by Anna Elliott
DON’T SLOW DOWN. Don’t slow down. Dera kept saying the words over and over to herself as she made herself keep moving, following the leather-covered back of the man in front of her. She’d heard what Glaw had said. Glaw was leading the band east, skirting around the rocky rise in the land that had Dinas Emrys at the top. And if she didn’t keep up, she’d be dead in less time than it would take one of them to spit in her face. But she felt like her legs had been turned into over-cooked porridge. Like she was stuck in one of those nightmares where you run and run until your heart’s like to burst, but never get anywhere. Her legs moved up and down and her nose ran and her head throbbed. But the scenery on either side of her never changed—and the back of the man in front of her was getting further and further ahead.
Maybe she should give up. Just sit down here and die.
Dera bit down on her lip, trying to push the thought away, but it was like a blister on her heel or a thorn under her clothes. What did she think she could do, even if she managed to keep up with the pace Glaw had set? Gwion and the rest of the men would still be killed. Jory and Cade and Lady Isolde would still die when Dinas Emrys fell.
The touch on her arm made her heart seize up, and she had to swallow a scream. But it was only the servant. The blue-eyed, half-witted one. He and she were the last in the line. And he’d just taken her arm and gave her a little push to speed her along, helping her over the dry scrub and dead, fallen logs that littered the ground.
Dera’s throat felt dry as a donkey trail in summer. The serving man had never made it around to her with the skin of wine. She swallowed. The men up ahead weren’t worried about making noise; the crashing they made as they stomped their way through dead brush and brittle branches was enough to cover the sound of her voice. “What’s your name?”
The bearded man looked at her blankly, face vacant, eyes unfocused. She licked her lips, glanced up at the men ahead to be sure she wasn’t falling too far behind, and tried again. She gave him her best effort at a friendly smile. “Is there a name I can call you by?”
Another blank look.
All right, she might as well get to the point. “Will you loan me your knife?”
If she could just get her hands free, she could take her chances on running. The half-wit wouldn’t care enough to follow. And Glaw’s men might not either—not with the rush they were in. If she were free, she might be able to get up to Dinas Emrys. Warn Lady Isolde and get Jory—
The serving man blinked. “M–mmmy knife?”
Dera squelched down an urge to take him by the shoulders and shake him till his teeth rattled. “Yes, that’s right.” She looked up at the men ahead of them and then risked a quick jab with her bound hands at his belt. “Your knife.”
The man blinked again, then looked down at the leather scabbard on his belt like he’d never seen it before. “This knife?”
Dera shut her eyes and took a breath. At any rate, that had settled one thing. She was going to live. She wasn’t going to let this conversation be the last earthly memory she had.
She opened her eyes again—and then almost stopped dead with surprise, because after what felt like a year of slogging along, watching the man in front of her getting further and further ahead, she saw he was now closer. She was catching up. And he didn’t seem to be having too easy a time of it. She couldn’t see his face, just his back and shoulders, but he was stumbling a bit, walking hunched over like he’d a pain in his gut.
And then, all of a sudden, he staggered, dropped to his knees, and then pitched forward onto the ground, retching. The man ahead of him had fallen, too. And warriors all up and down the line were swaying and tripping over their own feet, coughing and vomiting into the dead leaves. Glaw, up at the head of the line, had fallen, too. He was bellowing something about poison in between heaves.
Dera stood frozen, feeling again like her arms and legs had been disconnected from the rest of her. Then, as she stared at all the sick and writhing men, a voice in her head sounded. This is your chance, fool. Run!
Bound hands or no, that was true. She gulped down air, started to turn. And the serving man’s hand clamped down on her wrist.
“Who are you, really? What are you doing here?”
The blue eyes weren’t unfocused anymore. They were clear and fierce-looking as he stared into her face. He wasn’t stammering anymore, either. And his fingers felt like some wild animal’s jaws had got hold of her.
“I’m … I’m Dera.” Her thoughts felt like caged squirrels, furiously churning round trying to get free. But one thing was clear enough. This was the man who’d poisoned all Glaw’s band. Up ahead, Glaw was still yelling about poison, though his voice was getting raspy, and weaker, too.
Dera swallowed. “I’m from Dinas Emrys. I mean, I’ve been staying there. Me and my boy. Jory—he’s just past two. I’ve been working caring for the wounded. When I’m not with Jory, I mean. Because Lady Isolde—”
It was probably lucky the bearded man stopped her. She could have gone on forever and not managed to make any kind of sense. But all of a sudden the man’s grip on her tightened. “Lady Isolde is here? At Dinas Emrys?”
Dera took a breath and nodded. “That’s right. She’s the one that gave me the job of being her helper—because we hadn’t anywhere else to go. And she wanted to come out here herself, but I said—”
The man stopped her again. “Wait a moment.” His voice was quieter, now, and he looked a bit less fierce. “Let’s start over again. I’m sorry if I frightened you. Just”—he glanced at the fallen men littering the trail— “tell me from the beginning, as quick as you can, how you came to be here.”
Well, he hadn’t killed her—or even threatened to kill her—yet, so that was maybe a good sign. It put him one notch above Glaw, anyway. Dera took another breath and told him everything, from Bevan’s staggering into the infirmary to her coming out and waiting at the head of the river path for the men she and Lady Isolde had been sure would appear.
She’d expected him to look at her like she was crazy when she told the part about Lady Isolde Seeing Bevan’s thoughts. But he just nodded, like it wasn’t anything he hadn’t heard before. Maybe he knew the stories about Lady Isolde. He seemed to know her name, anyway.
His face was hard, though, by the time she’d finished, his eyes like chips of flint above the gold brown beard.
“Traitors at Dinas Emrys? Are you sure?”
Dera’s teeth were chattering, both with cold and with trying to block out the sounds of the groaning, grunting men on the ground. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything for sure. But where there’s one, there could always be more—that’s what Lady Isolde said.”
The man looked at her a moment, like he was trying to make up his mind about something. Then he nodded, eyes on hers. “Look, I know you’ve no reason to trust me. But do you think you could just pretend to yourself that you do? Long enough, say, for me to get some answers here? I swear if you stay here and don’t try to run away until I come back, I’ll either get you to safety or give you the chance to make a run for it, whatever you’d like.”
Dera still felt like her blood had been turned to ice water. But she studied the serving man’s face and then said, “I suppose if you can pretend to be a fool, I can pretend to trust one.”
The man’s teeth flashed in a grin, white against his beard. “Fair enough.”
The smile had gone, though, by the time he made it to the front of the line where Glaw was lying on the ground. And his face was grim enough to have been carved out of stone as he hooked the toe of his boot under Glaw and rolled him onto his back.
Dera dropped down onto a fallen log, hugging her knees to her chest and blowing on her hands. She’d have expected the blue-eyed man to bully Glaw. But instead he talked to him, quiet and straight. Said he was dying, and it was likely to go on for some time and hurt something fierce. But he’d give him a quick death and a warrior�
��s end if Glaw’d tell him what he wanted to know.
Dera couldn’t hear what Glaw said. She was too far away for that. And besides, one of the men on the ground was thrashing, crying out for his mam. Dera couldn’t remember deciding anything. All of a sudden, she was just there, on the ground, holding the poisoned man’s hand. Which was lucky, maybe. This wasn’t the kind of thing she’d have wanted to think about for long.
He seemed like he quieted a bit, though, at her touch. So she put her hand on his forehead the way she’d seen Lady Isolde do. And she started to tell the story Lady Isolde had told weeks ago, when she was stitching up Cade.
Lady Isolde was right. Dera shivered, and wiped sweat from the man’s brow with a corner of her sleeve. She didn’t know whether this man especially wanted to hear about a Water Horse. But it was better than sitting in silence, all alone with your own thoughts and a dying man—or trying to think up what you could say.
She’d made it halfway through the story when the serving man came back. His knife was out—and even though he must have cleaned the blade on leaves or dry grass, he’d missed a smear of blood on the hilt.
“Are you all right?” He crouched down next to her.
She rubbed her eyes and realized there were tears on her cheeks, though she didn’t know quite why. The man whose hand she’d been holding was unconscious—or dead.
She looked around at the bodies on the ground. Even the cold couldn’t mask the smell of vomit, or of the ones who’d lost control of their bowels. But they’d died quick, anyhow.
Dera stood up. Her head felt funny and light, like it was about to roll off her shoulders, and her hearing buzzed. She sat down again on the fallen log and looked at the man in front of her.
“They were … they were bad men.”
The blue-eyed man shrugged. There were tight lines around the corners of his mouth. “No worse than many others.”
“Doesn’t make what they did—what they would have done to me—right.”
He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck, like the muscles ached. “And if God knows whether that makes giving them all nightshade right, I’ve yet to hear an answer from Him.” He turned away, picking up the traveling pack he’d dropped on the ground, re-sheathing his knife. Then he turned back to her. “I’m sorry.” He reached out, like he was about to put a hand on her shoulder, then thought better of it and let his arm fall back to his side. “I said I’d get you to safety—and I will. If that’s what you want. And I won’t try to stop you if you want to make a run for it on your own. But I need to get word to King Madoc. It was true what you said? He’s on Ynys Mon?”
Dera swallowed again, then nodded. Then managed to get her thoughts enough in order to say, “I have a message for him. From Lady Isolde—it’s stamped with her own seal and everything. Because she knew he wouldn’t trust a message from just anyone. Lady Isolde said if only we could hold out until he and his warriors could get here, they’d be able to drive back Marche’s men.” Dera touched her ribs, where the oilskin packet brushed against her skin with every movement.
The blue-eyed man stared at her. “You have this message? From … Lady Isolde.” She thought his voice changed just a bit as he said the name. But then he said, quick-like, “Let me have it. Please.”
Maybe she was a fool to trust him. But you had to trust someone, sometime. Mam had always said that, too. Dera reached down into her bodice and ripped the few stitches that had held the packet in place. “Here it is. But you’d still have to get it—”
“That’s all right.” The man’s fingers closed round the packet, and then he gave a queer sort of whistle—too short trills, and then a longer one. And before the sound of it had even died away, another man stepped out of the trees onto the path.
Dera didn’t seem to be able to feel any more shock or surprise. If one of the great enchanter Merlin’s dragons had stepped out onto the path, she’d probably have just nodded and asked him How d’you do. And now she stood, staring, while the blue-eyed man talked to the newcomer. Though ‘talked’ wasn’t quite the word.
The second man was huge—broad-built and tall, with corn-colored hair that fell to his shoulders, and a long, fair beard. A Saxon-born, plain as the nose on his face. And he didn’t talk in words. The blue-eyed man was giving him instructions, telling him he’d got to get this packet and the letter inside to King Madoc, who was with his warriors on Ynys Mon. He wasn’t to stop for anything—even an hour’s delay was too long. And the big Saxon man was answering in some kind of finger-talk. Moving his hands in a way that must have meant something, because the blue-eyed one was nodding and answering like the Saxon had actually spoken.
Then, finally, the Saxon man nodded, clasped wrists with the serving man, and turned away, vanishing into the trees.
The blue-eyed man came back to Dera. “He’ll see King Madoc gets the message. Now”—he held out a hand— “let’s get you back to Dinas Emrys.”
Dera stared at his hand. The fingers were a bit crooked, like they’d been broken once, years ago. And she could see a pattern of scars on the back, all the way up to the leather guard he wore on his wrist. She took a breath, then she put her hand into his and let him pull her to her feet.
PART IV
