by John M. Ford
Ratcliffe held out two objects. One was a robin's eggshell on a ribbon. The other was a medallion, showing two warring dragons.
"The Tydders are an old and notably rebellious Welsh family," Hywel said, turning the medallion over in his fingers. "Owain Tydder, managed, somehow, to acquire Henry the Fifth's widow as a wife. They had a son, but Owain was killed not long after and his brother Jasper raised the boy... here and there and on the run."
"This Owain is a famous wizard, isn't he?" Dimi said. "When we were north, I heard stories—"
"Oh, no," Hywel said, "that Owain was Glyn Dwr. He had children, but neither magic nor war bred strong in them. But his memory's stronger than life, you know how that is, and it's certain that young Harry Tydder will shout Glyn Dwr's name every chance he has." Hywel turned to Ratcliffe. "Has Colyngbourne said anything more?"
"He's said the last he will, my lord wizard."
"What?"
"This morning, by the King's order, he was hanged. And quartered."
Hywel said quietly, "So speaking one's mind is death, and everyone in London knows it. We could have better afforded prison for him."
Not quite apologetic, Ratcliffe said "Some of the papers we found upset Richard no small amount. The one that said Queen Anne was struck barren, for the Princes' deaths..."
"Yes, I know," Hywel said. "That's exactly their purpose: to excite people to rash and irrevocable acts. That paper in particular I wonder if Master Colyngbourne even wrote."
Cynthia appeared in the doorway, leaning on her green-headed cane. "Hywel, may I talk to you?"
Hywel said to Dimi and Ratcliffe "Excuse me, now... and please try to have a thought before acting. If Anthony Rivers were dead, where would we be now?"
Hywel and Cynthia walked through the upper apartments, above the level of the outer walls; from Tower Hill came a sound of thunder, the Duke of Norfolk's men practicing with Gregory's quick-drill artillery.
Cynthia said "Have you heard from Anthony?"
"Very little. He's as well liked in Wales as any Englishman, I think, but there's no good will from the people he's after. Do you miss him?"
"I'd call you jealous, but you wouldn't laugh," she said. "The fact is, I'd like to visit Mary, if there's any chance of it."
"Not a social visit."
"No." She tapped her fingers on the head of her cane. "I'm trying to think of something to do for Anne. She can't be convinced that some women just aren't made fertile—and being in the shadow of the prolific Woodvilles hasn't helped. She's offered to change her faith, and have surgery, and everything between: I think she'd die gladly to give Richard another son. Not," she said distantly, "that I'd allow her to... but if we could get her to the point, I think we could carry her home." She laughed, once sharply. "She'd be carrying, of course. What am I saying? I must be tireder than I think."
"We all are," Hywel said casually. "And I won't argue this time. We'll go. And if we're to do Anne and Richard any good, we'd best go before Tydder gets sailing weather."
Still in his high boots and spurs, James Tyrell clumped into the throne room, bowed to King Richard the Third.
Richard said "What's the news from the coast?"
"Tydder's sailed. Three days ago, from Brittany."
Dimitrios said "But the weather's been foul—"
"There's a sorcerer in the boats with 'em," Tyrell said, "and the coast-watches say he opened a hole in the squalls and sailed through. Where's my lord wizard Peredur?"
"By now," Dimi said, "halfway to Wales." He turned to the King. "If I rode after..."
"There's not time," Richard said, "even assuming you could pick up their trail. Dick: where's Tydder planned to land?"
Ratcliffe said "Pembroke, according to the Colyngbourne papers. But it's a lot of coast to cover."
"True... but it's not Wales he's after, is it. He'll march for England, picking up his dragon rebels as he goes
"Then we're for Nottingham. And he whistles for his robin- hoods ... we'll feather him." The King banged his fist into his palm.
"What in the Lady's name is this mess?" Cynthia said.
Hywel said "Dragon spoor."
Along the roads was the detritus of an army: broken belts and drums, rusty weapons, torn knapsacks spilling rotten food. There was something bright on the crown of the road, and Cynthia bent to pick it up. She turned the medallion over in her hand, and over again, and again.
For the next mile, she carried it, and neither of them spoke. Then Cynthia stumbled, and looked at the disc, and then snapped her wrist and threw it into the scrub. She leaned heavily on her cane.
"I almost... wanted to follow it," she said haltingly. "Wherever ... wherever it led."
"And if you had carried one for months now," Hywel said, "you would have followed it. Did you notice your leg?"
"No, I.. .No. I didn't. I lost my limp, didn't I?"
"You did not feel it... but I could hear the bones grinding."
"Why didn't you... why weren't we taking them from people when we were here? We chased those damned things for two years, and we should have been shouting what they were!"
"No. The people who cast them, who invested them with power, wanted them seized. The more, the better. Had we done that, the ones remaining would have been even more tightly held... or the folk might have made their own, and a bond the subject forges for himself is the hardest of all to break."
"Still, we could have done something."
"We did," he said, smiling. "Anyone who was healed by the lady known as Rhiannon, or who traded medals with her wizard companion, will not get far with the army before deciding he or she would be happier at home—"
Hywel stopped still, looking up at the northern sky, at the white bulk of Mynydd Troed.
"Hywel, what is it?"
"It's... I don't know." His voice was very small. "Mary's house is warded against... so much... I can't see."
She touched him. His hands were trembling, and his forehead was damp. "Let's hurry," he said, without any need.
The sun was high when they reached Llangorse, and the village was peculiarly silent. There was not a single horse on the street, or a mule. There was a message at the inn, written right on the door in chalk: gone to fight for wales.
"Rhiannon, aid my son!" a woman's voice called from behind Hywel and Cynthia. A woman in a widow's black dress was running toward them, dropping to her knees. "Rhiannon, Gwydion, aid my son."
"I am not a goddess," Cynthia said, in the commonest Cymric she could manage, "but I am a... healer, and if your son is sick I will be glad to help him."
They passed more old men and women as they followed the widow, and signs were made at them, and some of the people bowed or knelt as they went by. There were a few younger women, working furiously at gardens or tending babies, and young men who either did not meet their eyes at all or looked right through them.
The widow's son was perhaps twenty, sitting on a stool in the back-kitchen of the house. He wore a leather jack, almost worn through, and a baldric hung with an empty scabbard.
He sat absolutely still, back straight as a poker, hands folded loosely in his lap. His eyes were open, fixed on nothing. He had the warm, meaningless smile of an idiot.
Cynthia turned to Hywel, said in Italian, "Is this what you meant by-"
"No."
She chewed her lip, nodded. To the widow she said "How long has he been like this?"
"He came in last night," the woman said. "He'd'a gone out on that morning, with his friends. Proud, he was, to be wearing his fa's sword, and his gran'fa's coat from the French wars... but he come back without the sword, and I can't reason it. Do you think..."
Cynthia reached inside the young man's collar, brought out a leather cord with one of the dragon medallions. She lifted it over his head. He continued to stare.
Cynthia threw the medal out the kitchen door.
Nothing happened.
She touched the man's forehead, said clearly, "War's over. Why don't y
ou go home?"
The son blinked, stood up, said "I'm going to rest now, Mother, and later I'll hoe the garden." He walked out of the kitchen.
"My!" the widow said.
"I don't know," Cynthia said to Hywel, bewildered. "But maybe—" She turned to the widow. "You say he's been... ill since last night. Have you gone to the Jeshite healer? Mary Setright?"
"Oh, my, no, Lady," the widow said, terrified. "No, we wouldn't do that—please don't punish him on that! Why, his gran'fa' fought them in the French wars, and his faith's good—"
Cynthia limped out of the back-kitchen, leaned against a fence- post. Hywel came behind her, carrying her cane.
"No," she said, sick. "You said she was safe, Hywel... Hywel, what did you see on the road this morning?"
"Nothing clear," he said, and they started down the road, leaving the widow shouting praises after them.
There were at least a dozen men and women around Mary's cottage, all quite still, eyes open and staring. Some sat in the grass, intent on clouds passing; some lay on the ground and contemplated a single turd.
One had been kneeling by the brook, evidently to drink, and had never taken his face from the water. Another squatted beneath the corner of the roof thatching; there had been a torch in his hand, and the thatch was sooty. But the torch had burned down, all the way past his fingers and away to nothing.
Cynthia stood in the yard, looking this way and that, leaning on her stick each time she became dizzy, thinking about the knife in its hilt.
"Cynthia," said Hywel, from the open door to the house.
She took a step, saw his face. "You don't want me to go in, do you." "No."
"Is Mary in there?"
"Yes."
"Then I'm going in."
"I know."
She went inside and saw Mary. A tearing sound came from Cynthia's throat, and she lifted her stick, to smash it down on the townswoman who sat numbly before the fire, mallet still in her flaccid hand.
But it seemed that someone caught her hand and held it, and she held very still, until she said "Her curse, Hywel? Is that what's happened to them all?"
"Her blessing, I think. We forget that anyone who can curse can bless. I think... she told them to find... peace."
"Absolute peace?" Cynthia said, looking hard-eyed at the statue people. "Until they starve, and blow away to dust?"
"Possibly."
"I like that. Now help me find something to draw these nails."
They buried Mary a little distance into the woods, pounding the cold earth down. Cynthia made holes in the soil with her cane stiletto, and sowed thyme and rosemary as a lasting marker. They agreed that Mary would want the cottage left standing, as shelter for anyone in need.
"And them?" Hywel said, pointing at the people caught in peace.
Cynthia looked at them for a long time. Finally she said "I don't suppose I have a choice, do I?"
"I think you do. I think that's why you can release them."
She shivered in a nonexistent wind, went to a man who sat with his back against the woodpile, a medallion in one hand and an axe in the other. Cynthia threw his medal away. "Go home now," she said, softly. "We forgive you."
The man blinked, looked up at Cynthia. He let the axe fall, then stood and walked unsteadily toward Llangorse village.
Cynthia cut a neck cord, let the disc fall. "Go home, it's over." "Go home, rest." "Go home, you're forgiven "
King Richard was in the castle tower at Nottingham, looking east: not south at the town, with spearpoints bristling in the streets and bodies on gibbets, not north at Sherwood, with small fires still rising from it, and not west at all.
"What does he have, now?" Richard said, working the fingers of his left hand.
"A few exiles, some of his relatives," Tyrell said. "And the outlaws who've filtered to him. That amounts to his household guard: maybe a hundred, all good. Then the Bretons, some mercenaries, minor nobles mostly, calling Tydder 'Arthur come to free their land.'"
"They believe that in Brittany too?" Dimi said, not very surprised by it.
"He was the Breton savior before Badon," Richard said, distracted. Then he said to Tyrell "And?"
"And the Byzantines."
"Definitely them?" Dimi said, before Richard could speak.
"They're wearing eagles and floating banners. There's a full century of lances, and they do glitter."
"Every army needs something to leave a legend behind," Richard said. "I wonder if Tydder's aware he's not it? But I'm sure he'll be grateful."
"It'll be in his contracts that he's grateful."
"Guns?" Gregory said.
"There they're light," said the Duke of Norfolk, sounding concerned. "We know they have not more than six of the serpentines, and the scouts swear not more than one hand-gunner to twenty spears."
Dimi said "That's not Byzantine organization."
"Or English," Richard said. "Their ships must have been sinking full: could they be short of powder and shot?"
No one spoke for a moment; then Dimi realized everyone was looking at him. "It's not impossible." he said, "but I don't think it's the reason "
"And?" said the King.
"There's only one reason to abandon a weapon," Dimi said. "Because you don't expect to need it, because you have something better."
"There is the dragon, my lord," Tyrell said.
Richard nodded. "Yes," he said, sighing, "the dragon. What about the light foot, Tyrell?"
"Their numbers vary with every report. If it isn't bad scouting, which I do not think, he seems to be both gaining and losing men."
"And losing," Richard said softly.
"If neither flow changes, he'll have some ten thousand with him when he enters England, somewhere near Shrewsbury. We have about the same."
"Twenty thousand men," Richard said, "away from the fields at spring planting... Well, gentlemen, it had better be a short war, or it could be a very long winter."
Something crunched within Richard's hand. He opened his fingers, let bits of pale-blue eggshell sift down to the floor.
"Cynthia!" Rivers said. "When did you get here? Hello, Peredur. God, you must have flown." He looked sidelong at Hywel.
"Horses of flesh, not air," Hywel said.
"Did you find the healer?"
Cynthia said "No."
"Well... after tomorrow, there'll be time to look again." He shrugged. "Or there won't be need. Anne's upstairs."
"Here?"
"They wouldn't leave each other. Am I going to fault them?" Anthony's eyes met Cynthia's for just a moment. "But the trip was hard on the Queen. You'll want to look at her."
Cynthia nodded once, hiked her pannier on her shoulder, and went up the inn stairs, cane tapping.
Rivers said to Hywel "Can you walk a little farther?"
"As far as you need."
They went out of the inn, into the village of Sutton Cheney. From the village, a hill stretched west for about a mile; it was a few hundred yards north to south. At its western point, a group of men were silhouetted against the low sun, a shadow banner fluttering beside them.
"What's this place called?" King Richard was saying.
"Ambien Hill," Tyrell said. "And the plain below is called Red- moor."
"And more red when we're done, I dare say."
"Rivers, there you are. And Peredur, it's a relief to see you You've come up from South Wales? Around Tydder?"
"Around, sometimes through."
"Then you've seen the Red Dragon?"
"This was no time to tickle its tail. But we saw what happens in its path." He told them briefly, what had happened in Llangorse.
They stood around, silent, expressions shadowed out. Dimitrios shook his head slowly; Rivers turned back toward Sutton Cheney.
Richard said "And men are supposed to fight that?"
Hywel said "The central absurdity of magic is that it can only do what men can imagine; and anything a man can imagine, a way may be devised of doing, without
sorcery."
Dimitrios said, straining for humor, "Even raise the dead?"
"Had you ever been dead," Gregory said, eyeglasses flashing like copper coins, "you would not ask that."
"Peredur, I don't need your mysteries now," Richard said, somewhat irritated. "I need a victory. What can you do, against their wizard? Can you give me a White Dragon, to meet the Red?"
"That would be exactly their wish. Now, the Ddraig Goch is no more than a banner for them. But if we meet it on its own terms, it becomes... real, in a sense, because we have acknowledged it as real." Hywel pointed toward the setting sun, Tydder's army somewhere beneath it. "Remember, everyone drawn into this through the medals knows the Red Dragon can defeat the White."
"So what are you going to do tomorrow?"
"I will watch for a chance to do something, and when the chance comes, I will do it."
Exasperated but blackly amused, Richard said "Isn't there a saying about meddling in the affairs of wizards? Well. This is where we'll meet them; let them come."
Rivers was looking to the southwest. Sixty yards from the base of the slope there was a patch of bog, still half frosted over. "Do you think," he said, rubbing his chin, "that they might be coaxed to come that way, instead of from the north slope? Would they run between the hill and the bog?"
Dimi said "You said Tydder's never led men?"
"So far as we know. Though he's got his uncle Jasper, who's an old hand, and the Earl of Oxford." Rivers said the last name with particular venom.
"And they'll be leavened well with the Breton serjeants," Dimi said. "I suspect you know they're sharp. And the Byzantines... I'd say, coaxed never, but a hot enough fire might drive them. Gregory...?"
Gregory examined the ground, held up a device like a mariner's quadrant and took sightings in the bad light, said "Quickly sustained fire with fragmenting balls creates a zone in which, in theory, nothing may live. But as you experienced soldiers doubtless know, by prostrating onself and uttering a prayer to the Goddess of Artillery, this scientific law is suspended." His voice was absolutely level, and it was too dark to see his face. "However, the Goddess of the Engineers has been known to outvote her daughter. I shall need several of my lord of Norfolk's engineers, and men to hold the lanterns."
