“This prince,” said Thorkell, “is entitled to make his own choices in life, reckless or otherwise, as much as we are. A third blade is welcome as a woman in a cold bed. But if he is right and outriders are following him, we need to move.”
“He should go back,” Alun repeated, stubbornly. “This is not his—”
“Talk to me if you have anything to say. You’ve said that three times,” Athelbert snapped. “Make a triad of it, why don’t you? Set it to music! I heard you each time. I am not turning back. Will you really refuse aid? Even if it might save lives? Is it so certain you aren’t thinking of glory?”
Alun blinked at that. “I swear by Jad’s name, it is certain. Don’t you see? I do not believe it is possible to do this. I expect to die here. We have no idea where water is, or food, what path we might find, or not find. Or what will find us. There are tales of this place going back four hundred years, my lord Athelbert. I have a reason to risk death. You do not.”
“I know those stories. The same tales are told on this side. If you go back far enough, we used to sacrifice animals in the valley north of here, to whatever was in the wood.”
“If you go back far enough, it wasn’t animals,” Alun said.
Athelbert nodded his head, unruffled. “I know that, too. It is not for you to judge my reasons. Say that you are here because of your brother, and I because of my father. Leave it and let’s go.”
Alun still hesitated. Then he shrugged. He’d done what he could. With a hint of wryness in his tone, one that a dead brother would have recognized, he said, “If that is so, this one here breaks the pattern.” He nodded towards Thorkell.
“Not really,” said the Erling. They heard his amusement. “I’m of a piece with you, in truth. Tell you about it later. Let’s move, before we’re found and it gets difficult.”
“Truly. Some of the outriders sing worse than I do,” Athelbert said.
“Jad defend us, if so,” said Alun. He reached a hand down, into the fur of the dog’s neck. “Cafall, will you lead us home, my heart?”
And with those words Athelbert realized that they weren’t as completely without resources as he’d thought, riding into the spirit wood after the two of them, panic and determination warring within him.
They had the dog. Amazingly, it might matter.
The three of them remounted and carefully picked their way out of the small glade, bent low over the horses’ necks to stay under branches if they could. They heard sounds as they went. The noises of a wood at night. Owls calling, wingflap of another bird overhead, wood snapping to left and right, sometimes loudly, a scrabbling along branches, scurry, wind. What else each of them heard, or thought he heard, he kept to himself.
Men were avoiding the king, Ceinion saw. He could understand that. Aeldred, philosopher, seeker after the learning of the old schools, shaper of calm devices and stratagems, a man controlled enough to have feasted the Erling who’d blood-eagled his father, was in a rage like a forest fire.
As he’d stalked away across the stones of the beach where the boats had been, his fury had been so intense, it had been as if there were a wave of heat coming off his body. If you were a physician, you feared for a man in such condition; if you were his subject, you feared for yourself.
The king was still down the strand in the gathering dark. Standing close to the crashing surf in the wind, as if together wind and waves might cool him, Ceinion thought. He knew that wasn’t going to happen. They had heard from the outriders sent out. Prince Athelbert had gone into the woods.
Fear plainly visible in those reporting this; four exhausted men astride their horses, waiting for the command they would not dare refuse, and could hardly bear to imagine. It never came.
Instead, Aeldred had stood, fighting for control, and then had turned on his heel and gone off to where he was now, his back to all of them, facing the darkening sea under the first stars in the vault of the sky. The blue moon was rising.
Ceinion went after him.
No one else would do it, and the cleric was aware of terrors clinging to what remained of this day, building within himself. He felt trammelled, as in a fisherman’s net of sorrows.
Deliberately, he let his approach be heard, scuffling at stones. Aeldred did not turn, stayed as he had been, gazing out at the water. Far off, beyond sight but not sailing, were the shores of Ferrieres. Carloman had taken the coast back from the Karchites in the spring, after two years of campaigning. A disputed, precarious shoreline, that one. It always had been. Everything was precarious, he thought. He was remembering fires in the farmyard at Brynnfell.
“Did you know,” said Aeldred, not turning around, “that in Rhodias in the days of its glory there were baths where three hundred men could be bathing in cool water, and as many in the heated pool, and as many again lying at their ease with wine and food?”
Ceinion blinked. The king’s voice was conversational, informative. They might have been, themselves, reclining at their ease somewhere. He said, carefully, “My lord. I did hear of such. I have never been there, of course. Did you see this yourself, when you went with your royal father?”
“The ruins of them. The Antae sacked Rhodias four hundred years ago. The baths didn’t survive. But you could see … what they had been able to make. There are ruins here, too, of course, from when the Rhodians came this far. Perhaps I will show you, some day.”
Ceinion thought he could discern the shape of what this was about. Men responded so differently to grief.
“Life was … otherwise, then,” he agreed, being cautious. It was difficult; he was seeing fires in his mind. The breeze was strong here, but it was pleasant, not cold. It was from the east.
“I was eight years old when my father took me on pilgrimage,” Aeldred went on. The same even, casual tone. He still hadn’t turned around. It occurred to Ceinion to wonder how the king had known who it was who’d come walking over to him. His particular footfall? Or a simpler awareness that no one else would approach, just then?
“I was excited and impatient, of course,” Aeldred went on, “but what you just said … that life was otherwise for them … that was clear to me, even when I was young. On the way, in one of the cities in the north of Batiara, where the Antae had their own court, we saw a chapel complex. Four or five buildings. In one of them there was a mosaic of the court of Sarantium. The Strategos-Emperor. Leontes.”
“Valerius III. They called him ‘the Golden.’”
Aeldred nodded. “There was a king,” he said. A wave crashed and withdrew, grating along stones. “You could see it on that wall. His court around him. The clothing they wore, the jewellery, the … room they were in. The room they had. In their lives. To make things. I’ve never forgotten it.”
“He was a great leader, by all accounts,” Ceinion agreed.
He was letting this unfold. At the back of his mind, his pulse rapid with it, was the awareness of ships, and the east wind.
“I’ve read one or two chronicles, yes. Pertennius, Colodias. On the other wall I remember another mosaic, less good, I think. An earlier emperor, the one before him. He rebuilt the sanctuary, I think. He was there too, the opposite wall. I remember I wasn’t as taken. It looked different.”
“Different artisans, very likely,” the cleric said.
“Kings depend on that, do you think? The quality of their artisans.”
“Not while they live, my lord. After, perhaps, for how they are remembered.”
“And what will men remember about—?” Aeldred broke off, resumed again, a different tone. “We shouldn’t be forgetting his name,” he murmured. “He built Jad’s Sanctuary in Sarantium, Ceinion. How are we forgetting?”
“Forgetting is part of our lives, my lord. Sometimes it is a blessing, or we could never move beyond loss.”
“This is different.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“What I was saying … about the baths. We have no space, no time to make such things.”
He had been s
aying this, Ceinion remembered, at the high table after the banquet last night. Only last night. He said, “Baths and mosaics are not allowed to all of us, my lord.”
“I know that. Of course I know. Is it … unworthy to feel their absence?”
This was not the conversation he’d been expecting to have. Ceinion thought about it. “I think … it is necessary to feel that. Or we will not desire a world that lets us have them.”
Aeldred was silent, then, “Do you know, I always intended to take Athelbert, his brother, too, to Rhodias. The same journey. To see it again myself, kiss the ring of the Patriarch. Offer my prayers in the Great Sanctuary. I wanted my sons to see it and remember, as I do.”
“You were fighting wars, my lord.”
“My father took me.”
“My lord, I am of an age with you, and have lived through the same times. I do not believe you have anything for which to reproach yourself.”
Aeldred turned then. Ceinion saw his face in the twilight.
“Alas, but you are wrong, my lord cleric. I have so much in the way of reproach for myself. My wife wishes to leave me, and my son has gone.”
They had arrived. Every man had his own path to such places. Ceinion said, “The queen is seeking to go home to the god, my lord. Not to leave you.”
Aeldred’s mouth crooked a little. “Unworthy, good cleric. Clever without being wise. Cyngael wordplay, I’d call it.”
Ceinion flushed, which didn’t happen often. He bowed his head. “We cannot always be wise, my lord. I am the first to say that I am not.”
Aeldred’s back was to the sea now. He said, “I could have let Athelbert lead the fyrd last night. He could have done it. I didn’t need to be here.”
“Did he ask for it?”
“That is not his way. But he could have dealt with this. I had just come back from my fever. I had no need to ride. I should have left it to him.” His hands were fists, Ceinion saw. “I was so angry. Burgred … ”
“My lord—”
“Do you not understand? My son is dead. Because I did not let—”
“It is not for us to say what will be, my lord! We do not have that wisdom. This much I do know.”
“In that wood? Ceinion, Ceinion, you know where he went! No man has ever—”
“Perhaps no man has tried. Perhaps it was time to lay to rest old fears, in Jad’s name. Perhaps a great good will come of this. Perhaps … ” He trailed off. There was no great good that he could see coming. His words were false in his own ears. There was that image of burning in him, here by the cool sea, as the moon rose.
Aeldred was looking closely at him now. He said, “I have been greatly unjust. You are my friend and guest. These are my own concerns, and you have a grief here. There is a reason Prince Owyn’s son went into the spirit wood. My sorrow, cleric. We were too slow, riding. We needed to be here before the ships cast off.”
Ceinion was silent. Then he said, as he ought to have said at the beginning, with the dark coming on, “Pray with me, my lord. It is time for the rites.”
“There is no piety in my heart,” said Aeldred. “I am not in a state to address the god.”
“We are never in a state to do so. It is the way of our lives in his world. One of the things for which we ask mercy is that inadequacy.” He was on familiar ground, now, but it didn’t feel that way.
“And our anger?”
“That too, my lord.”
“Bitterness?”
“That too.”
The king turned back to the sea. He was still as a monolith, as a standing stone planted on the strand by those who lived here long ago, and believed in darker gods and powers than Jad or the Rhodian pantheon: in sea, in sky, in the black woods behind them.
Ceinion said, again, “We must not presume to know what will come.”
“My heart is dark. He … should not have done what he did, Athelbert. He is not without … duties.”
They were back to the son. Not a child any more.
“My lord, the son of a great father might need to shape his own way in the world. If he is to follow you and be more than only Aeldred’s child.”
The king turned again. He said, “Dying allows no way in the world. They cannot go through that wood.”
The cleric let his own voice gain force. A lifetime of experience. So many conversations with the bereaved and the afraid. “My lord, I can tell you that Alun ab Owyn is as capable a man as I know. The Erling … is far more than a servant. And I watched Prince Athelbert this past night and day, and marvelled at him. Now I will honour his courage.”
“Ah! And you will say this to his mother, when we come back to Esferth? How comforting she will find it!”
Ceinion winced. Behind them, men were gathering wood, lighting night fires on the beach. They would stay until morning. The fyrd would be exhausted, ravenous, but they would be feeling pride, deep satisfaction at what they had done. The Erlings were driven off, fleeing them, and threescore of the raiders were dead on Anglcyn soil. The tale would run, would cross these dark waters to Ferrieres, Karch, east to Vinmark itself, and beyond.
For Aeldred and the Anglcyn this could be called a triumphant day, worthy of harp song and celebration after the mourning for an earl. For the Cyngael, it might be otherwise.
“Pray with me,” he said again.
There must have been something in his voice, an edge of need. Aeldred stared at him in the last of the light. The wind blew.
It could carry the Erlings tonight. Ceinion could see them in the eye of his mind, dragon-prows knifing black water, rising and falling. Vengeful men aboard. He had lived through such raids, so many times, so many years. He could see Enid, fire at the edges of his vision, pushing inward, as Brynnfell burned and she died.
Always, since his wife had been laid in the ground behind his own sanctuary in Llywerth, there had been that one thing for which he never prayed: the lives of those he loved. He could see her, though—all of them at Brynnfell—and the ships in the water like blades, approaching.
Aeldred’s gaze was unsettling, as if his thoughts were open to the king. He wasn’t ready for that. His role was to offer comfort here.
Aeldred said, “I cannot send the Drengest ships to catch them, friend. They will be too far behind by the time word reaches the burh, and if we are wrong, and the Erlings do not go west … ”
“I know it,” Ceinion said. Of course he knew. “We aren’t even allies, lord. Your soldiers on the Rheden Wall are there against Cyngael raids … ”
“To keep you out, yes. But that isn’t it. I would do this, after last night. But my ships are too new, our seamen learning each other and the boats. They might be able to block the lanes if the Erlings turn home tonight, but—”
“But they cannot catch them going west. I know it.”
No words for a time. Ships in his mind, out there somewhere. The beat and withdraw of surf, sound of it, sound of men behind them up the strand, noises of a camp, wind in the gathering night. Three things the wise man ever fears: a woman’s fury, a fool’s tongue, dragon-prows.
“Brynn ap Hywll killed the Volgan, Ceinion. He and his band are very great fighters.”
“Brynn is old,” Ceinion said. “So are most of his band. That battle was twenty-five years ago. They will have no warning. They may not even be there now. Your men say there were five ships beached here. You know how many men that means, even without those you killed.”
“What shall I say?”
Somehow it had been turned around. He had walked over to give comfort. Perhaps he had; perhaps for some men this was the only access they had to being eased.
“Nothing,” he said.
“Then we’ll pray.” Aeldred hesitated, a thinking pause, not an uncertain one. “Ceinion, we will do what we can. A ship to Owyn in Cadyr. They’ll sail to him under a truce flag with a letter from me and one from you. Tell him what his son is doing. He might cut off an Erling party on its way back to their ships, if they do go to your shores. An
d I’ll send word north to the Rheden Wall. They can get a message across, if someone is there to receive it … ”
“I have no idea,” Ceinion said.
He didn’t. What happened in those lands around the Wall was murky and fog-shrouded, beyond the power and grasp of princes. The valleys and the black hills kept their secrets. He was thinking about something else. On their way back to the ships.
If they were doing that, the Erlings, it would be over at Brynnfell. And here he was, knowing it, seeing it, unable to do more than … unable to do anything. He knew why Alun had gone into the forest. Standing still was very nearly intolerable, it could shatter the heart.
He would pray for Athelbert, and for Owyn’s son in the wood, but not for those he most dearly loved. He’d done that once, prayed for her with all the gathered force of his being, holding her in his arms, and she had died.
He was aware of Aeldred’s gaze. Told himself to be worthy of his office. The king had lost a lifelong friend and his son was gone.
“They may get through … in the forest,” he said, again.
Aeldred shook his head, but calmly now. “By the mercy and grace of Jad, I have another son. I was a younger son as well, and my brothers died.”
Ceinion looked at the other man, then beyond him at the sea. On that windblown strand he made the sun disk gesture that began the rites. The king knelt before him. Down along the beach where the fires were, the men of the fyrd saw this and, one by one, sank to their knees to share the evening invocation, spoken in that hour when Jad of the Sun began his frozen journey under the world to battle dark powers and malign spirits, keeping as many of them as possible away from his mortal children until the light could come to them again, at dawn.
Keeping most of them away. Not all.
It was not the way of things in the world that men and women could ever be entirely shielded from what might seek and find them in the dark.
CHAPTER XIII
Given what followed, it might have been a mistake to stop for what remained of the night, but at the time there hadn’t seemed to be much choice.
All three men were hardened and fit and two of them were young, but they’d been awake for two days and nights and in the saddle. In this forest, Thorkell had judged it more dangerous to keep moving in exhaustion, tired horses stumbling, than to stop. They could be attacked as easily while moving, in any case.
The Last Light of the Sun Page 35
