by Terry Madden
Lloyd and Gwylym had made no move to send out a flanking attack as Nechtan expected. With no stingers in his backside, it was clear the men of Ys, his own men, pressed Marchlew’s back to the river. If he was going to engage Fiach, it had to be now.
Nechtan commanded three score horsemen, twice as many foot soldiers, and three hundred archers, a sad remnant of the detachment he’d led at dawn. He’d sent Talan back to Lyleth, and that was the last he’d seen of either of them. He could only hope they were among the archers at his back.
Nechtan plowed through the snow on foot, for his horse had been hamstrung. With fingers frozen around his axe hafts and arms like dough, he sliced his way deep into Emlyn’s men until he saw Fiach’s yellow hair spilling from under his helm.
Fiach’s foot soldiers reformed a meager shield wall, waiting for him.
Then he saw it. Far beyond the wide bend in the river, smoke billowed from Caer Cedewain. The Bear had come.
He pulled off his helm and tossed it to the red mush of the ground.
“Fiach!” Spreading his arms wide, Nechtan strode directly toward Fiach’s position.
Nechtan crossed his axes and tapped the hafts together.
The men of Fiach’s guard backed away.
“Look to the east, Fiach!” he called. “Caer Cedewain burns. The Bear comes for us. Shall we kill each other? Or the Bear?”
Nechtan closed the ground between them with long strides, his arms wide, inviting a spear, yet no man of Emlyn raised a weapon against him.
“Your men die today for the Bear, Fiach, not to avenge the shame I brought on you, on myself.”
Fiach’s eyes flashed to the east, then back to Nechtan. “Where is Lyleth?”
“Safe. She’s safe.” He hoped it was true.
Fiach lunged at him, but Nechtan parried with crossed axes.
“Fiach, listen to me!”
He tossed Fiach back, but the man growled and came at him again.
Nechtan deflected a slice to his thigh, then one to his head. “Kill me, and you still have the Bear,” Nechtan said. “Join me, and we bring him down.”
Fiach feigned left, and came at Nechtan with a red-faced hack. Nechtan trapped the sword blade between his axes and pulled Fiach close and held him.
“I draw breath for this, Fiach. For this alone: to mend the shame I’ve brought on myself and those who once served me, the shame I’ve brought on my solás and yes, even the wife who murdered me.”
Fiach thrust Nechtan away and stumbled free, wiping at frozen snot with the back of his hand.
“I have three hundred archers at my back,” Nechtan said, “and Lyl’s among them. She’d like to see you live, Fiach.”
He snorted a laugh. “Lyleth brought you back to raise an army against me.”
“She brought me back to join you,” Nechtan said.
Fiach drove at him and punched his shield into Nechtan’s chest, but Nechtan caught the edge with his axe. He worked Fiach’s guard open, and caught him in a strained embrace.
“She’s worthy of our love, is she not?” Nechtan said. “The woman? And the land who bore us?”
Nechtan broke his hold on Fiach and tossed him to the ground, then started walking east toward the burning fortress. He fixed his gaze on the sky, waiting for Fiach’s spear to bite into his spine, certain he’d be adrift on the sea of death, riding the cold current back to that white light of the Otherworld and the boy who demanded his return.
The sound of hooves in icy mush came from behind him. He would not turn. He spread his arms wide, an axe in each fist, hoping it would be quick. But the horse passed him by and the rider reined up and stood before him. He was a young man of Fiach’s clan guard, his nose red and his breath a warm streamer in the cold.
He dismounted, handed Nechtan his reins, and showed his palms, saying, “Take my horse, my lord.”
Nechtan turned to see Fiach and a field of horsemen at his command.
“Take us to the Bear, Nechtan.”
Snow fell again, but now it came in blinding flurries. Nechtan led Fiach and his horsemen upriver to join Pyrs, and they swiftly brought Lloyd to heel. The battlefield was silent now, but for the wails of the wounded and the dissonant bickering of crows. The men who remained whole, on both sides, turned toward the burning timbers of Caer Cedewain. Marchlew had already gone east, back to his fortress and his wife.
The battle between kinsmen was over, and the battle for the Five Quarters had begun.
A battery of archers had returned from the south side of the battlefield, but Lyl wasn’t among them. Nechtan wouldn’t allow himself to think of her. He had only one thought, to finish what she brought him here to do.
He rode over the bodies of the Ildana. It was a waste of life that had won nothing. It was then Nechtan saw Talan riding toward him from the south. He rode alone.
“We have Ava!” Talan called.
Nechtan found Pyrs and told him, “I’ll bring Ava back and find you.”
“I’ll send Maddoc for her,” Pyrs said. “We can’t spare you. Not now.”
“I’ll be back before you reach the ráth.”
Nechtan rode to Talan. “Does Ava have any men with her?”
“Her solás. But he’s dead.”
“And Lyl?”
“A dozen archers, no more. And Dylan.”
“Take me to her.”
The boy led him across a hollow between the river and the withy fences of the holding. As they reached the sheepfold, Nechtan saw the glint of steel from the ridge above, just below the burnt-out shell of Morcant’s Roost. Ice-born were making their way down from the crag. It was impossible to say how many. If Ava fell into their hands, there would be no stopping the Bear. Nechtan had no one to hold them but Talan and the handful of archers he could see on the stockade before him.
Nechtan spurred his spent horse and Talan followed.
“Through there,” Talan pointed to an open gate in the stockade. Nechtan had started across the sheepfold when Lyl appeared with Dylan clutching Ava under his arm like a broken doll.
From the walls, Lyl’s archers opened fire into the trees behind the holding. The ice-born had reached the south side.
“Get to your horses and go,” he told Lyl.
He gathered Ava in his arms and started back across the pasture. Her sunken eyes locked on his face. She was a fragile shell of the woman he’d wed; bruised and stinking of Irjan’s poisons.
“My love,” she croaked, her eyes full of mocking contempt. “You’ve come for me.”
Her hands were bound, but she placed both trembling, icy palms on his cheeks as if she appraised this flesh he wore. He saw something else in her, something she could not mask with spite or venom, and a pang of remorse flooded him. Nechtan had killed something precious in her, no less than she’d killed his flesh. It was for this sin alone he paid with the blood of his kinsmen.
He lifted her onto his horse. “I am deserving of your hatred, as you were deserving of my love.”
He looked into her, hoping to see some finality. But she studied him with a distant wonder in her eyes, as if taking in every curve of his flesh.
“By stars and stones,” she said at last, “it is you, Nechtan.”
His eyes found Lyl’s for a long moment. He wasn’t sure if the pity he saw there was for Ava or himself, or both.
Another flight of arrows rained from the archers on the wall, and he heard the rhythmic blow of a warhorse at full gallop. He turned to see an ice-born thegn clear the sheep fence on horseback. The man’s spear was set and he rode straight for Nechtan.
“Take them and go!” Nechtan said to Lyl. But her eyes refused to say goodbye.
“Go, Lyl!”
She tipped her chin just perceptibly, and dug in her heels.
A cacophony of bleating drowned out all other sound. The warhorse trampled through the flock and bore down on Nechtan. He turned the horns of his axes. He had one chance to hook the rider. As the thegn drew closer, the snarl curling his uppe
r lip became clear. It was Rua. Thegn of the Wastes. A parting gift from the green gods indeed.
As Rua closed, Nechtan lunged right at the last moment, hooking his axe horn around Rua’s knee.
Rua’s falchion slashed, missing Nechtan’s bare head and meeting his shoulder, but the mail held and the big man tumbled down on top of him.
Nechtan drove an axe haft into Rua’s gut and rolled him away. A churned mire of frozen dung and mud sucked at his feet, but Rua was up, too.
The sheep formed a ring of bleating spectators.
Rua circled and grinned; his tongue waggled and an old scar curled his lip like a mad dog.
“I never kilt a det man before,” he said in broken Ildana.
“The Bear falls to Pyrs while you play games with me.” Nechtan saw a star glaive at Rua’s belt, a throwing weapon, but not an accurate one. Two throwing spears were strapped to his back, and a seax hung from Rua’s shield wrist by a leather thong. That would be a nasty surprise.
“Da Bear comes, det man, ya. And Rua comes for hees bride.” He thumped his shield with the hilt of his falchion.
The facepiece of his helm formed the neck of a swan and battered wings wrapped round his head as if in flight. Vambraces covered his knuckles and ivory medallions scaled his hauberk and rattled like bones.
The vambraces would limit his wrist movement for throwing those spears on his back. Quickness would win this.
Nechtan crossed his axes and tapped the heads together. “Come,” he said. “You must kill me first.”
Rua lunged, his falchion arcing high.
Nechtan slid behind the blow, striking at Rua’s thigh, but Rua crossed his shield to deflect it and Nechtan’s axe head glanced off. Rua’s ivory scales chattered, and Nechtan tuned his ears to the warning they gave as to direction and speed.
Nechtan’s axehead deflected a spear, and he moved quickly to counter, hooking Rua’s shield edge with the horn of one axe and wrenching the arm and wrist that held it, pushing him back.
Nechtan tried to bind up the falchion with the other axehead, but Rua hacked at the haft, just missing Nechtan’s hand. As Rua cocked the falchion for another chop, Nechtan hooked his leg and the big man crashed to his back. Nechtan’s axe buried in the snow where Rua’s head had been.
Clattering, Rua regained his feet, casting his last throwing spear, which was off mark. He was agile for such a big beast.
Rua had spent his spears, but there was still the circular star glaive. He would need time to aim and release it, and Nechtan would give him no such time. He kept close and when Rua’s falchion sank deep into the haft of one of his axes, Nechtan popped the sword out of Rua’s hand and threw the axe and bound falchion into the flock of sheep.
Nechtan looked back in time to see the star glaive snap from Rua’s hand in a spinning whorl of blades. It came for his throat, but struck his raised axe, rattling metal and wood, slicing Nechtan’s knuckles before it fell to the snow.
Rua was charging him.
Nechtan picked up the glaive and threw with an arcing twist. It found Rua’s inner elbow and slashed through to the bone. His sword arm dangled like a broken doll’s, the seax falling to the snow.
Rua fell to his knees and Nechtan crossed the ground in two strides, cocked the axe and brought it down and through Rua’s neck.
The wolf of the frozen wastes, prince of savagery, slayer of Nechtan’s father, fell forward in the frozen muck. It took two more swings of the axe to sever the swan-helmed head from its massive body. Nechtan emptied the helm of its head, the eyes still wide and blinking. He took hold of the red hair and held it out so Rua’s last view of this world was his own twitching body, lying in sheep dung.
“May your ship sail an endless sea,” Nechtan cursed him, “and your feet never know the earth.”
With that, he tossed the head into the boiling froth of sheep.
The archers had left the walls and moved toward Nechtan in a hasty jog. “Another wave comes, my lord,” one of them called.
“Go,” he told them. “Keep them from Lyl.”
At the edge of the woods he saw a handful of horsemen coming. He could hold them for some time, long enough to be sure that Lyl was well on her way to Pyrs.
He collected Rua’s weapons and only then saw Talan. The foolish lad had come back. He’d been watching from the fence.
Talan was at his side before the horsemen entered the sheepfold.
“You’re supposed to live, lad. Go.”
“My father says a king who’s not proven his courage is a king who’s not respected.”
“You must live to be respected.”
“Perhaps not.” Talan weighed the spear in his hand. A smirk played at his thin red lips.
The horsemen crossed the sheepfold and circled them. One man dismounted and picked up Rua’s head, displaying it to the others and bellowing something in Skvalan. He pointed at Nechtan, saying, “Ahhh. The det kink killt Rua. Big man.”
The man drew his sword, more for posturing than to actually fight. But as Nechtan watched, Talan’s spear sprouted out of the man’s chest. The others closed quickly.
“Keep your shoulder to me!” he told Talan.
A second man fell easily to Nechtan’s axe before the other two circled one last time and rode on, making for the forest they’d come from.
While Talan retrieved his spear, Nechtan finished the man he’d brought down. It struck him as so peculiar; he saw no fear in the man’s eyes as he died. Just laughter.
He extracted his axe from the body and steam rose like a last breath from the cleft in the man’s chest. Nechtan stood and inhaled deeply of the crisp air, feeling a bone-deep weariness he’d never known before.
Turning to Talan, he said, “I’m done with death.”
His eyes met Talan’s, just as the spear left the boy’s hand.
The shaft flew for an eternity, spiraling to meet him with the perfect aim of ambition.
Nechtan fell, his hands clutched around the burning shaft in his gut.
Talan stood over him breathing hard, or was he bleating? His eyes darted to something beyond the fence, then he set his foot against Nechtan’s chest to wrench the spear free. But Nechtan clutched his ankle and held on with all the strength left him.
“The land is a jealous bitch,” Nechtan growled.
Talan fell backward into a clutch of sheep and the spearhead and Nechtan’s insides tore free in a surge of pain. The sky dimmed and a searing frost closed down on him.
When he opened his eyes, he looked into his nephew’s face; the warrior’s braid a snake of dark hair with tiny silver bells tied in it. The bells chimed like rain, like the silver bells on the branch Lyleth carried beside him, like wind through harp strings.
“Finish it,” Nechtan commanded.
The lad cocked the spear as if to oblige. But someone was coming, Nechtan could read it on his face.
Talan lowered the spear, muttering, “Peace find you in the Fair Lands, uncle.” And he was gone.
Chapter 38
Lyleth had left Ava with Pyrs under heavy guard. Pyrs intended to use her to negotiate with her father, but Lyleth doubted there was anything left of the woman that would be of use to the Bear. They needed Nechtan. But neither he nor Talan had returned from the shepherd’s holding. Against Lyleth’s command, Talan had turned back before they’d even reached the river, saying only a coward would let his uncle face ice-born alone.
Lyleth feared she’d lost them both.
The boy Dylan had found hiding in the cupboard was another matter. Lyleth couldn’t send him into battle, so she told him to hide and hide well. He was to wait the day out, then run to his grandfather’s, though Lyleth knew the chance of it being burned out was high.
Her thoughts were on the boy as she and Dylan rode fresh horses back toward the shepherd’s holding. Arvon warriors would be following as soon as Pyrs could spare them, but they had just reached the walls of Caer Cedewain, and every man was needed. The longer the Bear held the
fortress, the harder it would be to take him.
When they reached the sheepfold, the flock was in a frantic stir. As they drew closer, Lyleth saw something move through the sheep like a mole under a blanket of fallen leaves. It was Brixia—ribbons, holly and mane flying. Elowen trailed close behind her. They had clearly been flushed from their hiding place in the woods and the ice-born would be right behind them.
Lyleth slid from her horse and raced across the muck. Sheep spurted and flowed in all directions, their bleating and bells drowned Elowen’s cries. When the sheep parted, she saw where Elowen was headed. Nechtan.
Encircled by sheep, he lay in a muddy pool.
Lyleth ran to him and placed her palms on his cooling cheeks. A spear had ripped through his mail, and his intestines lay strung out in the filth, spilled when the spearman retrieved his weapon. But he hadn’t the kindness to finish him.
His eyes saw her, but did his mind?
He fought for words. “You’ll do… what I asked?” His words were barely more than a whisper.
“Talan.” Lyleth held him, her tears leaving muddy streaks on his face. “Talan came back for you. Where is he?”
Nechtan fought for breath. “I sent him… to Pyrs.” He took her face between bloody, quaking palms. But his eyes were hiding something from her when he said, “You promised me...”
A whisper of arrowflight sounded from the walls. Lyleth’s archers had turned back with her, and had taken position on the stockade.
More ice-born were coming.
From the woods across the pasture, mounted thegns appeared.
“Ready your bow,” she told Dylan.
The boy nodded and pulled his bow from his shoulder, and Lyleth did the same. They took up position behind a low jumble of granite. Blinded by tears, she drew her bow and fired. When she glanced back at Nechtan, his eyes were on her.
I’m coming with you, her heart said to his.
