Gwenhwyfar

by Mercedes Lackey

  “I don’t think—” she began, then abandoned what she was going to say. “We should get away from here. There will be more of those men out looking, and some might come this way too.”

  He nodded at her ruined gown. “Take what you need from them; I’ll get into my armor again.”

  And there it was, exactly what she had wished for; her pick of trews, tunic, armor, sword, bow. Medraut was fastidious about his person and just as fastidious about the men that served him. The first man she’d downed had bled very little, for she hadn’t cut the major blood vessels. She took his armor and shirt, the trews from the first man Lancelin had killed, since he hadn’t voided himself when he died and they were unsoiled, and the boots from the last one, which were almost a fit. She made it all into a bundle rather than getting changed; when he looked at her askance, she raised an eyebrow. “I can ride in this, and it will take some time to cut myself out of it; I’d rather put more space between us and Medraut than stop to change.”

  Without a pause, he nodded, mounted his horse, and offered her a hand. She used it to pull herself up behind him, settled herself over the bare rump of his horse, then put her arms around his waist tightly, so that he wouldn’t hesitate to get some speed from Idris. He nudged his horse into a canter, and they were off.

  She became increasingly self-conscious as they rode—and conscious of him. The feel of his body under her hands, the smell of him—horse, and clean sweat, a little blood, and what smelled like rosemary in his hair. And she became aware that her body was responding to his in a way it had never responded to Arthur.

  It’s the fighting, she scolded herself. I’ve heard the men talking about it. I’ve seen them afterwards, they can’t get to the camp whores quickly enough. It’s the fighting and the fear of death and then the realization when it’s all over, that you didn’t die. That’s all.

  But it wasn’t all, and she knew it. From the first time she’d seen Lancelin, she had wished, without admitting it to anyone but herself and Bronwyn, that he would look at her not as a fellow warrior but as a woman. That he would give her the kind of glances that men gave Gynath and Cataruna. That he would touch her not with friendly indifference but with pent-up passion.

  Which was about as likely to happen as for this horse to sprout wings and fly them to Celliwig. She was a warrior.

  And she was Arthur’s.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  As she was already well aware, riding pillion on the bare rump of a cantering horse was not a comfortable way to ride. Especially not a horse of her father’s breeding, which had wide hips and a muscular set of hindquarters.

  And she hadn’t ridden in—well, a very long time. Months. She’d done her best to stay limber, but by the time Lancelin slowed his mount to a walk, her legs were definitely sore. The horse wasn’t any too pleased, either, and she didn’t blame him.

  “I don’t suppose you have a place in mind to camp?” she asked as she tried to adjust her perch on Idris’ rump; she hoped she didn’t sound as if she were whining. This patch of forest was identical to the one they had been riding through, which still gave her no clue as to their location. “Where are we, anyway?”

  “North of Celliwig,” he said. “If I hadn’t been following Gildas, I’d have come straight from there, and you would not likely have found me at all.” He shook his head. “Gildas would say one of his good spirits was watching over you. If you had kept going and no one had stopped you, eventually you might even have reached your own father’s lands.”

  “Well, I am very glad I did find you.” She laughed. “It was a good thing for both of us. But now we are going south—”

  “We are, and into lands I know. As for camping, yes, I do have a place in mind,” he continued. “I’ve used it before. It’s very well concealed. We’ll be riding until twilight to get there, though.”

  “I would rather do that than take any chance of Medraut’s men catching us.” She said it, and she meant it, but she knew when she finally got off this horse, part of her would regret saying it.

  But even as she thought that, he turned the horse’s head and sent him down into a ditch or ravine with a tiny thread of a stream running in the bottom of it, a ditch that quickly deepened until the sides were higher than their heads. There he dismounted. “Off,” he said. “All three of us need to stop for just a few moments.”

  The horse proved the truth of this by plunging his nose into the bit of a stream and noisily slurping up water. And as soon as her legs stopped hurting, the running water reminded her that there was something else she needed desperately to do. With a rueful glance at each other, they parted company until the brushwood hid them. She was still not willing to stop long enough to change clothing completely, but since she was going to have to retie everything anyway, she did cut the gown off at the hips and pull on the breeches and the boots. Immediately—and not just because she also relieved herself—she felt better. More like herself.

  And there was the added benefit that she had two large pieces of heavy fabric that were likely to come in very useful.

  She folded the fabric into a pad she could use under herself and trotted back to the horse and Lancelin. A little stretching left her feeling a lot happier about getting back on that horse. The leg of rabbit Lancelin fished out of a saddlebag and handed to her made her feel happier in general. She made short work of it, as he did the same with another leg.

  “I’m going to stop one more time so we can hunt,” he told her, as he swung himself up into the saddle, then offered her his hand and let her pull herself up behind him again. “We won’t have a chance before dark otherwise, and that was the last of my provisions.”

  “I hope I can still remember how to use a bow,” she said dryly. He laughed and put heels to his mount.

  True to his word, in late afternoon, he did stop. Under any other circumstances, Gwen would never even have considered hunting, and not just because there might still be men out looking for them. This was springtime, and unless you were very careful, you’d shoot animals with young and leave orphaned babies to die, which was poor husbandry and land care. But there wasn’t a choice.

  But luck was with them. He tethered Idris in the brush near a pond, and both of them could hear the quiet quacking of ducks. She nodded him towards the pond, and she headed in the direction of a glare of sunlight through the trees that probably meant a clearing. As she stalked carefully along the edge of a meadow, she heard a tussle in the grass and saw two hares fighting. Now, hares fighting could only be male. And the male hares had no part in anything but the siring of the young ones; they went off and left the does to tend the babies alone. She froze as soon as she saw them, but they were so deep in combat they paid no attention to her. Carefully she stuck one arrow in the ground in front of her, moving as slowly as a leaf in a light breeze. Carefully, she put a second to the bow, and pulled it back to her ear.

  She let fly. And without waiting to see if the first arrow hit, snatched up the second and put it to the string.

  Hares were not very bright at best, and when fighting over females, they were single-minded as well. The second continued to attack the first for a critical moment after it fell over dead. By the time it realized that something was wrong, and its head came up as it froze with indecision as a few dim thoughts managed to escape from the sex fight-sex madness that spring brought on, it too was dead.

  Feeling utterly triumphant, she collected them, gutted them then and there, cleaned her knife and the arrows with a handful of grass and brought back the cleaned carcasses to where Lancelin had tethered the horse. He was already there, tying a gutted drake to the saddle bow.

  He looked up. “Two were fighting over a hen. I shot the loser.”

  She nodded and held up her prizes. He actually grinned as he tied the carcasses alongside his catch.

  As the sun set, it turned everything the color of roses—the greening forest, the sky, the clearings they passed through—and she could not help a feeling of triumph as sh
e thought about all the nights she had seen this same rosy light fill her tiny window. She would swear that somehow she would win herself free, and now she had.

  “Are you disappointed?” she asked into Lancelin’s back. “That you weren’t the one to win me free, like some warrior in a tale?”

  He was quiet for a while, although she did not feel his muscles tense, so as she was used to seeing, he must have been carefully considering his words. “While the glory of being your rescuer all alone was a heady fancy, it was never more than that,” he said, slowly. “First, of course, I did not know if you were actually held captive by Medraut. Second, if you were, his men are many, and I am one. What I planned to do, I fear, is somewhat less glorious. I was going to skulk about to determine if there was a captive there, and if it was a female, and if so, where she was being held. Then to see how closely guarded she was. Then to see if it was you. After that . . .” He shook his head. “My plans were unformed. Pray remember, so far as anyone knows, you are still in Celliwig. My first course of action would have been to free you if I could, but I assumed I would not be able to. And I would have to think who would believe me that I could count on to fight with me.”

  She began to chuckle. “It appears that Abbot Gildas and his monks were willing and able to put up some sort of fight.”

  His laughter was deep in his chest, and she felt it vibrate in his muscles. “I owe the Abbot a profound debt of gratitude. I hope no one came to any harm.”

  She didn’t know. “I don’t think Medraut would dare. Though he follows the Old Ways, still, a holy man is a holy man, and you harm one at your peril.”

  While they had been speaking, the sun descended below the trees; the sky to the east darkened and filled with stars, while the sky to the west faded into ashes-of-roses. Idris picked up his pace; it appeared the horse knew where they were going.

  They had to duck under low-hanging branches, and even though the leaves were barely budding, the trees here were very old, enormous, and thick, enough that it was hard to see. The horse could barely get between them, and his hooves made scarcely a sound on ground with a padding of old leaves that gave off a bitter scent as he picked his way over them. The air was close and warmer than it should have been. Even though Gwen was not Gifted in that way, she felt the Power here, humming along her skin, like the warning before lightning is going to strike nearby.

  And then, without any warning, the trees opened up. And before them was a ruin.

  It was not, as she had more than half suspected it would be, a henge. It was a small house, a house and not a hut nor a cottage of the sort her people raised, yet it was not Roman nor of any other style that she could identify. The roof had long since vanished, and yet several trees and a litter of smaller branches and a thatch of leaves had somehow fallen across the stone walls to create a new one.

  “I have no idea who built this here,” Lancelin said quietly. “Some Druid? A Lady? Whoever it was, that person had great power. Even I can feel it, and I have no Gift for Power at all.”

  “It welcomes us.” She felt that, as well. This place was pleased to have them there.

  He nodded, then threw his leg over his horse’s neck and jumped down, lifting her down before she could dismount herself. “I come here when I need to be away from Arthur and the Companions. I can think, here. I can find myself and know even what I am hiding from myself—”

  He broke off what he was going to say and quickly took off Idris’ tack. He handed her the saddlebags and took the bucket himself. “There’s good dry wood in there, and a hearth, and if they have not broken, some pots. For sleeping, I fashioned a pallet, and, there is good, dry bracken and some old horse blankets. If you can get a fire going, I shall get water.”

  She was about to ask from where, but he was gone. With a shrug, she went into the one-room stone house and found it was just as he had said it would be. In the last light, she quickly made a fire, using his flint and steel, catching the sparks in a nest of leaf fragments, blowing them into a tiny flame and feeding it with twigs until it was strong enough to take the logs. The bracken was piled in one corner, well sheltered, with the blankets atop it and the pallet tossed atop that. Once the fire was going, she hauled the pallet, which was of more bracken stuffed inside a worn canvas cover, down beside it. As she worked, Lancelin came and went several times, filling some of the pots with water. She took the first of those, skinned and cut up the hares, and put the pot into the side of the fire to stew. He continued to bring in water and wood, and at last he left the full bucket outside with Idris.

  With a sigh and a wince, he settled down onto the pallet beside her. Only then did she break the silence. “If I had such a place, I would open it to no one.”

  He did not look at her; he stared at the fire. The soft light did not touch his eyes, “Not even Arthur?”

  The air hummed with Power. This was no place for lies. She touched his hand, and when he finally turned, she gazed into his eyes. “Especially not Arthur.”

  He caught his breath, and emotions chased across his face too quickly to read. “Then . . . there is no love between you?”

  She tried not to feel bitterness as she shook her head. “This is the lot of princes. I knew that one day I might be needed for—some bargain. I was the unwanted part of a bargain for horses,” she said, the bitterness coming through anyway. “The Ladies wanted a bride for him who was pledged to the Old Ways. He needed an heir. The land needed one. He gave way, but grudgingly. There is nothing about me, the real me, that Arthur wants. I honor him as the High King. But I do not love him, and he does not love me. He wants a dream of a compliant, complacent woman who will bend like a willow to his will, who will ornament his great hall, greet his guests graciously, bear him heirs, give him bed sport, and never seek to join him in council or battle. That is not me. And he does not want what I am.” She could have wept to say it out loud at last. It felt as if she had dropped shackles from her wrists. Somewhere out in the darkness, an early frog sang. “If I had known this, I would never have consented. This is no marriage, it is bondage.”

  Something that she had never, ever expected to see, flared in his face. “Then the gods be thanked!” he cried, and clasped his hands about her face, and kissed her.

  A fire leaped up between them, a fire that began at their lips and swiftly raced to her groin. She moaned and opened her mouth to his even as her own hands drew him to her. His mouth was that of a starving man, it devoured her, as hers devoured his. A hunger she had not known was inside her obliterated all other thoughts except of him. Her hands, with a life of their own, unbuckled his armor; he cast it aside. His hands caressed her breasts, thumbs rubbing her sensitive nipples through the thick cloth, and the fire leaped from her groin to her breasts. She moaned into his mouth and pushed him away just long enough to pull the remains of the gown over her head, discarding it into the darkness. His shirt followed it, and they fell back together onto the canvas pallet, touching, tasting, hands and mouths exploring one another.

  His fingers traced the line of her side, and she ached, arching her back as his lips and tongue played with her nipples. Impatient, more than impatient, she pulled down his breeches; hers were already around her knees, and she kicked them off. She parted her legs for him, and he knelt between them, staring down at her, his face alight, his eyes shining.

  “I love you, Gwenhwyfar,” was all he said. Then he was on her, inside her, and the two of them moved to a rhythm all their own, until the fire became a conflagration, and devoured them both.

  With their discarded clothing for a pillow, they lay in each other’s arms and fed each other bits of hare—which, by some miracle, had not been burned to blackness in the bottom of the pot. She listened to his heart pound and traced her fingers over his chin. He held her as if he would never let her go.

  “I think I began to love you when you spoke to me after the battle in the winter,” he said, quietly. “But I thought—I thought you were spoken for, maybe. And if you were not,
well, you were a warrior, your father’s eyes and soon to be his right hand. You were the White Phantom, the legend the Saxons had learned to fear. What could I offer you? I have no land, let alone a kingdom. I have only my status as a Companion. Not even my horse is my own.”

  Cataruna’s husband came to us with less, she wanted to say, but how could she? That was the past, and words would not change it. “So I put you from my mind, and when I thought of you, I told myself to think of you as another warrior. And so I did. Until I saw you as Arthur’s bride, so beautiful, so regal, and—” His voice choked a little. “—and I knew what a fool I had been, and you were going to Arthur, and if you did not love him then, you would love him soon.”

  As you love him? She did not say that either. “He did not want another wife, much less one with my name,” she said quietly. “And he especially does not want one like me. He kept me as much a captive as Medraut, even if that captivity was in a cage of gold rather than stone.”

  There was more, much, much more, that she wanted to say. But these were not things that you said to a lover. When we lay together, the only thing that kept it from being rape was my consent. And I cannot, and never will, welcome him into my bed. He may come there, but I cannot welcome him, for it is not me he wants—any empty vessel would do.

  Or he thought I was breeding. He stayed only long enough to put a child in me and then could not leave me fast enough.

  “I love you,” she said, knowing it to be true.

  “But—” he began, his voice rising a little in distress. And she knew what he was going to say. That she was still Arthur’s—oh, not necessarily by the laws of their gods, but certainly by the law of the land and of the Christian one. That Arthur would never give her up. That they had together betrayed Arthur, just as the second Gwenhwyfar had.