by Terry Madden
He paced the circle and stopped again before Pyrs.
The chieftain of Arvon had arms like willow branches, his brows swept over brooding eyes. He’d been more a friend than liegeman to Nechtan.
Pyrs hands went to Nechtan’s shoulders where he tested the meat in a strong grip. “My lord, men return from the dead only in tales of the Old Blood.”
“I left much undone, Pyrs. By the will of the gods I’ve come to finish it.”
“Was it the gods’ will? Or Lyleth’s?” Marchlew asked.
But Kyndra was floating toward him. He took her trembling hands as her legs gave way; he caught her and eased her to the flagstones, then knelt beside her.
“Then it’s true,” she said. “What she told me is true.”
“Who told you?”
He followed Kyndra’s gaze to a serving woman who stood in the doorway holding a platter. When she saw Nechtan, the platter crashed to the floor.
“By stars and stones, my lord does live indeed. Where is she, my lord? Where is my Lyleth?”
“Taken,” Nechtan said to the woman, “by Fiach. How do you know Lyleth?”
“Served her, I did, me lord.”
Nechtan helped Kyndra to her feet. She laced her fingers in his and said to the serving woman, “We’ll discuss this with a meal. See to the table, Dunla. My brother has a great hunger.”
Nechtan oversaw the distribution of weapons to the men who poured into the vale of Cedewain. When word reached the more remote mountain valleys that Nechtan had returned, the numbers began to swell. He’d emptied Marchlew’s armory, and still more men came. They’d have to fight with sickles and staves, he told them. “We’ll fight with our fists for ye,” was the reply. The more visible he was to these men, the more real he was, not only to them, but to himself.
When night fell, his thoughts turned to Lyl. When Ava reached Fiach’s camp, what would she do to Lyl?
Dylan trained with the bow and ate at every opportunity, and was proving his talent at both. The serving woman, Dunla, delivered to table platters of boar stuffed with hazelnuts and honey, wild sloe cakes and baked apples, mountain trout wrapped in pastry, blood sausage, mead from the Long Vale and coal-roasted partridge.
Dylan never slowed in his battle against the table.
Nechtan had stolen short exchanges in the kitchen with Dunla, who claimed to have given Lyl refuge after Nechtan banished her.
“She didn’t go to Fiach when you cast her out, my lord,” Dunla stated flatly, as if he needed to be convinced of it. “Nay. Distraught was she. Mightily. And then, well…then you were dead.”
She wadded the apron at her generous waist. “I seen into her with the eyes of a tired ol’ woman, aye, ‘tis true. I see her heart, me lord, her heart. Lyleth thinks her love for you is a blemish on the duty you laid upon her.” She gave a harrumph of disbelief. “’Tis this that troubles her.”
He tried to speak, but ended up staring at her. What was the old woman saying? And how much of this had she fancied in her own mind? When he left the kitchen, he could think of nothing else but wonder if Lyl really felt anything for him other than duty? Had he forced the role of solás upon her? If she had refused, he would likely never have seen her again. Had that been the reason she accepted?
It smelled of vanity to even think it, and worse, it distracted him from the task she’d set before him.
Dylan attacked his food with dire intent, licking his fingers and slathering his cakes with honey butter and exchanging rapturous glances with Nechtan.
Marchlew had protested when Dylan was seated beside Nechtan. “Servants eat in the kitchen,” he’d said.
“My servant eats with me.”
Nechtan tapped the meat knife in his hand, and raised his eyebrows at Dylan. After a stricken look, Dylan took up his own knife and cut away at the boar rather than tearing at it with his fingers.
Across from Dylan sat Kyndra’s son, Talan, who picked at his food and openly gawked as Dylan behaved like a starving hound. The light fuzz on Talan’s lip said he’d come of age. He was no longer the lad with squirrelish cheeks, but had grown into a long-limbed creature with a brooding scowl. Nechtan wondered how much Marchlew had to do with that scowl.
Kyndra wore the distant mask of one who’d given up joy long ago. Still beautiful, she looked more like their mother than Nechtan, which was a good thing, for their mother had been sculpted from a pale, brittle stone and colored with the sky.
Kyndra had given Marchlew the required son as well as a daughter, now at the court of IsAeron as a ward of Lloyd. The girl had been betrothed at five to Lloyd’s heir, a man of seventeen years then. Nechtan wondered how long it’d been since Kyndra had seen her daughter. She worried for her now, certainly, for Lloyd of IsAeron marched north with Fiach and Ava.
No other children had filled his sister’s belly. He imagined that she saw her duty fulfilled and preferred to send Marchlew to his whores rather than suffer the sweating, drunken sod in her bed.
Nechtan caught Marchlew’s stare and held it. His rebirth certainly couldn’t please Marchlew who had, according to rumor, sought to bargain for the throne by wedding Talan to Ava. Nechtan was certainly a serious inconvenience.
“Fiach commands more spearmen than archers,” Pyrs was saying. “But his mounted troops number far greater than Arvon and Cedewain combined.”
Nechtan took a bite of sloe cake. Dylan was right. The food tasted like sin indeed.
“What of our numbers, Pyrs?” Nechtan asked.
“We have twice their archers and far more war dogs.”
“The reality is that Ava commands three of the Five Quarters against our two,” Nechtan said, “and if Lyl is right, the ice-born wait to run up our ass as well. The only way we can succeed is to use what we have at the right time in the right place. And if they know we’re coming, it will mean our death.
“We set the dogs on Fiach’s horses,” Nechtan said, “Archers against spears in the initial push.”
“My men in Sandkaldr say the old Bear lies dying,” Marchlew said. He spat and his wolfhound got up from his slumber and licked it off the flagstones. “If this is so, how is it he can be floating out on the Gannet’s Bath waiting to beach his longships?”
“Lyl thinks he would still send his thegns even if he is near death.”
Marchlew rocked back in his chair and ran his hands over his belly. “Ah yes, the leafy counselor who thought it great diplomacy to marry you off to your killer. Why would I listen to Lyleth?”
His eyes flashed from Nechtan to Talan.
“This bird that shits upon us now,” Marchlew said, “took wing years ago, Nechtan.” He leaned across the table and wagged his meat knife. “From the moment you walked into the Bear’s hall at Rotomagos and asked for that little ice bitch for your bed, he planned to murder you.”
“What’s done is done.”
“Ah, but that’s the thing, brother. ’Tisn’t done. You’ve left us to clean up the mess your druí made.”
Kyndra set a hand on her husband’s arm. “This is not the time—”
“There’s never been a better time. Nechtan, or whoever he might be, bids us ride out and die with him, woman.” He sniffed.
“The Five Quarters would have fallen to the Bear years ago if not for Lyl,” Nechtan said.
“That woman has brought you nothing but disgrace!” Marchlew sprayed spittle. “And now you tell me she’s brought you back from the dead. For what? To salvage your honor?” He gave a fat snort and tossed a bone to the wolfhound.
Dylan’s hand was on Nechtan’s shoulder. His eyes were the anchor Nechtan needed.
“She brought me back,” Nechtan said evenly, “to see that we prevail.”
Marchlew rumbled to his feet, saying, “No, brother. I lead this army. No ghost. But a living, fuck-loving man.” He pounded his chest. “I say we prepare for a siege. If you wish to join me, I can use your sword. If not, go back to the hell you came from.”
Dylan had gone to fetch more w
ater. Nechtan lay back in the wooden tub and stared at the rib vaults in the ceiling, each terminating in a creature’s head, wagging stone tongues, baring fangs or lecherous grins. The dance of firelight made them appear to come alive. The mind sees what it thinks it should, not what’s really there. Maybe this entire world moved only by the hand of a shifting light. Maybe this was the land of the dead and nothing was real. Not Lyl, not Ava, especially not Nechtan.
Real or not, Ava’s army marched for Cedewain and if Marchlew had his way, they would sit behind his walls and wait. The hot water melted the knots in Nechtan’s flesh but all he could think about was that Lyleth had given her life for him to roll over at Marchlew’s feet like a bad dog.
He closed his eyes. One way or another, he would do what Lyleth had brought him back to do, and this overmatched army of the north would slice Ava to pieces. But he sorely needed to talk to Pyrs.
The door opened and feet crossed the room. He heard a bucket rattle to the floor.
“Dylan, fetch Pyrs. I need to speak with him.”
He opened his eyes and started to sit up, but hands caught his shoulders and pressed him back into the water, massaging his shoulders with an expert touch. He turned to see a serving girl.
“Where’s Dylan?”
“My lady Kyndra sent me. To see to your shaving, my lord.”
“Shave?” He rubbed at the thick stubble on his chin. “Be quick about it.”
He let his head rest on the edge of the tub while the girl soaped his face. The thought struck him like a blow—one slice of the razor and Marchlew would have no more contention over his battle plan and Talan would still be heir to the throne. Nechtan would be just as dead as he had been a fortnight ago.
He caught the wrist that held the razor.
“I don’t know what you’ve been told, lass, but if you cut me, you’ll be dead long before I will.”
She froze, the crescent-shaped razor dripping soap on his chest.
“I’m quite good at this, my lord. I shave my lord Marchlew.” Nechtan doubted that was all she did for Marchlew.
She set the blade to his throat and dragged it up to his chin.
It felt good to be rid of the itch of beard stubble. But his mind was on the narrow glen that opened out from the gates of Caer Cedewain. Ava would come up that glen, one way or another, for taking that many men through the mountain passes would be impossibly slow and leave her open to ambush. Nor would she move at night, not with thousands of men. But Nechtan figured Ava would reach Morcant’s Roost at the neck in another day.
The serving girl dipped a cloth in the water and wiped stubble from his cheeks.
“Thank you,” he said, and sat up.
But her hands were on his chest, sliding under the water. She hitched up her skirt and stepped into the tub with him.
He caught her wrists and stopped their groping as she lost her balance and splashed into the tub on top of him, grinning.
“I was in need of nothing more than a shave, lass. Now, fetch my serving boy.”
Her grin trickled away. “Yes, my lord.”
He glimpsed his own exposed wrists holding hers. It was clear from her face that she’d seen his lack of the king’s mark as well.
If he were another man, he would offer her gold for her silence, and others still would drown her. He continued to hold her wrists and she began to struggle, fear flashing in her eyes. He held her gaze, willing the fear to build.
“You need not speak of it,” he said.
“No. I’ll not speak of it. Thank you, my lord.”
He held her still, tightening his grip on her wrists.
“Please, my lord! I swear on my life, I’ll say nothing of it.”
When he released her, she was frozen for some seconds, and then spilled out of the tub into a puddle. She scrambled to her feet, showed her palms, and was gone. And so was his secret.
Nechtan dressed in a surcoat and trousers Kyndra had sent. Smelling clean was something new for him in this lifetime.
Dylan laced up his bracers and chattered on. “Do you think I can carry a bow with the archers from Arvon, my lord? They can shoot the eye from a grouse a league away, they say. Is it true that some are women?”
“The best are women, and yes, I think you can fight beside them. But hitting a grouse from a league away…”
The boy grinned and tied off the laces.
“Now go fetch Pyrs for me and get cleaned up,” Nechtan said. “You stink.”
Dylan disappeared and Nechtan poured a cup of mead. If the tactics for this ambush came from Pyrs, perhaps Marchlew would agree to them.
A knock came at his door.
It wasn’t Pyrs. It was Kyndra.
She closed the door quietly as if she feared being followed.
“What is it?” he asked.
She stood carved out by the firelight, her hands fretting with her belt.
“Kyndra?”
“Let me see your wrist,” she said at last.
“Whatever you’ve heard—”
“Show me!”
“Lyleth doesn’t know why—”
She slapped him, hard. Then her trembling hands went to her mouth.
He held his right arm out to her. She pulled at the laces frantically and peeled the bracer away. Her gaze went from the pink-white skin of his wrist to his eyes.
“Who are you?”
Chapter 28
Across leagues of grain fields and moors, Lyleth and Elowen followed Brixia northward in darkness. The little horse’s direction didn’t waver any more than when she’d led Lyleth and Nechtan through the mountain. When the wheeling night brightened to blue, clouds streamed from the east, joined and parted with the wind, and dawn gifted the land with the hues of heather and frost-rimed gorse, with white drifts of thistle down that followed unseen currents of the sky.
Lyleth took a deep, thankful breath and felt tears well. She had so far to go.
Long before dawn, she had finally succeeded in cutting the rope that held her fast to Nechtan’s corpse. She lay there for a long time, trying to imagine the camp that had grown in the past few days. How far was it to the edge?
Glancing under the tent, she saw the guard slumped over, and beside his bulk a pair of dirty, bare feet.
She scrambled back to the corpse, clutched the knife between her palms, and pretended to be bound and sleeping.
The tent flap opened.
“Wake up, druí.”
Elowen held a rushlight in one hand and a bloody dagger in the other. “We must be quick.”
“You were supposed to run,” Lyleth scolded as she took the girl in her arms.
Elowen smiled, showing her missing teeth. “I never do as I’m told, ye should know that by now.”
She ducked outside and returned with an armload of weapons: a bow, two quivers packed with bodkin-tipped arrows, and a swordbelt. Her skills at thievery commanded admiration.
“How’d you find me?”
Elowen touched her nose and made a face. “Easy, that.”
The little horse stood in the doorway and nickered.
“Truth be, ‘twas Brixia,” Elowen said, helping Lyleth to her feet. “She wouldn’t go south. I said to meself, ‘she’s got someplace to take me to,’ but nay. I finally figured it—she’s got someplace to take the druí.”
Elowen had two horses tied in a thicket just north of camp. She’d walked right through Fiach’s men and convinced them she was the get of a camp whore, begging for food, doing chores for copper. Who would ask questions of a ragged girl?
Lyleth stripped the cloak of farandine from Nechtan’s corpse and wrapped herself in it, and, concealing the arsenal Elowen had stolen, the two walked right out of camp, a whore and her child.
Dawn had come now, and a dark forest beckoned no more than a league to the north. They followed the river until they found Dylan’s bridge. Lyleth dismounted, drew her sword, and crept down to the water’s edge. A bridge was a fine place for an ambush.
Sh
e took the opportunity to drink and wash, for the smell of death clung to her like peat smoke. When she scrambled back up the embankment, Elowen was scanning the southern horizon.
“There.” She pointed.
Through the thick of dawn, Lyleth saw them too. Fiach’s men weren’t far behind.
Once across the bridge, Lyleth pushed her spent horse towards the woods not far away. Stands of oak and beech had long shed their leaves, offering little cover, but a dense copse of golden willow welcomed them as Fiach’s horsemen reached the bridge.
Thrashing through the underbrush, branches lashing her face and catching her cloak, Lyleth broke free into an open meadow, then wove back into a heavy stand of fir. Tracking them would be easy in this soft ground, so she found a game trail that wound up to a limestone ridge. The only soil here clung to cracks and pits in the great slab warming in the morning sun, but the horses’ iron shoes left a trail, even here.
Rejecting the obvious route, Lyleth crossed the stone shelf at a trot and took a steep descent, which plunged into a glen so thickly wooded a deer would struggle to get through. But a stream sliced through the middle and Lyleth rode into it, her horse stumbling over moss-slick rocks and making far more noise than she intended.
She reined up.
“Did you hear that?” she whispered to Elowen.
The girl listened, eyes wide. “Aye.”
Lyleth pointed upstream where faint voices drifted through the trees.
She put her fingers to her lips, dismounted, and handed her reins to Elowen. With bow nocked and ready, she waded upstream.
The woods gave way to a pocket meadow, deep with highland grass covered in a dusting of morning frost. There, at the meadow’s edge, was a camp of perhaps fifty men, maybe more hidden by trees.
Lyleth made her way as close as she dared, close enough to hear the guttural tongue of the ice-born. These men had built no morning fires, travelled in trackless woods, spoke in hushed voices. Ava didn’t know they were coming. But she would soon, and so would Fiach.
Lyleth found Elowen planted in the middle of the stream where she’d left her.
