The Last Light of the Sun

TWELVE

Jadwina was never quite clear, looking back, whether they received the tidings of the earl's death (she always got his name wrong, but it was difficult to remember things from so long ago) and the slaughtered Erling raiders before or after the evening her life changed—or even that same night, though she didn't think so. It felt as though it had come afterwards. It had been a bad time for her, but she was fairly certain she'd have remembered if it had been that same night.

The troubles had begun a fourteen-night earlier, when Eadyn lost his hand. An accident, an entirely stupid accident, clearing trees with his father, bending a branch for Osca's axe. A clean severing, at the wrist. His life marred, all hope of good fortune spurting from him with his blood. The hand on the grass, fingers still flexed, a thing of its own now. Discarded. A young man, broad-shouldered, fair-haired, picked to marry her, and her own inward choice for that (by Jad's pure grace), turned cripple in a moment's inattention at the edge of wood and scrubland.

He lived. Their cleric, summoned, knew more than most about leechcraft. Eadyn lay in fever for days, his wrist wrapped in a poultice his mother changed at sunrise and sunset. Osca wasn't at the bedside or even at home. He spent those days drinking, swearing, weeping, cursing the god, abusing those who tried to comfort him. What comfort was there under the heavens? He had only the one living son, and a farm that needed Eadyn's strength as his own began to fail.

It was a calamity. Lives turned, lives ended, with such moments. The cleric, wisely, kept his distance until Osca had drunk himself into a vomiting stupor and awoke, a day and night later, ashen and heart-scalded. The god had made the world this way, in his unknowable wisdom, the cleric said to the villagers in their small chapel. But it was hard, he conceded. It could be intolerably hard.

Jadwina thought so too. Her own father had shaken his head grimly when he heard the tale. He had politely waited to see if Eadyn would conveniently die, before calling off the proposed match. What else could he do? A cripple was no marriage. He could never swing an axe properly, handle a plough, mend a fence alone, kill a wolf or wild dog. Couldn't even practise with a bow as they were ordered by the king to do now.

It was a sorrow for Eadyn and his family, a lesson for every-one else, as the cleric said, but you didn't have to make it your sorrow, too. There were healthy lads in the village, or near enough. You needed to marry daughters usefully. It was a matter of survival. The world, here in the north, or anywhere else probably, wasn't going to make life easy for you.

At some point during that time—it blurred for Jadwina, looking back—Bevin, the smith, had appeared at their door and asked to speak with her father. Gryn had gone walking with him and returned to say that he'd accepted an offer for her.

The younger son of the village smith wasn't the match Eadyn, son of Osca, had been—land was land, after all—but he was better than a one-handed cripple. Jadwina received the tidings and—as best she remembered—she dropped a pitcher on the floor. It might have been on purpose; she couldn't recall. Her father beat her about the back and shoulders, with her mother calling approval. It had been a new-bought pitcher.

Raud, the smith's son, now plighted to her, never even spoke with Jadwina. Not then, at any rate.

Some days later, however, towards twilight, as she was bringing the cow back from the northernmost field, Raud stepped out from a copse by the path. He stood before her. He had come from the forge; there was soot in his clothing and on his face.

"Be wed come harvest," he said, grinning. He had poxed cheeks and long, skinny shanks.

"Not by my will," Jadwina replied, tossing her head.

He laughed. "Wha' matters that? You'll spread legs by will or wi'out."

"Eadyn is two men to your one!" she said. "And you knows it." He laughed again. "He's one hand to my two. Can't even do this now."

He grabbed at her. Before she could twist away, he had a hand twisted in her hair, spilling her kerchief, and another over her mouth, too tightly for her to bite, or scream. He smelled of ash and smoke. He pulled the hand away quickly and hit her on the side of the head, hard enough for the world to rock and sway. Then he hit her again.

The sun was going down. End of summer. She remembered that. No one on the path, home a long walk from where they were. She couldn't even see the nearest houses of the village.

"Take what's mine now," Raud said. "Get a baby in you, they'll just make me wed you, won' they? What matters that?" She was on the ground by the path, beneath him. He straddled her, a boot on either side, started untying the rope around his trousers, fumbling in his haste. She drew breath to shout. He kicked her in the ribs.

Jadwina gasped, began to weep. It hurt to breathe. He dragged his leggings down around his muddy boots. Lowered himself to his knees then forward onto her. Began pushing, clumsily, at her lower clothes. She hit him, scratching at his face. He swore, then laughed, his hand groped hard at her, down there.

Then his whole body lurched crazily to one side, his head most of all. Jadwina had a confused, frightening sense of wetness. She was in pain, dizzy and terrified. It took her a moment to understand what had happened. Raud's blood was all over her. He'd been hit in the neck from above, behind, by an axe. She looked up.

An axe swung one-handed.

Raud's body, his sex exposed, still erect, his trousers around his ankles, lay sprawled on one side, next to her in the shallow ditch where he'd thrown her down. Instinctively, she shifted away from him. He was, Jadwina saw, already dead. She was afraid she was going to be sick. She put a hand to her side where the worst pain was, then brought it to her face. It came away wet with Raud's blood.

Eadyn, his face ghost-pale, stood above her. She struggled to sit up. Her side felt as if a blade were in it, as if something were broken and sliding within. He stepped back a little. Her cow was behind him, in the grass on the other side of the path, cropping. No sound but that, and the birds flying to branches at end of day; fields and trees, dark green grass, the sun almost down.

"Was out here trying," Eadyn said, finally, gesturing with the axe. "See if I can chop. You know? Saw you."

She seemed able to nod her head.

"Can't do it rightly," he said, lifting the axe a little again, letting it fall. "No good."

Jadwina drew a careful breath, a hand to her side again. She was covered in blood. "Just started, though. You'll get better at it."

He shook his head. "Useless man." She tried not to look at the bandaged stump of his right hand. His good hand, it had been.

"You… you were man enough to save me," she said.

He shrugged. "From behind him."

"What matters that?" she said. Her capacity to speak, to think, was coming back. And she had a thought. It frightened her, so she spoke quickly, before fear could take hold. "Lie with me now," she said. "Give me a child. No one else will want me then. You'll have to."

What she saw in him, that moment, in the last fading of the summer daylight, and remembered ever after, was fear, and defeat. It could be read, the way some clerics read words in books.

He shook his head again. "Na, that'll not do. I'm cripple, girl. They'll not wed you to me. And how could I fend for a wife and little ones now?"

"We'll fend the both of us together," she said.

He was silent. The axe—dark with Raud's blood—held in his left hand. "Jad rot it forever," he said finally. "I'm done." He looked at the dead man. "His brothers'll kill me now."

"They'll not that. I'll tell the cleric and reeve what happened here."

"And that'll matter to them?" He laughed, bitterly. "No. I'm away this night, girl. You clean yourself, say nothing. Maybe take a bit of time before they find this. Give me a chance to be gone."

Her heart was aching by then, more than her side, a dull, hard pain, but there was—even in that moment—a part of her that had begun despising him. It was like a death, actually, feeling that.

"Where… where will you go?"

"As if I have the least idea," he said. "Jad be with you, girl."

He said that over his shoulder, had already turned away.

He left her there, walked north, back up the grassy path the way that she had come, and then on, beyond the pasture. Jadwina watched until she couldn't see him any more in the twilight. She got herself up, reclaimed her hazel switch, and began leading the cow back home, moving slowly, a hand to her side, leaving a dead man in the grass.

She decided, before she'd reached the first houses, that she wasn't going to listen to Eadyn. He had left her lying there without a backwards glance. They had been pledged to be married.

She went home exactly as she was, Raud's blood on her face and hair and hands, all over her clothing. She saw horror—and curiosity—in people's faces as she took the cow through the village. She kept her head high. Said nothing. They followed her. Of course they followed her. At her door, she told her father and mother, and then the cleric and reeve when they were brought, what had happened, and where. She'd thought she'd be beaten again, but she wasn't. Too many people about.

Men (and boys, and dogs) went running to look. It was well after nightfall that they brought back Raud's body. It was reported how he had been when they'd found him, trousers down, exposed. Two of the older women were instructed by the reeve to examine Jadwina. Behind a door they made her lift her skirts and both of them poked at her and came out, cackling, to report that she was intact.

Her father owned land; the smith was only a smith. There was no one to gainsay her tale. Right there, under torches in front of their door, the reeve declared the matter closed to the king's justice, named the killing a just one. Two of Raud's brothers went north in the morning after Eadyn. They came back without having found any sign of him. Raud was buried in the ground behind the chapel.

And it had been some time during those warm, end-of-summer days that they had learned of the Erling raid and the death of the earl, the king's good friend.

Jadwina hadn't been inclined to care, or listen very much, which is why she was never certain about the course and timing of events. She remembered agitation and excitement, the cleric talking and talking, the reeve riding out and then back. And on one of the days there had been a black billowing of smoke west of them. It turned out to be, they learned, a burning of slain Erlings.

The king himself, it seemed, had been right there, just beyond the trees and the ridges. A battle almost within sight of where they lived. A victory. For those whose lives had not been utterly undone, as Jadwina's had been, it counted as entirely memorable.

Later that same year the smith's wife died, an autumn fever. Two others of the village went to the god as well. Within a fourteen-night of burying his wife, Gryn came to Jadwina's father again, this time for himself. This was the father of the man who had been pledged to her and had assaulted her and been slain for it.

It didn't seem to matter to anyone, certainly not her father. There was a kind of cloud, a stain over Jadwina by then. She was sent to him that same week, to the smithy and the house behind it. The cleric spoke new blessings over them in chapel; they had a cleric who liked to keep abreast of new things. Too much haste, some said of the marriage. Others jested that, with Jadwina's history, her father didn't want to see a third man maimed or killed before getting her off his hands.

No one ever saw Eadyn again, or heard tell of him. Gryn, the smith, as it turned out, was a mild-humoured man. She hadn't expected that in someone so red-faced, and with the sons he had. How could she have expected kindness? They had two children who survived. Jadwina's memories of the year she was wed softened and blurred, overlaid with others as the seasons passed.

In time, she buried her husband; took no other mate. Her sons shared the smithy, after, with their older half-brothers, and she lived with one of them and his wife, tolerably well. As well as such things can ever be, two women in a small house. She was buried herself, when the god called her home, laid in the growing chapel graveyard, next to Gryn, not far from Raud, under a sun disk and her name.

+

Three things, Alun was thinking, remembering the well-worn triad, will gladden the heart of a man. Riding to a woman under two moons. Riding to battle, companions at his side. Riding home, after long away.

He was doing the third, possibly the second. Hadn't thought about the first since his brother died. His heart was not glad.

He saw a sudden branch and ducked. The overgrown path they'd chosen could barely be called such. These woods had no formal name in either tongue, Cyngael or Anglcyn. Men did not enter here, save for the edgings, and only by daylight.

He heard his unwanted companion following. Without turning, Alun said, "There will be wolves in here."

"Or course there will be wolves," Thorkell Einarson said mildly. "Bears, still, this time of year. Hunting cats. Boars." "With autumn coming, boars for certain. Snakes."

"Yes. Two kinds, I believe. The green ones are harmless."

They were a fair distance into the forest already, the light entirely gone, even if it might still be twilight outside. Cafall was a shadow ahead of Alun's horse.

"The green ones," Thorkell repeated. Then he laughed—genuine laughter, despite where they were. "How do we tell in the dark?"

"If they bite us and we don't die," Alun replied. "I didn't ask you to come. I told you—"

"You told me to go back. I know. I can't."

This time Alun stopped his horse, the Erling horse Thorkell had found for him. He still hadn't asked about that. They had reached a very small clearing, a little space to face each other. The leaves overhead let a hint of the last evening light come down. It was time for the invocation. He wondered if it had been done before in these woods, if Jad's word had ever reached so far. It seemed to him he felt a humming, just below hearing, but he was aware that that was almost certainly apprehension and no more. There were so many tales.

"Why?" he asked. "Why can't you?"

The other man had also reined his horse. There was just enough light to see his face. He shrugged. "I am neither your servant, nor the cleric's. My life was saved by Lady Enid at Brynnfell and she claimed me as hers. If you are correct, and I believe you are, Ivarr Ragnarson is leading the Jormsvik ships there. I value my life as much as any man, but I gave her my oath. I will try to get back before they do."

"For an oath?"

"For that oath."

There was more, Alun was sure of it. "You understand this is mad? That we have five days, maybe six to survive in these woods?"

"I understand the folly of it better than you do, I suspect. I'm an old man, lad. Trust me, I'm not happy being here."

"Then why—?"

"I answered you. Will you leave it."

The first hint of a temper, strain. Alun's turn to shrug. "I'm not about to fight you, or try to hide. We'll forget rank, though. I think you know more than I do about surviving here." It was easier to say that to this man than to most others, he thought.

"Perhaps a little more. I did bring food."

Alun blinked, and realized, with the words, that his hunger was extreme. He tried to work out the timing. They'd had bread and ale after killing the first Erling party by the stream. Nothing since then. And the fyrd had been in the saddle since the middle of the night before.

"Come. Get down," said Thorkell Einarson, as if tracking that thought. "As good a place as any. I need to stretch. I'm old."

Alun dismounted. He'd been a horseman all his life, but his legs were aching. The other man was groping in a saddle pack.

"Can you see my hand?"

"Yes."

"Wedge of cheese. Cold meat coming. I've ale in a flask." "Jad's blood and grace. When did you…?"

"When we got to the water and saw the ships were gone." Alun considered this a moment, chewing. "You knew I'd do this?"

The other man hesitated. "I knew that I would."

This, too, needed thought. "You were going to come in here alone?"

"Not happily, I promise you."

Alun tore at the chunk of meat the other man passed him, drank thirstily from the offered flask.

"May I ask a question?" The Erling took the ale back. "Told you, not a servant in here. We need to survive." "Tell the snakes, the ones that aren't green."

"What's the question?"

"Is this the same wood as north, by Esferth and past it?" "What? You think I'd be here if there was a break in the trees? Am I a fool?"

"In here? Of course you are a fool. But help me with the question, nonetheless."

A moment, both men silent, then Alun heard his own laughter in that black, ancient wood where the tales he'd known all his life said there were spirits that sought blood and were endlessly angry. Something small skittered, startled by the noise. The dog had gone ahead, now came back to them. Alun gave him some of the meat. He took the ale flask back.

It occurred to Thorkell Einarson, squatting on his haunches beside the young Cyngael, that he hadn't heard the other man laugh before, not once in all their time together, since the night of a spring raid.

Alun said, "You aren't very good at a servant's role, are you? It is the same forest. There's a small valley on this side, I think there's a sanctuary there."

Thorkell nodded. "That's how I remember it, yes." And then, quietly, he added, "So whatever spirit you were with last night might be here as well?"

Alun imagined he felt a wind in his face, though there was none blowing. He was briefly glad of the darkness. He cleared his throat. "I have no idea," he said. "How did you…?"

"I watched you come out of the trees last night. I'm an Erling. My grandmother could see spirits on the roofs of half the homes in our village, summoned them to blight the fields and wells of those she hated. There were enough of those, Ingavin knows. Lad, we can swear an oath to honour the sun god, and wear his disk, but what happens after darkfall? When the sun is down and Jad is under the world, battling?"

"I don't know," Alun said. He still seemed to feel that wind, sense the wood's vibration, so nearly a sound. Five days' journey, maybe more. They were going to die here, he thought. Three things a brave man remembers at his end…

"None of us knows," Thorkell Einarson said, "but we still have to live through the nights. It is… unwise to be so sure we're alone here, whatever the clerics teach. You believe that spirit is kindly disposed?"

Alun took a breath. It was difficult to believe they were speaking of this. He thought of the faerie, shimmering, a light where there was none.

"I believe so."

The other man's turn to hesitate. "You realize that where there is one such power, there may be others?"

"I told you you didn't have to come."

"Yes, you did. Pass the flask. My throat's dry. A sorrow to die with ale to hand and undrunk."

Alun reached the flask across. His calves were sore, the long ride, crouching now. He sat on the grass, wrapped his arms about his knees. "We can't ride all night."

"No. How did you propose to guide yourself, alone?" "That one I can answer. Think on it."

The other man did. "Ah. The dog."

"He came from Brynnfell. Can find his way home. How were you going to do it, alone?"

Thorkell shook his head. "No idea."

"And you thought I was being a fool?"

"You are. So am I. Let us drink to ourselves." Thorkell lifted the flask again, cleared his throat. "Consider sending him ahead? The dog? Ap Hywll would know…"

"I did think about it. It seems to make sense to have him with us, and to let him run on alone if we…"

"Find a not-green snake or one of the things that are stronger than your spirit and don't like us."

"Should we rest here?" Alun asked. Fatigue was washing over him.

There was an answer given to that question, though not from the man beside him. They heard a sound, movement in the trees.

Larger than a boar, Alun thought, rising, unsheathing his blade. Thorkell was also on his feet, holding his hammer. They stood a moment, listening. Then they heard a different kind of sound.

"Holy Jad," said Alun, a moment later, with considerable feeling.

"I think not, actually," said Thorkell Einarson. He sounded amused. "Not the god. I believe this would be—"

"Be quiet!" said Alun.

The two of them listened, in bemused silence, to a voice, behind them and a little south, moving through the trees where no moonlight could fall. Someone—however improbably—was singing in these woods.

The girl for me at the end of the day

Is the one who'd rather kiss than pray,

And the girl for me in the morning light

Is the one who takes and gives delight,

And the girl for me in the blaze of noon

Is the one

"Stuff the wailing. We're over here," Thorkell called. "And who knows what else's coming now, the noise you make."

Both men put back their weapons.

Crackling sounds came nearer, branches and leaves, twigs on the forest floor. An oath, as someone collided with something.

"Noise? Wailing?" said Athelbert, son of Aeldred, heir to the Anglcyn throne.

He edged his horse into their small clearing. Straining his eyes, Alun saw that he was rubbing at his forehead. "I hit a branch. Really hard. I also believe I have been insulted. I was singing."

"That what it was?" Alun said.

Athelbert had a sword at his hip, a bow across his back. He dismounted, stood facing the two of them, holding the reins of his horse.

"Sorry," he said ruefully. "To be frank, my sisters and my brother take that same view of my voice. I've decided to leave home, out of shame."

"This," Alun said, "was a bad idea."

"I'm a bad singer," Athelbert replied lightly.

"My lord prince, this is—"

"My lord prince, I know what this is."

Both of them stopped. A moment later, Athelbert was the one who went on. "I know what you are doing. Two men are unlikely to get through this wood alive."

"And three are likely?"

It was Thorkell. He still had that amused tone, Alun realized. "I didn't actually say that," Athelbert replied. "You do realize where we are? Likelihood? We'll all be killed."

"This is not your concern," Alun said. He forced himself to be gracious. "Generous as the thought might be, my lord, I daresay your royal father—"

"My royal father will have sent outriders after me, as soon as they realized I was gone. They are almost certainly in the trees already, and terrified witless. My father thinks I am… irresponsible. There are reasons why he might hold such a view. We'd best move on or they'll find us and say they have to bring me back, and I'll say I won't go, and they'll have to draw weapons against their prince on the orders of their king, which isn't a proper thing to force any man to do, because I'm not going back."

A silence followed this.

"Why?" Thorkell asked finally, the amused tone gone. "Prince Alun is right: this is no Anglcyn quarrel, Erlings raiding west of the Wall."

Alun could see clearly enough to observe Athelbert shaking his head. "That man—Ragnarson? — killed my father's lifelong friend, one of our leaders, a man I knew from childhood. They led a raid into our lands during a summer fair. Word of that will spread. If they get away and—"

Alun's turn to interrupt. "They didn't get away. You killed fifty or sixty of them. A ship's worth. Drove the rest from your shores, running from you. Word of that will spread, to the glory of King Aeldred and his people. Why are you here, Prince Athelbert?"

It was almost impenetrably black now, even in the clearing, the trees in summer leaf blocking the stars. Cafall had stood up too, the dark grey dog virtually invisible, a presence at Alun's knee.

After a long time, Athelbert spoke. "I heard what you said, before, by the river. What you believe they intend to do. The farmhouse, women there, ap Hywll, the sword…"

"And so? It is still not your—"

"Listen to me, Cyngael! Is your father the haven and home of all virtues in the world? Does he rise from a fevered sickbed to make a slaughter of his enemies? Does he translate medical texts from Jad-cursed Trakesian? By the time he was my age," said Athelbert of the Anglcyn, speaking with great clarity, "my father had survived a winter hiding in a swamp, had broken out, rallied our scattered people, and retaken his own slain father's realm. To the undying glory of King Aeldred and our land."

He stopped, breathing hard, as if he'd been exerting himself. They heard wings overhead, flapping from one tree to another.

"You are unhappy with him for being a good man?" Thorkell said.

"That is not what I am saying."

"No? Perhaps not. Help me then, my lord. You want some of that same glory," said Einarson. "That is it? Well, that is fairly sought. What young man with a beating heart does not?"

"This one!" said Alun sharply. "You both listen to me. I have no interest in any of that. I need to get to Brynnfell before the Erlings. That is all. The coastal path goes to Arberth and it takes almost four days, at speed, then four or five more to get north to Brynn's farm. I did that journey this spring, with my brother. The Erlings know exactly where they are going because Ragnarson's with them. No warning we send along the coast will beat them to Brynnfell. I'm here because I have no choice. I'll say it again: I didn't even want you to come," he said, turning to Thorkell.

"And I'll say it again, though I shouldn't have to: I am the servant of Lady Enid, wife to Brynn ap Hywll," the Erling replied calmly. "If Ivarr gets to that farm she'll die in the muck of her own yard, hacked apart, and so will any others there, including her daughters. I have done such raids. I know what happens. She saved my life. I swore an oath. Ingavin and jad both know I have not kept every promise I made, but this time I will try."

He was silent. After a moment Alun nodded. "That's you. But this prince is just… chasing his father. He's—"

"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 saying 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. And 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.