“‘Then we will force a battle,’ Arthur concluded. ‘But, Yffern! Bran would choose now as the time to rebel. Aldwulf might have decided on battle, and it only takes one more defeat for him and he’s broken. Bran must have thought I’d be unwilling to leave the campaign just now.’ He sighed, and began tracing a line on the map with his finger, thoughtfully looking into nothing with a wide gray stare. I waited.
“‘I want you to leave this afternoon,’ he said at last. ‘The Family can’t be ready to leave before noon tomorrow, but you leave now and take Bran my terms. Give him the impression that the rest of us are still north of the Wall, and waiting for his reply before we act; hint that the Family is scattered, and will be unable to assemble for at least a week. But see if you can talk him round: unlikely as it may be, it’s worth the trial. Bran is an honorable man, and unlikely to dismiss a herald with violence, unless—there’s no truth in the rumor about you and his sister, is there?’ His eyes focused on me for an instant. I did not meet them. I stared at my hands, and at the scarred wooden table. I had asked Morfran and the other to keep the matter quiet, but it had come out despite that. When it came up, I would laugh, make a joke of it, and change the subject as though it were only a mad harper’s tale, but I could not lie to my lord. ‘There isn’t, is there?’ he demanded again, impatiently. I was silent. He put both hands flat on the table and looked at me. ‘Before Heaven, there is.’ I did meet his eyes then, knowing it would be worse if I did not. The shame of it cut deeper than a spear point. I had dishonored him in Ebrauc, since I was his emissary and ambassador, sent in his name; I had betrayed his trust. ‘There is,’ I said.
“‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ my lord asked, his face very calm.
“I shrugged, not knowing what to say. ‘You have kept me busy. The matter did not arise. But if you wish I will go as your herald to Bran.’
“‘I do not want you killed,’ snapped Arthur. ‘I will send Rhuawn.’
“‘There is no need to send anyone else. Bran had no idea of this when I left, and he should have none now. The girl is not so foolish as to tell him.’
“Arthur studied me, his face still so calm; I have seen it look like that when they tell him, after a battle, who of his men are dead. I could no longer look at him, and so pretended to study the map, furious and ashamed because he was disappointed. ‘Was she very beautiful?’ he asked at last, and I looked up and saw that the set look had softened. I opened my mouth to say no, and instead said, ‘As a birch tree is, with the west wind blowing; as a lark singing.’ And as I said it, I wanted to see her again. I would have given the bright world, all of it, though it were an unequal bargain.
“At this Arthur smiled. ‘Is she?’ He folded the map slowly, thinking of something else—of Gwynhwyfar? ‘Then you are fortunate. You believe that Bran does not know?’
“‘My lord, I am certain that he does not. Even in the Family most people do not believe it and I doubt that Bran has even heard the tale.’
“‘Then I will send you,’ Arthur said, and told me what terms he was willing to offer Bran for peace. I went out from the room, saddled Ceincaled, and turned him southward, my heart full of Elidan.
“But when I came to Caer Ebrauc, I had not even a glimpse of her. Bran kept me at the gates of the fortress, waiting until he came down from the palace to meet me there. He listened to the terms Arthur had proposed with a cold lack of interest, and when I had done, said only, ‘You were exiled from this land. I could have you put to death for coming here.’ I felt for my sword, but he continued, ‘You came from the north very quickly. See if you can do better going back, and tell Arthur ab Uther, that bastard who lays claim to the imperium of Britain, that Ebrauc has her own king, that Bran ap Caw has more title to the Pendragonship than he, and that we will bow our heads to no yoke, least of all to his. Go, and tell him!’ He shouted it with a kind of delight, and, drawing his sword, struck my horse with the flat of the blade. Ceincaled reared up, but I checked him, drew my own sword and saluted Bran with it. The light that dwells in the blade kindled, and it burned like lightning—it is not an ordinary sword—and Bran’s men fell back. ‘I will tell these things to my lord the High King,’ I said. ‘And may the end be to your account, Bran of Llys Ebrauc.’ I turned Ceincaled and set my heels to him, and we were off down the road like a falcon swooping. I was angry enough to weep, and all my thoughts turned on Elidan.
“I rode north until I met the Family on its way south, and told Arthur that Bran had turned me back from the city gates with boasting and insults. My lord was not surprised, and only sighed and shook his head, and told me to ride in the van. We rode in silence. No one liked leaving the northern campaign for this rebellion. We were worn by a summer’s fighting, and not eager for a pitched battle.
“We reached Caer Ebrauc some three days after I left it. Bran had had no more than a few hours’ warning of our approach, but he had room enough in the city for armies larger than his, and time enough to bar the gates and set a watch on the walls. We spent the night camped before these, wondering what to do. We could not support a siege without forfeiting the northern campaign, but no one knew how to take a city. Whatever the Romans may have done, no one fights from a city now.
“In the morning, Arthur came out of his tent in the gray dawn, and walked about the walls, looking at them. Then, while the camp was breakfasting, he returned and gave orders that, as soon as we were done, we were to move off and burn and plunder western Ebrauc. The corn stood in the fields then, thick and white for the harvest, and all the men were with Bran since the army had been called up. There were none to stop us.
“It was barely two days before Bran left the city, with his warband of three hundred cavalry and two hundred infantry, and an army of some fifteen hundred: as Arthur had thought, he could not afford to lose the harvest. At that time the Family numbered under six hundred, since some of us had been raiding far afield when Arthur assembled the warband, and many were dead or wounded from the summer’s campaign. About half of us were cavalry: the odds were not bad. But Arthur called a parley first.
“We held it in the middle of a field we had burned, with untouched fields across a pasturage shimmering in the wind to remind Bran of the cost of war. We did not dismount, and Bran looked at nothing with a hot blue stare while Arthur talked. Arthur’s terms were generous: he offered to return the plunder we had taken and provide transport for grain from other parts of Ebrauc to the region we had pillaged, if Bran would swear submission and agree to pay the tribute. But Bran didn’t even wait for Arthur to finish before saying, ‘So you will return the goods which you stole from me. Will you return me my sister?’
“Arthur did not look at me at all. ‘Speak plainly.’
“‘My sister, I say, my sister Elidan, the brightest, the purest woman in all Britain until your whore-mongering sorcerer corrupted her. Can you redeem that wrong, Imperator Britanniae? I will make terms with you if you give me the man you sent upon that mission, so that I can…’
“‘Enough!’ Arthur said. ‘As before, when you set your men to quarrel with mine, you dredge up excuses, and fasten on a private grievance as the pretext for rebellion.’
“‘A private grievance, a pretext? When your emissary makes a whore of his host’s sister? I know that there is no faith in you, or any of yours. Truly, I will be protecting my women if I make peace with you!’
“‘Enough,’ Arthur said again, and Bran stopped. ‘Your mind has been set on this, King Bran, since first you came to power; and when you turned my emissary from your gates with insults a week ago, you had no such pretensions.’
“‘If I had known then,’ Bran cried, ‘then I would have given him the edge of my sword, and not insults!’ He looked directly at me for the first time, where I sat my horse at Arthur’s right. ‘You witch’s bastard, I will see to you before the day is out. Mark me in the battle.’
“I could answer h
im at last, but I did not answer him, only asked, ‘Where is your sister?’
“He glared at me and said, ‘I have shut her up where you cannot defile her again. For all your sorceries, you will die today, if my sword hand has any strength.’
“‘I may, if mine has none,’ I said. I felt completely calm, and I knew that I would kill him that same day. I studied him carefully: the brown hair, beard cleft by an old scar, eyes the color of Elidan’s, the gray stallion and the purple-edged cloak. I was sure I would know him in the battle. It seemed to me entirely reasonable and necessary to kill him, not because he had insulted me, but because he was Elidan’s brother and determined to keep me from what was mine.
“We rode back to our own lines. Arthur had already settled the dispositions. But as he dismissed Bedwyr—who was in charge of the cavalry, as always—and me to our places, he caught Ceincaled’s bridle and said in a low voice, ‘Do not kill Bran unless you have to.’ I said nothing. Arthur shook the bridle a little, leaning over in his saddle and forcing me to look at his face. Then he let go, turned his horse, and raised his voice to encourage the men to fight well.
“It was a battle like most of our battles. Arthur had chosen hilly ground, which scatters a charge, and makes numbers of less weight. Our foot faced Bran’s center, where he had stationed the infantry of his warband, flanked on each wing by the irregular forces of his army, and, on the right wing, by his cavalry opposed to the drawn-out line of our own. Our foot charged before Bran was quite ready, and forced his center to retreat. The army was thrown into confusion, some of the men trying to encircle us, the rest, afraid of a flank attack from the cavalry, trying to retreat with the center. When Bran’s warband managed to slow its retreat, the army was further confused, and our cavalry charged, caught Bran’s cavalry—which had been trying to outflank our foot—and struck through them into the right wing.
“I go mad in battle, and this is a gift of sorts, and not a frenzy such as berserkers have. Everything seems as clear as spring water over sand, and everyone around me seems to move under water, slowly and without force. If I am wounded I cannot feel it, for I feel nothing but a sweet joy, and I can never remember killing, though I know I must have. My memories are fragmentary, once the charge has begun, and so I remember the first part of this battle. From the time I threw my first spear it is like the memory of a dream. And yet some of the fragments remain. I remember seeing a brown-haired man on a gray horse fighting his way towards me, but in the madness it meant nothing, though something in me seemed to remember him. And then I was face to face with him, fighting, still as in a dream. I remember striking at his hand, and that he cried and dropped his sword, then turned his horse and rode off at a gallop, clutching his hand to his chest.
“But something of the madness was gone from me, and, though I still scarcely knew what I was doing, I drove Ceincaled after him. Others crossed my path and I cut them down, but after striking, again looked for Bran.
“It was late afternoon. Later I found that the cavalry charge had shattered both Bran’s cavalry and his army, and that the warband surrendered after their king had fled the field. At the time I saw only the purple-bordered cloak retreating over a hill, and a black thirst came over me to see it dark with blood. He had a good start, but there is no horse like my Ceincaled, and I gained on him quickly.
“The afternoon sun lay richly over the autumn trees, and the din of the battle blurred behind us as we left it behind a hill; the loudest sound became the pounding of our horses’ hooves and the jingle of harness and gasp of breath. He had a good horse. It kept running after most beasts would have dropped, but it could not keep running for ever. It stumbled, stumbled again, and Bran drew rein before I reached him and leapt down, his shield on his right arm, gripping a spear in his shield hand. He grinned at me, all teeth. His face was a mask of blood and sweat and dirt.
“‘Well, sorcerer,’ he said. ‘Your sword isn’t burning now. Does the magic fail before human courage?’
“I didn’t understand a word of it then. I reined in Ceincaled and slid to the ground, my sword in my hand. I cared only to kill Bran. I was mad, but it was not my accustomed madness: nothing was clear, there was a red mist over my eyes and a salt taste in my mouth. I cried out, howling like a dog, and rushed at him.
“He blocked my first thrust with his shield, clumsily, turning as I circled him and tried to get to his right, wounded side. I struck at him again and again, and once or twice shallow blows went past his guard, but he fought. By Heaven, he fought bravely, and never dropped his savage grin. ‘I…am not afraid…of your magic,’ he told me, working hard to get the words out. He must have wanted very badly to say them. ‘I am a king, a king, may Yffern…take you…’ His shield drooped a little, and I saw my chance and thrust forward, driving the sword through his ribs to the heart, so that he fell forward onto me and died, and was silent, his words unsaid. I stepped back and let him fall to the earth. The fine linen of his cloak began to darken with his blood. I kicked the body twice, hard, then left it for the plunderers and went back to Arthur and the Family. And that was how I committed murder.”
Gwalchmai was silent for a very long time, looking at nothing at all. In his eyes was an old, weary pain that I did not want to think about, and he rubbed the side of his sword hand with the thumb of the other hand, leaning forward above the fire. My hand was frozen in the neck fur of our hound-bitch.
After a little, the dog whined and nudged my hand, and Gwalchmai straightened and looked up at the smoke hole. “And no one in the Family said anything about it,” he said, as if he had not stopped. “Arthur asked me where Bran was, and I told him that the man was dead. He said nothing, only looked at me. Not angrily, only…I do not know. He has trusted me no less since that time. I swear the oath of my people, he is the greatest of all lords on the green earth, and I do not deserve him.
“The day after the battle we rode to Caer Ebrauc and the people there opened the gates for us. Bran’s half-brother Ergyriad ap Caw had been chosen as his successor by the royal clan. Bran had designated his full brother Hueil for that position, but Hueil was a trouble-maker, and Ebrauc apparently wanted no more wars with Arthur. Ergyriad was too pleased to be king to risk his position by greater ambitions, and swore submission to Arthur without trouble. Arthur returned all the plunder we had taken, released all our prisoners without ransom, and helped arrange for provisioning the regions we had pillaged, and Ebrauc was reconciled to us. So the rebellion ended. My lord planned to leave for the north the next day, and raid in southern Deira on the way. I went to look for Elidan.
“Bran had said that she was shut up somewhere, but I knew that she must be in the city, and roamed about the place threatening the servants until one of them, an old woman, told me where she was. I ran there desperately, getting lost twice on the way through very eagerness. Since I had killed Bran, it had seemed as though all the world were stricken and bloodless, and I was broken with weariness and sickness of heart. I could only think of Elidan.
“Bran had locked her up in a little room above one of the palace stables. She knew nothing of the battle until she saw me. The old woman in the palace, the one who told me where she was, had brought her food once a day, and otherwise she had been left alone.
“I cut the bolt from the door with one blow of my sword and burst into the room without even calling to see if she was there. She was standing in one corner of the bare room, her back to the wall, ready to fight—until she saw that it was me. Then her face lit up, like the sunlight flooding through a lake, turning everything to shining color. She cried, ‘Gwalchmai!’ and ran across the room into my arms. I held her and held her, kissing her hair and neck, and something of the black ache went out of my soul.
“But finally she pushed herself away from me a little and looked up at me, her hands against my shoulders, and began asking me questions. ‘How are you here?’ she asked. ‘Was there a battle? Is my brothe
r safe? Has he sworn fealty? Where is he, and where is the Emperor?’
“And I had no answers. I tried to pull her close again, but she kept her hands braced against my shoulders, smiling with shining eyes. ‘When was the battle?’ she asked. ‘My brother found out, and he was very angry. That is why he shut me up here. I fainted when I heard how he sent you away from the gates, and he noticed…Is he safe?’
“‘What does it matter?’ I asked.
“She frowned. ‘He is my full brother; how could that not matter? Where is he?’
“There was nothing I could say. She stared at me, her eyes widening. ‘He’s not…hurt…Is he?’
“I could not look at her. ‘He is dead,’ I told her.
“‘No, oh no. He can’t be. You promised; he can’t be.’
“Then I remembered that I had promised, and I was horrified. I had broken my sworn word, and, until that moment, had not even thought of it. I became furious with her for binding me with that oath, and, as I thought, making me forsworn. ‘Promises like that are meaningless,’ I said. ‘They are impossible to keep in a battle. Your brother came at me to kill me. What was I to do? Offer him my sword?’
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