Divine Sacrifice, The

by Hays, Anthony

  I huddled against the old woman to protect her from the storm. She grabbed my shoulders with surprising strength, releasing them only long enough for me to pound some vagrant intruding on our space with a stick of firewood.

  All through the night, her thin arms clutched my chest, only the shallow movement of her chest letting me know she lived. I kept the fire blazing but we spoke no more words. No words were needed, at any rate. She seemed to be afraid that she would destroy this fragile bond we had established.

  “Whose villa is this that you have built onto?” I ventured during one lull in the storm.

  “Is that of concern?”

  “Curiosity more than anything. I like to know whose hospitality I’m usurping.”

  “Abandoned hospitality, my one-armed scribe. This was Patrick’s villa, or rather his father’s, Calpornianus. But surely your friend Patrick will consent.”

  “Would,” I mumbled.

  “What was that!” Myndora’s hearing was as clear as a newborn’s.

  I sank down then, amongst a pile of furs and stared at the floor.

  “What have you not told me, Malgwyn?”

  I turned away from her as wind whipped through the door.

  “What?” She sounded less now like the old woman and more like the young girl she had once been. “Speak now!”

  Still, reluctantly, I slowly turned my head and faced her. “Patrick’s heart no longer beats among us. He was killed not two nights past, Myndora.”

  Though her eyes could no longer see, they filled with tears. “You could have told me that my father was dead and I would shed no greater tears. How did he die?”

  And so amid the cry of the wind, the bashing of the branches, and drumbeat of the rain, I held Myndora as she cried and told her some of Patrick’s demise, but only some. She did not need to know how he had been taken from us.

  “Did Gwilym and Patrick see each other before he died?”

  “No, Myndora. Tremayne’s duties took him to other villages and he did not know of Patrick’s arrival.”

  “Elafius did not tell him that Patrick was due to arrive?”

  “It was a sudden visit; even we were not aware when we left Castellum Arturius. Word did not reach Arthur until we arrived at Ynys-witrin.” Beyond the flapping door, I could smell sea air, salt air. I held the cloth tightly and watched the lane. Nothing. No travelers. No merchants. No one. Something was wrong. Where was the stream of travelers I had seen the day before? If they were not here, that could only mean that they saw some danger in this place as well.

  “Myndora, hear you nothing?”

  “I’ve heard little since you arrived.”

  “Is there a tower in the villa?”

  “A tower?”

  “A watchtower. A tall cornice, anything, any place from which I can see the countryside about.”

  “Potitus built a chapel down near the stream. It held a tower at the apse, with a cross atop it.”

  “Do you know if it is still there?” The stupidity of my question hit me.

  “Of course.”

  And I asked another stupid question. “How do you know?”

  “I hear every sound in this place. The wind from the great channel makes a certain pitch when it passes around the cross. That’s how I know it’s still there.”

  I looked at her with something approaching love and respect. That she had survived for this long, blind, and that her hearing was so remarkable was beyond understanding. Quickly, I pulled a white sheet, bold and mangy. The walls of the villa were dirty gray, and the sheet would nearly match them.

  “Wait here.”

  “And where else should I be waiting?”

  I left her grumbling, cackling voice behind and slipped between the villa buildings, the old bathhouse, the kitchen block, until I could see the chapel with its tower surmounted by a cross close by.

  I stacked three large stones in an uneasy pile, which started me on my journey. With just one whole arm, the going was truly touchy, but my legs counted for much. Soon I was atop it, my one arm wrapped around the cross, and I hung on for life itself to my post atop the windy, stormy cross. It felt like my skin was freezing to the post. Just a few kilometers away I could see the cold channel, the sea between the land of the Scotti, “Hibernia” the Romans called it, and our own. I saw easily how a band of Scotti could have landed and stolen up here to take Patrick in his sleep.

  It took but a few moments to adjust myself to this blowing gale, the rain striking my face like little pebbles. I was forced to continually wipe my eyes with my forearm, unable to release the base of the cross. In a moment, the rain eased and I could see the coastline and beyond. But what I saw was more than surprising, more than remarkable.

  Forty longboats, jammed with soldiers, Scotti by the look of them, were but minutes from making their landing. Scotti! They had never launched such a mighty invasion of our shores. Why, there were three hundred men if there were one, with more boats carrying storage jars, weapons!

  I watched as they maneuvered their craft into a small cove. They beached them and immediately began unloading. Once finished, they pushed the boat back out to sea quickly and just as quickly moved to the next in line. One man was obviously the leader. Tall and broad chested, he wore a thick beard, thicker than my own, of red hair. His cloak, of a woven gold and white design, was hooked by two brooches, one over each shoulder. The tunic, banded in gold, reached near to his feet. If there were a king among them, it was he.

  Knowing that I had to find out more, I began my slippery descent down the cross, onto the canted roof, the hobnails on my leather caligae giving no purchase.

  I slipped twice but managed to maintain my balance and kept from plunging headfirst into muck and mud below. Seconds later, with my hand showing bloody splinters, I leaped the remaining feet to the ground, slightly twisting my ankle in the process.

  Wasting no time, I half hobbled, half ran to Myndora’s hut.

  “What is it?” she asked before I could even announce myself.

  “Scotti! Hundreds of them! You must let me carry you to hiding. Come, we’ll gather what we can and—”

  “And nothing! You think I have not avoided capture by the Scotti before? You go! It is you who are in most danger.”

  I paused, torn between my duty to Arthur and my concern for Myndora.

  “Malgwyn.” And I felt her hand touch mine. “I am touched by your worrying after an old woman, but listen to me. Bannaventa is lost to you already. You must find Arthur, and he must stop the Scotti before they cross the river of sorrows.

  “You have learned all you can here about Patrick and Addiena. Anyone else who could tell you more is long dead or at Ynys-witrin. The Scotti must be your concern now. So, go! We will meet again.”

  Though I thought it unlikely, a certainty in her words swelled them in my mind, gave them substance and therefore truth.

  I brushed her cheek with my hand and disappeared out the door, hoping that we would meet once more, someday.

  Now I was more confused than ever. Whatever was driving people from the north of Ynys-witrin was not the Scotti. I saw no signs of an earlier landing party. Aye, the group I had seen had begun to enlarge the clearing where they had beached.

  But three hundred men! Such was a small army in those days. Not enough to defeat Arthur’s forces, but that assumed Arthur had time to prepare. And that left me with two problems. First, they had chosen a clever place. The closest watch-post was at the Mount of Frogs, some miles to the north. It was manned by Teilo’s men. He was a minor lord in that region; I knew little about him. The cove was small and well hidden, and they had landed in the early evening hours, in heavy weather when the sea could play tricks on your eyes.

  Second, Arthur needed to know as much as possible about this new threat. As I already knew, the army I had seen, while posing a threat, was not enough to defeat Arthur outright. But what if there were a second party of the same size? That seemed unlikely. The Scotti were many, but it would
require a large confederation of their kings to field a six-hundred-man army. And even then they would not be assured of victory. But they could devastate much of the western half of our island simply by taking provisions. So, what was their aim? A foothold? An expansion of their territory? Patrick had said nothing about a threat from the Scotti, and he would have done so had he heard a single word.

  Patrick! The issue of Patrick’s killing had fled from my mind as swiftly as a rabbit flees from a hunter’s approach. And now I had no time to ponder it. I felt a fleeting moment of sadness that the death of a man like Patrick could so easily be put aside. The time to mourn him would come, I knew, I hoped. But what his chosen people were up to must now take precedence.

  Though my purchase was slippery and my lungs burned with the struggle, I raced across the levels and made the steep climb up to the meneds, the hills, the moorlands that skirted the great flats to the south. Most of the year, the flood waters joined with the Axe and the Brue to create a great new sea that left Ynys-witrin an island. At this season the waters had receded to the riverbanks, and the newly arrived Scotti would, I guessed, stay in the shadows of the meneds to shield themselves from our soldiers at watch on the Mount of Frogs.

  Once atop the meneds, I braced myself against a tree and recovered my breath. It was fully dark now, the last vague hint of sun swallowed up by the clouds roiling on the western horizon. Where the hills touched the levels, it looked for all the world like a crack in the earth, black and brooding. If I closed my eyes, I could almost smell the hint of sulfur said to lie deep within. Somewhere down there, I thought, Gwynn ap Nudd, the fairy king, ruled. One wrong step and I could easily tumble in. But the gods protected me, kept my one good arm held fast to the tree. My cheek brushed against the bark, and I thought of poor Elafius; it was a yew tree. The last few days had not been lucky ones for the church or for sons of Bannaventa.

  No matter how hard they tried, an army of men was bound to make some noise, and I did not have too long to wait before I made out the creaks and groans of a large party on the move. And they were either so stupid or so arrogant that they carried a number of small torches.

  My plan was simple. If I could but trail them to their destination, I might know their purpose. That they moved inland so quickly told me much. These were traveling parties, not colonizing groups. Traveling parties implied that they were going somewhere. But where? The presence of a Scotti raiding party was not unusual, troublesome, but not unusual. Again, it was the size of it that worried me. It was ten times the number normally seen in a single group.

  Taking a deep breath, I crouched and began my journey along the ridge above them. My path was more treacherous than theirs as I had to navigate the heights above them without benefit of a torch. The ground was slippery and uneven; great yawning holes and sheer drop-offs marked the edge of the meneds.

  The Scotti seemed to have brought no horses, no chariots. Indeed, they seemed not to have brought anything they could not carry on their backs. Simple, round shields, spears. Their commander, the one that I had spied wearing the white tunic, was setting them a swift pace. That could mean any number of things, but nothing clear.

  I started to become hungry and the hunger passed into weakness, and still they continued, always hugging the base of the hills as the terrain allowed. The clouds soon parted, and the moon spread its light across the levels and touched the dampened grass and trees with a shimmer like promised gold, that color that lies somewhere between white and yellow.

  My mind told me that they were hurrying to a rendezvous. My stomach told me that I was beginning not to care. The only farms near me, where I might steal some cheese or bread, were too far back from the edge of the meneds to keep an eye on my quarry, or they were on the high spots in the levels, which would cause me to have to cross the Scotti’s route. While I might not have seen any horses, they would be fools to be moving across enemy ground without scouts ahead and on their flank to warn of any threat.

  My legs were beginning to tremble though, and as if by magic the flickering of the Scotti torches spelled the slowing of their march. I checked the now clear sky and saw that we had been some ten hours on this treacherous journey. They would rest now, for a short while. I propped myself up on one hand and bent over, my empty stomach nearly heaving from hunger and exertion.

  From my vantage point, I could see that we had crossed almost to the edge of the meneds, where I could look into the distance and see the flickering fire of the Tor at Ynys-witrin and the smaller, yet still discernible, fires of the abbey. I turned and looked back through the forest. Distance was hard to judge, but I thought I could see the glow of a light between the trunks of the massive trees.

  I looked back quickly to the still-halted torches of the Scotti. With any luck, I could dash to the farmstead, raid a storage pit, and be back before they started again. At worst, I might be an hour behind, but so clear was the night and so bright their torches, I would have no trouble catching up.

  Pivoting on my heels, I dashed off toward the distant light. It was only after I was already a hundred paces along my journey that I realized that the Scotti could have stopped to douse their torches and continue on in the moonlight. But I was committed by then, and it was only a few moments before I emerged into a large clearing.

  It took but seconds to realize where I was—the barrows on the top of the meneds, dug by the old people to bury their dead. Old tales told of a golden coffin buried in one, but we honored these burial places because of their purpose, not old tales. Aye, we buried our own near them in hopes that those old ones would protect them in the afterlife. I did not know about all of that, but I knew that it gave me comfort that my old dad and mother and brother Cuneglas lay together with our ancestors.

  Ahead I saw an old roundhouse with a pair of sheds set about ten yards away. A lamp burned within, and I could detect a wisp of smoke from a hole in the roof. Just as I determined to get closer, a woman emerged from the house and walked, heavily, toward one of the sheds. She stopped short of the shed though, and leaned down into its moonshadows toward a bump in the ground. I watched as she kicked a small rock aside, lifted a wooden cover, took something out, let the cover drop, and replaced the rock with a swift movement of her foot.

  A little smile stretched my face as I realized I had found my target. And my grumbling stomach and weakening knees told me that it was not a second too soon.

  As soon as she was back in the roundhouse, I bolted from my hideaway and dashed across the open ground in a half-crouch.

  Man has many failings. Allowing his physical needs to block his common sense is but one of them. When the two Scotti warriors stepped out of the house, wiping their daggers on their tunics and tucking them back into their belts, I knew that my hunger had been the death of me.

  So shocked was I at their appearance that I literally stopped in my tracks, frozen to the spot.

  I could not move.

  They saw me immediately, and my surprise was all the time they needed.

  I reacted, but the delay and my tired old legs cost me precious time.

  I was knocked to the ground by one who straddled my chest with his dagger at my throat while my hand clawed at my belt for my own knife. But he caught me in the attempt, stripped the dagger from my belt and flung it away. His companion, well trained, scanned the area for others with me.

  My captor’s face was close enough to mine that I could smell his rancid breath, laden with onion and cheese. His dagger-laden fist drew back for the fatal blow, and I was just preparing to kick him or roll him off, anything to avoid that blow, when something odd happened.

  He stopped.

  His other hand had slipped down my half arm to find the empty sleeve and his eyes grew wide. As quickly as he was on me, he lost his balance and fell sideways and scrambled away as if in fear.

  The other Scotti, satisfied that I was alone, spun around, saw his companion sprawled some feet from me, and started toward me with his own dagger. But his friend s
pouted something in their hellish language, and I knew so little of it that I could not understand exactly what he said. I did catch the word “arm.” But that was all.

  I stood, slowly, eyes fixed on the two Scotti. They continued jabbering at each other. I glanced quickly around. No others that I could see. I began to measure the distance to the forest, calculating if I had even half a chance of making it into the darkness before they cut me down.

  Then they did something strange. My first attacker was now on his feet. They replaced their daggers in their belts and held their hands up, palms out. Taking their move as an apology, I nodded curtly and went to retrieve my dagger, but they cut me off, still with frightened looks on their faces, still without weapons in hand.

  I turned then to leave, but again they blocked my path. It seemed I would not be allowed to rearm myself or to leave on my own, but neither would I be killed. At least not here and now.

  They herded me (and I use that for lack of a better word) back toward the roundhouse, a typical wattle-and-daub structure, the likes of which dotted our landscape. A lamp still burned within, but I suspected that the occupants lay with their throats slit after providing food for the Scotti.

  My new guardians indicated that I was to wait outside while one of them ducked through the door. I could hear a scrambling and scuffling inside and then a small bundle flew out the door and slid across the mud.

  Llynfann, my little thief! Bound hand and foot.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Master Malgwyn!”

  One of the Scotti hustled over and cut the cords binding my little friend’s legs and then hauled him to his feet.

  I looked him over as well as I could in the moonlight. He was muddy and obviously exhausted, but I saw little sign of ill treatment, save some bruises and a trickle of blood flowing from a cut lip.

  “What happened to you? What is all of—”

  But Llynfann clumsily bowed and knelt. With head dropped he spoke as clearly as he could. “Treat me as a recalcitrant servant. Show no tenderness. I am alive only because I convinced them that I am your servus.”