The Last Light of the Sun

FOURTEEN

Sometimes, as events in a given saga or idyll or tale move towards what may be seen as a resolution, those in the midst of what is unfolding will have a sense—even at the time—of acceleration, a breathlessness, urgency, speed.

Often, however, this emerges only in looking back, an awareness long after the fact (sometimes accompanied by belated fear) as to how many strands and lives had been coming together—or breaking apart—at the same time. Men and women will wonder at how they did not perceive these things, and be left with a sense that chance, accident, or miraculous intervention (for good or ill) lay at the heart of the time.

It is the humbling, daunting nature of this truth that can lead us to our gods, when pace and press subside. But it also needs to be remembered that sagas and idylls are constructed, that someone has composed their elements, selected and balanced them, bringing what art and inclination they have, as an offering. The tale of the Volgan's raid with a handful of men on a sanctuary of the Sleepless Ones in Ferrieres will be very differently told by a cleric surviving the attack, chronicling the round of a dismal year, and an Erling skald celebrating a triumph. Those inside a story do not usually think of themselves that way, though some may have an eye to fame and those who come after.

Mostly, we are engaged in living.

Riding back from the coast in bright summer daylight on the main road by the River Thorne, birdsong above, harvest-ready fields to the east and the forest receding for a time as a valley cut it away, Ceinion of Llywerth watched the Anglcyn fyrd struggle to define a collective state of mind, and he understood their difficulty.

The victory was magnificent, memorable, complete. A considerable Erling force had been shattered, driven away with major losses on the raiders' side and next to none on theirs. No deaths, in fact, after the initial night killings that had sparked the king's ride.

It was a time of glory. There were traders from abroad in Esferth for the fair—the story of Aeldred's riding out at night would be in Ferrieres and Batiara before autumn changed the leaves. It would reach Al-Rassan when the silk-clad horse traders went home.

Glory then, more than enough to share. But the death that had begun it mattered. They all mattered, of course, Ceinion told himself, but it was idle—even for a cleric dispensing pieties—to pretend that some lives did not signify more for their people than others, and Burgred of Denferth had been one of the three great men in these lands.

So there was that, to dim the joy of this homeward ride. There was also the prince, gone into the spirit wood. The madness of that, the death at the heart of it. And so those of the fyrd who wished to let their spirits soar kept a distance from King Aeldred and the mask that had become his face this morning.

And so again it seemed to Ceinion, as it had by the sea at twilight, that they were waiting on him. In a way it was an irony. He was only a visitor here, and the Cyngael were far from allies of the Anglcyn. In another sense, the reason Prince Athelbert was in the wood was that Alun ab Owyn had gone there, and Ceinion knew it, and so did the king.

You could say that it properly fell to a Cyngael, to their high cleric, to provide consolation and hope right now. Ceinion didn't know if it was possible. He was very tired. Unused to so much riding, with a body that didn't ease and loosen as it once had in the mornings. He was also heartsick and afraid, picturing the dragon-ships that might even now be cleaving seas to the west. There were blue skies overhead. He had prayed for storms in the night.

These inward sorrows didn't matter, or couldn't be permitted to matter, if you accepted the duties of your office. Ceinion twitched his reins and cantered his horse over beside Aeldred's. The king glanced at him, nodded, no more than that. No one was near them. Ceinion took a breath.

"Do you know," he said coldly, "if I were cleric of your royal chapel, I would be ordering you to do penance now."

"And why would this be?" Aeldred's voice was equally cold. Within, Ceinion quailed at what he heard, but forced himself to push on. "For the thoughts that are written in your face." "Ah. Thinking now is cause for chastisement?"

"It always has been. Certain kinds of thought."

"How illuminating. And what unspoken reflections of mine amount to transgressions, cleric?"

The title again, not his name. Ceinion looked over at the king, trying not to be obvious about his scrutiny. He wondered if Aeldred were succumbing to one of his fevers. If that might explain…

"I am perfectly well," said other man bluntly. "Please answer my question."

Ceinion said, as briskly as he could, "Heresy, a breaking from holy doctrine." He lowered his voice. "You are easily wise enough to know what I am saying. I am glad you are well, my lord."

"Pretend, if you will, that I am not wise at all, that you ride beside a fool, deficient in sense. Explain." The king's face had flushed. Fever, or anger? They said he still denied when his illness was coming on, after twenty-five years. A refusal to accept. That gave Ceinion a thought.

"Let me ask a question. Do you truly believe two royal princes and an Erling who rowed with Siggur Volganson are incapable of contending with wolves and snakes in a wood?"

He saw what he was looking for. The flicker in the other man's eyes, swift awareness of where this was going.

"I would imagine," said King Aeldred, "they ought to be able to defend themselves against such."

"But you decided, even before we set out this morning, that your son is now dead. You have… accepted his death. You said as much on the strand last night, my lord."

No reply for a time. The horses cantered, a ground-covering pace, without urgency. It was warm in the sunlight, the weather accursedly benign, a scattering of soft clouds. He needed black storms, the howl of wind, obliterating seas.

Aeldred said, "You are upbraiding me for beliefs about the forest. Tell me, Ceinion, did you come here through the wood? Or did you and your companions avoid it?"

"And why," said the cleric, deliberately sounding surprised, "would I choose to risk getting lost in a wood when the coastal path from Cadyr lay open before us?"

"Ah. Good. And it has always been from Cadyr that you set out? It is from that coast that all of the Cyngael coming east have departed? Tell me, high cleric, who it is has made a journey through that wood in living memory, or in your chronicles and songs? Or do not the songs of the Cyngael tell something different, entirely?"

Ceinion felt equal to this, by training and disposition and necessity. He said firmly, "It is my task, and yours, my lord, to steer the people—our people in both lands, where we share the blessing of Jad—away from such pagan fears. If you think your son and his companions equal to wild animals and to not losing their way, you must not surrender hope that they will come out in the west. And there is a chance they will save lives doing so."

Birdsong, horses' hooves, men's voices, laughter, though not near to them. Aeldred had turned his head, was looking directly at him, the eyes bright, clear, no fever, only knowledge. After a moment, he said, "Ceinion, dear friend, forgive me or do not, as you will or must, but I saw spirits close on twenty-five years ago, the night of the battle we lost at Camburn, and then in Beortferth that winter. Lights in the swamp at twilight and at night, moving, taking shape. Not marsh fires, not fever, not dream, though the fevers did begin the night of the battle. High cleric, Ceinion, hear me. I know there are powers in that wood who do not mean us well and are not to be mastered by men."

It had taken so little time to say, and to hear. But how much time did a sword stroke take? An arrow's flight? How long was there between the last breath of someone you loved when they were dying, and the breath they did not take?

Ceinion's heart was pounding. An easy ride, their battles over, talking on a summer's day. Even so, he felt himself assaulted, under siege. He was not necessarily equal to this, after all.

You brought your own memories and ghosts to these exchanges, however much you fought to keep them out, to be simply a holy man, a distilled voice for the teachings of the god you served.

He knew what he should say to this, what he was required to say. He murmured, "My lord, surely, you just gave yourself answer: it was the very night your kingdom was lost, after the battle, your father and brother slain… the worst night of your life. Is it any wonder that—"

"Ceinion, do me enough courtesy to believe I have thought of this. They were… present for me before, long before. From childhood, I have since come to understand. I denied them, avoided, would not accept… until the night of Camburn. And in the marshes after."

What had he expected? That his words would shed a dazzling illumination upon a confused soul? He knew what this man was. He tried another way, because he had to: "Do you… do you not know how arrogant it is to trust our mortal vision over the teachings of faith?"

"I do. But I am not able to deny what I do know. Call it a flaw and a sin, if you will. Could you do that denying?"

The question he hadn't wanted. An arrow, flying.

"Yes," he said, finally, "though not easily."

Aeldred looked at him. Opened his mouth.

"No questions, I beg of you," Ceinion said. Raw as an open wound, all these years after.

The king gazed at him a long moment, then looked away and was silent. They rode for a time, through the mild, sweet glory of late summer. Ceinion was thinking as hard he could; careful thought, his refuge.

"The fevers," he said. "My lord, could you not see that they—?"

"That I conceived visions in my fevered state? No. Not so."

Two very clever men, long-lived, and subtle. Ceinion considered this a moment, then realized that he understood something else, as well. He gripped his reins tightly.

"You believe that the fevers are… that they come to you as…" He reached for words. This was difficult, for many reasons.

"As punishment. Yes, I do," said the king of the Anglcyn, his voice flat.

"For your… heresy? This belief?"

"For this belief. My fall from the teachings of Jad, in whose name I live and rule. Do not believe that what I am telling you has come kindly to me."

He couldn't imagine believing that. "Who knows of this?" "Osbert. Burgred did. And the queen."

"And they believed you? What you saw?"

"The two men did."

"They… saw these things as well?"

"No." He said it quickly. "They did not."

"But they were with you."

Aeldred looked at him again. "You know what the old tales tell. Yours and ours, both. That a man who enters the sacred places of the half-world may see spirits there, and if he survives he may see them after, all his days. But it is also told that some are born with this gift. This, I came to believe, was so with me. Not Burgred, not Osbert, though they stood by me in the marsh, and rode with me from Camburn that night."

The sacred places of the half-world. Uttermost heresy. A mound not far from Brynnfell, another summer, long ago. A woman with red-gold hair dying by the sea. He had left her with her sister, taken horse, gone riding in a frenzy, in a madness of sorrow beyond words. No memory, at all, of that ride. Had come to Brynnfell at twilight two days later, bypassed it, entered the small wood

He made himself—as always—twist his mind away from that moon-shaped memory. It was not to be looked upon. You trusted and believed in the words of Jad, not in your own frail pretense of knowing the truth of things.

"And the queen?" he asked, clearing his throat. "What does the queen say?"

It was the hesitation, Aeldred's delay in replying. A lifetime of listening to men and women tell what was in their hearts, in words, in pauses, in the things not quite said.

The man beside him murmured, gravely, "She believes I will lose my soul when I die, because of this."

It was clear now, Ceinion thought. It was achingly clear. "And so she will go to Retherly."

Aeldred was looking at him. He nodded his head. "To pray each day and night for me until one of us dies. She sees it as her first duty, in love and in faith."

A burst of laughter, off to their right, somewhere behind. Men riding home in triumph, knowing songs and feasting awaited them.

"She might be right, of course," said the king, his tone light now, as if discussing the coming barley harvest or the quality of wine at table. "You should be denouncing me, Ceinion. Is that not your duty?"

Ceinion shook his head. "You seem to have done that to yourself, for twenty-five years."

"I suppose. But then came what I did last night."

Ceinion looked quickly over. He blinked; then this, too, slipped into understanding.

"My lord! You did not send Athelbert into that wood. His going there is no punishment of you!"

"No? Why not? Is it not sheerest arrogance to imagine we understand the workings of the god? Did you not tell me that? Think! Wherein lies my transgression, and where has my son now gone?"

Wolves and snakes, Ceinion had said, foolishly, moments ago. To this man who was bearing more than two decades of guilt. Trying to serve the god, and his people, and carrying these… memories.

"I believe," Aeldred was saying, "that sometimes we are given messages, if we are able to read them. After I taught myself Trakesian, and sent out word I was buying texts, a Waleskan came to Raedhill—this was long ago—with a scroll, not more than that. He said he'd bought it on the borders of Sarantium. I'm sure he looted it."

"One of the plays?"

The king shook his head. "Songs of their liturgy. Fragments. The horned god and the maiden. It was badly torn, stained. It was the first Trakesian writing I ever bought, Ceinion. And all this morning I have been hearing this in my head:

When the sound of roaring is heard in the wood

The children of earth will cry.

When the beast that was roaring comes into the fields

The children of blood must die.

Ceinion shivered in sunlight. He made the sign of the disk.

"I believe," Aeldred went on, "if you will forgive me, and it is not an intrusion, that you did not denounce what I have just said because… you also have some knowledge of these things. If I am right in this, please tell me, how do you… carry that? How do you find peace?"

He was still half in the spell of the verse. The children of earth will cry. Ceinion said, slowly, choosing words, "I believe that what doctrine tells us, is… becoming truth. That by teaching it we help it become the nature of Jad's world. If there are spirits, powers, a half-world beside ours, it is… coming to an end. What we teach will be true, partly because we teach it."

"Believing makes it so?" Aeldred's voice was wry.

"Yes," said Ceinion quietly. He looked at the other man. "With the power we know lies in the god. We are his children, spreading across his earth, pushing back forests to build our cities and houses and our ships and water mills. You know what is said in The Book of the Sons of Jad."

"That is new. Not canonical."

He managed a smile. "A little more so than a song of the horned god and the maiden." He saw Aeldred's mouth quirk. "They use it as liturgy in Esperaña where it was written, have begun to do so in Batiara and Ferrieres now. Clerics carrying the word of Jad to Karch and Moskav have been told by the Patriarch to cite that book, carry it with them—it is a powerful tool for bringing pagans to the light."

"Because it teaches that the world is ours. Is it, Ceinion? Is it ours?"

Ceinion shrugged. "I do not know. You cannot imagine how much I do not know. But you asked how I make my peace and I am telling you. It is a frail peace, but that is how I do it."

He met the other man's gaze. He hadn't denied what Aeldred had guessed. He wasn't going to deny it. Not to him.

The king's eyes were clear now, his flush had receded. "The beast dies, roaring, not the children?"

"Rhodias succeeded Trakesia, and Sarantium, Rhodias, under Jad. We are at the edge of the world here, but we are children of the god, not just… of blood."

Silence again, slightly altered. Then the king said, "I did not expect to be able to speak of this."

The cleric nodded. "I can believe that."

"Ceinion, Ceinion, I will need you with me. Surely you can see that? Even more, now."

The other man tried to smile but failed. "We will talk of that. But before, we must pray, with all piety we may command, that the Erling ships sailed for home. Or, if not, that your son and his companions pass through the woods, and in time."

"I can do that," said the king.

+

Rhiannon wondered, often, why everyone still looked at her the way they did, concern written large, vivid as a manuscript's initial capital, in their eyes.

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. "What 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.

You couldn't deny it was matter for skald song, through a winter and beyond. In the northlands, that mattered. Perhaps everyone shared these doubts he was having, Bern thought. He didn't think so, actually, looking at his shipmates, but it would have been good to have someone to ask. He wondered where his father was. Thorkell had told him not to let them come this way.

He'd tried. You couldn't say he hadn't tried. He wasn't leading this raid, was he? And if your life steered you to the dragon-ships, well… it steered you there. Ingavin and Thünir chose their warriors. And maybe—maybe—he'd come out of this with a share of glory. His own. A name to be remembered.

Men lived and died pursuing that, didn't they? Fair fame dies never. Was Bern Thorkellson of Rabady Isle the one to say they were wrong? Was he that arrogant? Bern shook his head, drawing a glance from the man next to him on the beach.

Bern looked the other way, embarrassed. Saw, beyond the strand, the darkly outlined hills of the Cyngael, knew that the Anglcyn lands lay beyond, far beyond. And farther east, across the seas, where the sun would rise, was home.

No one, he thought, travelled as the Erlings did. No people were so far-faring, so brave. The world knew it. He drew a breath, pushed the dark thoughts away from him. Sunrise came. Brand Leofson picked his men for the raid.

Bern started east with the other chosen ones.

+

They had been living for three days on nuts and berries, like peasants foraging in a dry season or during a too-long winter with the storeroom empty. Cafall led them to water, so there was that, for themselves and the horses.

It was oppressively dark in the forest, even in daytime. On occasion a square of sky could be seen through the trees, light spilling down, a reminder of a world beyond the wood. Sometimes at night they caught a glimpse of stars. Once they saw the blue moon, and paused in a glade without a word spoken, looking up. Then they went on. They were following the dog north and west towards Arberth—or they had to assume that was so. None of them could do more than hazard a guess at where they were, how far they'd come, how far yet there was to go. Five days, Alun had said the passage through the forest might be: that, too, had been a guess.

No one had ever done this.

They pushed themselves and the animals hard: an awareness of urgency and the equally strong feeling that it was better to keep moving than be still in one place for too long. They never again heard or sensed the beast-god that had come the first night, or the green creatures of the half-world that had followed.

They knew they were here, however. And when they slept, or tried to (one always awake, on watch), the memory of that unseen creature would come back. They were intruders here, alive only on sufferance. It was frightening, and wearying. One had to work to avoid startling shamefully at sounds in the wood—and all forests were full of sounds.

They knew they had been three nights here, but in another way this had become for them a time outside of time. Athelbert had a vision once, almost asleep in the saddle, of the three of them coming out to a world entirely changed. He didn't know, for he didn't speak of this, that Alun had had that same fear, meeting a faerie outside Esferth, before the fyrd had ridden south.

Through the first two days they'd talked, mostly to hear voices, human sounds. Athelbert had amused the others, or tried to, singing tavern songs, invariably bawdy. Thorkell, after extended urging, had offered one of the Erling saga-verses, but the younger men became aware he was doing it only to indulge them. By the fourth day they were riding in silence, following the grey dog in the gloom.

Near sundown, they came to another stream.

Cafall was doing this without urging. Each one of them was aware that they'd have been lost days ago without Alun's dog. They didn't speak of this, either. They dismounted, bone-tired, to let the horses drink. Dim, filtered twilight. Clink of harness, creak of saddle leather, crunch and snap of twigs and small branches by the stream, and they nearly died again.

The snake wasn't green. It was Alun who trod too close, Athelbert who saw it, whipping out his dagger, gripping it to throw. It was Thorkell Einarson who snapped a command: "Hold! Alun, don't move!"

The black snakes were poisonous, their bite tended to be lethal. "I can kill it!" Athelbert rasped through clenched teeth. Alun had frozen where he was, in the act of approaching the water. One foot was incongruously lifted so that he was poised, like some ancient frieze of a runner in one of the villas left behind when the Rhodian legions retreated south. The snake remained coiled, its head moving. An easy-enough target for someone skilled with a blade.

"I swore an oath," Thorkell said urgently. "Our lives depend—" In that same moment Alun ab Owyn murmured, very clearly, "Holy Jad defend my soul," and sprang into the air.

He landed in the water with a splash. The stream was shallow; he came down hard, knees and hands on stone, and cursed. The snake, affronted, disappeared with a slither and glide into underbrush.

The bear cub, which none of them had seen, looked up from the far side of the water where it had been drinking, backed away a few steps, and essayed a provisional growl in the direction of the man in the stream.

"Oh, no!" said Athelbert.

He wheeled. Cafall barked a high, furious warning and streaked past him. The mother bear had entered the clearing already, roaring, her head swinging heavily back and forth. She rose on her hind legs, huge against the black backdrop of trees, spittle and foam at her gaping mouth. They were between her and the cub. Of course they were.

The horses went wild—and they were untethered. Alun's plunged through the stream. Thorkell seized the reins of the other two and hung on. Alun scrambled to his feet, splashed over, and claimed his trembling horse on the far bank—it was blocked there by trees, had nowhere to go. Frantically, it tried to rear, nearly pulled him off the ground. The cub, equally frightened, backed farther away, but was much too close to him. Athelbert sprinted over to Thorkell and the horses, fumbling for his bow at the saddle.

"Mount up!" Thorkell shouted, fighting his way into his own saddle. Athelbert looked at him. "Do it!" the Erling screamed. "We are dead if we kill here. You know it!"

Athelbert swore savagely, hooked a leg into a swinging stirrup. The horse skittered sideways; he almost fell, but levered himself up. On the far bank, Alun ab Owyn, also a horseman, clambered on his mount. It wheeled and bucked, eyes white and staring. The bear came forward, still roaring. It was enormous.

They had to move past it to get out. "I'll shoot to wound!"

Athelbert cried.

"Are you mad? You'll make it wild!"

"What is it now?" the Anglcyn prince screamed back. "Jad's blood," he added very quickly, and with extreme, necessary skill, mastered his rearing mount and, leaning far over to one side, lashed it past the bear, which was almost on top of them.

Thorkell Einarson was an Erling. His people lived for longships, white foam, a moonlit sea, surf on stony strands. Not for horses. He was still struggling to control his spinning, terrified steed.

"Move!" Alun screamed from the far bank, not helpfully.

There wasn't enough time in the world, or room in the glade, to move. Or there wouldn't have been, if a lean, blur-fast, grey creature hadn't knifed over and sunk its teeth into the hind leg of the bear. The animal roared, in rage and pain, turned with shocking speed on the dog. Thorkell kicked his horse in that same moment, sawed at his reins, and moved, following Athelbert out. Alun joined them in that same instant of reprieve, splashing across the water, cutting out of the glade.

It was very hard to see. A bear was roaring behind them, a noise that shook the woods. And entangled with it back there was a wolfhound with unspeakable courage and something more than that.

They were out, though, all three of them. It was far too black and tangled to gallop. They moved as quickly as they could along the twisting, almost-path. A little distance farther they stopped, of one accord, turned to look back, staring—ready to move if anything remotely bear-like should appear.

"Why in the name of everything holy did we keep our weapons if you won't let us use them?" Athelbert was breathing in gasps.

So was Thorkell, gripping his reins too tightly in a big fist. He turned his head. "You think… you think… if we get out of this Ingavin-cursed forest they'll be dancing to greet us?"

"What?"

The big man wiped at his face, which was dripping with sweat. "Think it! I'm an Erling enemy, you're an Anglcyn enemy, that one is the prince of Cadyr, and we're heading for Arberth. Which of us do you think any men we meet will want to kill first?"

There was a silence. "Oh," said Athelbert. He cleared his throat. "Um. Indeed. Not dancing. Ah, you, I'd wager. You'd be first. What, er, shall we bet?"

They heard a sound along the path; both men turned. "Dear Jad," said Alun ab Owyn quietly.

He slipped down off his horse, walked a few steps back along the way they had come, crunching twigs and leaves again. Then he knelt on the path. He was crying, although the other two couldn't see that. He hadn't cried since the beginning of summer.

Out of shadow and tree the dog limped towards them, head low, moving with effort. It stopped, a short distance from Alun, and lifted its head to look at him. There was blood everywhere, he saw, and in the near-black he thought an ear was ripped away. He closed his eyes a moment, swallowed hard.

"Come," he said.

A whisper, really. All he could manage. His heart was aching. This was his dog, and it wasn't. It was Brynn's wolfhound. A gift. He'd accepted it, been accepted after a fashion, never allowed himself a deeper bond, something shared. Companionship.

"Please come," he said again.

And the dog stepped forward, slowly, the left front paw favoured. The right ear was indeed missing, Alun saw, as it drew near and he put an arm around it, gently, and laid his face carefully against that of the creature which had come to him the night his brother's life and soul were lost.

Thorkell was aware that the dog had saved their lives. He wasn't about to get drunk on the thought. He and Siggur had saved each other at least half a dozen times, each way, years ago, and other companions had guarded him or been saved by him. It happened if you went into battle, or at sea when storms came. Once a spear thrust he'd not seen had missed him only because he'd stumbled over a fallen shipmate's body in a field. The spear had gone behind him, and above. He'd turned and cut through the spearman's leg from below. That one, as it happened, he remembered. The blind chance of it. He'd never been saved by a dog before, he had to acknowledge that.

The animal was badly hurt, which might be a difficulty, since they had no hope of getting through the wood without it. Ab Owyn was still on his knees, cradling his dog. He'd known men who treated their hounds like brothers, even sleeping with them; hadn't thought the Cyngael prince was one such. On the other hand, something extraordinary had happened here. He owed his life to it. It wasn't quite the same as Siggur covering his left side on a raid.

He looked away, feeling unexpectedly awkward watching the man and dog. And doing so, he saw the green figure among the trees. It wasn't far away. Out of the corner of his eye he registered that Athelbert had also seen it, was staring in the same direction.

The curious thing was that this time, he didn't feel afraid. The Anglcyn didn't seem frightened either, sitting his horse, looking into the trees at a green, softly glowing figure. It was too far away for details of face or form to be clear. The thing looked human, or near to being so, but a mortal didn't shine, couldn't hover over water as these things had done. Thorkell looked into the darkness at that muted glow. After a moment it simply went away, leaving the night behind.

He turned to Athelbert.

"I have no least idea what that is," the prince said softly. Thorkell shrugged. "Why should we have an idea," he said.

"Let's go," said Alun ab Owyn. They looked back at him. He was on his feet, a hand still touching the dog, as though reluctant to be parted now.

"Can he lead us?" Thorkell asked. The dog had at least one bad leg. There seemed to be blood, not as much as there might have been.

"He can," Alun said, and in the same moment the dog moved ahead of them. He turned back and waited for ab Owyn to mount up and then started forward, limping, not going quickly, but taking them through the spirit wood towards his home.

They rode through that night, dozing at times in the saddle, the horses following the dog. They stopped once more for water, cautiously. Alun bathed the dog by that pool, washing away blood. The animal's ear was gone. The wound seemed strangely clean to Thorkell, but how could you say what was strange and what was proper in this place? How could you dream of doing so?

They reached the end of the forest at sunrise.

It was too soon, all three of them knew it. They ought not to have been able to get through nearly so quickly. Athelbert, seeing meadow grass through the last of the oaks, cried aloud. He remembered his thoughts about time passing differently, everyone dead, the world changed.

It was a thought, but not an actual fear. He was aware (they all were, though they never spoke of it) that something out of the ordinary had happened. It felt like a blessing. He touched the sun disk around his neck.

Why should we have an idea? the Erling had said.

It was true. They lived in a world they could not possibly comprehend. The belief that they did understand was illusion, vanity. Athelbert of the Anglcyn carried that as a truth within himself from that time onward.

There is something—there is always something—about morning, dawn's mild light, end of darkness and the night. They rode out of the trees into Arberth and saw the morning sky above green grass and Athelbert knew—he knew—that this was their own world, and time, and that they had come through the godwood alive in four nights.

"We should pray," he said.

A woman screamed.

It really should have been possible, Meghan thought indignantly, for a girl to crouch and relieve herself in the bushes outside the shepherd hut without having a man on a horse appear right beside to her.

Three men. Coming from the spirit wood.

She'd screamed at the voice, but now a colder fear came as she realized that they'd ridden out of the forest. No one went into the wood. Not even the older boys of their village and farms, daring each other, drunk, would go farther than the first trees, in daylight.

Three men, a dog with them, had just emerged on horses from the woods. Which meant that they were dead, spirits themselves. And had come for her.

Meghan stood up, adjusting her clothing. She would have run, but they were on horses. They looked back at her oddly, as if they hadn't seen a girl before. Which might be true of ghosts, perhaps.

They looked ordinary enough. Or, if not ordinary, at least… alive, human. Then—third shock of a morning—Meghan realized that one of them was an Erling. The riders from Brynnfell that had come and taken all the men away with them had spoken of an Erling raid.

There was an Erling here, looking down at her from his horse, because—of course—her scream had revealed to them where she was, peeing in the bushes before seeing to the sheep.

She was alone. Bevin had gone with the others to Brynnfell yesterday at sunrise. Her brother would have laughed at her for screaming. Maybe. Maybe not, with men coming out of the wood, armed, one of them an Erling. The first man had spoken in a tongue she didn't know.

The dog's fur, she saw, was torn, streaked with blood.

They were still looking at her strangely, as though she were someone important. The Erlings had blood-eagled a girl named Elyn—another farm girl, only that—to the west after the Brynnfell fight. Meghan would have screamed again, thinking of that, but there was no point. No one near them, the farmhouses too far and the sheep wouldn't help her.

"Child," said one of them. "Child, we mean you no harm in all the god's sweet world."

He spoke Cyngael.

Meghan drew a breath. A Cadyri accent. They stole cattle and pigs, scorned Arberth in their songs, but they didn't kill farm girls. He dismounted, stood in front of her. Not a big man, but young, handsome, actually. Meghan, whose brother said she would get herself in trouble if she wasn't careful, decided she didn't really like it that he'd called her "child." She was fourteen, wasn't she? You could have a child at fourteen. That was what her brother meant, of course. He wasn't here. No one was.

The Cadyri said, "How far are we from Brynnfell? We must go to them. There is trouble coming."

Feeling extremely knowledgeable, and not as shy as she probably should have been, Meghan said, "We know all about it. Erlings. Riders came from Brynnfell and took our men with them."

The three men exchanged glances. Meghan felt even more important.

"How far is it?" It was the Erling, speaking Cyngael.

She looked dubiously at the one standing beside his horse.

"He's a friend," he said. "We must get there. How far?"

She thought about it. They had horses. "You can be there before dark," she said. "Up the swale and back down and pretty much west."

"Point us to the path," the Erling said.

"Cafall will know," said the Cyngael quietly. The third one hadn't spoken since his voice had made her scream. His eyes were closed. Meghan realized he was praying.

"Did you really come out of the forest?"

She had to ask. It was the wonder at the heart of this. It… made the world different. Bevin and the others would not believe her when she told them.

The one standing in front of her nodded. "How long ago did your menfolk leave?"

"Yesterday morning," she said. "You might almost catch them up, on horse."

The one who seemed to be praying opened his eyes. The one on the ground swung back into the saddle, pulled at his reins. They left without another word, the three of them, the dog, not looking back at her.

Meghan watched until they were out of sight. After, she had no idea what to do with herself. She wasn't used to being here alone—yesterday had been the first time, ever. The sun rose, as if declaring it was just another day. Meghan felt tingly, though, all strange. Eventually, she went back to the hut and built up the fire. She made and ate her morning pottage and then went to count the sheep. All morning, all day, she kept seeing them in her mind, those three riders, hearing what they'd said. Already it was beginning to feel too much like a dream, which she didn't like. She felt as if she needed to… root it in herself like a tree, make it real.

Meghan mer Gower told the story all her life, only not the part about how she'd been squatting to pee when they came out of the trees. Given what followed, who the three of them had turned out to be, even Bevin had to believe her, which was very satisfying.

Half a century later, it was Gweith, her grandson—having heard his grandmother's story all his days—who took thought one autumn morning after a fire had destroyed half the houses in the village.

After, he walked south, cap in hand, to the sanctuary at Ynant and spoke with the clerics there, asking their blessing for what he was of a mind to do. It was not the sort of thing you did without a blessing.

He received more than that. Fifteen clerics from Ynant, yellow-robed, most of them unhandy in the extreme, came walking with him back to the village.

The next morning they offered the dawn invocation and then, with all the villagers gathered to watch, in awe and wonder, the clerics began to help—after a fashion—as Gweith set about cutting down the first trees at the edge of the spirit wood. Some of the other young men joined them. They were more useful.

Gweith didn't die, nor did anyone else. No one was stricken with palsy or dropsy or fever in the days that followed. Neither were the clerics, though many of them did complain of blistered hands and muscle pains.

Men began taking axes to the wood.

At about that same time, in the way of such things, where an idea, a notion, reaches the world in many places at once, the same forest in the Anglcyn lands was entered into by men in search of urgently needed wood.

They brought their axes to the trees west of Esferth and farther south, beyond Retherly, towards where the young king had ordered a new shipyard and burh to be built. A growing kingdom needed lumber, there was no getting around it. At a certain point, in the name of Jad, you couldn't let old women's tales stop you from doing what had to be done.

None of the first woodcutters on that side of the wood died either, except for those suffering the usual accidents attendant upon sharp blades and falling trees and carelessness. It began, it continued. The world does not stay the way it was, ever.

Years after all of this, a great many years, actually, an Anglcyn charcoal burner at what had become the south-eastern edge of a considerably reduced forest came upon something curious. It was a hammer—an Erling battle hammer—lying in the grass by a small pond.

The odd thing was that the hammer's head, clearly ancient, gleamed as if newly forged, unrusted, and the wood of the shaft was smooth. When the charcoal burner picked it up he swore he heard a sound, something between a note of music and a cry.

Actions ripple, in so many ways, and for so long.