Hood

by Stephen R. Lawhead

  Whirling around, Bran retrieved the spear and, turning back, knelt and planted the butt of the shaft in the ground as the charger sped forward—too fast to elude the trap. Unable to stop, the hapless animal ran onto the blade.With a scream of agony, the horse plunged on a few more strides before it became tangled in the undergrowth and went down in a heap of flailing hooves and thrashing legs. The rider was thrown over the neck of his mount and landed on hands and knees. Bran rushed to the stunned knight, ripped the knife from his belt, and with a shriek like the cry of a banshee, plunged the blade into the exposed flesh of the man’s neck, between his helmet and mail shirt. The knight struggled to his knees, clawing at the blade, as Bran ran for the shelter of the trees.

  A few strides into the wood, the main trail split into several smaller paths, fanning out into the tangle of trees and undergrowth. Bran chose one that passed between two close-grown trees—wide enough to admit him, but narrow enough to hinder a rider. His feet were already on the path, and he was through the gap when the second rider reached the place.

  He heard a frustrated shout behind him and the tormented whinny of a horse. Bran glanced back to see that the rider had halted because his mount was tangled in the branches of a low-lying bramble thicket, and the warrior was having difficulty extricating himself.

  Unslinging his bow, Bran shook the arrows from the bundle and snatched one from the ground. He pressed the bow forward, took aim, and let fly. The missile sped through the trees and took the rider in the chest just below the collarbone. The force of the impact slammed the warrior backward in the saddle, but he kept his seat. Bran sent a second arrow after the first. It flew wide of the mark by a mere hairsbreadth.

  He had two arrows left. He bent down to snatch them up, and as he straightened, he glimpsed a blur of movement out of the corner of his eye.

  The spear sped through the air. Bran tried to leap aside, but the steel-tipped length of ash was expertly thrown, and the blade caught him midstride, striking high on the right shoulder. The force of the throw knocked him off his feet and sent him sprawling forward.

  Bran fell hard and heard something snap beneath him. He had landed on the arrows, breaking one of the slender shafts in the fall. One arrow left. Gasping for breath, he rolled onto his side, and the spear came free.

  The rider drove in fast behind his throw, sword drawn and raised high, ready to part Bran’s head from his shoulders. Bran, crouching in the path, picked up the bow and the last arrow; he nocked the shaft to the string, pressing the longbow forward in the same swift motion.

  The wound in his shoulder erupted with a ferocious agony. Bran gasped aloud, his body convulsed, and his fingers released their grip on the string. The arrow scudded off along the trail, to no effect. He threw down the bow, picked up the Ffreinc lance that had wounded him, and stumbled from the path, pushing deeper into the wood.

  The coarse shouts of his attackers grew louder and more urgent as they ordered their pursuit. The branches were now too close grown and tangled, the trail too narrow for men on horseback. Bran sensed the marchogi were dismounting; they would continue the chase on foot.

  Using their momentary inattention, he turned off the trail and dove into the undergrowth. Moving as quickly and quietly as possible, he slipped through the crowded ranks of slender young hazel and beech trees, scrambling over the fallen trunks of far older elms until he came to another, wider path.

  He paused to listen.

  The voices of his pursuers reached him from the trail he had left behind. Soon they would realise their quarry was no longer on the path they pursued; when that happened, they would spread out and begin a slower, more careful search.

  He put his hand to his injured shoulder and probed the wound with his fingers. The ache was fierce and fiery, and blood was trickling down his back in a sticky rivulet. It would be best to find some way to bind the wound lest one of the pursuers see the blood and pick up his trail that way. Luckily, he thought with grim satisfaction, the marchogi no longer had a dog with them.

  As if in answer to this thought, there came a sound that turned his bowels to water: the hoarse baying of a hound on scent. It was still some way off, but once the animal reached the trailhead, the hunt would be all but finished.

  Turning away, Bran lurched on, following the path as it twisted and turned, pressing ever deeper into the wood. He ran, listening to the cry of the hound grow louder by degrees, keenly alert for something, anything, that might throw the beast off his scent.

  Then, all at once the sound ended. The forest went quiet.

  Bran stopped.

  His shoulder was aflame, and cold sweat beaded on his brow. He waited, drawing air deep into his lungs, trying to steady his racing heart.

  Suddenly, the hound gave out a long, rising howl that was followed instantly by a shout from one of the soldiers. The dog had found his trail again.

  Bran staggered forward once more. He knew he could not long elude his pursuers now—a few moments, more or less, and the chase would end.

  And then, just ahead, he spied a low opening in the brush and, beneath it, dark, well-churned earth: the telltale sign of a run used by wild pigs. He dove for it and scrambled forward on hands and knees, dragging the spear with him. His pursuers were still on the trail he had just quit.

  He drove himself on, wriggling through the undergrowth, around rocks and over roots. Low-hanging branches tore at him, snagging his clothing and skin.

  The hound reached the end of the pig run and hesitated.

  At first the marchogi assumed the dog had been distracted by the scent of the pigs. There was a shout and a yelp as they dragged the dog away from the entrance to the run and moved on down the trail.

  Bran gathered himself for another push. Pulling himself up by the shaft of the spear, he lurched ahead—four heartbeats later, the hound loosed another rising howl, and the chase resumed behind him.

  Gritting his teeth against the pain, Bran ran on.

  Above the crashing and thrashing in the wood behind him, he heard something else: the liquid murmur of falling water. Bran followed the sound and in a moment came to a small, boulder-strewn clearing. A swift-flowing stream cut through its centre, coursing around the base of the huge, round moss-covered stones.

  Bran picked his way amongst the rocks, only to find that the path ended in a sheer drop. The stream plunged into a pool beneath the stony ledge on which Bran was standing.

  The waters gathered in the pool and then flowed away into the hidden heart of Coed Cadw.

  Bran gazed at the pool and realised that, like the path, his flight had ended, too.

  With his back to the waterfall, he turned to make his last stand. His breath came in shaky gasps. Sweat flowed down his face and neck. The shaft of the spear was slick with his blood.

  He wiped his hands on his clothes and tightened his grip on the spear as the marchogi approached, their voices loud in the silence of the forest.

  They reached the clearing all at once—the hound and three men—bursting into the glade in a blind rush. Two soldiers held spears, and the third grasped the leash of the hound. The dog saw Bran and began straining at its lead, snarling with slavering fury and clawing the air to reach him.

  The soldiers hesitated, uncertain where they were. Bran saw the cast of their eyes as they took in the rocks, the waterfall, and then . . . himself, standing perfectly still on a stone above the fall.

  The dog handler shouted to the others; the knight on his left raised his spear and drew back his arm. Bran readied himself to dodge the throw.

  There came a shout, and a fourth man entered the rock-filled hollow behind the others; he wielded a sword, and the front of his hauberk was stained with blood from the arrow wound beneath his collarbone. He made a motion with his hand, and the marchogi under his command spread out.

  Bran tightened his grip on the spear and braced himself for the attack.

  The man with the sword raised his hand, but before he could give the signal, there was
a sharp snap, like that of a slap in the face. The hound, suddenly and unexpectedly free of its broken leash, bounded toward Bran, its jaws agape.

  Bran turned to meet the hound. One of the soldiers, seeing Bran move, launched his spear.

  Both dog and spear reached Bran at the same time. Bran jerked his body to the side. The spear sailed harmlessly by, but the jaws of the hound closed on his arm. Bran dropped his spear and threw his free arm around the neck of the dog, trying to strangle the animal as its teeth ripped into the skin and tendons of his arm.

  Two more spears were already in the air. The first found its mark, passing through the dog and striking Bran. The hound gave out a yelp, and Bran felt a wicked sting in the centre of his chest.

  Wounded, his vision suddenly blurred with the pain, Bran fought to keep his balance on the rock ledge. Too late he saw the glint in the air of a spear streaking toward him. Thrown high, it missed his throat but sliced through the soft part of his cheek as it grazed along his jaw.

  The jolt rocked him backward.

  He teetered on the ledge for an instant, and then, still clasping the dying dog like a shield before his body, he plunged over the waterfall and into the pool below.

  The last thing he saw was the face of one of his attackers peering cautiously over the edge of the fall. Then Bran closed his eyes and let the stream bear him away.

  PART TWO

  IN COED

  CADW

  CHAPTER 14

  Mérian took the news of Bran’s death hard —much harder than she herself might have predicted had she ever dreamed such a possibility could occur. True, she heartily resented Bran ap Brychan for running away and deserting his people in their time of need; she might have forgiven him all else, if not for that. On the other hand, she knew him to be a selfish, reckless, manipulating rascal. Thus, though utterly irritated and angry with him, she had not been at all surprised by his decision to flee. She told herself that she would never see him again.

  Even so, never in her most resentful disposition did she conceive—much less wish—that any harm would come to him. That he had been caught and killed trying to escape filled her with morbid anguish. The news—reported by her father’s steward and overheard by her as he related the latest marketplace gossip to the cook and scullery girls—hit her like a blow to the stomach. Unable to breathe, she sagged against the doorpost and stifled a cry with her fist.

  Sometime later, when summoned to her father’s chamber, where she was informed, she was able to bear up without betraying the true depth of her feelings. Shocked, horrified, mournful, and leaden with sorrow, Mérian moved through the first awful day feeling as if the ground she trod was no longer solid beneath her feet—as if the very earth was fragile, delicate, and thin as the shell of a robin’s egg, and as if any moment the crust on which she stood might shatter and she would instantly plunge from the world of light and air into the utter, perpetual, suffocating darkness of the tomb.

  Soon, everyone in King Cadwgan’s court was talking of nothing else but Bran’s sad, but really only-too-predictable, demise. That was harder still for Mérian. She put on a brave face. She tried to appear as if the news of Bran and the misfortune that had befallen Elfael meant little to her, or rather that it meant merely as much as bad news from other places ever meant to anyone not directly concerned—as if, lamentable though it surely was, the fate of the wayward son of a neighbouring king ultimately was nothing to do with her.

  “Yes,” she would agree, “isn’t it awful? Those poor people—what will they do?”

  She told herself time and again that Bran had been an unreliable friend at best; that his apparent interest in her was nothing more than carnal, which was entirely true; and that his sad death had, at the very least, delivered her from a life of profound and perpetual unhappiness. These things and more she told herself—spoke them aloud, even. But no matter how often she rehearsed the reasons she should be relieved to be free of Bran ap Brychan, she could not make herself believe them. Nor, for all the truth of her assertions, could she make herself feel less wretched.

  She kept a tight rein on herself when others were nearby. She neither wept nor sobbed; not one sorrowing sigh escaped her lips. Her features remained composed, thoughtful perhaps, but not distraught, less yet grief-stricken. Anyone observing Mérian might have thought her distracted or concerned. Knowing that nothing good could come of any overt display of emotion where Bran was concerned, she swallowed her grief and behaved as if the news of Bran’s death was a thing of negligible significance amidst the more troubling news of the murder of Brychan ap Tewdwr and all his war-band and the unwarranted Ffreinc advance into neighbouring Elfael. Here, if only here, she and her stern father agreed: the Ffreinc had no right to kill a sitting king and seize his cantref.

  “It is a bad business,” King Cadwgan told her, shaking his grey head. “Very bad. It should not have happened, and William Rufus should answer. But Brychan had been warned more than once to make his peace. I urged him to go to Lundein long ago—years ago! We all did! Would he listen?

  He was a hell-bent, bloody-minded fool—”

  “Father!” Mérian objected. “It is beneath you to speak ill of the dead, and bad luck besides.”

  “Beneath me?” wondered Cadwgan. “Daughter, it is kindness itself! I knew the man, and of times would have called him my friend. You know that. On Saint Becuma’s knees, I swear that man could be so maddeningly pigheaded—and mean with it! If there was ever a man with a colder heart, I don’t want to know him.” He raised an admonishing finger to his daughter. “Mark my words, girl, now that Brychan and his reprobate son are gone, we will soon count it a blessing in disguise.”

  “Father!” she protested once more, her voice quivering slightly. “You should not say such things.”

  “If I speak my mind, it is not out of malice. You know me better than that, I hope. Though we may not like it, that is God’s own truth. Brychan’s son was a rogue, and his death saved a hangman’s fee.”

  “I will not stay and listen to this,” declared Mérian as she turned quickly and hurried away.

  “What did I say?” called her father after her. “If anyone has cause to mourn Bran ap Brychan’s death, it is the hangman who was cheated out of his pay!”

  Mérian’s mother was more sympathetic but no more comforting. “I know it is hard to accept,” said Queen Anora, threading her embroidery needle, “when someone you know has died. He was such a handsome boy—if only he had been better brought up, he might have made a good king. Alas, his mother died so young. Rhian was a beauty, and kindness itself—if a little flighty, so they say. Still, it’s a pity she was not there to raise him.” She sighed, then went back to her needle. “You can thank God you were not allowed to receive him in company.”

  “I know, Mother,” said Mérian glumly, turning her face away. “How well I know.”

  “Soon you will forget all about him.” She offered her daughter a hopeful smile. “Time will heal, and the hurt will pass. Mark my words, the pain will pass.”

  Mérian knew her parents were right, though she would not have expressed her opinions quite so harshly. Even so, she could not make her heart believe the things they said: it went on aching, and nothing anyone said soothed the pain. In the end, Mérian determined to keep her thoughts, like her grief, to herself.

  Each day, she went about her chores as if the raw wound of sorrow was already skinning over. She attended her weaving with care and patience. She helped the women prepare the animal skins that would become furs to adorn winter cloaks and tunics. She stood barefoot in the warm sun and raked the newly harvested beans over the drying floor. She twirled the spindle between her deft fingers to spin new-carded wool into thread, watching the skein grow as she wound it round and round. Though she laboured with diligence, she did not feel the thread pass through her fingertips, nor the rake in her hands; she did not smell the strong curing salts she rubbed into the skins; her fingers gathered the wool of their own accord without he
r guidance.

  Each day, she completed her duties with her usual care—as if the thought of Bran hunted down and speared to death like some poor, fear-crazed animal was not the sole occupation of her thoughts, as if the anguish at his passing was not continually churning in her gentle heart.

  And if, each night, she cried silently in her bed, each morning she rose fresh faced and resolved not to allow any of these secret feelings to manifest themselves in word or deed.

  In this she made good.

  As the weeks passed, she thought less about Bran and his miserable death and more about the fate of his leaderless people. Of course, they were not—as Garran, her elder brother, so helpfully pointed out—leaderless. “They have a new king now—William Rufus,” he told her. “And his subject lord, Count de Braose, is their ruler.”

  “De Braose is a vile murderer,” Mérian snapped.

  “That may be,” Garran granted with irritating magnanimity, “but he has been given the commot by the king. And,” he delighted in pointing out, “the crown is divinely appointed by God. The king is justice, and his word is law.”

  “The king is himself a usurper,” she countered.

  “As were most of those before him,” replied her brother, smug in his argument. “Facts are facts, dear sister. The Saxon stole the land from us, and now the Ffreinc have stolen it from them.We possess what we hold by King William’s sufferance.

  He is our sovereign lord now, and it is no good wishing otherwise, so you had best make peace with how things are.”

  “You make peace with how things are,” she answered haughtily. “I will remain true to our own kind.”

  “Then you will continue to live in the past,” Garran scoffed. “The old ways are over for us. Times are changing, Mérian. The Ffreinc are showing us the way to peace and prosperity.”

  “They are showing us the way to hell !” she shouted, storming from his presence.

  That young Prince Bran had died needlessly was bad enough. That he had been killed trying to flee was shameful, yes, but anyone might have done the same in his place. What she found impossible to comprehend or accept was her brother’s implied assertion that their Norman overlords were somehow justified in their crime by the innate superiority of their customs or character, or whatever it was her brother found so enamouring.