He could not see Alina.
Or Duda.
He could not move. The weight seemed to cling to him. And then he saw her. Not pushing upwards through the brief skirmish on the hill slope but on the other side of him, with Duda. She was turned towards him. They both were.
He saw what was behind them.
His sword was gone, the hilt out of his reach, useless anyway, because he could not move. He kicked at the weight that held him trapped. It seemed to move with him like a death grip. He clawed free enough to get a hand to the seax hilt at his belt
He had not the slightest consciousness of moving after that, only of the faint glint of shining metal cleaving the air. Then Alina's scream and Duda's curse as they turned. Behind them Goadel's man, the one who had been set to cut pieces out of the prisoner, collapsed, the bloodied knife spiralling out of his hand.
He expected Duda to stop, then, to at least make sure the man was dead. But he did not. He charged, holding his own seax in one outstretched claw. Then he felt movement in the dead weight, saw the brief flash of steel.
He struck out backhanded, with all the strength of his arm, just as Duda dived. The double impact took his breath, Duda's weight adding to the other in a bone-jarring thud. Then nothing.
He levered himself up out of the mess.
"Is he really dead?" But it was not his voice that asked the question.
He turned his head and saw Alina. His sword was in her hand, in a warrior's grip, with her thumb all the way round the gilded wood of the hilt. Her face was death pale. But she was whole.
"Aye, the creature's dead now," said Duda. "Give me that sword, woman, before you do some damage." Duda was dragging the weight off his lower body.
"Dead all right," muttered Duda. "Would not have lasted five minutes anyway after that sword thrust. I only gave him a flea bite. But it was worth it."
Once he was free of the weight, he could get to his feet. Duda and Alina were staring at him. Horrors lived in Alina's eyes. The instinct that tore through him was to crush her in his arms and take her head against his shoulder, the way he had before. To tell her that she was safe, that no one would harm her. That she was his.
His feet took the first step towards her, even though he could say none of the things bursting against the walls of his heart. She did not move. Just stared at him with that look he could not describe.
He held out his hand, not knowing what he could say, or what he could do, but unable to turn away from her, unable to stop just looking at what he had so nearly lost. To Goadel's malice.
Her stricken gaze moved slowly from his face to his hand. He realized it was covered in blood. She would hate that. She loathed such sights. She was too tenderhearted for that.
He snatched his hand back, feeling suddenly and utterly disoriented, like a sleepwalker who had stumbled unknowing into the world of those who were awake: an unwelcome creature out of someone's nightmare.
He stared at the blood. At his sleeve sticking to the uneven surface of a gash.
"The knife blade must have caught me after all." But there was too much blood, some of it drying.
"Nay," said Duda in the kind of voice you would use when you did not want to provoke a wild animal. Or a savage. "It happened before. It is a sword cut. Goadel's blade."
He had no memory of it. The implications of that were something he could not bear. He took a step backwards. He stared at the blood on his arm, still welling sluggishly. He could not feel anything.
He took another step. At the edge of his vision he could see the fluttering movement of Alina's skirts, the narrow shape of her bronze-buckled shoe. It moved towards him. Not away.
Of course she would not turn away. That was the other side of her tender heart. Its strength. She had such
Pity-He realized he was utterly covered in blood: Goadel's, his. It clung to his body. It must be mired over his face from the splinter cut. He could not let her touch that, could not let her anywhere near him. Not just because of that, but because of what must be on the inside.
He was a creature of nightmare. "Brand—"
He spoke across her, to Duda. "What of my orders? The prisoner?"
"Safe enough." Duda's answer was quick, as one should answer a commander. At least that much was still his, still real. He looked across the vast distance of two paces that separated them. "And?"
"Most of them surrendered without striking a blow. You did not leave them much of a choice."
"Cunan?"
"With his father. Where else?'
Not with his sister who had nearly been cut down by the man who served as Goadel's executioner. Of course not. He tried to focus his thought on what still had to be done.
"I will see Maol."
"I will come with you." The ridiculously small feet in their expensive shoes moved.
"Not now." He looked up, met Duda's sudden frown, then the disbelief in Alina's gaze swiftly succeeded by anger. He shook his head.
"No." The force in the word was vicious. It made her flinch but he could not help that. He had no breath to explain, and he did not know whether Maol would look as bad as him. He did not want her to see another image that would haunt her mind.
Besides, there were things to be sorted out with Maol the Pict. Now. While the evidence of what the man had done was still before his eyes.
He turned away from the masked hurt in the night-dark eyes that was all too visible to him, the incomprehension of what he was and what he had done. What he had turned into.
At a gesture, Duda handed him the sword. The blade was covered in blood. Dirt crusted it from where it had hit the ground. It was his match. He did not clean the blade.
He climbed the slope. The blade hummed in his hand as though the power of the elk-sedge rune hidden beneath the dirt were something living. Such dangerous force. He did not need to be able to see it. He could feel it.
They fell back to let him pass, his men, the Picts, even Goadel's men. He could see the same expression in all of their eyes, like men who saw one of the hellkinn. The other word he would not name, not even in his mind.
They had cut the man's bonds, but it was not a sight Alina should see. He knelt down.
"Did you give him water? Mead? Fetch him my cloak."
He laid the ringing blade across his knees and waited. There was silence. Of a kind. It seemed impossible no one else could hear the sword's voice.
He studied the man before him while they covered the body and gave him aid. There were only surface wounds. The man must have the devil's own luck.
The Ret turned his head. Brand watched the eyes. They were quite clear; They saw the blade first. Then they focused on him, with an intensity that was sudden. The Pict's gaze held the shades of what he had read in the eyes of the others around him. In Alina's gaze.
The sword sang.
"What will you do?" His accent was pure Pictish, no soft overtones of Strath-Clòta. He watched the blade. His eyes were like Alina's. Not so much in their colour, which was lighter and more like Cunan's, but in something else.
Perhaps the man was her father.
Perhaps no one knew.
Brand let the silence stretch.
"So it is you and your King Cenred who now own the price of my life."
"Yes. It is." His voice cut across the sword's, merged with it, so that the clarity of it split the air. He missed nothing, not the moment's surprise in Eadric's face over his uncompromising assertion, not Cunan's tightened lips, not the small flicker of fire in the eyes so like Alina's.
"And my daughter?"
So he had remembered Alina. That was good. And he kept on with his acknowledgement of her as his seed.
"Safe enough. Now."
"You mean safe with you?" The words dripped with the accusation of what he had done when he had taken Alina from her intended husband.
"Yes. She owes me her life as well. Did they tell you that? Cunan?" He turned his head and the shift in attention was as fast and as disconcerting as he ha
d meant it to be. The lean face on the other side of Maol's body darkened. "So? Do I tell the truth?" The question was sharp, Pictish.
Cunan's eyes widened, blanked off with the realization of how much he knew. There was a pause that lasted an age of time.
"It is true," said Cunan in the same speech, with more directness than he expected. "I saw it. When the fight ended she tried to get to the Northumbrian. One of Goadel's men went after her. He…he would have killed her. The Northumbrian knifed him."
It was succinct. He kept his face blank. Maol kept eyeing him, and the blood that covered him. He had forced himself to hide nothing of that, or of the remains of whatever less material horrors clung to him.
"You have the price of two lives. What do you want?"
"Two wergilds."
Maol would understand the Anglian term for a life-price, he had no doubt.
"Riches in compensation?" The sloe-shaped eyes sparked, just like Anna's.
"Nay. Greater things."
"What?"
The bloodied wreck seemed to gather itself. He watched, forcing his mind to assess, choosing the measure of his words. The sword was quite still, the fork shape of the rune invisible, the protective curves of the serpents felt beneath his hand.
"The first payment is that I want no impediments to the peace your king has pledged with mine. If you have your own ambitions, you can exercise them north of the border, not south, and to prove your faith, you will come to Bamburgh. To your other son."
The blood-streaked head bowed. But it was easy enough to accede to that. Nechtan was likely to make it difficult for him to do otherwise, and he did have another of his expendable children at stake.
"Do you want to know the second payment?"
The power of the blade.
"I am sure you will tell me, Northumbrian."
The words waited in the shadows of what was to come. He fought to give them shape, out of his power and the sword's.
"I want your daughter's future."
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The water was swift. So cold it stopped the blood almost immediately.
He would have to go back, soon. He knew that. To have the wound bound if not stitched. To relieve Eadric and Duda and Cenred's men of the burden of organizing the dangerous rabble of uneasy Bernicians and sullen Picts back on the road to Bamburgh.
He would.
He would do all that, but first he wanted, needed, to feel real.
No one had dared to follow him.
The water dragged at his clothes, its pure clearness streaked rust-brown. Its coolness seemed blessed, filled with strange memories, or future glimpses.
It had been clear water that had let him know that his brother still lived.
It had been clear water that had nearly given him the peace from life he had craved.
Drowning.
But he had been a child then. A child whose parents had died, screaming. That time was gone. There were responsibilities to fulfill, as there were always.
Perhaps even as a child he had sensed that, if not fully understood.
But if only he could feel again, even the pain. Quite ordinary, human pain.
But then he would feel everything.
He thought of Alina, of the way her eyes had looked at him after Goadel's death.
He stepped farther out into the water.
In the end, it ran clearly.
Just as his mind did. Clear as that small part of it that had been untouched by what he had let himself become with Goadel.
All he had to do was hold to that. And to his decision.
He had done right in his request to Maol.
But he had to make sure of that, make sure that the Pict kept to his word, make sure that Cenred did. And that the tormented creature Cunan realized what true loyalty was.
Choices.
He turned back towards the stream bank. The weight of his sodden clothes, the weight of a thousand links of handcrafted metal, dragged at him. The weight of the water. He did not think he could climb the riverbank alone.
Alone.
The pain hit him. Pain that was real.
But the unreality was still there, like the waking dream in the forest clearing. When he moved, his senses swam in darkness shot though with fire. Not fire. There was such coldness. Ice cold. He pushed through it.
His mind heard Alina's voice, shouting.
Bamburgh was deadly.
Alina knew both its faces: the palace whose secret inner beauty was a richness beyond price, and the fortress that breathed power in every unyielding line.
It was the place where her destiny had begun and now would end. It watched her in its brilliant pride, rising skyward on its massive rock, guarded on three sides by the vast, power-seething expanse of the North Sea.
So many different lives had played out their heart-stopping risks here, felt the same desperation. Perhaps the hidden beauty of the palace locked behind walls understood that. Its own life had felt the same risks. It had been fought over many times, almost burned to the ground by the pagan King Penda of Mercia, saved only by a saint's prayers turning the wind.
The kinship she felt as the high walls closed round her was unexpected. Her hand fastened on a painted column in the inner chamber. The strength that lay beneath the sense-stealing beauty seemed to flow inside her from the wood.
You are not a prison, she thought, only a creature who has to fight to survive. Like me. I did not realize before. Sometimes your battles are fought outside the walls with spear and shield, sometimes inside, with guile or an assassin's knife. Yet you know you will survive your span of time.
Even life is only lent.
Do not let all we have fought for end now…
The thoughts in her frightened mind tumbled over each other, all centred round a blank, expressionless face.
Protect your prince. The words came carefully into her head, in English so that the living, breathing palace would understand.
I would give him to you if it would save him.
Eadric was calling to her. He sounded terrified.
She let go of the column.
She had a companion in her vigil. Night-dark eyes, the mirror image of her own, kept moving from her face to that of the ice-cold warrior in the tapestried bed.
"I still cannot believe this."
Alina's hand tightened on one that was utterly lifeless and felt nothing.
"Which bit can you not believe? Father acting as though he has more power than King Nechtan? Cunan leading him into stupidity? Both of them willing to sell me off first to one hell fiend and then to his brother? Or perhaps it is the fact that they would have left your fate to a hangman's noose until they got round to remembering you existed?"
The dark head shook in negation.
"You. You and this Englishman." Modan's glance flickered. "They say he fought like a savage, like a…berserker. Does that make no difference to you?"
"No."
"But—"
She looked up. "The difference it made was to you. If he had not fought, you would be dead. If Goadel had begun his rebellion with Father's support, King Cenred would have hanged you."
"But…that would be nothing to an Englishman."
"Of course, I forgot. You know how he thinks. Have you worked out who else would have been dead if he had not fought like a berserker? Me. Cunan. Your father and all of his men, and a few other unnecessary Englishmen."
"Yes." The intelligent face flushed dark. "But Alina, the man abducted you by force. Twice."
"Really? What makes you, or my father, think he needed force?"
Her brother surged to his feet.
"By all the saints, you…you are in love with him. That is why you will not leave his side now, not even to go to your own father."
She looked not at Modan's shocked eyes but at the white face cleaned of every last trace of blood.
"Yes."
After that, people came and went. King Cenred and an array of courtiers. All of Brand's me
n.
Everyone except Cunan and her father.
The ones who had stayed longest had been those from Lindwood. People whom she did not know, who had come to Bamburgh because they knew their master would return there. One of them had been near sev-enty. She thought he would have wept if she had not been there, a stranger.
They loved Brand. It seemed to make no difference to the ice-locked face.
King Cenred's personal physician hovered, unwilling to report to his master that every remedy he had tried was useless. The table was littered with herbs and potions. She sent him away. When nightfall came, she thought they might leave her alone.
The door opened. It was someone from Lindwood. Or it was Modan. He did not like to leave her alone, so he sat with her, watching her with his grave dark eyes. She knew he went to see their father as well. Divided loyalties. It was the way she used to feel. Before her heart snapped.
She was standing by the table, sifting through the herbs as though she could do something the physician could not. She turned.
"Modan, did you—"
It was a king's man, one she did not recognize. Cenred's retinue of hearth companions seemed endless. She could not cope with them.
"You can go away," she said in weariness. "There is nothing new to tell your master."
He came farther into the room, a neat figure, like all of them, hair cleanly cut about his neck, beard well trimmed…an unusually large nose. He kept walking. Persistent.
"There is no point—" He sat down without invitation, which was an offence to her rank. "You may go."
The man unsheathed a seax and began sharpening it.
"So may you. I believe we have had this argument before."
She stared at the swollen nose.
"Duda?"
"You told me last time we sat like this that you screeched very well. I now believe it."
"What have you—" She controlled her voice. Stared. Silver flashed in the candlelight. "Where did you get…"
"The clothes? The arm ring?"
"The face."
"Ah. Like the trimmed look do you? I hear it appeals to the ladies."
"Very…very winsome."
Embers Page 20
