by Mia West
Arthur answered with what he knew was pride, and a vengeful one at that. With a shout, he unleashed a storm of blows Cai was hard-pressed to answer. Arthur brought to bear all his anger, his righteousness on behalf of Bedwyr and the private space Cai had breached, his disbelief that Cai would disdain a bond like the one that had held their family together for so long. He let all of it push him well past the accepted limits of practice and straight on into something closer to battle. He struck without thought and fended off blows as if they were gnats tickling his ears.
When Cai’s face grew red, Arthur hit harder. When his brother’s mouth fell open, panting, Arthur surged forward. As Cai gave ground, and then more, and more, Arthur fought to silence the voice in his mind, the one he often heard in this yard. It belonged to his grandfather, Marcus, and it was growing loud, no longer exhorting him to be patient and choose his strikes carefully. Now it rang as if the man stood at the fence, shouting at him to stop, that he was going too far.
But he wouldn’t stop.
He couldn’t.
And then he did, as Cai sidestepped and tripped him.
He landed hard on one knee but had no time to right himself before Cai knocked him onto his back. Straddling him, Cai put his blade to Arthur’s throat.
It pressed coldly into his skin as he swallowed. “Why?”
Cai glared at him, shaking in fury, and Arthur lived one bright moment of terror in which he was certain his brother would kill him. Then Cai drew a strong breath through his nose and the blade eased. His anger didn’t. “Unnatural,” he spat.
Arthur struggled to move, but Cai had his arms pinned under his knees. “It’s not unnatural, Cai. Grandfather wasn’t unnatural. Papa Wolf wasn’t unnatural.”
“Shut up!” Cai hissed. “Don’t soil them with your filth.”
“My filth—”
“You don’t deserve any of it,” Cai said. “Lord Uthyr doesn’t see what you are. But he will.”
“Cai…”
He trailed off at the expression on Cai’s face. Hard as stone, with eyes just as unseeing. He wasn’t going to listen. He was resolved. Whatever was driving Cai, he would tell Uthyr. He was willing to bring down the sky.
But maybe…
Arthur closed his eyes, steeled himself to think it.
The sky would fall, but maybe it needn’t destroy everyone.
He opened his eyes again, managed to snag Cai’s gaze. “He was your shieldmate,” Arthur said. “He’s a good man. Better than either of us.” He drew a steadying breath, then made his plea. “Don’t name him.”
Cai scowled, his jaw working as he ground his teeth. Then he growled and shoved off Arthur’s body, stalking away to leave him lying in the yard.
~ ~ ~
They prowled the perimeter of the meeting hall like wolves.
Arthur’s head was easy to spot above everyone else’s. Not only was he one of the tallest men present, the torches about the space set the colors in his hair alight, as bright and dangerous as any of the flames. Bedwyr couldn’t see her but knew that Gwen walked beside Arthur, her arm in his, just as Elain walked with him. He glanced over to find her surveying the room as he’d been doing.
Cai was taking his time, damn him.
The women had arrived back home that morning to find Bedwyr pacing the house, waiting for Arthur to return. They guessed right away that Cai had come back. There followed a brief and unhelpful lecture from Gwen about taking more care. When he told her what Cai had threatened to do, she scoffed.
“But his grandfathers,” she said. “How can he be such a lump?”
“He’s angry,” Elain said. “Arthur’s taken his shieldmate, his place in the eyes of Lord Uthyr, this house, and, if I’m not mistaken, the woman he had hoped to marry.”
When they’d stared at her, Elain had shrugged tightly. “I’m a fresh pair of eyes here, remember?”
Arthur had returned shortly afterward, looking tense. When Bedwyr tried to ask him what had happened, Arthur had only said, distractedly, “We sparred. He bested me.”
They had gone uneasily about their day’s tasks. Bedwyr suspected that both women sought Cai during the day to try to dissuade him, though neither admitted doing so. When he himself cornered Cai in the armory and urged him to see reason, his former shieldmate had only glared at him flatly and then left. Bedwyr had considered going to his father then, but he still held out hope that Cai’s temper would cool. No reason to ruin what they’d achieved if Cai might come to his senses.
A tug on his arm from Elain brought him back to the noisy interior of the meeting hall. Cai had arrived and was wasting no time now, striding directly from the door to Uthyr’s chair. Three people in the hall stood stone-still to follow his progress. The fourth, Gwen, broke away to reach her father first.
It was a risky move, one that the rest of them had tried to talk her out of making. It would implicate her as the accomplice she’d been, instead of the innocent, unaware young wife she should play.
But she’d managed to slip Arthur’s grasp now and, being shorter than Cai, was weaving her way through the crowd more quickly. She all but pulled her father bodily away from Eira.
Bedwyr tried and failed to read her lips. “What is she saying?”
Elain shook her head. “I’ve no idea. She wouldn’t tell me.”
“You knew she would do it?”
“I knew she would try, just as you knew it.”
Uthyr leaned to one side to listen to Gwen. His face registered first the usual concentration required to hear any single voice in the clamorous hall. Then his brow pinched—confusion? consternation?—and he shook his head. Waving Gwen off, he straightened, returning his attention to Eira.
Gwen’s eyes met Bedwyr’s for a second, and he took an involuntary step toward the panic in them, but then she turned back to their father and grabbed his arm.
It served only to alert him that Cai now stood before him. He gave Arthur’s brother a curious look and nodded acknowledgment.
Cai glanced to either side before stepping closer. Whatever he said drew Uthyr’s spine straight in the slow, deliberately calm way he had in the face of imminent conflict.
Bedwyr found Arthur again, watching intently. Philip stood next to him now. The cleric seemed to have asked him something Arthur hadn’t heard.
“Quiet!”
Uthyr’s voice cut through the hall, slicing conversations in half. All heads turned to face him.
“Cai wishes to make a public statement.”
“A public charge,” Cai clarified, glaring at his brother.
Several of their neighbors noticed his hard stare and turned to Arthur in curiosity. It wouldn’t have been the first time the brothers had had some sort of disagreement, and the villagers probably expected a good argument, nothing more.
Nothing like what they were about to witness.
“Go on,” Uthyr said. One of his hands gripped the arm of his chair.
Cai pointed at Arthur. “This morning, I sought my brother to ask a favor. He wasn’t in the training yard, so I went to his house. He didn’t answer my knocks, but I heard strange noises coming from inside. I thought he was being attacked, so I entered his house.” He took a deep breath, his jaw tight. “I found him fucking another man.”
Gasps sounded around Bedwyr, raising the hairs on his neck. Elain clutched his arm, hard. Gwen’s face had gone pale. Arthur’s ears were a livid wine color. He glanced toward the wall, and Bedwyr followed his gaze to Arthur’s parents. They stood side by side, their attention on their sons.
Uthyr rose from his chair like a thundercloud and set a hand on Cai’s shoulder. “This is a serious claim. You know the consequences of a false accusation.”
He could have his tongue cut out.
Cai nodded. “I do, my lord.”
Uthyr’s nostrils flared. He was girding himself to ask the next question. “Who was this other man?”
The hall was utterly silent, waiting.
“I don’t know,�
� Cai said.
Elain’s hold on Bedwyr’s arm tightened. He didn’t dare look at Arthur.
Instead, he was watching Cai when Uthyr let out a controlled but relieved breath, and Bedwyr saw it: Cai’s shoulders gave a slight flinch. A man didn’t train with another from boyhood and not learn his every tell. Cai had realized that Uthyr knew who the other man was. Cai’s eyes flicked from person to person in the hall, as if wondering how many people had known.
Uthyr found Arthur in the crowd. “Come forward, young man.”
The color was high in Arthur’s neck and face as he came to stand before Uthyr.
“Your brother accuses you of sodomy. What say you?”
Uthyr was giving Arthur the same hard look, and Bedwyr realized something terrible: his father was willing Arthur to deny it, telling him silently that he would punish Cai for false claims to cover this.
Bedwyr closed his eyes, unable to believe his father would misjudge Arthur so badly. Arthur was ambitious but would never let his brother take the fall for something he himself had done.
“It’s true,” Arthur said, and the hall erupted.
Bedwyr opened his eyes to an expression he’d only witnessed on his father’s face a few times in his life. It had nearly always preceded the death of whoever was standing before him. Bedwyr wanted to launch himself between them but his boots felt rooted to the ground.
Uthyr stepped closer to Arthur, bringing the full force of that lethal stare. “Who was this other man?”
Elain was probably gripping Bedwyr’s arm tightly, but it had long since gone numb. He waited for the inevitable.
If Arthur wouldn’t refute Cai, he would never implicate Bedwyr.
“It was me.”
Bedwyr jerked with surprise and turned to the source.
The villagers parted to allow Tiro to pass. He strode through them, coming to stand before the other three men.
They all looked at him with the same dismayed question: What are you doing, man?
Meanwhile, Philip looked pale and stricken, watching his partner sacrifice himself unnecessarily.
And all of them were protecting Bedwyr.
Enough.
He pried Elain’s fingers loose and pushed toward his father. Uthyr saw him coming and leveled that murderous glare at him, but Bedwyr had let this get out of hand. He raised his voice so that everyone would hear.
“I was the man Cai saw.”
Cai stared at him, horrified. Arthur looked shocked and strangely disappointed.
Uthyr trembled with rage. “You go too far to protect your shieldmate. Stand down.”
“No.”
“Stand down!”
Ignoring his father’s shout, he turned to Arthur and, taking his head in his hand, kissed him.
The chaos around them was nothing to the riot in Bedwyr’s body, until he was in danger of shaking apart. He gripped Arthur with desperation, willing him to respond, to grab Bedwyr likewise and open to him. To show everyone what they had, and that it was strong and true and not shameful.
But Arthur’s body remained rigid, his mouth shut. He shoved Bedwyr away, wild-eyed. “Lord Uthyr has the right of it,” he said, breathing hard. “You go too far, shieldmate.”
Bedwyr reached for him, but Arthur batted his hand away.
“You’ve been overprotective my whole life.” He turned to the hall. “You all know it. Bedwyr would protect any of you as fiercely as his own family.”
His neighbors nodded. A hand came to rest on Bedwyr’s shoulder. He shook it off.
Arthur faced Uthyr again. “It was a passing traveler, one of the many wedding guests and long gone from this place.” He gave Bedwyr a look that could have curled steel. “No one of consequence.”
He knew what Arthur was doing. He knew. Arthur’s voice was all wrong. But the words…Arthur’s face…and what was coming.
Uthyr stepped up onto his dais. When he turned to Arthur again, Uthyr’s face had a sickly gray tinge to it. “Arthur ap Matthias,” he said loudly, “you have defiled your marriage bed and the gods’ laws. You have brought shame to your fellow warriors, your people, and my house. You are banished.”
“No!”
Mistress Britte’s shout sounded as raw as Bedwyr’s lungs felt. He surged forward, only to be caught in the iron grip of two men. He struggled, but between them, Cai and Huw were too strong.
Uthyr glared at Arthur. “Leave. Don’t return unless you’re willing to die for it.”
Arthur blinked. He turned to Gwen and bowed his head. “I’m sorry.” Then he glanced at Bedwyr, his gray eyes as clouded as a winter sky, and strode from the hall. His parents hurried after him.
Uthyr watched them go, then turned to Cai.
“Take this one to the armory.” He looked at Bedwyr, his eyes black and unyielding. “Chain him.”
Chapter 18
Arthur fumbled with the latch on his front door but couldn’t make it work. After a few attempts, a strong, familiar hand stilled his and opened the latch.
“Thank you.”
His father didn’t respond, only followed him inside.
His mother pushed past them both to stoke the hearth. The sight of her bent over the banked coals was too much a part of him—something he’d seen so many days of his life. He was torn between watching her now to keep the memory or turning away to spare himself.
In the end, he was too restless to stand around. He crossed to his bedchamber to pack his gear.
He hardly knew this room; he’d spent only one night in it and not even an entire night. His clothing was here and his few possessions—all for show, in case someone ventured into this chamber. To most eyes, it would have been where he slept with his wife. Gwen’s comb lay on a shelf near the bed, a fancy thing of some sort of reddish wood, a gift from her father. What would become of her?
He straightened, shaking his head to clear it. Bedwyr would care for his sister, of course. She would have to marry again—Lord Uthyr would insist. Maybe Bed could urge their father to choose someone kind. Someone who might not notice how close Gwen was to her sister-by-law.
Arthur groaned. What had he done?
“Arthur.”
His father stood inside the doorway, his hands uncharacteristically twitchy. Arthur couldn’t face those eyes that had always believed the best of him, even when they reflected some disappointment he’d caused. He grabbed his pack from the corner and began to shove things into it.
His father gripped his shoulder, turning him. “Where will you go?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t have to go far, you know. Only to the bounds of Uthyr’s holdings.”
He could cross into a neighboring chieftain’s lands. Would that be worse, though, to be so close and not be able to see his parents? To see Bedwyr? Or worse, to tempt Bed to come to him and risk discovery? Risk losing everything that was his due?
No. He couldn’t take that chance. “I have to go farther.”
His father frowned. “For Bedwyr?”
“This is his chance to take his rightful place.”
“His rightful place is beside you.”
“It’s here, as your next warlord.”
“Arthur—”
“Don’t make this harder than it already is.”
Matthias looked away, and Arthur packed in the ensuing silence. From the main room came the soft clatter of whatever his mother was doing at the hearth. When he’d collected his few belongings, Arthur hefted the pack over his shoulder and stepped past his father.
As he’d suspected, his mother was packing food for him.
“Where does Gwen keep the dried apples?” she asked, bustling about. “I can’t find the dried apples.”
“On the beams.”
She looked up, seemed surprised to find the chewy rings hanging on their loops of twine from the roof beams—the same way every woman in the village dried her fruit.
He set his pack on the table. “I’ll be fine. You don’t have to pack food.”
She waved him off, cut down an entire thread of apples. “I won’t have you starving.”
“Mama—”
“Arthur.” She held up a hand to stop him. It shook. She curled it into a fist. “I have to.”
He stood stupidly, watching his mother work.
“I’ll be right back,” his father said and left. Headed for his apothecary to gather a supply of medical remedies, no doubt. Between his parents, he wouldn’t be able to lift his pack.
Setting it down on the floor, he drifted to the door to Bedwyr’s chamber. After a few seconds, he lifted the latch and stepped inside.
The room smelled like Bedwyr, and Arthur’s knees nearly buckled under that. The man was everywhere here, from his shield and sword leaning against the wall to the bedclothes they’d been too panicked to address in the wake of Cai’s intrusion until Elain had set them to rights. For all the good that had done.
Unable to stop his feet, he crossed to where Bed’s spare shirt and trousers hung on their pegs. The wool of the shirt felt soft between his fingers. He lifted it to his nose.
His throat tightened. Bed’s skin, his hair, his sweat—they had permeated the fabric with the scent of him. If Arthur held the shirt long enough, it would become warm, as if Bed had just taken it off. He gripped it in his hands, willing it to absorb his own heat. Then a thought occurred to him. An unfair one, but he was desperate. Quickly, he unbuckled his belt and stripped his own shirt, hanging it on the peg. Then he donned Bed’s shirt.
It hung on him like one of his grandfather’s campaign tents, but he had it now, that scent he couldn’t be without. It wrapped him up, and he could almost imagine Bed’s arms doing the same. With calmer hands, he refastened his belt. He was staring at the foot of the bed, remembering how the lamplight had played warmly over inked skin, when voices sounded in the main room. He glanced about the dim space one last time, then went out the meet them.
Elain was speaking low to his mother when he stepped from the bedchamber. She turned as he neared them. Drawing a pendant from around her neck, she handed it to him.
“Go to Black Rhys,” she said.
“What’s this?”
“He’ll know it. He knew of the bargain I made with Lord Uthyr and gave me this. Told me to send it to him if I needed his help.”
