The Last Light of the Sun

THREE

She is curious and too bold. Always has been, from first awakening under the mound. A lingering interest in the other world, less fear than the others, though iron's presence can drain her as easily as any of them.

Tonight there are more mortals than she can remember in the house north of the wood; the aura is inescapable. No moons to cast a shadow: she has come away to see. Passed a green spruaugh on the way, seethed at him to stop his chattering, knows he will go now, to tell the queen where she is. No matter, she tells herself. They are not forbidden to look.

The cattle are restless in their pen. First thing she knows, an awareness of that. The lights almost all doused in the house now; shining only in one chamber window, two, and in the big room beyond the heavy doors. Iron on the doors. Mortals sleep at night, fearfully.

She feels hooves on the earth, west of them.

Her own fear, before sight. Then riders leaping the fence, smashing through it into the farmyard below and fire is thrown and iron is drawn, is everywhere, sharp as death, heavy as death. She hasn't come for this, almost flees, to tell the queen, the others. Mays, up above, unseen flicker in the dark-leaved trees.

Brighter and lesser auras all around the farmyard. The doors bursting open, men running out, from house, from barn, iron to hand in the dark. A great deal of noise, screaming, though she can screen some of that away: mortals too loud, always. They are fighting now. A feeling of hotness within her, dizziness, blood smell in the yard. She feels her hair changing colour. Has seen this before, but not here. Memories, long ago, trying to cross to where she is.

She feels ill, thinned by the iron below. Clings to a beech, draws sap-strength from that. Keeps watching, cold and shivering now, afraid. No moons, she tells herself again, no shadow or flicker of her to be seen, unless a mortal has knowledge of her world.

She watches a black horse rear, strike a running man with hooves, sees him fall. There is fire, one of the outbuildings ablaze now. A confusion of dark and roiling mortal forms. Smoke. Too much blood, too much iron.

Then something else comes to her. And on the thought—quick and bright as a firefly over water—between her shoulders, where they all had wings once, she feels a spasm, a trembling of excitement, like desire. She shivers again, but differently. She spies out more closely: the living and the dead in the chaos of that farmyard below. And yes. Yes.

She knows who died first. She can tell.

He is face down on the churned, trampled earth. First dead of a moonless night. Could be theirs, if she moves quickly enough. Has to be fast, though, his soul fading already, very nearly gone, even as she watches. And such a long time since a mortal in his prime has come to them. To the queen. Her own place in the Ride forever changed if she can do this.

It means going down into that farmyard. Iron all around. Horses thundering, sensing her, afraid. Their hooves.

No moons. The only time this can be done. Nothing of her to be seen. Tells herself that, one more time.

None of them has wings any more or she could fly. She lets go of the tree, finger by finger, and goes forward and down. She sees someone on the way. He is hurrying up the slope, breathing hard. He never knows that she is there, a faerie passing by.

He had to get to his sword. Dai screamed a warning, and then he did it again. Men sprang from pallets, roaring, seizing weapons. The double doors were thrust open, the first of their people hurtling into the night. Alun heard the cries of the Erlings, Brynn's warband shouting in reply, saw their own men from Cadyr rushing out. But his own room, and his sword, were back along the corridor the other way. Terribly, the other way.

Alun ran for all he was worth, heart pounding, his brother's voice in his ears, a fist of fear squeezing his heart.

When he got to the room, Gryffeth—who knew battle sounds as well as any of them—had already claimed his own blade and leather helm. He came forward, handed Alun his, wordlessly. Alun dropped the harp where they were; he unsheathed the sword, dropped the scabbard, too, pushed the helmet down on his head.

The woman with Gryffeth was not wordless, and was terrified.

"Dear Jad! There are no guards where we are. Come! Hurry!"

Alun and Gryffeth looked at each other. Nothing to be said. The heart could crack. They ran the other way, farther down the same dark hallway, the brown-haired girl beside them, her hand somehow in Alun's, candle fallen away. Then north, skidding at the hall's turning, up the far wing to the women's rooms.

Away from the double doors, from the fighting in the farmyard. From Dai.

The girl pointed, breathing in gasps. They burst in. A woman screamed, then saw it was them. Covered her mouth with the back of a hand, backing up against a table. Alun took a fast look, sword out. Three women here, one of them Brynn's daughter. Two rooms, a connecting door. He went straight across to the eastern window, which was, inexplicably, open. Moved to close the shutters, slide down the wooden bar.

The Erling hammer, descending, splintered wood, shattered the sill, barely missed breaking Alun's extended arm like so much kindling. A woman screamed. Alun stabbed through the wreckage of the window, blindly into the dark. Heard a grunt of pain. Someone shouted a high warning; he twisted hard, a wracking movement, back and away. Horse hooves loomed, thrust for the splintered window frame, smashed it in—and then a man hurtled through and into the room.

Gryffeth went for him, swearing, had his thrust taken by a round shield, barely dodged the axe blow that followed. The women pressed back, screaming. Alun stepped up beside his cousin—then had to wheel back the other way as a second man came roaring through the window, hammer in hand. They'd figured it out, where the women were. Erlings. Here. Nightmare on a moonless night; a night made for an attack.

But what were they doing so far inland? Why here? It made no sense. This was not where the raids came.

Alun swung at the second man, had his sword blocked, wrenchingly. He was bleeding from the splintered wood, so was the Erling. He stepped back, shielding the women. Heard a clattering noise, boots behind him, and then longed-for words.

"Drop weapons! There are two of you, five of us, more coming."

Alun threw a glance back, saw one of Brynn's captains, a man almost as big as the Erlings. Jad be thanked for mercy, he thought. The captain had spoken Anglcyn, but slowly. It was close to the Erling tongue; he'd be understood.

"You may be ransomed," Brynn's man went on, "if someone cares enough for you. Touch the women and you die badly, and will wish you were dead before you are."

A mistake, those words, Alun later thought.

Because, hearing them, the first man moved, cat-quick in a crowded room, and he seized Rhiannon mer Brynn—whose warning had been the one that had drawn Alun back from the window—and wrenched her away from the others. The Erling gripped her in front of him as a shield, her arm behind her back, twisted high, his axe gripped short, held to her throat. Alun caught his breath on a curse.

One of the other women dropped to her knees. The room was crowded with men now, smell of sweat and blood, mud and muck from the yard. They could hear the fighting outside, dogs barking frantically, the cattle lowing and shifting in their pen. Someone cried out, and then stopped.

"Ransom, you say?" the Erling grunted. He was yellow-bearded, wearing armour. Eyes beneath a metal helmet, the long nosepiece. "No. Not so. You drop weapons now or this one's breast is cut off. You want to see? I don't know who she is, but clothing is fine. Shall I cut?"

Brynn's captain stepped forward.

"I said drop weapons!"

A silence, taut, straining. Alun's mouth was dry, as if full of ashes. Dai was outside. Dai was outside. Had been there alone.

"Let him do it," said Rhiannon, the daughter of Brynn ap Hywll. "Let him do it, then kill him for me."

"No! Hear me," Alun said quickly. "There are better than fifty fighting men here. You will not have so many for a raid. Your leader made a mistake. You are losing out there. Listen! There is nowhere for you to go. Choose your fate here."

"Chose it when we took ship," the man rasped. "Ingavin claims his warriors."

"And his warriors kill women?"

"Cyngael whores, they do."

One of the men behind Alun made a strangled sound. Rhiannon stood, the one arm twisted behind her back, the axe fretting at her throat. Fear in her eyes, Alun saw; none in her words.

"Then die for this Cyngael whore. Kill him, Siawn! Do it!" The axe, gripped close to the blade, moved. A tear in the high-necked green gown, blood at her collarbone.

"Dearest Jad," said the woman on her knees.

A heartbeat without movement, without breath. And then the other Erling, the second man in through the window, dropped his shield with a clatter.

"Leave her, Svein. I've been taken by them before."

"Be a woman for the Cyngael, if you want!" the man named Svein snarled. "Ingavin waits for me! Drop weapons, or I cut her apart!"

Alun, looking at pale, wild eyes, hearing battle madness in the voice, laid down his sword, slowly.

There was blood on the girl. He saw her staring back at him. He was thinking of Dai, outside, that shouted warning before the hooves and fire. No weapon at all. His heart was crying and there was a need to kill and he was trying to find a space within himself to pray.

"Do the same," he said to Gryffeth, without turning his head. "Do not!" Rhiannon said, whispering it, but very clear. Gryffeth looked at her and then at Alun, and then he dropped his blade.

"He will kill her," said Alun to the men behind him, not looking back. His eyes were on the girl's. "Let his fellows be defeated outside, and then we will settle with these two. They have nowhere on Jad's earth to go from here."

"Then he will kill her," said the man named Siawn, and he stepped forward, still with his sword. Death in his voice, and an old rage.

The axe moved again, another rip in the green, a second ribbon of blood against white skin. One of the women whimpered. Not the one being held, though she was biting her lip now.

They stayed like that, a moment as long as the one before Jad made the world. Then a hammer was thrown.

The yellow-bearded Erling was wearing his iron helmet or his head would have been pulped like a fruit by that blow. Even so, the sound of the impact was sickening at close range in a crowded room. The man crumpled like a child's doll stuffed with straw; dead before his body, disjointed and splayed, hit the floor. The axe fell, harmlessly.

It seemed to Alun that no one in the room breathed for several moments. Extreme violence could do that, he thought. This wasn't a battlefield. They were too close together. Such things should happen… outdoors, not in women's chambers.

The woman in whose chambers they were standing remained where she'd been held, motionless. The flying hammer had passed near enough to brush her hair. Both arms were at her sides now, and no one was holding an axe to het Alun could see two streams of blood on her gown, the cuts at throat and collarbone. He watched her draw one slow breath. Her hands were shaking. No other sign. Death had touched her, and turned away. One might tremble a little.

He turned away, to the Erling who had thrown that hammer. Reddish beard streaked with grey; long hair spilling from the helmet bowl. Not a young man. His throw, the slightest bit awry, would have killed Brynn's daughter, crushing her skull. The man looked around at all of them, then held out empty hands.

"All men are fools," he said in Anglcyn. They could make it out. "The gods gave us little wisdom, some less than others. That man, Svein, angered me, I confess. We all go to our gods, one way or another. Little profit in hurrying there. He'd have killed the girl, and both of us. Foolish. I will not bring a great deal in ransom, but I do yield me, to you both and to the lady." He looked from Alun to Siawn behind him, and then to Rhiannon mer Brynn.

"Shall I kill him, my lady?" said Siawn grimly. You could hear the wish in him.

"Yes," said the brown-haired woman, still on her knees. The third woman, Alun saw, had just been sick, on the far side of the room.

"No," said Rhiannon. Her face was bone-white. She still hadn't moved. "He's yielded. Saved my life."

"And what do you think he would have done if there'd been more of them here?" the man named Siawn asked harshly. "Or fewer of us in the house tonight, by Jad's mercy? Do you think you'd still be clothed, and standing?" Alun had had the same thought.

They were speaking Cyngael. The Erling looked from one of them to the other, then he chuckled, and answered in their own language, heavily accented. He had been raiding here before; he'd said as much.

"She would have been claimed by Mikkel, who is the only reason we are so far from the ships. Or by his brother, which would have been worse. They'd have stripped her and taken her, in front of all of us, I imagine." He looked at Alun. "Then they'd have found a bad way to kill her."

"Why? Why that? She's… just a woman." Alun needed to leave, but also needed to understand. And another part of him was afraid to go. The world, his life, might change forever when he went outside. As long as he was here, in this room…

"This is the house of Brynn ap Hywll," said the Erling. "Our guide told us that."

"And so?" Alun asked. They'd had a guide. He registered that. Knew the Arberthi would, as well.

Rhiannon was breathing carefully, he saw. Not looking at anyone. Had never once screamed, he thought, only that one warning to him, when the horse smashed the window.

The Erling took off his iron helmet. His red hair was plastered to his skull, hung limply to his shoulders. He had a battered, broken-nosed face. "Mikkel Ragnarson leads this raid, with his brother. One purpose only, though I did try to change his mind for those of us who came for our own sakes, not his. He is the son of Ragnar Siggurson, and grandson of Siggur, the one we named the Volgan. This is vengeance."

"Oh, Jad!" cried the man named Siawn. "Oh, Jad and all the Blessed Victims! Brynn was outside when they came! Let's go!"

Alun had already picked up his sword, had turned, twisted through the others, was flying as fast as he could down the corridor for the double doors. Siawn's desperate cry came from behind him.

Brynn ap Hywll hadn't been the only one outside.

He hadn't killed anyone yet, the thought came. A need was rising, with his terror.

Terror went away like smoke on a wind as soon as he was out through the doors and saw what there was to see. Its passing left behind a kind of hollowness: a space not yet filled by anything. He had been quite certain, in fact, from the moment he'd heard Dai's first cry, but there was knowing, and knowing.

The attack was over. There hadn't been enough of the Erlings to cope with Brynn's warband here and their own Cadyri, even with the element of surprise. It was obviously to have been a raid on an isolated farmhouse—a large, specifically chosen farmhouse, but even so, this had been meant to kill Brynn ap Hywll, not meet his gathered force. Someone had erred, or had very bad luck. He'd said that himself, inside. Before he'd come running out into the yard to see the body lying here not far from the open doors. Not far at all.

He stopped running. Others were moving, all around him. They seemed oddly distant, vague, blurred somehow. He stood very still, and then, with an effort that took a great deal out of him, as though his body had become extremely heavy, Alun went forward again.

Dai hadn't had anything but the knife in his belt when he'd gone out, but there was an Erling sword in his hand now. He was face down in the grass and mud, a dead raider beside him. Alun went over to that place, where he lay, and he knelt in the mud and put down his own blade, and took off his helmet and set it down, and then, after another moment, he turned his brother over and looked at him.

Not cheap, the selling of his life, the "Lament for Seisyth" went. The one the bards sang, at one point or another, in the halls of all three provinces during those winter nights when men longed for spring's quickening and the blood and souls of the younger ones quickened at the thought of bright, known deeds.

The axe blow that killed Dai had fallen from behind and above, from horseback. Alun saw that by the light of the torches moving through the yard now. His blood and soul did not quicken. He held a maimed body, terribly loved. The soul was… elsewhere. He ought to pray now, Alun thought, offer the known, proper words. He couldn't even remember them. He felt old, weighted by grief, the need to weep.

But not yet. It was not over yet. He heard shouting still. There was an armed Erling in the yard some distance away, his back to the door of one of the outbuildings, holding a sword to a nearly naked figure in a half-ring made by the Arberthi warband and Alun's own companions.

Still on his knees, his brother's head in his lap now, blood soaking into his leggings and tunic, Alun saw that the captive figure was Brynn ap Hywll, being held—in the most savage irony he could imagine—exactly as his daughter had been, moments before.

The clerics taught in chapel (and text, for those who could read) that Jad of the Sun did battle in the night under the world for his children, that he was not cruel or capricious as the gods of the pagans were, making sport of mortal men.

You would not have known it tonight.

Riderless horses moving in the yard among the dead; servants running after them, taking their reins. Wounded men crying. The flames seemed to have been put out except for one shed, burning down at the other end of the farmyard, nothing near it to be claimed by fire.

There had been more than fifty fighting men sleeping here tonight, with weapons and armour. The northmen could not have known or expected that, not in a farmhouse. Bad luck for them.

The Erlings had fled or were taken, or were dead. Except one of them held Brynn now, with nowhere to go. Alun wasn't sure what he wanted to do, but he was about to do something.

You go. I don't think I am equal to this. Not the voice, the brother, he'd known all his life. And for a very last word, a command, torn from him: Go!

Sending Alun away, at the end. And how could that be their last shared moment in the god's world? In a life Alun had lived with his brother from the time he was born?

He set Dai's head gently down and rose from the mud and started over towards that torchlit half-circle of men. Someone was speaking; he was too far away yet to hear. He saw that Siawn and Gryffeth and the others had come out now, the big, red-bearded Erling gripped between two of them. He looked over at his cousin, and then away: Gryffeth had seen him kneeling beside Dai, so he knew. He was using his sword for support, point down in the earth, looked as if he wanted to sink into the dark, trampled grass. They had grown up together, the three of them, from childhood. Not so long ago.

Rhiannon mer Brynn was in the yard as well now, beside her mother, who was standing straight as a Rhodian marble column, not far from the arc of men, gazing at her captive husband through the smoke and flames.

He saw Owyn's younger son—Owyn's only son now, a sorrow under Jad—moving too quickly towards the other men, sword in hand, and he understood what was working in him. It could be like a poison, grief. Ceinion went forward swiftly, at an angle, to intercept him. A necessary life was still in the balance. It was too dark to read faces, but you could sometimes tell a man's intention from the way he moved. There was death around them in the farmyard, and death in the way the young Cadyri prince was going forward.

Ceinion spoke, almost running, calling his name. Alun kept going. Ceinion had to catch him, lay a hand on the young man's arm—and received a look that chilled him, for his pains.

"Remember who you are!" the cleric snapped, deliberately cold. "And what is happening here."

"I know what happened here," said the boy—he was still something of that, though his father's heir as of tonight. And there were ripples that might flow from that, for all of them. Princes mattered, under Jad.

"It is still happening. Wait, and pray. That man with the sword is the Volgan's grandson."

"I thought as much," said Alun ab Owyn, a bleakness in his voice that was a sorrow of its own to the cleric hearing it. "We learned he was leading them, inside." He drew a breath. "I need to kill him, my lord."

There were things you were supposed to say to that, in the teachings, and he knew what they were, he had even written some of them. What Ceinion of Llywerth, high cleric of the Cyngael, anchor and emblem of his people's faith in Jad, murmured amid the orange flickering of torches and the black smoke was: "Not yet, my dear. You can't kill him yet. Soon, I hope."

Alun looked at him, and after a stiff moment nodded his head, once. They went forward together into that half-circle of men and were in time to see what happened there.

The taken-away sword had struck the tumbled raider first, but a second Erling's axe from behind and above had killed the Cyngael sooner.

She crouches by the fence until those first two bodies are left alone again—the one who knelt beside one of them standing and walking away—and then, not allowing any time for fear to take hold of her, she goes straight in, at speed, and claims a soul for the queen.

A moonless night. Only on a moonless night.

Once it was otherwise and easier, but once, also, they were able to fly. She lays hands on the body, and speaks the words they are all taught, says them for the first time, and—yes, there! — she sees his soul rise from blood and earth to her summoning.

It hovers, turning, drifting, in a stray breath of wind. She exults fiercely, aroused, her hair changing colour, again and then again, body tingling with excitement, even amid the fear of shod hooves and the presence of iron, which is weakening and can kill her.

She watches the soul she's claimed for the Ride float above the sprawled, slain mortal body and she sees it turn to go, uncertain, insubstantial, not entirely present yet in her world, though that will come, it will come. She didn't expect to feel so much desire. This isn't hers, though, this is for the queen.

He turns completely around in the air, moves upwards, then comes slowly back down, touches ground, already gathering form again. He looks towards her, sees, doesn't see—not quite yet—and then to the south he turns and begins to go, pulled towards the wood… as if to a half-remembered home.

He will reach them in the forest soon, taking surer, stronger form as he goes, a shape in their world now, and the queen will see him when he arrives, and will love him, as a precious gift, shining by water and wood and in the mound. And she herself, when she rejoins the others, will be touched by the glory of doing this as silver moonlight touches and lights pools in the night.

No moons tonight. A gift she has been given, this mortal death in the dark, and so beautiful.

She looks around, sees no one near, goes out then from that farmyard, from iron and mortals, living and dead, springing over the fence, up the slope, stronger as she leaves blades and armour behind. She pauses at the crest of the ridge to look back down. She always looks when near to them. Drawn to this other, mortal half of the world. It happens among the Ride, she isn't the only one. There are stories told.

The auras below are brighter than torches for her: anger, grief, fear. She finds all of these, takes them in, tries to distill them and comprehend. She looks down from the same beech tree as before, fingers upon it, as before. Two very big men in the midst of a ring; one holding iron to the other, who came bursting out of the small structure, roaring for a weapon. It frightened her, the red heat in that voice. But he was seen by the raider before his own men could reach him, and pinned by a sword to the wall. Not killed. She was not sure why, at first, but now she sees. Or thinks she does: other men arrive, freeze like carvings, then more come, gather, and are there now, like stone, torchlight around two men.

One of the two is afraid, but not the one she would have thought. She doesn't understand mortals well at all. Another world, they live in.

It is quiet now, the battle over except for this, and one other thing they will not know, down below. She listens. Has always liked to listen, and watch. Trying to understand.

+

"Understand me," the Erling said again, in his own tongue. "I kill him if anyone moves!"

"Then do it!" snapped Brynn ap Hywll. He was barefoot in the grass, only a grey undertunic covering his belly and heavy thighs. Another man would have looked ridiculous, Ceinion thought. Not Brynn, even with a sword to him and the Erling's left hand bunching his tunic tightly from behind.

"I want a horse and an oath to your god that I will be allowed passage to our ships. Swear it or he dies!" The voice was high, almost shrill.

"One horse? Pahl A dozen men you led are standing here! You stain the earth with your breathing." Brynn was quivering with rage.

"Twelve horses! I want twelve horses! Or he dies!"

Brynn roared again. "No one swear that oath! No one dare!"

"I will kill him!" the Erling screamed. His hands were shaking, Ceinion saw. "I am the grandson of Siggur Volganson!"

"Then do it!" Brynn howled back. "You castrate coward! Do it!"

"No!" said Ceinion. He stepped forward into the ring of light. 'No! My friend, be silent, in Jad's name. You do not have permission to leave us!"

"Ceinion! Don't swear that oath! Do not!"

"I will swear it. You are needed."

"He won't do it. He's a coward. Kill me and die with me, Erling! Go to your gods. Your grandfather would have gutted me like a fish by now! He'd have ripped me open." There was a white-hot, spitting fury in his voice, near to madness.

"You killed him!" the Erling snarled.

"I did! I did! I chopped off his arms and cut his chest open and ate his bloody heart and laughed! So carve me now and let them do the same to you!"

Ceinion closed his eyes. Opened them. "This must not be. Erling, hear me! I am high cleric of the Cyngael. Hear me! I swear by holiest Jad of the Sun—"

"No!" roared Brynn. "Ceinion, I forbid—"

"— that no harm will come to you when you release—" "No!"

"— this man, and that you will be allowed—"

The small door to the outbuilding—it was the brewhouse- banged open, right behind the two men. The Erling startled like a nervous horse, looked frantically back over his shoulder, swore.

Died. Brynn ap Hywll, in the moment his captor half turned, hammered an elbow viciously backwards and up into the other man's unprotected face beneath the nosepiece, smashing his mouth open. He twisted hard away from the sword thrust that followed. It raked blood from his side, no more than that. He stepped back quickly, turned…

"Here!"

Ceinion saw a sword arcing through the torchlight. Something beautiful in that flight, something terrible. Alun ab Owyn's blade was caught by Brynn at the hilt. Ceinion saw his old friend smile then, a grey wolf in winter, at the Cadyri prince who had thrown it. I ate his heart.

He hadn't. Might have done, though, the way he'd been that day. Ceinion remembered that fight—against this one's grandfather. A meeting of giants, crashing together on a blood-slick morning battlefield by the sea. In battle this fury happened to Brynn, the way it did to the Erlings of Ingavin's bear cult: a madness of war, claiming a soul. If you became what you fought, what were you? Not the night for that thought. Not here, good men dead in the dark farmyard.

"He swore an oath!" the Erling bubbled, spitting teeth. Blood in the broken mouth.

"Jad curse you," said Brynn. "My people died here. And my guests. Rot your ugly soul!" He moved, barefoot, half-naked. The Cadyri blade in his hand flicked right. The Erling moved to block it. The younger man wore armour, was big, rangy, in his prime.

Had been. The annihilating backhand blow swept down like a falling of rocks from a mountain height, crashing through his late parry, biting so deeply into his neck between helmet and breastplate that Brynn had to plant a foot on the fallen man, after, to lever and jerk it out.

He stood back, looked around slowly, flexing his neck and shoulder muscles, a bear in a circle of fire. No one moved, or said a word. Brynn shook his head, as if to clear it, to release fury, come back to himself. He turned to the door of the brewhouse. A girl stood there, in an unbelted tunic, flushing in the torchlight, her dark hair loose, for bed. For being bedded. Brynn looked at her.

"That was bravely done," he said, quietly. "Let all men know it."

She bit at her lower lip, was trembling. Ceinion was careful not to look to where Enid stood beside her daughter. Brynn turned around, took a step towards him, then another. Stopped squarely in front of the cleric, feet planted wide on his own soil.

"I'd never have forgiven you," he said, after a moment.

Ceinion met that gaze. "You'd have been alive to not forgive me. I spoke truth: you do not have leave to go from us. You are needed still."

Brynn was breathing hard, the coursing rage not yet gone from him, the big chest heaving, not from exertion but from the force of his anger. He looked at the young Cadyri behind Ceinion. Gestured with the blade.

"I thank you for this," he said. "You were quicker than my own men."

Owyn's son said, "No thanks need be. At least my sword is blooded, though by another. I did nothing at all tonight but play a harp."

Brynn looked down at him a moment from his great height. He was bleeding from the right side, Ceinion saw, the tunic ripped open there; he didn't seem aware of it. Brynn glanced away into the shadows of the farmyard, west of them. The cattle were still lowing on the other side in their pen. "Your brother's dead?"

Alun nodded his head, stiffly.

"Shame upon my life," said Brynn ap Hywll. "This was a guest in my house."

Alun made no reply. His own breathing was shallow, by contrast, constricted. Ceinion thought that he needed to be given wine, urgently. Oblivion for a night. Prayer could come after, in the morning with the god's light.

Brynn bent down, wiped both sides of the blade on the black grass, handed it back to Alun. He turned towards the brewhouse. "I need clothing," he said. "All of you, we will deal with…"

He stopped, seeing his wife in front of him.

"We will deal with the dead, and do what we can for the wounded," Enid said crisply. "There will be ale for the living, who were so valiant here." She looked over her shoulder. "Rhiannon, have the kitchen heat water and prepare cloths for wounds. Fetch all my herbs and medications, you know where they are. All of the women are to come to the hall." She turned back to her husband. "And you, my lord, will apologize tonight and tomorrow and the next day to Kara, here. You likely gave her the fright of a young life, more than any Erling would have, when she came to fetch ale for those still dicing and found you sleeping in the brewhouse. If you want a night's sleep outside the doors, my lord, choose another place next time, if we have guests?"

Ceinion loved her even more, then, than he had before.

Not the only one, he saw. Brynn bent down and kissed his wife on the cheek. "We hear and obey you, my lady," he said.

"You are bleeding like a fat, speared boar," she said. "Have yourself attended to."

"Am I permitted the slight dignity of trousers and boots first?" he asked. "Please?" Someone laughed, a release of strain. Someone else moved, very fast.

Siawn, a little tardy, cried out, following. But the red-bearded Erling had torn free of those holding him and, seizing a shield from one of them—not a sword—crashed through the ring around Brynn and his wife.

He turned away from them, looking up and south, raised the shield. Siawn hesitated, confused. Ceinion wheeled towards the slope and the trees. Saw nothing at all, in the black night.

Then he heard an arrow strike the lifted shield.

"There he goes!" said the Erling, speaking Cyngael very clearly. He was pointing. Ceinion, whose eyes were good, saw nothing, but Alun ab Owyn shouted, "I see him. Same ridge we were on today! Heading down the other way."

"Don't touch the arrow!" Ceinion heard. He spun back. The big Erling, not a young man, grey in his hair and beard, set down the shield carefully. "Not even the shaft, mind."

"Poison?" It was Brynn.

"Always."

"You know who it was, then?"

"Ivarr, this one's brother." He jerked his head towards the one on the ground. "Black-souled from birth, and a coward." "This one was brave?" Brynn snarled it.

"He was here with a sword," said the Erling. "The other one uses arrows, and poison."

"And Erlings should be much too brave to do that," Brynn said icily. "Can't rape a woman with a bow and arrow." "Yes, you can," said the Erling quietly, meeting his gaze. Brynn took a step towards him.

"He saved your life!" Ceinion said quickly. "Or Enid's." "Buying his own," Brynn snapped.

The Erling actually laughed. "There's that," he said. "Trying to, at any rate. Ask someone what happened inside."

But before that could be done, they heard another sound. Drumming hooves. An Erling horse thundered through the yard, leaped the fence. Ceinion, seeing the rider, cried out after him, hopelessly.

Alun ab Owyn, pursuing a foe he was unlikely ever to see or find, disappeared almost immediately on the dark path that curved around the ridge.

"Siawn!" said Brynn. "Six men. Follow him!"

"A horse for me," cried Ceinion. "That is the heir of Cadyr, Brynn!"

"I know it is. He wants to kill someone."

"Or be killed," said the red-bearded Erling, watching with interest.

The archer had a considerable start and poison on his arrows. It was pitch black on the path among the trees. Alun had no knowledge of the Erling horse he'd seized and mounted, and the horse wouldn't know the woods at all.

He cleared the fence, landed, kicked the animal ahead. They pounded up the path. He had a sword, no helmet (on the ground, in mud, beside Dai), no torch, felt a degree of unconcern he couldn't ever remember in himself before. A branch over the path struck his left shoulder, rocked him in the saddle. He grunted with pain. He was doing something entirely mad, knew it.

He was also thinking as fast as he could. The archer would come out and down from the slope—almost certainly—at the place they had reached earlier today, with Ceinion. The Erling was fleeing, would have a horse waiting for him. Would anticipate pursuit and head back into the trees, not straight along the path to the main trail west.

Alan lashed the horse around a curve. He was going too fast. It was entirely possible that a stump or boulder would break the animal's leg, send Alun flying, crack his neck. He flattened himself over the mane and felt the wind of another branch pass over his head. There was a body behind him, on the churned-up earth of a farmyard far from home. He thought of his mother and father. Another blackness there, darker than this night. He rode.

The only good thing about the moonless sky was that the archer would have trouble finding his way, too—and seeing Alun clearly, if he came close enough for a bowshot. Alun reached the forking trail where the slope came out on the path south-west. Remembered, only this afternoon, climbing up with Dai and then both of them coming down with the high cleric.

He drew a breath and left the path right there, not hesitating, plunging into the woods.

It was impossible, almost immediately. Swearing, he pulled the horse to a stop and listened in blackness. Heard—blessed be Jad—a sound through leaves, not far ahead. It could be an animal. He didn't think it was. He twitched the reins, moved the horse forward, carefully now, picking his way, sword out. A semblance of a trail, no more than that. His eyes were adjusting but there was no light at all. An arrow would kill him, easily.

He dismounted on that thought. Looped the reins around a tree trunk. His hair was slick with sweat. He heard sounds again—something ahead of him. It wasn't an animal. Someone unused to being silent in a forest, an unknown wood, far from the sea, amid the terror of pursuit, a raid having gone entirely wrong. Alun gripped his sword and followed.

He came upon the four Erlings too quickly, before he was ready for them, stumbling through beech trees into a sudden, small space, seeing them there, shadows—two kneeling to catch their breath, one slumped against a tree, the fourth directly in front of him, facing the other way.

Alun killed that one from behind, kept moving, slashed away the sword of the one leaning by the tree, gripped him and turned him with an arm twisted behind his back, snarled, "Drop blades, both of you!" to the kneeling pair.

A triad, he thought suddenly, remembering Rhiannon held, then Brynn. Third time tonight. The thought was urgent, sword-swift.

He remembered what had happened to the other two men who had held their captives this way, and even as the thought came he broke the pattern. He killed the man he was using as a shield, pushing him hard away to fall on the earth, and he stood alone to face two Erlings in a clearing in a wood.

He had never actually killed before. Two now, in moments.

"Come on!" he screamed at the pair before him. Both bigger than him, hardened sea-raiders. He saw the nearer one's head jerk suddenly, looking past Alun, and without any actual thought Alun dove to his right. The arrow from behind flew past him and hit the Erling in the sword arm.

"Ivarr, no!" the man screamed.

Alun rolled, scrambled up, turned his back on the two of them, sprinting immediately east into the thicket where the bowman would be. He heard him running through to the other side, then mounting up. The horse was there!

He wheeled back, running hard, swearing savagely. The fourth of those he'd surprised here was running the other way, towards the path. The wounded man was on his knees, clutching the arrow in his arm, making small, queer sounds. He was as good as dead, they both knew it: poison on the arrowhead, the shaft. Alun ignored him, pushed through to his horse, clawed free the reins, mounted, forced his way back through the trees and then the clearing again to the other side. He could still hear the archer's horse ahead of them, that rider swearing too, fighting to find a path through in thick, treed blackness. He felt a surging in his blood, fury and hardness and pain. His sword was red, his own doing this time. It didn't help. It didn't help.

He broke through, the horse thrashing into open space, saw water, a pool in the wood, the other rider going around it to the south. Alun roared wordlessly; galloped the Erling horse into the shallow water, splashing through at an angle to shorten the way, cut off the other man.

He was almost thrown over the animal's head as it halted, stiff-legged.

It reared straight back up, neighing, clawing at the air in terror, and then it came down and did not move at all, as if anchored so firmly it might never stir again.

The entirely unexpected will elicit very different responses in people, and the sudden intrusion of the numinous—the vision utterly outside one's range of experience—will exaggerate this, of course. One person will be terrified into denial, another will shiver in delight at a making manifest of dreams held close for a lifetime. A third might assume himself intoxicated or bewitched. Those who ground their lives in a firm set of beliefs about the nature of the world are particularly vulnerable to such moments, though not without exception.

Someone who—like Owyn's younger son that night—had already had his life broken into shards, who was exposed and raw as a wound, might be said to have been ready for confirmation that he'd never properly understood the world. We are not constant, in our lives, or our responses to our lives. There are moments when this becomes clear.

Alun's foot came out of one stirrup when the horse reared. He clutched at the animal's neck, fought to stay in the saddle, barely did so as the hooves splashed down hard. His sword fell into the shallow water. He swore again, tried to make the horse move, could not. He heard music. Turned his head.

Saw a growing, inexplicable presence of light, pale as moon-rise, but there were no moons tonight. Then, as the music grew louder, approaching, Alun ab Owyn saw what was passing by him, walking and riding on the surface of that water, in bright procession, the light a shimmering, around them and in them. And everything about the night and the world changed then, was silvered, because they were faeries and he could see them.

He closed his eyes, opened them again. They were still there. His heart was pounding, as if trying to break free of his breast. He was trammelled, entangled as in nets, between the desperate need to flee from the unholy Jad-cursed demons these must beby all the teachings of his faith—and the impulse to dismount and kneel in the water of this starlit pool before the very tall, slender figure he saw on an open litter, borne in the midst of the dancing of them all, with her pale garments and nearly white skin and her hair that kept changing its colour in the silvered light that grew brighter as they passed, the music louder now, wild as his heart's beating. There was a constriction in his chest, he had to remind himself to breathe.

If these were evil spirits, iron would keep them at bay, so the old tales promised. He'd dropped his sword in the water. It occurred to him that he ought to make the sign of the sun disk, and with that thought he realized that he couldn't.

He couldn't move. His hands on the horse's reins, the horse rooted in the shallows of the pool, the two of them breathing statues watching what was passing by. And in that growing, spirit-shaped brightness in the depths of a moonless wood at night, Alun saw— for the first time—that the saddle cloth of the Erling horse he rode bore the pagan hammer symbol of Ingavin.

And then, looking at that queen again—for who else could this possibly be, borne across still waters, shining, beautiful as hope or memory? — Alun saw someone next to her, riding a small, high-stepping mare with bells and bright ribbons in its mane, and there came a harder pounding, like a killing hammer against his wounded heart.

He opened his mouth—he could do that—and he began to shout against the music, struggling more and more wildly to move arms or legs, to dismount, to go there. He was unable to do anything at all, couldn't stir from where he and the horse were rooted, as his brother rode past him, changed utterly and not changed at all, dead in the farmyard below them, and riding across night waters here, not seeing Alun, or hearing him, one hand extended, and claimed, laced in the long white fingers of the faerie queen.

Siawn and his men knew exactly where they were going, heading up the slope. They also had torches. Ceinion, though he preferred to walk, had been riding all his life. They came to the place where the trail from the ridge met the path, stopped there, the horses stamping. The cleric, though much the oldest, was the first to hear sounds. Pointed into the woods, Siawn led them there, cutting a little north of where Alun had tried to force his way through. There were nine of them. The other young Cadyri, Gryffeth ap Ludh, had joined them, fighting sorrow. They found the two dead Erlings and a dying one almost immediately.

Siawn leaned over in his saddle and killed the wounded man with his sword. He'd needed to do that, Ceinion thought: Brynn's captain had come into the yard too late, after the fighting was done. The cleric said nothing. There were teachings against this, but this wood tonight was not the place for them.

By the light of their smoking torches they saw signs of passage through the far side of that small glade. They went straight through and out the other side, and so came to the wider clearing, the pool of water under stars. Stopped then, all of them, without words. It became very quiet, even the horses.

The man next to Ceinion made the sign of the sun disk. The cleric, a little belatedly, did the same. Pools in the wood, wells, oak groves, mounds… the half-world. The pagan places that had once been holy before the Cyngael had come to Jad, or the god had come to them in their valleys and hills.

These forest pools were his enemies, and Ceinion knew it. The first clerics, arriving from Batiara and Ferrieres, had chanted stern invocations, reading from the liturgy beside such waters as this, casting out all presence of false spirits and old magics. Or trying to. People might kneel today in stone chapels of the god and go straight from them to seek their future from a wise woman using mouse bones, or drop an offering in a well. Or into a pool by moonlight, or under stars.

"Let's go," Ceinion said. "This is just water, just a wood."

"No it isn't, my lord," said the man beside him, respectfully but firmly. The one who had made the sign. "He's here. Look." And only then did Ceinion see the boy on his horse, motionless in the water, and understand.

"Dear Jad!" said one of the others. "He went into the pool." "No moons," said another. "A moonless night—look at him." "Do you hear music?" said Siawn abruptly. "Listen!"

"We do not," said Ceinion of Llywerth, fiercely, his heart beating fast now.

"Look at him," Siawn repeated. "He's trapped. Can't even move!" The horses were restive now, agitated by their riders, or by something else, tossing their heads.

"Of course he can move," said the cleric, and swung down from his mount and went forward, striding hard, a man used to woods and nights and swift, decisive movement.

"No!" cried a voice from behind him. "My lord, do not—"

That he ignored. There were souls here, to save and defend. His entrusted task for so long. He heard an owl cry, hunting. A normal sound, proper in a night wood. Part of the order of things. Men feared the unknown, and so the dark. Jad was Light in his being, an answer to demons and spirits, shelter for his children.

He spoke a swift prayer and went straight into the pool, splashing through the shallows, calling the young prince's name. The boy didn't even turn his head. Ceinion came up beside him, and in the darkness he saw that Alun ab Owyn's mouth was wide open, as though he was trying to speak—or shout. He caught his breath.

And then, terribly, there was the sound of music. Very faint it seemed to Ceinion, ahead of them and to the right. Horns and flutes, stringed instruments, bells, moving across the unrippled stillness of the water. He looked, saw nothing there. Ceinion spoke Jad's holy name. He signed the disk, and seized the reins of the Erling horse. It wouldn't move.

He didn't want the others to see him struggling with the animal. Their souls, their belief, were in danger here. He reached up with both arms and pulled Owyn's son, unresisting, from the saddle. He threw the young man over one shoulder and carried him, splashing and staggering, almost falling, out of the pool, and he laid him down on the dark grass at the water's edge. Then he knelt beside him, touched the disk about his throat, and prayed.

After a moment, Alun ab Owyn blinked. He shook his head. Drew a breath and then closed his eyes, which was a curious relief, because what Ceinion saw in his face, even in the darkness, was harrowing.

Eyes still closed, voice low, utterly uninflected, the young Cadyri said, "I saw him. My brother. There were faeries, and he was there."

"You did not," Ceinion said firmly, clearly. "You are grieving, my child, and in a strange place, and you have just killed someone, I believe. Your mind was overswayed. It happens, son of Owyn. I know it happens. We long for those we have lost, we see them… everywhere. Believe me, sunrise and the god will set you right on this."

"I saw him," Alun repeated.

No emphasis, the quiet more unsettling than fervour or insistence would have been. He opened his eyes, looking up at Ceinion.

"You know that is heresy, lad. I do not want—"

"I saw him."

Ceinion looked over his shoulder. The others had remained where they were, watching. Too far away to hear. The pool was still as glass. No wind in the glade. Nothing that could be taken for music now. He must have imagined it himself; would never claim to be immune to the strangeness of a place like this. And he had a memory of his own, pushed hard away, always, of… another place like this. He was aware of the shapes of power, the weight of the past. He was a fallible man, always had been, struggling to be virtuous in times that made it hard.

He heard the owl again; far side of the water now. Ceinion looked up, stars overhead in the bowl of sky between trees.

The Erling horse shook its head, snorted loudly, and walked placidly out of the pond by itself. It lowered its head to crop the black grass beside them. Ceinion watched it for a moment, the utter ordinariness. He looked back at the boy, took a deep breath.

"Come, lad," he said. "Will you pray with me, at Brynn's chapel?"

"Of course," said Alun ab Owyn, almost too calmly. He sat up, and then stood, without aid. Then he walked straight back into the pool.

Ceinion half lifted a hand in protest, then saw the boy bend down and pick up a sword from the shallows. Alun walked back out.

"They've gone, you see," he said.

They returned to the others, leading the Erling horse. Two of Brynn's men made the sign of the disk as they came up, eyeing the Cadyri prince warily. Gryffeth ap Ludh dismounted and embraced his cousin. Alun returned the gesture, briefly. Ceinion watched him, his brow knit.

"The two Cadyri and I will go back to Brynnfell," he said. "Two of them escaped from me," Alun said, looking up at Siawn. "The one with the bow. Ivarr."

"We'll catch him," said Siawn, quietly.

"He went south, around the water," Owyn's son said, pointing. "Probably double back west." He seemed composed, grave even. Too much so, in fact. The cousin was weeping. Ceinion felt a needle of fear.

"We'll catch him," Siawn repeated, and cantered off, giving the pool a wide berth, his men following.

Certainty can be misplaced, even when there is fair cause for it. They didn't, in fact, catch him: a man on a good-enough horse, in darkness, which made tracking hard. Some days later, word would come to Brynnfell of two people killed, by arrows—a farm labourer and a young girl—in the thinly populated valley between them and the sea. Both the man and the girl had been blood-eagled, which was an abomination. Nor would anyone ever find the Erling ships moored, Jad alone knew where, along the wild and rocky coastline to the west. The god might indeed know, but he didn't always confide such things to his mortal children, doing what they could to serve him in a dark and savage world.