by Anna Elliott
DERA WOKE to someone poking her in the ribs. Sometimes when she woke, it took her a moment to remember where she was and how she’d come there. But this morning—more was the pity—she remembered right away everything that had happened the night before. And when she opened her eyes, she found it was a man’s boot that was jabbing her. And the man attached to it—a tall, wild looking man with blue eyes and a gold-brown beard—was looking down at her.
“Up,” he grunted.
Dera dragged herself upright, every muscle in her body fairly screaming after a night on the cold hard ground. “And a good morning to you, too, Sunshine,” she muttered under her breath.
The man gave her a long look, but turned away without saying anything more. He was—so far as she’d been able to tell from watching him and the other men the night before—some sort of slave or servant here. He’d been put in charge of cleaning the weapons, keeping the swords free of rust, clearing the ground for a fire and digging the privy hole. He was young—not more than twenty-five or so. And not bad looking. At least, so far as Dera could tell under the beard. He was tall, well-built, with hair between blond and brown tied back in a leather thong.
But he’d a funny, vacant sort of look about his eyes, and a stammer when he talked—and an awkward, jerky way of moving, like a puppet on short strings. And the rest of the men, the leader Glaw included, talked to him like he was some kind of half-wit.
Took a wound to the head in some battle, maybe, and it had addled his wits. It happened, sometimes.
Now he shuffled over to a traveling pack, pulled out a hunk of bread, and tossed it into Dera’s lap, though he didn’t look at her again.
The bread was rock hard. And so coarse ground there were bits of grit in it from the miller’s grindstones. And she could scarcely get it up to her mouth, because her hands were tied together at the wrists, and her fingers were so numb with cold they felt ready to fall off. Not to mention a trip to the privy pit would have been nice.
But at least she was alive. Dera gnawed away on the cold, stale crust. The scouts weren’t back yet, so Glaw hadn’t—yet—slit her throat. And none of the men had even tried anything with her during the night. Glaw had given orders that they were all to be on strict guard in case of attack, and that if he caught any man with his pants down, Glaw’d have his guts for dog’s meat.
“Besides.” Glaw had smacked his lips. “All this’ll be over soon enough. There’s surely plenty of fine women inside Dinas Emrys, ripe and ready for the picking.” He’d jerked his head in Dera’s direction. “And you can have her, then, too. Win the fight, and then you can all have her at once for all I care. But not tonight.”
One or two of his spearmen had looked at her like they might be thinking about it, all the same. But they’d lost interest after she’d started in with the cough Lady Isolde had made her practice before she left—the one that made her sound like she had the white plague.
Now Dera forced down another mouthful of the bread. She’d have been an idiot to have thought that Glaw and his men would give up on attacking Dinas Emrys on her word alone. What had she expected? That they’d say, “Oh, well, all right then, Lord Marche’ll surely understand it can’t be done. And thanks very much, Dera, for the tip-off”?
Apparently she was idiot enough to have expected it, though. She’d not realized it. But the solid lump of ice that had been sitting in her gut since Glaw had ordered the men to make camp for the night told her she hadn’t—really—thought she was going to have to fall back on any of those worst-case plans she and Lady Isolde had made.
She touched the oilskin packet she had sewn inside her shift. That was the only good thing about all this; the men hadn’t bothered searching her. And why should they? It wasn’t like she was much threat to them.
Now all around her, the men were moving, scratching and stretching themselves, chewing on their own slabs of the hard bread. The blue-eyed serving man had dug out an ale skin and was carrying it round for the men to take swigs from in turn. The gray first light of early morning was filtering down through the tree branches, and she could see their faces more clearly than she had the night before. Hard faces, hard eyes, skin weathered and scarred by years of fighting and living out of doors. Most wore Marche of Cornwall’s badge: the Blue Boar. But she thought some of them must be Saxons—some of Marche’s foreign allies. They were dressed different from the others, in badly-cured wolfskin cloaks and fur-trimmed boots, and they kept to themselves, muttering in a harsh-sounding language Dera didn’t understand.
The serving man had finished handing out the food and drink, and now he was sitting cross-legged by the fire, oiling and polishing the blade of one of the men’s swords. Which Dera saw now was crusted and stained a rusty red.
She could feel the soggy pellets of bread trying to rise up out of her stomach. No. No no no. She couldn’t think about whose blood was on that blade. Couldn’t think about whatever village of women and old men and children these men had just come from, because if she did, she was going to turn into just one more woman gibbering with fear in front of Glaw and the other men’s swords.
No one was paying much attention to her. Dera felt cold all through, but she looked down at her bound hands and wondered what her odds would be if she tried making a run for it.
About as good as a fish in a barrel. Flailing around through thick forest and tripping over rocks and roots and branches with her hands tied—she’d be lucky if she got fifty paces before they caught her again. Or worse; two of the band were oiling wicked-looking crossbows. Probably the same ones that had shot Bevan.
Dera clenched her teeth to keep them from chattering and thought about how lucky it would have been if last night’s anger could have lasted her through the morning. Then she jerked her head up as a man stumbled through the trees. One of the scouts Glaw had sent out the night before. At least she thought it was him—his clothes were torn, and his face was so bruised and smeared with blood his own mother might have had to look twice.
“Patrol—King Madoc’s men, from the fortress.” His chest was heaving, and the words came out in whispery gasps. His eyes scanned the group until he found Glaw. “Caught us east of here. Near where Lord Marche and the other men were camped. Lord Marche heard the fighting. Came to our aid. Got Madoc’s men pinned down so they can’t get back to the fort. Looks to be the whole of the garrison Madoc had at Dinas Emrys—or nearly all. Lord Marche says get the men together and come at once and we’ll end this. Kill ’em and then take the fort.”
Dera heard the words—but it was like they went into her head, rattled around, and then left with her thoughts scrambled like they’d been beaten up with a whisk. She felt like she was standing and watching herself sitting there amongst a band of fifty armed men. With her hands tied, and her mouth full of half-chewed hard bread. Just waiting for one of them to—
“You want me to kill her?” One of the band already had his knife to her throat. He’d thought of it, too. That if they’d got Gwion and the rest of Madoc’s men pinned down, she wasn’t any use to them.
Glaw looked at her—about the same way he’d have looked at a slug, or the mess a dog had left behind. Then he said, “Where’s King Madoc? Word is he and his war band are away on Ynys Mon. Is that true?”
Dera swallowed and felt the knife bob up and down on her throat. But she managed to nod. “I suppose. ’S’what I heard, anyway. But it’s not like he writes me letters, you know.”
Glaw stared at her again, his eyes flat as metal. And for the space of a heartbeat, she knew this was it. She was going to die here. Never see Jory or Cade or Lady Isolde again.
Then Glaw said to the man holding her, “Let her go. She may still know something useful about the fort’s defenses. If she gives any trouble or slows us down too much, we can always kill her then. But for now, she comes with us.”
* * *
