father was going to kill him.
“You rode straight for this farmhouse?”
“Yes, that was the idea. If we could find it.”
“How did you find it?”
“Captured a shepherd.”
“And he is?”
“Dead,” said the Erling. “I can take you to him, if you want.”
“You expected this house to be undefended?”
The man smiled a little, then, and shook his head. “Not defended by your warband, certainly. Young leaders. They made a mistake.”
“You weren’t one of them?”
The other man shook his head.
“The one who held me brought you here? Of the line of the Volgan?”
The Erling nodded.
“Elder grandson?” Brynn had stopped in front of him again.
“Younger. Ivarr’s the elder.”
“But he didn’t lead.”
The man shook his head. “Yes and no. It was his idea. But Ivarr’s … different.”
Brynn was stabbing his blade into the earth now.
“You came to burn this farm?”
“And kill you, and any of your family here, yes.”
He was so calm, Rhiannon thought. Had he made his peace with dying? She didn’t think that was it. He’d surrendered, said he didn’t want to be killed, back in her chamber.
“Because of the grandfather?”
The man nodded. “Your killing him. Taking the sword. These two decided they were of an age to avenge it, since their father had not. They were wrong.”
“And why are you here? You’re as old as I am.”
First hesitation. In the silence Rhiannon could hear the horses and the crackle of torches. “Nothing to keep me in Vinmark. I made a mistake, too.”
Part of an answer, Rhiannon thought, listening closely.
Brynn was staring at him. “Coming, or before you came?”
Another pause. “Both.”
“There’s no ransom for you, is there.”
“No,” the man said frankly. “Once there might have been.”
Brynn’s gaze was steady. “Maybe. Were you ransomed last time you were taken here, or did you escape?”
Again, a silence. “Escaped,” the Erling admitted.
He had decided, Rhiannon realized, that there was no hope in anything but honesty.
Brynn was nodding. “I thought so. I believe I remember you. The red hair. You did raid with Volganson, didn’t you? You escaped east, twenty-five years ago, after he died. Through the hills. All the way to the Erling settlements on the east coast. They chased you, didn’t they? You used a cleric as hostage, if I remember.”
A murmur, from those listening.
“I did. I released him. He was a decent enough man.”
Brynn’s voice altered slightly.
“That was a long way to go.”
“By Ingavin’s blind eye, I wouldn’t want to do it again,” the Erling said dryly.
Another silence. Brynn resumed his pacing. “There’s no ransom for you. What can you offer me?”
“A hammer, sworn loyalty.”
“Until you escape again?”
“I said I wouldn’t do it again, that journey. I was young then.” He looked down and away for the first time, then back up. “I have nothing to go home to, and this place is as good as any for me to end my days. You can make me a slave, to dig ditches or carry water, or use me more wisely, but I will not escape again.”
“You will take the oath and come to the faith of Jad?”
Another slight smile, torchlight upon him. “I did that last time.”
Brynn didn’t return the smile. “And recanted?”
“Last time. I was young. I’m not any more. Neither Ingavin nor your sun god are worth dying for, in my judgement. I suppose I am a heretic to two faiths. Kill me?”
Brynn was standing still again, in front of him.
“Where are the ships? You will guide us to them.”
The Erling shook his head. “Not that.”
Rhiannon saw her father’s expression. He wasn’t normally someone she feared.
“Yes that, Erling.”
“This is the price of being allowed to live?”
“It is. You spoke of loyalty. Prove it.”
The Erling was still a moment, considering. Torches moved in the yard around them. Men were being carried inside, or helped if they could walk.
“Best kill me then,” the red-bearded man said.
“If I must,” said Brynn.
“No,” said someone else, stepping forward. “I will take him as a man of mine. My own guard.”
Rhiannon tur
ned, her mouth falling open.
“Let me be clear on this,” her mother went on, coming to stand beside her husband, looking at the Erling. Rhiannon hadn’t realized she was even with them. “I believe I understand. You would fight an Erling band that came upon us now, but will not reveal where your fellows are?”
The Erling looked at her. “Thank you, my lady,” he said. “Certain things done for life make the life unworthy. You become sick with them. They poison you, your thoughts.” He turned back to Brynn. “They were shipmates,” he said.
Brynn’s gaze held that of the Erling another moment, then he looked to his wife. “You trust him?”
Enid nodded her head.
He was still frowning. “He can easily be killed. I will do it myself.”
“I know you will. You want to. Leave him to me. Let us get to our work. There are wounded men here. Erling, what is your name?”
“Whatever name you give me,” the man said.
The Lady Enid swore. It was startling. “What is your name?” she repeated.
A last hesitation, then that wry expression again. “Forgive me. My mother named me Thorkell. I answer to it.”
RHIANNON WATCHED the Erling go with her mother. He’d said before, in her rooms, that he could be ransomed. A lie, it now emerged. From the look of him—an old man still raiding—Helda had said she doubted it. Helda was older, knew more about these things. She was the calmest of them, too, had helped Rhiannon simply by being that way. They had almost died. They could have died tonight. The one named Thorkell had saved her father and herself, both.
Rhiannon, hands steady as she gathered linens and carried heated water with Helda for the wounded in the hall, remembered the wind of that hammer flying past her face. Realized—already—that she would likely do so all her life, carrying the memory like the two scars on her throat.