by Sarah Zettel
Now, here he was again, looking out on that high, bare hill, exposed to the moon and stars, and whatever eyes King Gwiffert had sent out into the night. He panted, his lungs wheezing and stinging from the effort of his climb. His belly, used to hunger though it was, added to his pains.
Old man, old man, his trembling heartbeat said. Too late, old man.
Not yet, he told himself in angry answer. Not yet.
He heard the sound of hoofbeats over the other side of the hill, and his heart froze. But with it came the rattle and clatter of chariot wheels, and before he could move or remember to breathe again, two great horses lifted head and shoulders over the rise, followed hard by the Great King with the slim boy who was his charioteer kneeling before him, driving the chariot as easily and skillfully as Adev himself could drive a plough in good ground.
He was tall and broad, towering over even the standing stone beside him, just as Adev remembered. He could not tell whether the boy before him was the one whom he had seen all those years ago. He might have been. Time was a strange and shifting thing in the Little Country. There was no road to bring them here. All roads belonged to Gwiffert, and they came and went as he ordered them and would not hold still even for the chariot’s iron wheels. Only the wild ways remained, and yet the chariot, its bent-wood frame painted with trieskelions and other signs of the gods and goddesses, seemed to have found no obstacle climbing to this high place. The charioteer reined in his dark horses, and they obeyed, stomping and snorting to show that like their master, they still had spirit.
The Great King carried his war club easily in his huge hand. He looked down on Adev, his bearded face dark and grim.
“I remember you, Adev.” The giant’s voice rumbled far deeper than that of a man of natural stature, and yet there was a gentle note to it, and something sorrowful. “Why are you here?”
“Great King.” Adev knelt. “I came … I would …” Long years and the hard climb brought his breath out in gasps, but his hesitation was more than that. Habit and fear even now shackled his tongue. He had thought the journey would loosen such chains, but still he stumbled. “I came to tell you that the wall is breached. Strangers, a lady and her knight have come from the larger world.”
“I know,” replied the king. Adev had suspected he would. He too had his spies. Everyone who wearied at last of Gwiffert’s rule had two roads to take. One led to the Great King, and the other led to a hidden grave where it could be hoped they would not be troubled. “And Gwiffert has rounded them up already.”
Now came the treason. Now came the last bit of good he could do his own. “Sir … the knight will be let loose against you. Sir … I am asking you not to kill him.”
The Great King paused a long time before he asked, “Why should I not?”
Yes, why? Come, Adev. You rehearsed your pretty speech all the way here. “Because he may yet do us all good. They … when they came to us, they sought to save us trouble. They fed us, Sir, from food that was none of the Little King’s. They fought the Grey Men for us. The king does not yet own them. He fears them, I swear it, and he is lying to keep them tame.”
But the king only sighed. Adev could see nothing of his face in the night’s shadows. “What lie does he tell?”
“He claims all your deeds as his own, and lays his deeds at your feet.” My cousin Rhys risked his life when he told me this, when I crept up to the king’s walls to try … to try to do something for the ones who did so for us. Please, do not waste this. “It is only these lies that make the lady and her knight hate you.”
“What of it, Adev? This is Gwiffert’s way.”
Here it was. Here was the hope he had never thought to find in his lifetime. “If they could be shown the lie before too long, they would turn against him. They have power. The lady is gifted. The knight is strong. They came in from the outside of their own will. They might be able to show us the way out from this place.”
But the Great King only shook his head slowly. “They have been taken into the hall. You know as well as I do they are his now, Adev. Whatever they were before they entered those gates is turned now to his purposes.”
“But not yet …”
The Great King did not let him finish. “I’m sorry, Adev, but you have lived under his rule, and you know how swiftly he works.”
Anger, heady and unfamiliar surged through Adev, quickening his old blood. “You are like us. You have come to believe he is a god. You are as afraid as we are who crouch in the mud unable to raise a hand against him.”
The Great King turned his face away from the accusation and said only, “You should have come before, Adev. I looked for you, all those years ago, after I saved you from the Grey Men. I would have done my best to protect you and yours if you had come to me.”
Shame for shame. I should have expected no less.
“Before I thought we could live as we were, but now … now we will starve with the winter, and there is nothing left to lose.”
“He may come for you before then. The owl searches for you eve now”
“I know,” said Adev simply. “So at this last, I have remembered I am a man.” He stood, bones and joints creaking from cold and long travel. “I am going now, and I will do no more in life. What will you do, Great King?”
He did not wait for an answer, but turned stiffly on his old feet and stumped down the hillside, coming again to the darkness beneath the trees. He knew if he looked back, he would see the giant no more, so he did not bother. Instead, he turned his path down the north-facing slope, his face set in determination, his eyes ahead, as a man will who knows his road by heart.
Presently, he heard an owl hoot, and he nodded. He lifted his chin and spoke to the trees. ““You may tell him you were in time. I have spoken to no one.”
Adev sat down on the ground, born down by the heavy years of his life and he waited patiently for the sound of hoofbeats.
Chapter Eighteen
Geraint awoke knowing it was dawn. He felt it in his bones, even though the broad hall with its painted walls offered no view of the sky. The coals burned redly beneath their blankets of ash. In their dim light, he saw the men around him began to stir, rolling over, grumbling, scratching, trying to decide if they could burrow under the blankets for just a little more sleep. Despite its size, the hall smelled strongly of human warmth and unwashed bodies.
Some of these men would soon march to war with him, if all went well, and he knew none of them. The thought troubled Geraint as he eased himself out of the bed and reached beneath it for his tunic and sandals. Before attended to that disquiet, though, he needed to see Elen. He badly wished they had not been separated, but neither had he wanted to offend his host.
Her door was slightly ajar when he reached it. From the other side, he could hear cloth rustling, and Calonnau’s complaints. He knocked softly.
“My wife?”
There was a pause. “Come in, please, my husband.”
Inside the room, Elen stood between the bed and the serving woman Gwiffert had given her, smoothing down her unbound hair. She wore a borrowed dress of fawn colored wool that had been twisted with darker threads to make black flecks amid the brown. Its colors startlingly matched those Calonnau’s feathers, and Geraint wondered if it had been chosen by their host on purpose.
“Good morning,” she said, but her smile was tired. “Meg, you may go break your fast.”
The woman bridled, but in the end, turned and left the room. Elen sighed as she did, but her stance relaxed as the door closed.
“How was the night?” he asked.
Elen shook her head and sat down on the bed. Concerned, Geraint sat beside her, but it was a long time before she spoke to him. She stared at Calonnau preening on her perch and stretching out her talons.
“I could not sleep, and, I … walked the halls a little. And I saw …” She pressed her lips together, cutting off the words that wanted to emerge. “I found the king in his courtyard,” she said instead. He listened carefully
while she described the speech she held with him, and how he returned her to her room through the twisting corridors.
When she fell silent, he asked. “What else did you see?”
Elen frowned. “I tell you true, husband, I am not sure. It was a nightmare, but I’m not sure it was a dream.” She stared at the painted trees that surrounded them. “I don’t like these walls. They prey on my mind. The king, he does his best, but this hall of his … I don’t know what it was made to hold.”
That last echoed through his mind, and for all it held no objective fact, it carried all the weight of truth. “What do you suspect?”
But Elen only shook her head once. Wisps of hair drifted in front of her cheeks and she brushed them back impatiently. “I don’t even know that much.”
Geraint took her hand. There was no other comfort he could give her. “I wish I did not have to leave you here.”
That drew a smile from her and she was able to look at him. “So do I.” She covered his hand with her cool palm. “Do you know where you’re going?”
“King Gwiffert’s captain, Rhys is his name, has some thoughts, but the man is badly afraid. I don’t believe they’ve ever hunted the Grey Men or their cohort before. I cannot get much out of him. I wish …” It was his turn to shake his head. He remembered standing on the walls with Rhys and Taggart the day before, and the short answers the men gave to his questions, and how little they could say about anything that lay beyond the terraced hillside. It was as if their idea of the land ended at the last ditch. That, more than anything else, worried him. What sort of warrior did not know the land around his home like he knew his own name? The first and simplest explanation was that neither captain wished to speak with this stranger who had been set over them. That boded only ill for their riding into battle together.
“What do you wish?” Elen asked.
“I wish Gawain were here,” Geraint said with bitter honesty. “He’s a born leader, my brother. I’ve seen him rally a troop that the day before didn’t know him from Adam, but once the battle began they’d follow him to the gates of Hell. Such gifts are not mine.”
“You will do what you must, Geraint. That is your gift.”
I wish I could believe as you do. “It is a hard, Elen,” was all he said aloud.
“I know.”
They stayed like that for a little while, holding each others’ hands, surrounded by a stranger’s stone walls, bound by promises made perhaps in foolish haste. He could not have said why so many doubts plagued him this morning. Yesterday, he was certain of what needed to be done, and he still could see no other way, and yet, and yet …
In his brooding silence, Elen spoke. “Let me send out Calonnau to view the country. She is anxious to hunt, and she may show you where your quarry can be found.”
“A good thought.” It was. Geraint berated himself for not having had it, although he was reluctant to ask her to do such a thing, knowing how the hawk’s flight, and more, its hunt affected her. A different, thought now came to him. “Although, I do not like the danger. They have spears, these Grey Men. They may have arrows.”
“And why will they waste them on a hunting bird? Come, Geraint.” She shook his shoulder gently. “This place does not know all our secrets.”
“Yet.”
They looked at each other for a long moment before Elen got to her feet and went to the perch. “So we should make use of them while they are still ours.”
They stood there together, the grimly determined woman and the sullen bird, both with their brown robes and their dangerous eyes.
“I cannot argue with this.” Would ‘twer there was an argument to make. “Let her fly then, and let us see.”
Outside, the morning was damp and grey with mist. Despite this, Geraint felt better out in the fresh air. The doubt and brooding that had taken him since waking were easier to shake off. He was still himself, after all, and he knew wars and he knew the men who fought them. Elen stood beside him. He would do as he promised. A way would be found.
Despite the early hour, the yard was busy with animals and their folk, and all the noisy chaos of an overfull house. The great gates stood open. The walls were thick with men on watch. Four men stood on guard at the gates themselves. As Geraint and Elen approached, they raised their spears in sharp salute.
“I must ask where you are bound, my lord,” said the tallest of them. His cloak was clasped with silver rather than the bronze the others wore. “It is not safe past the gates.”
“We only mean to step outside the gates. My lady’s hawk must hunt or it will pine away. We will not go beyond the shadow of the walls.”
The man’s face twitched nervously as he struggled with himself. Some order had been left with him, and he was unsure how closely to apply it to these guests.
“Let them pass,” said one of the bronze-clasped guards roughly. “For Heaven’s sake, Ren, let them go.”
Ren looked sharp at his fellow, but his pained face stilled and he nodded. Geraint and Elen passed between them. The pressure of her fingers against his said she noted this strangeness and wondered about it, as he did. They both held their silence as they walked through the archway.
Once they were outside the walls, Calonnau stretched her neck toward the sky and gave her sharp, pleading cry. Elen loosened the jesses. The hawk beat her wings hard, taking to the air at once. The heaviness of the mist and clouds made no difference to her. She soared high, wheeling around, and making her course over the fortress, she swiftly disappear into the gloom.
Elen stared up at the sky for a long time after the bird was lost to sight. The wind rose, sliding between her and Geraint, bringing the mists with it to prickle their skins with cool and insidious damp.
“Will you stand near me?” murmured Elen at last.
Geraint moved closer, putting himself between her and the freshening wind. She was so cold.
“She is going to kill again. I want … I do not want to be alone with that.”
He wrapped his arms around her, making himself a cloak for her shoulders. He felt her breathing, felt her ease herself closer to him. But there was no heartbeat. Her heart was as far away as her gaze, and that truth brought a deep and increasingly familiar sorrow. The stillness at her center was an everpresent reminder of the wound he did not know how to heal, and of the things he had not yet said to her.
This place does not know all our secrets …. Yet … So we should make use of them while we keep them … Or we should set them free.
She was not aware of him now. She had the wild hunger in her eyes that belonged wholly to the hawk. Her hands crooked and her head strained forward. He tightened his arms around her. Her hands grabbed him suddenly, her fingers digging deep into his flesh until he winced with the pain. Then, it was over, and she was back with him, her face tight with shame.
“It’s getting worse, Geraint,” she whispered. “I thought it would ease, but it’s getting stronger.”
He had no answer. He could only stroke her hair and hold her close, and curse his helplessness. He would tear Morgaine apart with his bare hands for what she had done. He would slit Urien gut to gullet. He would do everything, and he could do nothing.
“We will finish this thing quickly. I will take you out of here and we will go to Merlin. There is a way to break this gaes. There must be.”
“Yes.” She rested her hands against his chest, struggling to master herself again. “You are right, of course.”
He waited. Gradually, she was able to lift her head and smile a little, to step away and stand alone. He let his arms fall to his sides. She was gazing into the distance again, seeing whatever it was Calonnau saw. Although he could have reached out and touched her easily, he felt as if she were a thousand miles away.
But she did return, her eyes focused on what was before them both, the slackness in her features replaced with her own vitality. “I … she saw them. To the north.” She pointed to one of the ragged hills, black and white the morning’s mist. Gerai
nt took note of its shape and where it stood among its fellows. “They are moving toward that hill, coming toward us. She just saw the valley beyond it. There were a dozen of the Grey Men, half those in the full helms, half of the other kind.”
Half still living, half already dead. “Thank you,” breathed Geraint. He did not want to acknowledge what must come next, but as with so much else on this darkening adventure, promises had removed choices. “We must go at once if we are to have a hope of catching them.”
She nodded, biting her lip. He thought she was going to tell him to take care, to come back to her, but she just pulled him down and kissed him with a fierceness that spoke more clearly than words.
When she let him go, he strode away into the hall, and did not dare look back.
Elen was still standing in the shadow of the fortress walls when Geraint and his men rode out. They were twenty althogether. They looked better armed and more sternly martial to her eye than the men of Pont Cymryd would have, but less so than the ones from Arthur’s court. She knew this from the rueful look Geraint’s gave her as he passed. She waved to him, blowing a kiss in imitation of the great ladies she had heard of in the songs and epics. He bowed gravely to her from the saddle, saluting with the spear he carried. Then, with harness and corslet jingling, he was past her, leading his men down the hill and through the earthworks, to find the enemy and set his plan in motion.
When they reached the level ground, Geraint raised his hand, making a motion as if casting a stone. His horse broke into a cantor, and all those following him did the same. The sound of hooves was distant thunder. From her height, Elen could see nothing but the colors of the horses and helms, but she watched them as they flowed away from her, a living river along the valley floor. The hoofbeats faded to a faint thudding like rain on a high roof by the time they reached the forest. The trees admitted the tiny band to their shelter, and they were gone from sight.