The Last Light of the Sun

by Guy Gavriel Kay

  It wasn’t as if she spent her days wan and weeping, refusing to rise from her bed (her mother wouldn’t have allowed that, in any case), or drifting aimlessly about the farmhouse and yard.

  She had been working as hard as anyone else all summer. Helping to bring Brynnfell back from fire and ruin, tending to the wounded in the early weeks, riding out with her mother to the families of those who’d suffered death and loss and taking what steps needed to be taken there. She devised activities for herself and Helda and Eirin, ate at table with the others, smiled when Amund the harper offered a song, or when someone said anything witty or wry. And still those furtive, searching looks came her way.

  By contrast, Rania had been allowed to leave. The youngest of her women (with the sweetest voice) had been so terrified in the aftermath of the raid that Enid and Rhiannon had decided to let her go. The farmhouse had too many images of burning and blood for Rania just now.

  She had left them early in the summer, weeping, visibly shamed despite their reassurances, with the contingent of men who would spend the summer by their castle towards the wall. The land there needed defending in summertime; there was little love lost between the men of Rheden and the Cyngael of the hills and valleys north of the woods; cattle and horses had been stolen on both sides, sometimes the same ones back and forth, for as long as anyone could remember. That was why Rheden had built the wall, why Brynn (and others) had castles there, not farmhouses. Her parents were here, though, attending to Brynnfell and its people.

  So Rania had gone away, and everyone seemed to understand why she had been so distressed, to accept it as natural. But Rhiannon was right here, doing whatever needed to be done, undeterred by night-memories of an Erling hammer smashing her window, or a blade held to her throat in her own rooms by a screaming, blood-smeared man vowing to kill her.

  She made her morning visits to the labourers’ huts, carried food to the men repairing the farmyard structures, offered a smile and a word of encouragement with their cheese and ale. She attended at chapel twice a day, spoke the antiphonal responses in her clearest voice. She shirked nothing, avoided nothing.

  She just wasn’t sleeping at night. And surely that was her own affair, not shared, not proper cause for all those thoughtful glances from Helda and her mother?

  Besides, these past few days, as the rebuilding drew to a close and preparations for the harvest began, her father seemed to be afflicted in the same way.

  Rhiannon, rising quietly—as she had been doing all summer—stepping past her sleeping women to go out into the yard, wrapped in a blanket or shawl, to pace along the fence and think about the nature of a person’s life (and was there something wrong in that?), had found her father out there before her for three nights now.

  The first two times she’d avoided him, turning back another way, for wasn’t he to be allowed his own solitude and thoughts? The third night, tonight, she gathered her green shawl about her shoulders and walked across the yard to where he stood, gazing up at the slope south of them under the stars. The blue moon, a crescent, was over west, almost down. It was very late.

  “A breeze tonight,” she said, coming to stand beside him at the gate.

  Her father grunted, glanced over and down at her. He was clad only in his long nightshirt, and barefoot, as she was. He looked away into the darkness. A nightingale was singing beyond the cattle pen. It had been with them all summer.

  “Your mother’s troubled about you,” Brynn said at length, a finger going to his moustache. He had trouble with these conversations, she knew.

  Rhiannon frowned. “I can see she is. I’m beginning to get angry about it.”

  “Don’t. You know she leaves you alone, usually.” He glanced at her briefly, then away. “It isn’t … right for a young girl to be unable to sleep, you know.”

  She gripped her elbows with both hands. “Why a young girl only? Why me? What about you, then?”

  “Just the last few days for me, girl. It’s different.”

  “Why? Because I’m supposed to go singing through the day?”

  Brynn chuckled. “You’d terrify everyone if you did.”

  She didn’t smile. Smiles, she’d admit, tended to be forced now, and in the darkness she didn’t feel she had to.

  “So, why are you awake?” she asked.

  “It’s different,” he repeated.

  It was possible he was coming out to meet one of the girls, but Rhiannon didn’t think so. For one thing, he obviously knew she was in the yard at night, everyone seemed to know. She didn’t like it, being watched that way.

  “Too easy an answer,” she said.

  A long silence this time, longer than she was happy with. She looked over at her father: the bulky figure, more paunch and flesh than muscle now, hair silver-grey, what was left of it. An arrow had been loosed from this slope above them, to kill him that night. She wondered if that was why he kept looking up at the shrubs and trees on the rise.

  “You see anything?” he asked abruptly.

  She blinked. “What do you mean?”

  “Up there. See anything?”

  Rhiannon looked. It was the middle of the night. “The trees. What? You think someone’s spying on … ?” She was unable to keep fear from her voice.

  Her father said quickly, “No, no. Not that. Nothing like that.”

  “What, then?”

  He was silent again. Rhiannon stared up. Shapes of trunk and branch, bushes, black gorse, stars above them.

  “There’s a light,” Brynn said. He sighed. “I’ve seen a Jad-cursed light for three nights now.” He pointed. His hand was steady enough.

  A different kind of fear, now, because there was nothing at all to be seen. The nightingale was still singing.

  She shook her head. “What … what kind of light?”

  “Changes. It’s there now.” He was still pointing. “Blue.”

  She swallowed. “And you think … ?”

  “I don’t think anything,” he said quickly. “I just see it. Third night.”

  “Have you told … ?”

  “Who? Your mother? The cleric?” He was angry. Not with her, she knew.

  She stared into emptiness and dark. Cleared her throat. “You … you know what some of the farmers say. About the, our woods over up there?”

  “I know what they say,” her father said.

  Only that. No swearing. It frightened her, actually. She was gazing up the slope and there was nothing there. For her.

  She saw her father’s large, capable hands gripping the top rail of the fence, twisting, as if to break the bar off, make it a weapon. Against what? He turned his head the other way and spat into the darkness. Then he unlatched the gate.

  “Can’t keep doing this,” he said. “Not every night. Stay and watch me. You can pray if you like. If I don’t come back down, tell Siawn and your mother.”

  “Tell them what?”

  He looked at her. Shrugged, in the way that he had. “Whatever seems right.”

  What was she going to do? Forbid him? He swung open the gate, went through, closed it behind him—habits of a farmyard. She watched him begin to climb. Lost sight of him halfway up the slope. He was in his nightshirt, she was thinking, carried no weapon. No iron. She knew that that was supposed to matter … if this was what they were so carefully not saying it might be.

  She wondered suddenly, though not unexpectedly, since it happened every night, where Alun ab Owyn was now in the world, and if he hated her still.

  She stayed by the gate a long time, looking up, and she did pray, like one of the Sleepless Ones in the dark, for her father’s life, and the lives of all those in the house, and the souls of all their dead.

  She was still there when Brynn came back down.

  Something had changed. Rhiannon could see it, even in darkness. She was afraid, before he spoke. “Come, girl,” her father said, re-entering through the gate, moving past her towards the house.

  “What?” she cried, turning to follow. “Wh
at is it?”

  “We have much to do,” said Brynn ap Hywll, who had slain Siggur Volganson long ago. “I cost us three days, not going up before tonight. They may be coming back.”

  She never asked who they might be. Or how he knew. But with the words she felt a seizure, a roiling spasm within herself. She stopped, clutching at her waist, and bent over to throw up what was in her stomach. Shaking, she wiped at her mouth, forced herself to straighten. She followed her father into the house. His voice could be heard, roaring an alarm like some half-beast come down from the trees, rousing everyone from sleep.

  Everyone, but not enough of them. Too many of his men were north and east. Days away. Even as she re-entered, tasting bile, that thought was in her head. Then another one: swift, blessedly so, for it gave her a pulse-beat of time to anticipate.

  “Rhiannon!” her father said, wheeling to look at her. “Get the stablehands to saddle your horses. You and your mother—”

  “Must ride out to alert the labourers. I know. Then we’ll begin preparing to deal with any wounded. What else?”

  She stared at him as calmly as she could, which was not easy. She had just been physically sick, her heart was pounding, there was sweat cold on her skin.

  “No,” he said. “That is not it. You and your mother—”

  “Will ride to the farm workers, then begin preparations here. As Rhiannon said.”

  Brynn turned and confronted his wife’s steady gaze. A man stood behind her holding a torch.

  Enid wore a blue night robe. Her hair was down, almost to her waist. No one ever saw it that way. Rhiannon, seeing the look exchanged between her parents, felt unsettled by the intimacy of it. The hallway was filled with people, and light. She felt herself flush, as if caught in the act of reading or hearing words meant for another. It occurred to her, even in that moment, to wonder if she would ever exchange such a glance with anyone before she died.

  “Enid,” she heard her father say. “Erlings come for the women. You make us … weaker.”

  “Not this time. They are coming for you, husband. Erling’s Bane. Volgan’s slayer. The rest of us are ordinary fare. If anyone leaves, we should all leave. Including you.”

  Brynn drew himself up. “Abandon Brynnfell to Erlings? At this point in my life? Are you seriously—?”

  “No,” said his wife, “I am not. That is why we stay. How many are coming? How much time do we have?”

  For a long moment he looked as if he were going to hold his ground, but then, “More than last time, I think. Say eighty of them. Time, I’m not sure. They’ll come from Llywerth again, through the hills.”

  “We need more men.”

  “I know. Castle’s too far. I’ll send, but they won’t get back in time.”

  “What do we have here? Forty?”

  “A little less than that, if you mean trained to weapons.”

  There were two lines on her mother’s forehead. Rhiannon knew them, they came when she was thinking. Enid said, “We’ll get as many of the farm workers as we can, Rhiannon and I, and their women and children for shelter. We can’t leave them out there.”

  “Not the women. Send them north to Cwynerth with the young ones. They’ll be safer away. As you said—Brynnfell is what they want. And me.”

  “And the sword,” his wife said quietly.

  Rhiannon blinked. She hadn’t thought of that.

  “Likely so,” her father was saying, nodding his head. “I’ll send riders to Prydllen and Cwynerth. There should be a dozen men at each, for the harvest.”

  “Will they come?”

  “Against Erlings? They’ll come. In time, I don’t know.”

  “And we defend the farm?”

  He was shaking his head. “Not enough men. Too difficult. No. They won’t expect us to have a warning. If we’re quick enough, we can meet them west, at a place we choose. Better ground than here.”

  “And if you are wrong?”

  Brynn smiled, for the first time that night. “I’m not wrong.”

  Rhiannon, listening, realized that her mother, too, had not asked about the warning, how Brynn knew what he seemed to know. She wouldn’t ask, unless perhaps at night when the two of them were alone. Some things were not for the light. Jad ruled the heavens and earth and all the seas, but the Cyngael lived at the edge of the world where the sun went down. They had always needed access to knowledge that went beneath, not to be spoken.

  They weren’t speaking of it.

  Her mother was looking at her. Frowning again, doing so, that expression everyone had been giving her since the end of spring.

  “Let’s go,” Rhiannon said, ignoring it.

  “Enid,” her father said, as the two women turned away. They both looked back at him. His face was grim. “Bring every lad over twelve summers. With anything at all that might do for a weapon.”

  That was too young, surely. Her mother would refuse, Rhiannon thought.

  She was wrong.

  Brand Leofson, commanding five Jormsvik ships as they made their way west, knew where he was going. He’d rowed his first dragon-ships in the final years of the Volgan’s raids, though never with Siggur’s men. Had lost his eye in one of those, had been recovering at home when the last of the Volgan’s journeys had ended in disaster in Llywerth. Hadn’t been there.

  Depending on his mood, in the intervening years, and on how much he’d been drinking, he either felt fortunate to have missed that catastrophe, or cursed not to have been one of those—their names were known—who’d been with Siggur in the glory years, at the end.

  You could say, if your mind worked that way, that his failure to be in Llywerth was a reason he was taking five undermanned ships west now. The past, what we have done or not done, slips and flows, like a stream to a carved-out channel, into the things we do years after. It is never safe, or wise, to say that anything is over.

  They were at risk, he knew it, and so would the other captains, all the more experienced men here. They still had all their ships but they’d lost sixty men. If the weather turned, it would get bad at sea. So far, it hadn’t. On the second night the wind switched to southerly, which pushed them closer than he liked to the rocky coast of Cadyr. But they were Erlings, mariners, knew how to stay clear of a lee shore, and when they reached the western end of the Cyngael coastline and turned north, that wind held with them.

  Your danger could become your gift. Ingavin’s storms could drown you at sea—or terrify your foe on land, adding fire and the flash of lightning to your own war cries. And the god, too, Brand was always telling himself, his private thought, had only one eye, after his nights on the tree where the world began.

  Salt in the air, sail full on each ship now, stars fading above them as the sun rose, Brand thought of the Volgan and his sword—for the first time in years, if truth be told. He felt a bone-deep stirring within. Ivarr Ragnarson had been malformed, evil and devious, had deserved to die. But he’d had a clever-enough thought or two in his head, that one, and Brand wouldn’t be the one to deny it.

  To have turned home with sixty dead and nothing to show for their loss would have been a disaster. To come back and report the Volgan’s slayer slain and the sword found and reclaimed …

  That would be something different. It could make up for the deaths, and more. For not having been one of that company, twenty-five years ago.

  IT HAD OCCURRED TO BERN, rowing west, that there was something unsettling about what he was and how the world saw them all. They were Erlings, riders of the waves, laughing at wind and rain, knifing through roiling seas. Yet he himself was one of them, and he had no idea what to do in rough weather, could only follow directions as best he could and pray the seas did not, in fact, roil.

  More: they were Jormsvikings, feared through the world as the deadliest fighters under sun and stars and the two moons. But Bern had never fought a battle in his life, only one single combat on the beach below the walls. That wasn’t a battle. It was nothing like a battle.

  What,
came the thought, as they turned north and wind took the sails, if all of the others were—more or less—like him? Ordinary men, no better or worse than others. What if it was fear that made men believe the Jormsvik mercenaries were deadly? They could be beaten, after all; they had just been beaten.

  Aeldred’s fyrd had used signal fires and archers. Brand, and Garr Hoddson, had called it cowardly, womanish, making mock of the Anglcyn king and his warriors, spitting contempt into the sea.

  Bern thought that it would be better to consider learning to use bows themselves, if their enemies did. Then he thought, even more privately, almost hiding the notion from himself, that he really wasn’t sure raiding in this way was the life for him.

  He could curse his father again, easily enough, for it was Thorkell’s exile that had thrust Bern into servitude, and then off the isle without an inheritance. But—in sunlit truth—that channel of the thought-stream wasn’t so easy any more. The farm, his inheritance, was only theirs because of raiding, wasn’t it? His father’s long-sung adventure with Siggur in Ferrieres, a cluster of men burning a royal sanctuary.

  And no one had made Bern take Halldr Thinshank’s horse to Jormsvik.

  He thought of his mother, his sisters on the mainland, and then of the young woman at the woman’s compound—he’d never learned her name—who’d been bitten by the volur’s snake, and saved his life because of it. Partly because of it.

  Women, he thought, would probably see this differently.

  He rowed when ordered, rested when the wind allowed, took food to Gyllir among the other horses standing tethered in the central aisle of the wide ship, shovelled horse dung overboard.

  Felt a surge of excitement, despite everything, when they reached the harbour that Garr and Brand both knew, in Llywerth. No one in sight, all along the coast coming north, or here. They pulled the ships ashore in the hour before dawn and spoke their thanks to Ingavin on the beach.

  They’d leave the boats here, men to guard them—he might be one of those, had no clear sense of how he’d feel about that. Then the others would head inland to find Brynnfell and kill a man and claim a sword again.