“In the vicinity of one hundred,” Taliesin said. “I’ll take the lead; all they need is someone to assert authority and they’ll fall into better order.”
Dafydd and Rhiann agreed to that, although it looked to Rhiann like there were a lot more than a hundred people in the crowd. Children ran this way and that, only to be hauled back by an anxious parent and slapped on the rear, as if that would do anything to make them behave.
These were country folk, all of whom had spent their lives working the land or running livestock up and down their patch of Wales. They were sturdy but provincial. Many of them had never traveled more than a few miles from their home and this flight in the dark was taxing their mental stamina. That and the nameless menace they were fleeing.
“We’ll take up the rear, then,” Rhiann said. “That’s where you need us anyway, if any of the Saxons get through our men.”
Dafydd snorted. “None will get through, and if they do, then all will be lost. I’d rather die myself than face that.”
Taliesin turned on him. “That’s not why you’re here, boy. Why does Lord Cadwaladr fight but for his people? If he falls, he expects you to stand firm. If you can’t defend your people when all is lost, run on ahead with the others.”
“I didn’t mean—” Dafydd stuttered at Taliesin’s vehemence. “I didn’t mean that I didn’t intend to do my duty.”
“Do you think these people beneath your dignity?” Taliesin said.
Dafydd shook his head. “No! I learned in the kitchens of Caer Dathyl that a man should not be judged by how he treats his equals, but by his attitude toward his social inferiors.”
Taliesin sniffed. “Good. There’s something between your ears besides mutton.” He turned and strode off toward the front of the line, wending his way along the trail, shedding his anger as he did so—if he’d ever actually felt any. It was hard to know with Taliesin what was real emotion and what was a carefully calculated act. As the refugees gave way to him, he didn’t pass any without a word, a nod, or a pat on the shoulder. This was the other Taliesin, the one a person couldn’t help trusting.
Rhiann held her bow in her left hand and led Arddun, who carried the extra arrows strapped on her back. Dafydd moved to a position just behind her, leading his own horse. Far ahead, the torch held by a man near Taliesin flashed and winked, sputtering a bit from the rain falling on it. As the leaders wended their way in and out of the trees and around rocky outcrops, the light would disappear except for a reflection off the naked trees. As the torchlight faded away, Rhiann’s night eyes began to adjust as Cade had said they would.
It helped that as they progressed away from Llanllugan, the rain became intermittent and then finally stopped. The darkness didn’t lift, however, and no stars or moon appeared. Waterlogged, Rhiann took a moment to shake out the thick cloak that Rhun’s Bronwen had presented to her before they left. It had been Bronwen’s own, a beautiful blue in color. Rhiann hoped Bronwen had seen the gratefulness in her eyes as well as her words when she’d wrapped it around her shoulders. Thanks to the cloak, the rest of Rhiann’s clothes had remained dry, and only her hands were truly cold.
“I thought we were supposed to follow the river for several miles before we entered the mountains?” Dafydd said.
Rhiann looked back at him and then forward. The tail end of the line now bent out of sight. Taliesin had apparently chosen to take a trail that wended higher into the hills to their right. “That’s what Geraint said, but it looks as if Taliesin has a different idea.”
They stopped and craned their necks to look up the hill. Taliesin and his torch were now a good fifty feet above them. The path on which he was traveling switched back and forth, doubling back on itself along the face of the hill.
The last of the villagers had turned onto this new trail and were heading upward when a young boy of about ten appeared in front of Rhiann, gasping for breath, having run headlong down the steep trail the whole way from Taliesin.
“My lady!” He took in big gulps of air.
“What is it?” Rhiann said.
“He says ... Lord Taliesin says ... to look behind you.”
Dafydd and Rhiann swung around to gaze back down the trail they’d just walked up that led to Llanllugan. In the hour of walking, they’d only come a mile, if that, from the turnoff from the Roman road. Rhiann listened, letting the people get farther ahead, along with the light that climbed higher and higher.
“Taliesin must have seen something from his height that we can’t,” Dafydd said. “I don’t—”
And then Rhiann heard it. At first it was a whisper, but as she strained to listen above the rushing of the stream, she heard shouting. The voices were hard and guttural, and not fearful like that of the villagers.
Dafydd heard them too. “We’ve made a mistake. The Saxons aren’t coming north from the Severn; they must have crossed the river before Caersws and come over the hills to Llanllugan.”
“Cade is in the wrong place.” Rhiann kept her voice to a whisper, not so much because she didn’t want to frighten the boy but because she could hardly stand to admit their error to herself.
Dafydd turned to the boy. “Go! Tell Taliesin to keep walking. He must keep the people safe. We’ll make our stand here.”
“They’ll kill you if you try! My da—” The boy cut the words off, swallowing them in sudden tears.
Dafydd put his great hands on the boy’s shoulders and bent down to him. “We’ll be fine. Lord Cadwaladr would not have asked that we accompany you if we couldn’t protect you.”
The boy nodded his head in jerky agreement. Dafydd gave him another pat and then a shove, and the boy ran away, back up the trail. Then Dafydd turned to Rhiann.
“Give me the bow.”
Rhiann gripped it tighter. “When was the last time you shot an arrow?”
He glared at her. “It’s ... been a while.”
“Not for me,” she said. “Besides, Rhun chose this bow for me.”
Rhiann clambered onto one of the many boulders that blocked the trail. Moss and lichens covered it, and the rain had made it even more slippery than it might usually have been. She managed to scramble up onto it, however, with a boost from Dafydd, and stood to look east. She still couldn’t see the enemy force, but was so on edge with all her senses heightened that she imagined that she could sense them coming, just like Cade could have done. She turned to look down on Dafydd.
“Hand me the arrows.” She reached out a hand towards him, and then she clenched it into a fist when she couldn’t stop it from shaking. “Then take the horses up the trail. Perhaps one of the villagers has a bow you can use.”
Dafydd capitulated, if only because they had so little time to prepare. “What about you?” He handed Rhiann the bundles of arrows.
“I’m going to stand here and shoot them down as they come through that point where the trail narrows.” Rhiann pointed to a spot fifty yards ahead where two boulders obstructed the trail. They’d led the horses past it in single file. Arddun was so fat that Rhiann had been afraid she wouldn’t make it with the pack on her back.
Dafydd looked anxiously up at Rhiann. “If anything happens to you, the others will kill me.”
“Fortunately,” Rhiann said, “if the Saxons reach this point, we’ll both be dead, and it won’t matter. Now, hurry!”
Rhiann looked away from him, down the trail, watching for the first flickering lights in the distance. Her words to Dafydd were brave, but inside she was trembling as much as her hands, which shook as she shed her mittens and adjusted the quiver on her back. Cade had killed men with his bow to rescue her. Now, she was going to have to do it herself, and she didn’t know that she really could.
With one last look at Rhiann, Dafydd sprang forward, tugging on the horses’ reins to get them moving. They broke into a trot with Dafydd running between them. He turned up the trail just behind the boy. Rhiann faced Llanllugan, sighting down the path along which the enemy would come. She’d said Saxon to Dafydd, tryin
g to convince both of them that whoever they were, they were simply humans.
One heartbeat followed another as the time stretched out in waiting. She busied herself with activity to distract herself from what was coming, aiming for calm amid the frenzy that threatened to overtake her mind. She bent to sweep pebbles and leaves from the boulder so she wouldn’t slip on them, and she flexed her hands to try to get the blood flowing. Then, she strapped on her finger tabs to protect her hands from the burning of the bowstring, pulled an arrow from her quiver, and took a deep breath, at last taking a moment to review what the captain of her father’s guard had taught her.
The period of waiting became torturously long. It was not dissimilar to the times when Rhiann’s father had made her wait to see him, knowing she would have to face his punishment. But at least then, what was coming was within the realm of comprehension. More often than not, Rhiann had known in advance, before she disobeyed whatever rule he’d established, that she’d feel his anger if he caught her. This fight seemed random and capricious, the whim of crazed foreigners—and worse, demons—who sought to kill simply because they could.
And Rhiann was all that stood between them and their victory.
Soon, it became clear that men were coming steadily closer. It was too dark to make out their numbers, but at least a dozen torches lit the trail between Rhiann and Llanllugan. What worried Rhiann most was that the marchers appeared unconcerned about disguising their progress through the woods. They’d had such an easy time driving the villagers from their homes, they probably didn’t believe they’d face any obstacle at all in destroying this last remnant. She was a fool to think that she represented any kind of threat to them.
“Yes, you are! Don’t you dare think differently!”
Taliesin’s words formed unbidden in her mind. Rhiann straightened her shoulders. Even if the gods had unleashed the demons of the dark places, her people had their champions too. Cade certainly. Taliesin. And maybe, heaven help us, me.
The Saxons grew steadily closer. After another count of one hundred, Rhiann was able to distinguish the unnatural rhythm of their marching feet from the natural sounds of the forest around her.
“You can see them, but they can’t see you.”
The comfort of having Taliesin somewhere on that ridge, looking down on her like a guardian angel flowed through Rhiann. Setting her feet more firmly on the stone, she pressed an arrow into the bow and sighted down it. A heartbeat later, the first Saxon came through the gap between the boulders.
Loose!
Chapter Two
Cade
Dafydd and Rhiann had disappeared with the villagers down the trail that led west, and the fifty horse and one hundred foot that comprised Cade’s entire force had crossed the river—the Rhiw someone had called it—just south of Llanllugan. Now, alone, Cade urged Cadfan into the fast-running river which curved north and east of the village. It wasn’t a real ford, but the water was low enough for him to cross. It worried Cade that the Saxons would realize it too and flank his companions before they knew what was happening.
Cade had made sure that he was one of the men whose job it was to scout the lands east of the oncoming Saxon horde. Normally, he would have led the cohort with Rhun, but Geraint and Goronwy were fully capable, probably more so than Cade, since they were better with people than he was in his present incarnation. Cade left them to it. He had sent the other scouts in groups of two, but went alone himself. In truth, after his conversation with Rhiann, he couldn’t stand the thought of company.
She was right, of course, that he’d intended to scare her in the guardroom at Bryn y Castell. And he had. Granted, she’d hugged him just now, but only because he’d made her angry. He’d carefully kept his arms to his sides when she’d touched him because she had to know that he was a monster. I spin around so quickly she doesn’t even have time to flinch before I have her up against the far wall of the guardroom. My mouth comes down on hers ...
Cade came up out of the water on the southern bank, slowed, and then dismounted. The trees crowded close to the river on either side and Cade moved between them, cat-walking in the dark. The river ran north-south for a significant stretch at this location, before turning east to the point where it would eventually flow into the Severn. The silence of the wood descended on Cade and he tested the air for unseen currents. He stilled, opening himself up to the natural rhythms of the forest. Instantly, he sensed two men to his left. They were so obvious, a child would have noticed them, so untrained were they in the ways of the woods.
Unfortunately, the third man was a much better scout. Cade spun around just in time to prevent the Saxon from bringing his weapon down on Cade’s head. Cade twisted sideways to avoid him, releasing Cadfan’s reins and catching the man’s wrist in his right hand. At the same time, Cade covered the man’s mouth with his gloved left, preventing his scream. The Saxon released the axe. Cade caught it, the power pulsing through his fingers, and then realized the man wasn’t a man at all, which is why Cade hadn’t noted him sooner. Instead of killing him with his touch, which didn’t work on demons, Cade moved in, slitting the demon’s throat with the newly acquired axe. As the demon died, Cade dropped him to the rain-softened ground with a dull thud.
Cade moved towards the two, inattentive scouts who definitely were human. As always, the existence of the sidhe-creature within him sharpened his senses such that he could feel the hum of life under his feet and in the branches above his head, even if he no longer shared that life. The air stirred around him, bringing with it the scent of alcohol. The two lazy Saxons had overindulged in their celebratory feast after they’d sacked the few villages between Caer Forden and here.
The thought brought Cade up short. The Saxons were supposed to have come down the Roman road from Caersws, so how did two drunken scouts get to this spot? Leaving the men to their ineffective watch, as he could track them by their scent alone, Cade slid west to the river he’d just crossed. He stood on the bank and looked upstream, toward Llanllugan. To his dismay, shouts and splashing sounded in the distance, obvious now that he was listening for them.
By all that is holy, they’re already at Llanllugan!
Cade didn’t know how the enemy had gotten here so fast; didn’t know this area of Wales well, but at this point it didn’t matter. Without bothering with stealth or any attempt to disguise his movements, he ran back to where the two Saxons waited. Despite the obvious disadvantages of his affliction, he’d found over the past two years that there were a few benefits. The one that gave him the greatest advantage in any fight, in addition to his strength, was his ability to move faster than a human could see—or sense.
Even if he would have liked to take one of the men captive in order to question him, Cade didn’t want to waste time and didn’t speak Saxon anyway—another cause to regret his long separation from his mother, who could have taught it to him. The Saxons saw him burst from of the trees in front of them, but that didn’t mean they could do anything about his approach. They stared at him, rooted to the ground in their surprise. A moment later, Cade had a hand on each of them, ducking under their guard before they’d recovered enough from the shock of seeing a sidhe where there’d been nothing before.
Cade needed all his strength if they were going to defeat the Saxons and their demon allies. One man usually didn’t make that big of a difference in battle, except when he was that man. In his own mind, he’d not yet resolved the moral tension between killing a man with his sword and killing him by draining his life-force. It looked like he wasn’t going to figure that out tonight either.
Two quick kills later, he was on the move again. Cade rode Cadfan to the Roman road, and then raced south to where his men marched, heedless of anything but his need for haste. “They’re already at Llanllugan!” Cade said, as the two riders who brought up the rear came into view.
It was Rhun and Goronwy and they swung around to greet him. “My lord! What did you say?” Goronwy said.
“I ran into
three scouts,” Cade said. “They were watching the river—poorly, I might add—as the southern guard of the Saxon advance. The Saxons are crossing the river at Llanllugan now!”
Goronwy gritted his teeth. “St. Aeren’s bollocks!”
“How many?” Rhun said.
“Hundreds,” Cade said.
“Rhiann and Dafydd! The villagers! Are they in their path?” Goronwy said.
“Yes.” Cade hated having to say it, thinking of Rhiann and her woman-sized bow as all that lay between the villagers and certain death.
The look on Goronwy’s face was as fierce an expression as Cade had ever seen. He made as if to spur his horse back to Llanllugan immediately, but Cade held out a hand to stop him. “Wait. We have fifty knights on horseback. If we ride as a group, we can cut through their advance. It may be that some of the Saxons have already reached the trail, but we can stop the bulk of their army together.”
Goronwy nodded and took in a deep breath. By now, Geraint had noticed them and ridden to the rear. Cade had hardly gotten the words out before Geraint and Rhun were reorienting the men to march back the way they’d come. The captain of the foot soldiers would normally have been Bedwyr, but he was at Caer Dathyl. His second, a man called Rhys, would lead them north. They would be a quarter of an hour behind the cavalry, and hopefully just in time to relieve riders when the press of Saxons threatened to overwhelm them.
Rhun was going to get his cavalry charge after all.
The men formed up. Cade pulled in beside Rhun. “I’ll take ten men east to flank them,” Cade said.
“Is there a trail there?” Rhun said.
Cade shook his head. “That’s why I want so few. If we work our way north from the far side of the river, we can come in behind them on the path they followed from Caer Forden.”
Rhun grunted. “Someone didn’t give us the full story.”
“Indeed. No time to worry about that now.” Cade raised his voice to reach above the murmur of the men. “Goronwy! You’re with me!”
The Pendragon's Blade (The Last Pendragon Saga Book 2) Page 2