“I don’t want anything to happen to you,” he said.
“I don’t either, but how would leaving here help? The entire world is dangerous. Besides, Mabon knows that it was I who last had the cloak. I’d be more vulnerable out there than in here.”
The sound of drums and marching feet were evident as the men in the camp below them fell into lines on Rhys’s orders.
“I hate to admit it,” Dafydd said, “but you may be right.”
Chapter Five
Rhiann
“And your honor says that you must fight alongside Rhys?”
Rhiann asked the question from a curled position on the pallet that was all that adorned their chamber. King and Queen of Gwynedd they might be, but they had no more in the way of luxuries than anyone else, barring the privacy of a room.
“He is determined to face the Saxons on what he calls his own terms,” Cade said. “I think he’s trying to prove to his father that he can lead.”
“He seeks to upstage you.”
“When all it does is show him a fool and endanger all of us.” Cade scrubbed at his hair with both hands and turned to look at his wife. That Arianrhod had appeared to her was terrifying. He’d found himself angrier—at the goddess, and the fates—than he’d ever been in his life. And he’d taken out some of that anger on Rhiann, to his regret. “I am bound—”
“You are not.” Rhiann’s words came out sharp and taut. “You swore no allegiance to Rhys or Morgan. You agreed to share command at Caer Fawr. That is all.”
“A fine point—”
“Don’t make me hurt you, Cadwaladr ap Cadwallon!” Rhiann picked up the pillow on which her head had been lying and threw it at him.
Cade caught it and then moved to her side. He knelt to wrap his arms around her. “You could never do that.”
“I could,” Rhiann said.
Cade looked into her eyes, and his heart twisted to see tears starting in them again.
“Arianrhod wanted me to hurt you,” she said.
“Something about the tunics?” he said. “I still don’t understand what happened down at the river. It doesn’t make sense.”
“She spoke to me, Cade,” Rhiann said. “I didn’t want to tell you in front of all the others, but Arianrhod spoke directly to me.”
His eyes narrowed. “And what did she say?”
“She offered me a bargain.” Rhiann had her face pressed into his arm, refusing to look at him. Cade had never seen her like this before.
“What kind of bargain?” Cade felt his temper rising again at the idea. It was one thing for Arianrhod to speak to him, to demand his services. It was quite another for her to upset his wife.
“She offered to trade the life of one of your men, one of our friends, for a child. Our child.”
Cade took in a deep breath and then swallowed down the first three things that came to his mind. He studied his wife’s downturned head and then stroked back a lock of her hair that had come loose and tucked it behind her ear. Only after he’d gained some measure of control, did he speak. “And she actually thought you’d make such a bargain with her?”
Rhiann clutched his hand. “She pressed on me. Her eyes bored into me. I wanted to accept so badly, but—”
Cade tugged on Rhiann’s braid. He heard and accepted the pain in her voice, but that Rhiann would choose such a thing wasn’t possible. Arianrhod should have known that. “Is a child so important, Rhiann? We’ve been married only a few weeks. We haven’t even discussed it other than in passing.”
“It doesn’t matter how long we’re married, Cade.” Rhiann finally looked into his face. “We will never have a child. You know that.”
“I know it,” Cade said. “But I didn’t realize how much you were thinking of it already.”
“Soon, everyone will begin to look askance at me,” Rhiann said. “They will wonder when I will give you a son, and when I prove incapable of it, they will say that it’s my fault. They’ll question your decision to marry me. They’ll wonder what it will take to convince you to put me aside. For the sake of Wales.”
“They would be fools to think or say it, but I grant that biddies in the solar are often fools.” He rubbed the back of her hand with his thumb. “This war has left many children fatherless. Motherless too. And there will be more after today. We could bring such a child into our house, if you like?”
Rhiann lifted her head. “Do you mean it?”
“Of course,” he said. “Wasn’t I mothered and fathered well by people who weren’t my birth parents? Wasn’t I loved as much as Rhun?”
Rhiann sat up and threw her arms around Cade’s neck. She hung on, holding him tightly. “Yes. You were. And we could do the same.”
* * * * *
To decide to foster a child was all very well and good, and Cade was delighted that Rhiann was happy, but meanwhile, they had Saxons to fight. Disaster loomed on the horizon. He left Rhiann asleep and entered the great hall.
And stopped short.
Hywel—alone among all his men—had chosen to confront Rhys. Cade hesitated on the threshold, wondering if he should interfere, but then thought better of it. Hywel was Rhys’s brother-in-law. He had a right to speak his mind.
Hywel held Rhys’s arm in a tight grip, even as Rhys tried to twist away. “You can’t order your men into the field. It is suicide.”
“It is the only way to show them that we are not afraid.” Rhys’s face showed defiance. He was either sure of himself, or wanted to be sure and was using bravado to appear so. Cade moved silently along one wall until he came abreast of the pair.
“You fought for the right to command the forces here,” Hywel said, “and your first move is one that everyone counsels against? Where’s the sense in that?”
“I do what I think is right,” Rhys said. “As does your lord, does he not?”
Cade had come to rest just within Rhys’s line of sight and Rhys’s eyes flicked to him and then away. Cade, for his part, kept his face impassive. He’d already had this conversation with Rhys. Cade’s choice, now, was to allow Rhys and his men to die unsupported, or to die alongside them.
“This is how you treat a member of your family?” Rhys said, deflecting the issue. “No wonder your father hasn’t spoken a civil word to you in two years.”
“We’ve spoken,” Hywel said. “How did you think I arrived with a hundred of my father’s men?”
“I would hope you’d be thinking of your sister,” Rhys said. “Of what you owe her—and by extension, me, as your brother-in-law.”
“I am thinking of my sister when I stand on the battlements of this keep and see five thousand Saxon soldiers within two hours’ walk of this fortress!” Hywel said. “I am thinking of her when I tell you that she will be ashamed to discover that her husband allowed so many men to die for no reason! We can devise a plan to defeat them, but it won’t be on the field in front of Caer Fawr out of arrow range of the fortress and with too few horsemen to make a difference.”
“You are wrong. We march now.” He wrenched his arm away from Hywel’s grip. Hywel’s fists clenched at his sides, and Cade thought he would strike Rhys, but Taliesin moved in and caught Hywel’s arm, stepping between the two men and blocking Rhys’s view of Hywel.
“Let him go.” Although Taliesin lowered his voice for the next words, Cade read his lips. “Death is not the only possible future for us. We can win despite Rhys’s idiocy.”
Hywel stepped back. “You mean this, truly?”
Taliesin nodded. Meanwhile, Rhys glared at Taliesin’s back, spun on his heel, and marched down the hall to the double doors at the far end. He waved a hand at the half dozen retainers who’d watched the scene with considerable interest. “We go! Who rides with me?”
Before Rhys’s men pulled open the doors, Cade was there. Rhys hadn’t seen Cade coming, but then, Cade could move quickly when he wanted to. “And what is the role you have for me? I cannot ride with you. I cannot fight while the sun shines.”
R
hys sneered at Cade, and his expression was so reminiscent of the look that Mabon’s face usually held that Cade faltered. Was there more to this show of certainty than bravado or a son’s desire to prove himself worthy of his father?
“Then you can watch our victory from the safety of the guardhouse,” Rhys said.
“And if you are wrong, what then? You leave us to defend Caer Fawr against a great Saxon force that will surround us. At our defeat, they will run free through Wales, picking off our castles and our lands one by one. Including your father’s.” Cade jerked his chin at Hywel. “Sir Hywel is right. As I predicted, Penda won’t be able to resist a frontal assault. If we stay inside Caer Fawr, the Saxons will come to us. We will have the high ground and the archers to counter any who come against us.”
Rhys’s teeth clenched. He gripped Cade’s shoulder and, for the first time, met his eyes. “We can’t win from inside Caer Fawr, no matter how many men we have.”
Cade’s eyes narrowed at him. “Why do you say that?”
“You are not the only one whom the gods have favored with a visit,” Rhys said.
“What are you saying? Which of the gods came to see you?”
“I have found favor where you have not. I am assured a victory.”
Cade’s mouth tasted of acid. “I’m very glad to hear it. Tell me who it was. Surely not … Mabon?”
The smirk was back, and Cade considered wiping it off Rhys’s face with his fist.
“The gods ally with these Saxons, but against you, not me, and not my men.” Rhys pushed past him and into the sunlight of high noon. Cade stayed where he was. Safe but impotent.
Hywel came to stand beside him. “As I see it, we have three choices: you could kill him now, though his men might riot and we’d be no closer to victory than before; we could stay safe inside the fort and let him and his men die; or we could fight alongside them and pray for a miracle.”
Cade turned his head to meet Hywel’s eyes.
Hywel nodded. “You’ll need the cloak.”
Cade tensed his shoulders and then released it. “For all I am sidhe, I am only one man. This is going to be a slaughter.”
Chapter Six
Goronwy
“Help me!”
“God damn it!”
“That’s my leg, you piece of dung!”
The words of the men around him clung to Goronwy’s ear as he hacked away at the Saxon force. It was no good, of course, had been no good almost from the start, and he was hoping to God that soon Rhys would see it. If he still lived, that is.
Cade was somewhere off to his right, and Bedwyr was to his left. Thankfully, Cade had insisted that Hywel, Rhiann, and Dafydd stay on the rampart with their bows. When it came to the retreat, they could defend it with their arrows.
“Fall back!”
Goronwy didn’t have to be told twice. He swung his horse around and made for the gate that cut through the northern rampart. Just ahead, a foot soldier was struggling to help a friend who’d lost the use of one of his legs. Goronwy leaned down to collar the foot soldier, while Bedwyr grabbed the wounded friend by the arm and hauled him up behind him.
“Praise God! I thought we were goners.” Goronwy’s rescued pikeman clutched him around the waist.
Goronwy grunted at that, for he’d thought so too—about a dozen times in the last hour. He leaned over his horse’s neck, averting his eyes from the setting sun. Darkness couldn’t come too soon for Goronwy.
“Rhys is dead,” the man said. “I saw him fall.”
And for that, Goronwy had no answer. He risked a look back. Behind him, the bulk of their men had taken to their heels and were running full out for Caer Fawr.
“Why don’t the Saxons follow?” Bedwyr was also looking over his shoulder.
And then Goronwy saw why. The Saxons hadn’t brought cavalry to the fight—Penda’s men never fought on horseback—and that gave the single horseman who raced his horse between the Welsh retreat and the Saxons advance a tremendous advantage. Especially when that horseman was the King of Gwynedd. Although Goronwy couldn’t see Cade due to the cloak, he knew he was there by the glow the cloak couldn’t suppress, even in the brightness of the late afternoon sun. Cade blazed between their fleeing men and the bulk of the Saxon lines, and his invisible sword cut down every Saxon who attempted to follow them.
Goronwy reached the stream that ran between the rampart and the battlefield and pulled up. Taliesin shouted at Bedwyr while stabbing a finger in Cade’s direction. “Get that fool back here right now! We need him!”
Bedwyr shoved the soldier he’d rescued off his horse and was away again, back the way they’d come. He cut through the lines of retreating men, who opened a path for him through their ranks. Fewer than half of those who’d gone out were returning.
Meanwhile, Taliesin, Dafydd, and Hywel were working furiously with sticks and rope among the trees on the near side of the stream.
Goronwy allowed the pikeman to drop to the ground and dismounted himself. He handed the reins to the young man. “Care for him with your life. This was King Arthur’s horse.”
The man sketched a bow. “My life belongs to you as it is.” And with an insouciant grin, which told Goronwy how pleased he was to be alive, he was off.
“What are you doing?” Goronwy said to Taliesin.
“Creating a surprise for the Saxons, should they decide to continue the assault.” Taliesin threw a glance at Goronwy over his shoulder. “We could use the help.”
Which is how Goronwy found himself suddenly changed from knight to serf as Taliesin ordered them all about during the time it took for the last of the able-bodied men to reach the gatehouse.
“You’ve never shown us this type of magic before,” Goronwy said.
Taliesin glanced up from his work and then back to the series of complicated knots he was tying. “We’ve never needed it quite this much before.” Goronwy didn’t know about that, and was about to say so, when Taliesin added, “Anyone who uses magic pays a price. It wouldn’t do for me to use it unless in absolute need, nor for any of you to come to rely on it.” One more glance. “And I’m stronger now than I was.”
Last of all, Cade and Bedwyr came flying across the field towards them.
Cade reined in under the darkness of the trees and removed his cloak so they could see him. He stood in the stirrups to look east. “The Saxons will come. I’m sure of it. But we have a little time.” He lifted his chin to indicate the complex weaves of ropes that Taliesin had painstakingly crafted and that his friends had interspersed among the trees. “What’s this?”
“When the Saxons come, you will see.” Taliesin looked up at Cade. “You fought well. You saved many men.”
“It helped that the Saxons have no demons among them this time,” Cade said. “It leaves me with a prickling at the back of my neck. Perhaps Mabon is waiting for his chance to hound me the moment I put my guard down.”
“We’ll just have to do our best until then.” Taliesin said this absently, his tongue peeking between his teeth as he concentrated on the task he’d set himself.
“How can you—” Cade bit off the words and looked away, back across the fields littered with fallen Welshmen. Crows and birds of prey gathered above them, spiraling down in ever smaller circles to come to land. “We can’t even bury our dead.”
“We have a war to fight,” Taliesin said. “It’s time to get on with it.”
Dafydd moved closer. “The men who can count have done so and come up with long odds.”
“I know,” Cade said. “We’ve had long odds before.”
“But not under these circumstances,” Goronwy said.
“What with the knife, we have enough food to last us as long as needed,” Cade said. “We can survive on half-rations for a long time.”
“To what end?” Dafydd said. “We hold out until the Saxons give up or falter from illness? How long will that take? And how long, then, are we penned in here like sheep in a stockade while other armies lay wast
e to our lands?”
“We still haven’t heard from Rhun and Siawn,” Goronwy said. “They will come.”
“If they can,” Cade said. “Another army just like this one could be marching out of Chester as we speak. The northern barons have had their hands full too in recent months.”
Taliesin shook his head. “This is useless wondering and unlike you—all of you.” The bard checked the sky. “They’ll come as the sun sets. We have an hour, maybe two. Let’s use it. We all have work to do.”
And that was that.
“I’ll save any wounded man I can.” Cade turned his horse’s head and trotted back towards the field, draping the cloak around himself and disappearing just before he hit the sunlight beyond the trees.
“Why are you so calm?” Goronwy said to Taliesin. None of them had mentioned the despair and rage that Goronwy had been feeling ever since he learned the size of the Saxon force and that Rhys intended to march against them.
“And what would I gain by despair?” Taliesin said.
“Did you know this would happen?” Goronwy said.
The bard stopped working. “My gift is neither clear nor certain. I see a host of possible futures. Sometimes it’s worse than seeing none at all.” He shrugged. “Almost. Every choice made both reduces and expands the possible futures. It’s when they narrow to only one that I begin to worry.”
“And have they? The paths you see?” Goronwy said.
Taliesin studied him. “Not yet.”
“So you don’t know what will happen?” Goronwy said.
With a slight shake of his head, Taliesin went back to his weaving of rope. “I know only what could.”
Chapter Seven
Hywel
Hywel glared over the ramparts at the oncoming force and barked a laugh. It was too late for second guessing. “A few hundred men from Gwynedd against a host of Saxons we’ve barely stung.”
Rise of the Pendragon (The Last Pendragon Saga Book 6) Page 4