What was implausible in the extreme was what they actually saw. The man who’d answered Alun’s question was smallish, grey-haired, cheeks and chin smooth-shaven, smiling at the two of them. He was alone, hands out and open, weaponless … and he was wearing a faded, telltale yellow robe with a golden disk of Jad about his neck.
“I might not actually be remembering rightly,” he went on affably. “It has been some time since I’ve been here, and memory slips as you get older, you know.”
Dai blinked, and shook his head as if to clear it after a blow. They’d been completely surprised by an aging cleric.
Alun cleared his throat. One particular thing had registered, powerfully. “Did you, er, say … Brynn ap Hywll?”
Dai was still speechless.
The cleric nodded benignly. “Ah. You know of him, do you?”
Alun swore again. He was fighting a rising panic.
The cleric made a reproving face, then chuckled. “You do know him.”
Of course they did. “We don’t know you,” Dai said, finally recovering the capacity for speech. He’d lowered the knife. “How did you get up here?”
“Same way you did, I imagine.”
“We didn’t hear you.”
“Evidently. I do apologize. I was quiet. I’ve learned how to be. Not quite sure what I’d find, you know.”
The long yellow robes of a cleric were ill suited to silent climbing, and this man was not young. Whoever he was, he was no ordinary religious.
“Brynn!” Alun muttered grimly to his brother. The name—and what it meant—reverberated inside him. His heart was pounding.
“I heard.”
“What evil, Jad-cursed luck!”
“Yes, well,” said Dai. He was concentrating on the stranger for the moment. “I did ask who you were. I’d count it a great courtesy if you favoured us with your name.”
The cleric smiled, pleased. “Good manners,” he said, “were always a mark of your father’s family, whatever their other sins might have been. How is Owyn? And your lady mother? Both well, I dare hope? It has been many years.”
Dai blinked again. You are a prince of Cadyr, he reminded himself. Your royal father’s heir. Born to lead men, to control situations. It became a necessary reminder, suddenly.
“You have entirely the advantage of us,” said his brother, “in all ways I can imagine.” Alun’s mouth quirked. He found too many things amusing, Dai thought. A younger brother’s trait. Less responsibility.
“All ways? Well, one of you does have a knife,” said the cleric, but he was smiling as he said it. He lowered his hands. “I’m Ceinion of Llywerth, servant of Jad.”
Alun dropped to his knees.
Dai’s jaw seemed to be hanging open. He snapped it shut, felt himself going red as a boy caught idling by his tutor. He sheathed the knife hurriedly and sank down beside his brother, head lowered, hands together in submission. He felt overwhelmed. A saturation of the unexpected. The unprepossessing yellow-robed man on this wooded slope was the high cleric of the three fractious provinces of the Cyngael.
He calmly made the sign of Jad’s disk in blessing over both of them.
“Come down with me,” he said, “the way we came. Unless you have an objection, you are now my personal escorts. We’re stopping here at Brynnfell on our way north to Amren’s court at Beda.” He paused. “Or did you really want to try attacking Brynn’s own house? I shouldn’t advise it, you know.”
I shouldn’t advise it. Alun didn’t know whether to laugh or curse again. Brynn ap Hywll was only the subject of twenty-five years’ worth of songs and stories. Erling’s Bane they’d named him, here in the west. He’d spent his youth battling the raiders from overseas with his cousin Amren, now ruling in Arberth, of whom there were stories too. With them in those days had been Dai and Alun’s own father and uncle—and this man, Ceinion of Llywerth. The generation that had beaten back Siggur Volganson—the Volgan—and his longships. And Brynn was the one who’d killed him.
Alun drew a steadying breath. Their father, who liked to hold forth with a flask at his elbow, had told tales of all of these men. Had fought with—and then sometimes against—them. He and Dai and their friends were, Alun thought, as they walked down and out of the wood behind the anointed high cleric of the Cyngael, in waters far over their heads. Brynnfell. This was Brynnfell below them.
They had been about to attack it. With eleven men.
“This is his stronghold?” he heard Dai asking. “I thought—”
“Edrys was? His castle? It is, of course, north-east by Rheden and the Wall. And there are other farms. This is the largest one. He’s here now, as it happens.”
“What? Here? Himself? Brynn?”
Alun worked to breathe normally. Dai sounded stunned. His brother, who was always so composed. This, too, could almost be funny, Alun thought. Almost.
Ceinion of Llywerth was nodding his head, still leading the way downwards. “He’s here to receive me, actually. Good of him, I must say. I sent word that I would be passing through.” He glanced back. “How many men do you have? I saw you two climbing, but not the others.”
The cleric’s tone was precise, suddenly. Dai answered him.
“And how many were taken?”
“Just the one,” Dai said. Alun kept quiet. Younger brother.
“His name is Gryffeth? That’s Ludh’s son?”
Dai nodded.
He’d simply overheard them, Alun told himself. This wasn’t Jad’s gift of sight, or anything frightening.
“Very well,” said the cleric crisply, turning to them as they came out of the trees and onto the path. “I’d account it a waste to have good men killed today. I will do penance for a deception in the name of Jad’s peace. Hear me. You and your fellows joined me by arrangement at a ford of the Llyfarch River three days ago. You are escorting me north as a courtesy, and so that you might visit Amren’s court at Beda and offer prayers with him in his new-built sanctuary during this time of truce. Do you understand all that?”
They nodded, two heads bobbing up and down.
“Tell me, is your cousin Gryffeth ap Ludh a clever man?”
“No,” said Dai, truthfully.
The cleric made a face. “What will he have told them?”
“I have no idea,” Dai said.
“Nothing,” Alun said. “He isn’t quick, but he can keep silent.”
The cleric shook his head. “But why would he keep silent when all he had to say was that he was riding in advance to tell them I had arrived?”
Dai thought a moment, then he grinned. “If the Arberthi took him harshly, he’ll have been quiet just to embarrass them when you do show up, my lord.”
The cleric thought it through, then smiled back. “Owyn’s sons would be clever,” he murmured. He seemed pleased. “One of you will explain this to Ludh’s boy when we are inside. Where are your other men?”
“South of here, hidden off the road,” Dai said. “And yours, my lord?”
“Have none,” said the high cleric of the Cyngael. “Or I didn’t until now. You are my men, remember.”
“You rode alone from Llywerth?”
“Walked. But yes, alone. Some things to think about, and there’s a truce in the land, after all.”
“With outlaws in half the forests.”
“Outlaws who know a cleric has nothing worth the taking. I’ve said the dawn prayers with many of them.” He started walking.
Dai blinked again, and followed.
Alun wasn’t sure how he felt. Curiously elated, in part. For one thing, this was the figure of whom so many stories were told, some of them by his father and uncle, though he knew there had been a falling-out, and a little part of why. For another, the high cleric had just saved them from trying a mad attack on another legend in his own house.
A man of Cadyr might be worth two Arberthi, but that did not—harp-boasting and ale-born songs aside—apply to the warband of Brynn ap Hywll.
These were the men
who had been fighting the Erlings before Dai and Alun were born, when the Cyngael lived in terror of slavery and savage death three seasons of every year, taking flight into the hills at the least rumour of the dragon-prows. It was clear now why Gryffeth had been captured so easily. They’d have had no chance trying to attack this farm tonight. They’d have been humiliated, or dead. A truth to run back and forth through the mind like the shuttling of a loom.
Alun ab Owyn was very young that day, a prince of Cadyr, and it was greenest springtime in the provinces of the Cyngael, in the world. He’d no wish to die. Something occurred to him.
“My cousin was only carrying the harp for me, by the way. If anyone asks, my lord.”
The cleric glanced back over his shoulder.
“Gryffeth can’t sing,” Dai explained. “Not that Alun’s much good.”
A joke, Alun thought. Good. Dai was feeling himself again, or starting to.
“There will be a feast, I expect,” Ceinion of Llywerth said. “We’ll find out soon enough.”
“I’m actually better with siege weapons,” Alun said, not helpfully. He was rewarded by hearing his older brother laugh, and quickly smother it.
“YOUR ROYAL FATHER I knew very well. Fought against him, and beside him. A disgraceful youth, if I may be blunt, and a brave man.”
“It would be too much to hope that we might one day receive such a judgement from you, my lord, but to that we will aspire.” Dai bowed after he spoke.
They were in the great hall of Brynnfell, beyond the central doors. A long corridor behind them ran east and west towards the wings. It was a very large house. Gryffeth had already been released—from a room at the end of the eastern corridor, as the cleric had guessed. Alun had had a whispered word with him, and reclaimed his harp.
Dai straightened and smiled. “You will permit me to add, my lord, that disgrace among the Arberthi is sometimes honour in Cadyr. We have not always been favoured with the truce that brings us here, as you know.”
Alun smiled inwardly, kept his expression sincere. Dai had had a lifetime shaping this sort of speech, he thought. Words mattered among the Cyngael, nuance and subtlety. So did cattle-raiding, mind you, but the day’s game had changed.
The scarred older warrior—a head taller than the two brothers—beamed happily down on them. Brynn ap Hywll was big in every way—hands, face, shoulders, girth. Even his greying moustache was thick and full. He was red and fleshy and balding. He wore no weapon in his own home, had rings on several thick fingers and a massive golden torc around his throat. Erling work: the hammer of the thunder god replaced by a suspended sun disk. Something he’d captured or been offered as ransom, Alun guessed.
If Ceinion of Llywerth felt displeasure at seeing something made to hold pagan symbols of Ingavin, he didn’t show it. The high cleric was not at all what Alun had expected him to be, though he couldn’t have said what he had expected. Certainly not the man who had been kissed so enthusiastically by the Lady Enid, as her husband smiled approval.
Alun had a recollection that the cleric’s own wife had died long ago, but he was murky about the details. You couldn’t remember everything a tutor dictated, or a tale-spinning father by the fireside.
“Well spoken, young prince,” Brynn boomed, bringing Alun back to the present. Their host looked genuinely pleased with Dai’s answer. He’d a voice for the battlefield, Brynn, one that would carry.
Their arrival at Brynnfell had gone easily, after all. Alun had a sense that things tended to go that way when Ceinion of Llywerth was involved. If there had been something odd about the cleric arriving with a Cadyri escort when he usually walked alone to his destinations, and was widely known not to have spoken to Prince Owyn for a decade and more … well, sometimes odd things happened, and this was the high cleric.
Brynn was prepared to play along, it seemed, whatever he might privately think. Alun saw the big man’s gaze slide to where Ceinion stood, smooth face benign and attentive, slender hands folded in the sleeves of his robe. “Indeed, it would seem you have set your feet on the path of virtue already, serving as escorts to our beloved cleric, avoiding the scandalous conduct of your sire in his own youth.”
Dai kept a level expression. “His lordship the high cleric is persuasive in his holiness. We are honoured and grateful to be with him.”
“I’ve no doubt,” said Brynn ap Hywll, just a little too dryly.
Dai was afraid Alun would laugh, but he didn’t. Dai was fighting to control exhilaration himself … this was the dance, the thrust and twist of words, of meanings half-shown and then hidden, that underlay all the great songs and deeds of courts.
The Erlings might choose to loot and burn their way to some glorious afterlife of … more looting and burning, but the Cyngael saw the glory of the world—Jad’s holy gift of it—as embodied in more than just swords and raiding.
Though that, perhaps, might explain why they were so often raided and looted—from Vinmark overseas, and under pressure from the Anglcyn now, across the Rheden Wall. He’d said it himself today: poems over siege engines. Words above weapons, too often.
He wasn’t dwelling upon that now. He was exulting in the presence of two of the very great men of the west, as a springtime raid conjured out of boredom and their father’s absence, hunting without them (Owyn was meeting a mistress), had turned into something quite otherwise.
Young Dai ab Owyn was, in other words, in that elevated state of mind and spirit where what occurred that evening could almost have been anticipated. He was alert, receptive, highly attuned … vulnerable. At such times, one can be hammered hard by a variety of things, and the effect can last forever—though it should be said that this did happen more often in tales, bard-spun in meadhalls, than on an impulsive cattle raid gone strange.
Just before the meal began Alun had taken the musician’s stool at the Lady Enid’s request. Brynn’s wife was tall, dark-haired, dark-eyed, younger than her husband. A handsome woman with no shyness among the men in the hall. None of the women here seemed shy, come to think of it.
He was tuning his harp (his favourite crwth, made for him), trying not to be distracted. They were playing the triad game in the hall, drinking the cup of welcome after the invocation by Brynn’s own cleric, before the food was brought. Ceinion had predicted a feast and had been proven right. They were drinking wine, not ale. Brynn ap Hywll was a wealthy man.
Some of the company were still standing, others had taken their seats; it was a relaxed gathering, this was a farmhouse not a castle, large and handsome as it might be. The room smelled of new rushes, freshly strewn herbs and flowers—and hunting dogs. There were at least ten wolfhounds, grey, black, brindled. Brynn’s warband, those with him here, were not men to put great weight on ceremony, it seemed.
“Cold as … ?” called out a woman near the head of the table. Alun hadn’t sorted the names yet. She was a family cousin, he guessed. Round-faced, light brown hair.
“Cold as a winter lake,” answered a man leaning against the wall halfway down the room.
Cold was an easy start. They all knew the jokes: women’s hearts, or the space between the legs of some of them. Those phrases wouldn’t be offered now, before the drinking had properly begun, and with the ladies present.
“Cold as a loveless hearth,” said another. Worn phrases, too often heard. One more to complete the triad. Alun kept silent, listening to his strings as he tuned. There was always one song before the meal; he was being honoured with it, wasn’t sure what he wanted to sing.
“Cold as a world without Jad,” said Gryffeth suddenly, which wasn’t brilliant but wasn’t bad either, with the high cleric at the head table. It got him a murmur of approval and a smile from Ceinion. Alun saw his brother, next to the cleric, wink at their cousin. Mark one for Cadyr.
“Sorrowful as … ?” said another of the ladies, an older one.
Trust the Cyngael, Alun thought wryly, to conjure with sorrow at a spring banquet’s beginning. We are a strange, wonderful
people, he thought.
“Sorrowful as a swan alone.” A thin, satisfied-looking man sitting close to the high table. The ap Hywll bard, his own crwth beside him. An important figure. Accredited harpists always were. There was a rustle of approbation. Alun smiled at the man, received no response. Bards could be prickly, jealous of privilege, dangerous to offend. More than one prince had been humiliated by satires written against him. And Alun had been asked to take the stool first tonight. A guest indeed, but not a formally trained or licensed bard. Best to be cautious, he thought. He wished he knew a song about siege engines. Dai would have laughed.
“Sorrowful as a sword unused,” said Brynn himself, leaning back in his chair, the big voice. Predictable pounding of tables as the lord of the manor spoke.
“Sorrowful,” said Alun, surprising himself, since he’d just decided to be discreet, “as a singer without a song.”
A small silence as they considered it, then Brynn ap Hywll banged a meaty hand down on the board in front of him, and the Lady Enid clapped her palms in pleasure and then—of course—so did everyone else. Dai winked again quickly, and then contrived to look indifferent, leaning back as well, fingering his wine cup, as if they were always offering such original phrasings in the triad game back home. Alun felt like laughing: in truth, the phrase had come to him because he had no song yet and would be called upon in a moment.
“Needful as … ?” suggested the Lady Enid, looking along the table.
A new phrase this time. Alun looked at Brynn’s wife. More than handsome, he corrected himself: there was beauty there still, glittering with the jewellery of rank upon her arms and about her throat. More people were seated now. Servants stood by, awaiting a signal to bring the food.
“Needful as warmed wine in winter,” someone Alun couldn’t see offered from down the room. Approval for that, a nicely phrased offering. Winter memory in midsummer, the phrase near to poetry. Their hostess turned to Dai, politely, beyond her husband and the cleric, to let the other Cadyri prince have a turn.