“The Saxons! The Saxons!”
“I thought we had until noon?” Rhiann said.
Alun pursed his lips as he gazed down at the encampment. “We have some time, yet. That’s just fear you’re hearing.”
Rhiann hoped he was right, but she didn’t like the idea that men were already desperate, inside the fort or out of it. Rhiann had never known Cade’s men to panic.
Another shout came from the ramparts above them, and Rhiann looked up to see who’d called to her. Bedwyr waved a hand. She returned the greeting and hurried through the gate. More men ran from hall to barracks to stables and back again.
“This way.” Bedwyr helped Rhiann from her horse and took her elbow. “The sun has forced Cade to retreat inside.”
Rhiann could read the tension in the set of Bedwyr’s shoulders, so she didn’t question him as she went with him up the steps to the door, which swung open before she reached it.
Goronwy waved her inside. “He isn’t going to like it that you’re here.”
“I know,” Rhiann said. “But I have news that couldn’t wait.”
“And you couldn’t send another to deliver it?”
“I’ll take chastisement from my husband, Lord Goronwy. Don’t you start too!”
Goronwy surprised her with a laugh. “He’s missed you. Perhaps you can put him in a better temper.”
“I hope so too, but I wouldn’t count on it.” Rhiann passed among the dozens of men who milled about the hall until she reached a table near a caved-in dais. Cade leaned heavily on his hands, a plan of Caer Fawr and the lands around it spread before him. She hesitated, still some yards away, drinking him in. He’d pulled his nearly black hair into a leather thong at the base of his neck and wore a rich blue shirt that exactly matched his eyes.
“I’m sorry, Cade—”
Cade bent his head over the table, gripping the edges with both hands. “I heard what you said to Goronwy.” Then he growled and straightened. “Come here, girl.”
Rhiann went to him, her heart lighter at the mere thought of him. The reality was so much better. She wrapped her arms around his waist and put her face into his chest. “I missed you so much.”
He lifted her arms to place them around his neck and bowed his head to touch hers. “When the lookout said you were coming, I was so angry… I didn’t want you here. But now—” He kissed her, and she clung to him for dear life.
When they drew apart, just a fraction, she said, “Mabon visited me. I didn’t feel like I had any choice but to come.”
“I don’t want to hear this.” Cade gripped her arms tightly, his tension returned, though thankfully no longer directed at her. She’d rehearsed what she was going to say to him the whole way down from Dinas Bran, and she eased out a breath, glad she’d read him right. Then he lifted his head and waved to Goronwy and Bedwyr that they should approach. “Get the others. Rhiann has brought us more bad news.”
* * * * *
“So what can I do?” Rhiann said.
Angharad and Catrin looked up from their work. They were sorting through dozens of scraps of linen. It was always the one aspect of warfare that men forgot—or perhaps they didn’t want to remember. Men would die in this battle, but some would be wounded, and someone needed to attend them.
“I’m sure you don’t need to help us, my lady,” Angharad said. “The Queen of Gwynedd—”
“Hush,” Rhiann said. “Don’t be ridiculous. You need every hand that can be spared.”
Angharad subsided, and now Catrin smiled at Rhiann. “We have more than enough work to keep you occupied, my lady, if you’re looking to hide from the king.”
“Call me, Rhiann.” Catrin’s casual acceptance of her presence lifted some of Rhiann’s worry. “My husband wasn’t so mean as that. But I am on a short leash.” She moved towards the pile of linen. Sorting it wasn’t a difficult job, just necessary.
Angharad still hesitated to begin working again. “But surely, as the Queen of Gwynedd—”
“As I reminded myself the other day before Mabon visited me, I was a serving wench long before I turned queen.” Rhiann gestured to the bandages. “Many of these are dirty. We’ll have to clean them before we can use them on the men.”
“I asked King Cadwaladr’s permission to leave the fort, to wash them in the river,” Catrin said. “He was reluctant to give us leave with all these men about whom he doesn’t know.”
“But surely—” Rhiann thought for a moment. “The spring begins its flow just outside the western gate. There must be a spot not far from the walls where we would be safe.” She held up a cloth, revealing the scrape of dirt across the middle of it.
“These aren’t much use as they are,” Catrin said. “But your lord won’t be happy if you leave the fort.”
“I’ll speak to him,” Rhiann said.
“He’s in council with Rhys,” Catrin said. “Taliesin is with him.”
Rhiann thought she heard a hitch in Catrin’s voice when she said Taliesin’s name and made a mental note to get to know Catrin better if she could. If they had the time.
“Lord Hywel went to inventory our stock of arrows,” Angharad said. “But Dafydd might be free to help us.”
Rhiann smiled to herself at Angharad’s obvious regard for Dafydd. She was more transparent than Catrin. Still, Rhiann had only been at Caer Fawr a few hours. She didn’t know if either man was aware of the interest they’d engendered. And maybe they’d never know, if the coming fight didn’t go well for them.
“We’ll find him,” Rhiann said.
Dafydd proved amenable, so it was he and the three women who left the fort by the western gate and wended their way among the ramparts, heading steadily away from the fort. Soon they came to a rocky outcrop, from which the spring precipitated. They followed a narrow path beside it that cut through the remaining ramparts until it neared the bottom of the hill. There, a few stubby trees still grew that Cade hadn’t ordered taken down. Further on, perhaps two hundred yards, Rhys’s men camped.
A hillock hid the companions from the river. Before they came around it on the path, however, Rhiann pulled up short. “I hear a woman singing.” She turned to the Dafydd. “We’ll need to bring the camp followers inside the fort before the battle begins.”
“I’ll see that the word goes out,” Dafydd said.
The lilting tones carried through the mid-morning air, but in words that Rhiann couldn’t make out. She picked up the pace, anxious to see who it was that sang so beautifully, but Catrin grabbed her arm. “No. Don’t.”
“Why not?” Rhiann said.
Catrin’s face had drained of all color and her eyes had gone a silver grey. Then she blinked and the impression was gone but still, Catrin held Rhiann’s arm. “I can feel magic and the world of the sidhe. It’s all around us in the fort, of course, because of King Cadwaladr and the Treasures, but my sense of it had faded as we’d traversed the path, but now—”
“Now you feel it again?” Rhiann looked ahead. The singing continued. “We must go on, if only to find out who it is.”
Dafydd unsheathed his sword and stepped in front of Rhiann. “Come on.”
Ten paces later, they came around the outcrop to see an old woman laundering clothes on a spit of gravel in the middle of the river. She wore a gray dress and cloak and her beautiful voice was a sharp contrast to her beaked nose and scraggily hair.
Dafydd pulled up short. “It’s just an old wom—”
“No it isn’t!” Rhiann threw herself past him and into the channel that separated them from the old woman. She went under the surface and came up sputtering. Seeing Rhiann’s mistake, Catrin raced along the grassy bank, coiled herself in preparation, and leapt across the channel. She landed on the gravel bar in the middle of the stream a dozen yards from where the woman washed.
Rhiann hauled herself out of the water, scrabbling at the rocks. She planted herself in front of the woman. “How dare you!” She snatched a shirt from the woman’s grasp before turning to Da
fydd and Angharad. “Help Catrin get the ones she’s already washed!”
Catrin had spared herself the initial dunking, but now flung herself into the water to grasp one tunic after another before they floated downstream. Angharad and Dafydd gaped at both of them, not understanding.
“It’s Arianrhod!” Rhiann said. “She’s washing the tunics of the men who will die in battle this day.”
That spurred them into action. Meanwhile, the crone pointed her finger at Rhiann. “You, of all people, should know better. You cannot avert your fate.”
“It isn’t fate!” Rhiann said. “This is your choice. Why are you doing this?” Unwanted tears leaked from her eyes and she brushed them away.
Arianrhod only cackled. “You can’t save them all.” She’d been watching the actions of Rhiann’s friends but now turned back to Rhiann. “Would death be easier to accept if I looked like this?”
Rhiann didn’t have time to take in a single breath before the woman transformed herself into the form she’d always shown to Cade, that of a beautiful woman. Then in another flash, she crouched again over the washing, a crone in tattered grey.
Not looking at her, not caring that she was openly defying the goddess, Rhiann gathered the tunics from the basket that the Arianrhod still had left to wash. “You would have every one of these men dead? Why? They are your people! Why not hamper the Saxons instead of us?”
Arianrhod laughed. The tinkle of it was in sharp contrast to her earlier cackle. “I would not deprive your husband of his fight, my dear.” She had returned to the shape of a beautiful woman.
Rhiann shivered. She couldn’t bear to look at Arianrhod and clutched the twenty tunics she’d gathered. She was just reaching for the last item in Arianrhod’s basket when the goddess laughed again. Against her will, Rhiann’s chin came up so she had to look at her. “I am the goddess of the cauldron, of war and battle, of the silver wheel of life and death.” Arianrhod gazed at Rhiann and it was as if Rhiann’s breath froze in her chest. “And life is what you care about, isn’t it?”
The chatter of Catrin, Angharad, and Dafydd, who were gathering the tunics that Arianrhod had already committed to the depths, came muffled to her ears, as if she and Arianrhod stood in a crypt by themselves. Outside sounds echoed without penetrating the rock.
“Wha-what are you saying?”
Arianrhod’s face was wreathed in light. She pointed to the tunics Rhiann held. “Would you trade just one of those, not your husband’s of course, but Dafydd’s perhaps, or Bedwyr’s? Just one, for the chance to bear a son for Cade?”
Rhiann tried to swallow, but her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. “You ask me to exchange a friend’s life for … a baby?”
“For Cadwaladr’s child.” Arianrhod spoke the words as if they were nothing, as if she was asking Rhiann to pass the butter.
“No.” Rhiann found her head shaking back and forth, back and forth. “You can’t ask that, you can’t offer me that.”
“But I just have.” Arianrhod took a step towards Rhiann. “No one would know. We would keep it between us.” She leaned closer and lowered her voice. “Just close your eyes and choose.”
“No!” Rhiann threw out her arm in a gesture of denial and backed away, but the stones behind her tripped her up, and she fell among them, half in and half out of the water.
Arianrhod stood over her, smiling a smile that didn’t reach her eyes, even in the glamour she had donned.
“So be it,” Arianrhod said. “Perhaps you are worthy of him after all.”
Rhiann gaped at the goddess, who smiled serenely back.
“Rhiann!” Dafydd raced towards them.
Arianrhod shimmered, glanced back once at Dafydd, and then seemed to melt into nothingness. As Dafydd reached her, Rhiann looked around, feeling like she’d just woken up from a dream. Her hands were empty, too. Everything Arianrhod had brought to the river—the tunics, the basket, the scrubbing brush—were gone. Instead, an arrow lay among the rocks where Arianrhod had been standing. At least a yard in length, the wood was silver-grey, like the crone’s dress, but with black feathers and tipped in silver.
Rhiann crawled towards it, but she didn’t pick it up. Catrin crouched beside her, and they studied the arrow together.
“Is it safe?” Rhiann said.
“A gift from the goddess is never safe,” Catrin said.
Rhiann reached out a finger to touch it. As with the chess piece that Mabon had left her, when no lightning struck her, she picked it up.
“Where did Arianrhod go?” Dafydd said.
“There.” Catrin pointed to the channel on the far side of the gravel bar. The goddess had assumed the shape of the crone again, solid and ugly as she trudged through the river. Her dress was soaked to her waist, but her hands were empty. She disappeared into the woods on the other side.
Chapter Four
Dafydd
Rhiann was shaking so hard Dafydd was afraid she would fall out of his arms, so he clutched her to him even more tightly. Catrin and he had supported her through the water and up the bank, but she couldn’t walk. Not long ago, he would have been thrilled at the thought of holding Rhiann so close, even if she was in peril, but now, all he wanted was to find Cade and pass her off to him. Cade, however, couldn’t walk in the sun.
Dafydd checked the sky. It would have to another of their companions who came, and he hoped he would come soon.
“Angharad—do you have the arrow?” he said, over his shoulder.
“Yes, my lord.”
He tsked through his teeth. In the last few days, she’d taken to calling him my lord, and he couldn’t seem to get her to stop. “Give it to Catrin and run ahead. The path is too steep and too far. I won’t make it.”
And that was another thing he would have been loath to admit two months ago. But a man was not measured by whether or not he could carry his queen a hundred yards straight up a mountain. Fortunately, after another few feet, a watcher finally spotted them. Dafydd’s legs had started to tremble with the effort, and then Bedwyr arrived to rescue him.
His jaw set and grim, Bedwyr took Rhiann from Dafydd and strode away. Goronwy had come too. He took the arrow from Angharad and then escorted Catrin, still carrying their dirty cloths, the rest of the way to the fort. They’d never washed the linen, but Dafydd didn’t think they wanted to go back to the river to finish the job. They did have Caledfwlch after all. The sword would heal anyone who would accept Cade’s help. It was just that there would be men who needed to be kept alive until Cade could help them.
Dafydd bent forward, his hands on his knees. All he could see of Angharad was her boots and the hem of her skirt. Like him, she was soaked to the waist.
“I don’t understand any of what just happened,” Angharad said. “Who was that woman? And what kind of hold did she have on Queen Rhiannon?”
Dafydd straightened and took in a deep breath. “You know that King Cadwaladr is a sidhe?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Arianrhod, the goddess of time and fate—and of war—made him what he is. She has been known to visit, especially recently.”
“And that’s who the crone was at the river?” Angharad said. “I thought Arianrhod was a beautiful woman.”
Dafydd shrugged. “She takes many forms. Legend says that in war, Arianrhod washes the tunics of men doomed to die in the next battle.” Dafydd looked at his hands, empty now of any proof of what they’d seen and done.
“I couldn’t get them all,” Angharad said. “Some floated away in the faster currents.”
“I know,” Dafydd said. “I didn’t want to look, but I couldn’t help it. Many of them bore the crest of the boar.”
“Rhys’s men?”
Dafydd bit his lip. “Goronwy and I wear the eagle badge when we don’t wear Cade’s red dragon. Did you see—” He broke off, realizing that he didn’t want to know the answer, but Angharad was looking at him steadily.
“The crone had one such tunic with her, and Rhiann tore
it from her hands.”
Dafydd swallowed again. This magic, this world of the sidhe, was not a world that he wanted anything to do with. The moment of a man’s death should be a mystery, or at the very least, not determined by the opaque reasoning or whims of a feckless goddess. The moment the thought formed in his head, he struggled to suppress it. Who knew if the goddess could read his thoughts? Dafydd hoped not.
Angharad looked over the ramparts towards the stream. “Arianrhod didn’t have to wash the tunics here.”
“What do you mean?” Dafydd said.
“Of all the rivers in Powys to wash them in, she chose this one? Perhaps she wanted Rhiann to find her.”
“I’d like you to be right. I’d like to think the goddess is on our side, at least a little bit.”
Angharad turned back to him. “The news is worse than this, though.”
Dafydd snorted a laugh. “How could it be worse?” And then he sobered because he realized she was serious.
“When we were coming up from the river, I overheard some of the men who passed us going the other way. Rhys has ordered his men to move out within the hour. They will meet the Saxons in the fields below Caer Fawr.”
Dafydd stared at her and then looked east. “He can’t be serious! They outnumber us. To meet them in open battle loses all advantage of the high ground. That’s why King Cadwaladr chose to gather his troops at Caer Fawr in the first place!”
“I know, but Rhys is preparing to march, with all of his men and ours.”
Dafydd caught Angharad’s arm. “You must leave. Now. Go with Catrin and Rhiann and head west. You have enough of a head start that they won’t catch you.”
Angharad tried to wrench her arm away. “I will not! You need us. I won’t leave you.”
Something shifted in Dafydd just then. Maybe it was her adamancy. Maybe it was her upturned nose and the freckles scattered across it that Lilwen had tried so desperately to hide. She wasn’t Rhiann, but maybe she didn’t have to be. He wasn’t Cade either. Without thinking about it, before the impulse deserted him, Dafydd caught Angharad’s hand. She looked down at their interlocked fingers and then back up at him.
Rise of the Pendragon (The Last Pendragon Saga Book 6) Page 3