Dark Moon of Avalon

by Anna Elliott

  “I’ll make the first cuts,” Isolde said. “And then I’ll need you to take over when it comes to getting through the bone.”

  Without taking his eyes from Hereric, Trystan nodded. “Here.” He handed her his bone-handled knife. “I put a new edge on it earlier. It’s as sharp as I can make it.”

  Isolde took the knife, holding it in her hand a moment, balanced across her palm. She’d done this before, many times, these last seven years. But still Kian’s voice echoed briefly in her ears, repeating what he’d said about facing battle. You’d think it’d get easier—but it doesn’t. It’s the same for every battle—every time.

  Since Hereric had taken so little of the poppy, Isolde drew out from her box of medicines a small glass vial of a hemlock and ivy decoction. Swallowed, the dose would be enough to kill—but inhaling the fumes could keep a man unconscious a short while. She unstoppered the vial and poured the contents over a clean rag, then handed it to Trystan.

  “Hold this under his nose, and I’ll begin.”

  EVEN WITH THE HEMLOCK AND POPPY, Hereric screamed. Deep, searing cries that at first echoed off the hut’s crumbling walls, then grew weaker and hoarser as his voice gave out. By that time, Isolde had finished her own part and was holding Hereric as still as she could so that Trystan could make the cuts through bone. She could see Trystan flinch, convulsively, with every cry Hereric made, and rivulets of sweat run down into his eyes, but his hands were absolutely steady as he gripped the knife and sawed quickly through the blood-smeared bone.

  Isolde’s own skin was clammy with the effort of blocking out the awareness of Hereric’s pain, but she took the Saxon man’s face between her hands and spoke softly. “Nearly over, now. You’ve borne it bravely. Nearly done.”

  When it was over, reaction would set in, and the man whose face she held would be Hereric once more. But for now he was only a man with a broken arm. A series of bloody tasks that must be done, one by one, if a life was to be saved.

  Trystan held the red-hot blade against the bloody stump that had been Hereric’s arm and Hereric screamed again, his body going rigid, the muscles of his neck and throat standing out like cords. But it was over. Trystan set the smoking knife down and raised a hand to dash the sweat from his eyes. Isolde saw that, now that it was all over, the hand shook, briefly, but when he spoke his voice was steady as before.

  “I’ll go outside and bury this lot.” He gestured to the blood-soaked mess by the bed. “If you’ll stay with Hereric.”

  He looked so completely shut-off, so controlled and unreachable and utterly alone that Isolde couldn’t stop herself. She reached out, laying her hand over his. “You did incredibly well, Trys.”

  He looked slowly from their joined hands up to her. Their eyes met, and at that moment Isolde would have given anything to know what he was thinking. But then he shook his head, a swift shadow crossing his blue gaze. “Thanks. Though I’m not so sure Hereric would agree.”

  TRYSTAN STOOD MOTIONLESS, DRAWING IN LONG breaths of the chill, damp night air and waiting for the fit of shivering to run its course—like the racking chills of a fever, but stronger. Then he turned and went back inside. Isolde had bandaged the stump of Hereric’s arm in clean wrappings and drawn fresh blankets up over his chest. She’d washed the worst of the blood from her hands and arms as well. Now she was sitting motionless against the wall by the bedside, her arms locked around her knees, her gaze fixed on Hereric, the flickering lamplight picking out the tears on her cheeks.

  Trystan cleared his throat, then asked, “Are you all right?”

  “What?” Isolde brushed at her eyes, then looked blankly at the moisture on her hand for a moment, as though she’d not realized she was crying until now. “Oh.” She shook her head. “I always cry afterwards when it’s someone I know. It’s nothing.”

  Trystan hesitated again, then dropped to the floor beside her, leaning back against the wattle and daub wall. There was a moment’s silence and then she said, “Hereric should have a few days’ rest before we try to move him. Will that give you time enough to fix the rudder?”

  “It should.” Trystan called up an imagined map of the surrounding landscape. “We’re maybe a seven nights’ journey from the Wessex border now.”

  Isolde twisted a little to look up at him. “You’re still willing to finish the journey, then?”

  Trystan rubbed the space between his eyes. He was trying to avoid looking at Hereric’s motionless form on the bed, but he asked, “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  Isolde bit her lip. “It’s just …I’m not sure I’ve actually done Hereric any good, and—”

  Trystan caught himself before he could reach for her. “Don’t say that. I thought we’d already agreed we weren’t making that kind of bargain. You feel you have to get to Wessex and Cerdic. I gave you my word I’d take you. Nothing’s changed.”

  Isolde scrubbed a hand across her cheek again. “I’m sorry. I know. It’s just—” She turned to look up at him, wide gray eyes huge in her pale face. “Do you think Cerdic will even listen to me?”

  Trystan sighed. He knew she’d not thank him for a facile lie. “I don’t know. He’s a name for being a hard man—but a just one. A good soldier, in his day, a fine leader of his war band. And he’s not a fool. He’s a keen mind, as well as a strong heart for war. I’d say there’s at least a chance he’ll listen to what you have to say.”

  Isolde nodded. “I suppose I have to hope so. I just—” She stopped, biting her lip again, and then said, her eyes still on his face, with a look in their depths that made his heart twist in his chest, “I just can’t help feeling as though I’ve dragged you and Hereric all this way and subjected you to all the dangers we’ve faced for what’s doomed to be a lost cause.”

  He hadn’t meant to touch her. It was his arm moved of its own accord, going round her before he realized what he’d done. “That doesn’t sound like you.”

  That made her smile a little. “It doesn’t, does it? I know. It’s only that—” She broke off, turning to look at Hereric’s gray face and bandaged stump of an arm. “It’s only that every time, after an operation like that, I think, If I ever have to do that again—but then I have to. Because I’m a healer, and sometimes it’s the only way, and—”

  She must have been even more shaken and exhausted than he’d realized, because a shiver shook her, and then she leaned against him, unselfconsciously resting her head against his shoulder.

  The part of Trystan’s mind that wasn’t still trying to block out the memory of Hereric’s screams asked exactly how long he thought he was going to be able to keep some kind of a grip on his self-control, sitting with her like this. But he nodded. “Like with Hereric. It was the only way, Isa. Don’t blame yourself.”

  Still, his left hand clenched involuntarily, and he heard Isolde draw in a sharp breath.

  When he looked down, she was staring at the scarred fingers, her face gone a shade paler even than before. “So that’s why you didn’t want …and I said …oh, Trys, I’m so sorry.”

  He’d learned long ago that lying to Isolde was a waste of breath. Trystan didn’t bother to ask what she meant or try to deny it. He tipped his head back, watching a coil of smoke from the lamp drift towards the ceiling, and said, after a moment, “Do you have to do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Read my mind like that.”

  Isolde glanced up, a brief ghost of a smile touching the corners of her mouth. “I suppose I’ve had plenty of practice. Trying to make you talk always was like dragging river reeds up by the roots.”

  She was still leaning against him; above the reek of blood from the rest of the room, he could smell the sweet, floral scent of whatever she’d used to wash her hair. “Well, you could usually talk enough for ten, let alone two. If I had a measure of wheat for every story and fire tale you made me listen to, I could feed an army through the winter.”

  He heard her smother a yawn; she must be as tired as he was. But then she laughed. “I know.
You used to tell me I could talk the hind legs off a goat.”

  “Did I? It’s a wonder you ever bothered with me at all.”

  She shifted, resting her head against his shoulder again. “Oh, well, you weren’t always that bad. You told Mara that she had pretty hair. That was kind.”

  Trystan rubbed his eyes with his free hand. After two all but sleepless nights, they were beginning to feel gritty with fatigue. “Who?”

  “You don’t remember? She was the daughter of Andras, my father’s armorer. My age—eleven, or twelve, maybe. And she used to be teased, often—because she had bad skin and teeth that stuck out in front. And you knocked the boy down who was laughing at her, and you told her she had pretty hair. I remember, because I’d never heard you pay any girl a compliment before—however much they all giggled and made eyes at you. But I thought it was a very kind thing to do.”

  Trystan shrugged. Outside, the wind was whistling around the corners of the hut, tugging at the thatched roof above. “I was sorry for her, I suppose. And as I recall you weren’t all that pleased with me at the time. I cracked a knuckle in the fight, and when you were tying it up for me, you said you’d skin me alive if I was ever stupid enough to get into another fight like that. I had to teach you how to throw a knife just so you’d speak to me again.”

  Her laugh was the one he remembered from years ago, bubbling up out of nowhere, clear and musical as her speaking voice. “I remember. I’d been begging you to teach me for months, but you’d always refused.”

  “Yes, well. If you’d cut your fingers off, I’d have been the one explaining just why I’d thought it a good idea to teach the king’s daughter knife throwing in the first place.”

  Isolde laughed again, then was quiet a moment. Her eyes strayed again to his scarred hand. Trystan braced himself for her to ask for the whole story, but all she said was, “I truly am sorry, Trys.”

  She pulled back slightly, twisting so that she could look up at him, putting one hand on his cheek. Her raven dark hair was slipping out of its confining braid to curl around her face, and in the orange glow of lamplight, her face looked milk pale, her eyes the color of the ocean at dawn. “Will you promise me something? Promise me that even if Hereric …even if he dies, you won’t blame yourself for tonight either? Hereric would know—really know—that you’d never hurt him willingly.”

  Her voice always made him think of sweet, cool water. Trystan closed his eyes. Then, through the haze of his own weariness, he heard himself say, “When I was in the quarries—in the slave camp—the guards used to …I was lucky to get off with a couple of finger joints gone. Usually they took hands—or arms—both of them, most of the time. Sometimes it was a punishment and sometimes—sometimes it was just for fun. Because they were edgy or bored or just plain angry as sin that they were stuck pulling guard duty at a filthy quarry in the middle of nowhere. They’d always do it nearby, so that the rest of us could hear. And then they’d group the ones without hands, without arms, together, in a kind of a cage and stand around laughing themselves sick while the wretches grubbed around in the dirt for whatever food was tossed in—trying to pick it up with their teeth, because of course they couldn’t get at it any other way. The guards never gave them much. Just enough to keep them alive while their bodies rotted from the outside in.”

  When he looked down, Isolde was still watching him, the gray eyes wide, what little color had ebbed back into her face entirely gone. Trystan forced himself to stop speaking. “I’m sorry—I shouldn’t have told you.”

  “Don’t be stupid.” She gave an impatient shake of her head, her voice almost angry. “I’m glad you did. I just. …” She stopped and looked up at him again. “I wish I’d been there as well.”

  Trystan caught himself before he could say something that couldn’t be taken back. Remembering you was the light in the darkness. I’d live all of it over again just to hear you laugh once more. Powers of hell, he thought. You sound more like that damned harper’s song by the day.

  Instead he said, “So that you could have suffered, too? A lot of good that would have done.” He paused and was silent, watching another curl of smoke from the lamp spiral upward, hang suspended a moment in the air above their heads, and then dissolve into the shadows of the thatched roof. Then he said, “I used to tell myself your stories, sometimes, though.”

  “Did you? I’m glad.” She paused, then twisted to look up at him again. “I—”

  And then she stopped, her eyes widening as though in shock or surprise, her gaze turning suddenly blank. She didn’t speak, though, and after a moment, he asked, “Is something wrong?”

  She shook her head slowly. “No. It’s nothing.” She was silent again, then, “Trys, what happened at Camlann? How did you come to be taken as a slave?”

  “I—” Trystan’s head came up with a jerk. Hell’s rear gate, what did he think he was doing?

  He felt as though he’d been asleep and had come awake suddenly to a kick in the chest. Even as the obscenely graphic memory boiled up inside him, even as his heart started to pound and a cold sweat broke out on his body, that detached, sneering voice at the back of his mind told him that he’d asked for this, letting himself get as close to her as he had.

  Reflexively, he jerked away and saw Isolde’s eyes widen again, and a look, part startled, part something that might have been pity or hurt or anger pass like a shadow across their depths.

  “Trys?”

  He turned away so that he wouldn’t have to see her face. He’d managed to lie with a reasonably convincing air of relaxed boredom with an enemy knifepoint at his throat. But he was heaven damned if he could think of a single thing to say now.

  “Do you trust me?” he asked finally. He heard the slight hesitation before she spoke and told himself he’d asked for that as well.

  “Yes,” she said after a moment. “Yes, I trust you.”

  Trystan got to his feet and forced himself to look down at her, briefly. “Then don’t ask me to answer that.”

  ONCE OUTSIDE THE HUT, TRYSTAN SAT motionless on the blanket he’d spread out on the ground—so that he could keep watch, he’d told Isolde. He waited until all movement inside had stopped. Isolde would leave the lamp burning through the night, in case Hereric woke. But she’d spread a blanket for herself on the beaten earth floor so that she could catch what rest she could before he did. Trystan tilted his head back to look up at the ice-pale network of stars above. A clear night, at least. Unlikely that there would be rain. He gave Isolde time to fall asleep, debating with himself.

  The thought of being caught unready by another attack was like chewing and swallowing broken glass. But there’d been no sign of pursuit all day. And now his muscles felt vaguely as though he were dragging himself along underwater, his eyes throbbing. He was approaching the limit of the time he could go without rest and still be alert enough to work on the rudder again in the morning. And if he tried staying awake and then dropped off anyway—

  Wearily, Trystan reached for the pack of supplies he’d carried from the ship, found the skin of wine, flicked open the cap, and took an explosive swallow. The liquid ran like sour fire down his throat. You’d think one of these nights I’d start to like the filthy stuff, he thought.

  He didn’t know what made him turn. Maybe she made some slight sound that caught his ear. But when he looked round, Isolde was standing in the open doorway of the hut, watching him. It was too dark to see her face, but he knew her eyes were on him. She stayed like that, absolutely motionless, a slender shadow against the yellow glow of lamplight at her back. And then she stepped back, turning away, and was gone back inside the hut without a word.

  THE SUN WAS JUST BREAKING OVER the horizon when Isolde looked out of the hut. The morning air was cool and damp, and she could see curls of silver mist rising over the sea of reeds that stretched between her and the river. Cabal had been sleeping curled on the blanket Isolde had spread for him near the door, but he woke at the sound of her passing by. He sat up,
snuffling into her hand, and Isolde ruffled his ears and ran a hand over his back before stepping outside.

  Trystan lay almost exactly as he had two nights before, one arm flung out, an empty wineskin lying by his side. The silver cap had come unfastened, and a last trickle of wine had pooled on the dirt, looking almost like blood in the harsh morning light. Isolde stood a moment, looking down at him, then dropped to sit beside him.

  She’d slept a bit, wrapped in her traveling cloak and dozing lightly enough that she’d hear Hereric if he stirred or woke. But she’d not undressed, nor even taken off her shoes and woolen stockings. Even still, she was cold, and she drew her cloak more closely about her, keeping her eyes fixed on Trystan’s face. This time he was less deeply asleep; after only a few moments his eyelids flickered, then opened.

  His gaze was bleary at first, then cleared to startled awareness, and he jerked partway upright. “Is something wrong?”

  “No.”

  Trystan let out his breath, and Isolde waited while he shook his head, then dragged himself upright to lean against the outer wall of the hut. He didn’t speak, though, and after a moment’s silence Isolde looked from him to the empty wineskin.

  “You must have the devil’s own headache,” she said.

  Trystan had shut his eyes again. “He’s welcome to take it back, then.” Then he seemed to come to himself, for he started and shook his head again. “Is Hereric—”

  Isolde shook her head. “No. Hereric’s as well as can be hoped, I think. I gave him another dose of the poppy a short while ago, and he’s asleep. It’s too early to say any more.”

  Trystan nodded, then winced, and Isolde held out the cup she’d brought from inside.

  “Here. Drink this.”

  Trystan’s gaze was slightly wary, as though expecting her to say something more, but he accepted the cup, then drew back as he started to raise it to his mouth. “What in God’s name is this? It smells like an ill-cured goat hide.”