Angharad peered at the gash in his upper arm. “Did Mabon do that to you? Why isn’t it bleeding?”
Dafydd held out Dyrnwyn. He didn’t quite know what to do with it.
“Is that—?” Angharad said.
“Dyrnwyn. Or at least I thought so, but now I’m not so sure. Its fire has gone out.” He focused on her face. “Your father told me to get you away from here, along with … whatever it is you’ve got. Where is it?”
“In the bags, along with the bandages. I need to wrap your arm.”
“We have no time,” Dafydd said.
“You can’t ride with a hole in your arm.”
Angharad pulled a length of clean linen from a pouch on the back of the lively grey she’d led from the stables and, without a by-your-leave, wrapped it tightly around his arm. He gazed down at her, silent with gritted teeth, while she tied the ends. The wound still burned him, but she’d pressed the insides of the gash together and lessened the pain enough that Dafydd could unclench his left hand from the hilt of his sword and sheath it.
“I’ve saddled your horse too.” She clicked her tongue. His horse, Llelo, whickered softly from the darkness of the stable.
One-handed, Dafydd pulled a blanket from his bags, wrapped Dyrnwyn in it, and tucked it under his saddle bags, with an assist from Angharad when he couldn’t lift the bag and slide the sword under it at the same time. Then he pulled open the postern gate. “What happened to the guard?”
“I sent him to help my father in the hall,” Angharad said.
Dafydd smiled inwardly. “I like you much better this way.” He led Llelo through the gate, and Angharad pushed it closed behind her.
“What do you mean—you like me better this way?”
Dafydd glanced at her, not sure if he should explain, but then he decided that if he didn’t tell her the truth, his dissembling would act as a barrier between them. “I overheard your argument with Lilwen, the first day I was at Castle Clydog.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry.” He shrugged. “It wasn’t entirely by accident, but you had been so unkind …” His voice trailed off as he realized she was glaring at him again.
“I can’t decide whether to be angry, hurt, or embarrassed.”
“How about none of those? How about we start now as we mean to go on—as friends.”
Angharad looked away, worrying at her lip with her teeth, but then she nodded. “I would like that. Where are we going?”
“Dinas Bran.”
Angharad took the news with no more than a hard swallow, the same acceptance she’d showed with everything Dafydd had asked from her so far this morning. They mounted their horses and turned them towards the Roman road that ran northeast from Clydog’s fort. Their horse’s hooves thudded on the ancient cobbles, which the years had filled in with moss and dirt.
“Where does this road lead?” Dafydd said.
“Caersws,” Angharad said, and then she shrugged, “Eventually.”
Dafydd glanced at her. “It goes all that way? You’re not serious?”
“Yes, of course,” Angharad said. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I should have known that to reach Dinas Bran we’d have to go through Caersws on the way north, but I hadn’t thought that far ahead.”
Angharad picked up on the hesitation in his voice. “What happened at Caersws?”
“Not so much there, but at Llanllugan, a few miles north of the crossroads,” Dafydd said. “We fought a great battle. I’d just as soon not revisit it.”
“Is it the place you fought the demons, before King Cadwaladr went to Caer Dathyl?”
“So you were listening when I talked to your father.”
“Of course.”
Dafydd checked behind them for the twentieth time. He was beginning to think that they might have gotten away without detection, but he almost didn’t dare admit it to himself. Still, when facing Mabon, it was hard to say if it was possible to outrun him. He glanced at the sky.
“What are you looking for?” Angharad said. “You keep looking at the road behind us and then at the sun.”
“It’s going down,” Dafydd said.
“Why does that matter?”
“You haven’t traveled far in your life, have you?”
Angharad looked affronted. Dafydd grimaced inwardly. He’d been sparring with Angharad for three days and had forgotten that they’d declared a truce.
“We went all the way to Caer Dathyl last summer, as I told you. I am not a child.”
“I didn’t say you were,” Dafydd said. “It’s just that it stays light so late in the summer that you would never have worried about the dark. Believe me, today, we need to worry.”
“Because of Mabon?”
“Him and other things I’m not going to tell you about just yet. Not until I have to.”
“I hate it when men are cryptic, as if I couldn’t understand the truth. As if I have no knowledge of the way the world works.” She looked away from him, and Dafydd hoped they weren’t going to revert back to the Lilwen version of Angharad instead of the genuine one.
Dafydd studied her downturned head. “I would prefer it if you never need to understand. However, I will tell you when you need to know. Either that, or I will tell you when we have reached safety and it no longer matters. I promise.”
Angharad nodded her head, though she still didn’t look at him.
“All you need to do is look at that.” Dafydd gestured towards the mountains looming ahead of them. The road bent and weaved around them, hardly the straight path for which the Romans usually strove. “If we’re going to get through those, it isn’t going to be tonight, as much as I’d like to continue in the dark.”
“We’re going to have to sleep outside?” Angharad clutched the reins more tightly. As for Dafydd, he knew well that tendril of fear curling inside at the thought of sleeping outside, unprotected by a company of soldiers.
Dafydd wanted to reassure her. “We have blankets and food. I’ll build a fire and keep watch. It didn’t even rain today, so the ground won’t be wet.”
“Why don’t we just go back?” Angharad said. “You said yourself that Mabon disappeared from the hall and didn’t return. I want to know what’s happened to my family.”
“Your father told me to get you to safety—to get both you and this thing you carry that Mabon wants. I think your father knows that it is no longer safe at Castell Clydog.” Dafydd paused. “I have never heard that a pillow could be so dangerous.”
“It isn’t really a pillow,” Angharad said. “It’s just wrapped up inside one.”
“So what is it?”
“I don’t know.”
Dafydd opened his mouth to speak—perhaps even to mock her—and then thought better of it. They were dancing around each other right now, trying to figure out how to talk to each other after their rocky start. He didn’t want to raise her hackles if he didn’t have to.
An hour later and a good fifteen miles from Castell Clydog, they sat together on a log, deep in the woods to the east of the road. Angharad had checked Dafydd’s arm again. It oozed lymph now, which meant it was healing, but it burned like hot fat sprayed from a pan, and his left arm and hand remained nearly useless. With some effort, Dafydd had managed to light a smokeless fire.
“All right. Let’s see what your father has risked so much to keep safe. I don’t want to travel any farther without knowing what he’s given you. If we can shed any light at all on why Mabon might want it and how it might serve him, I think that could only be a good thing.”
Angharad opened her satchel and pulled out the pillow. “My father gave this to me three years ago. Even then he’d wrapped it in soft sacking, so I couldn’t see what it was. He never told me, and I didn’t ask. He told me to hide it in plain sight.”
“So you covered it in the richest fabric you could find.” Dafydd rubbed a finger along the fine needlework. She’d embroidered the deep blue fabric with her family’s crest.
A
ngharad set it in her lap and with her belt knife carefully removed the stitching along one side of the pillow. Then she handed the open pillow to Dafydd. “I’d prefer that you do it. Just pull it out.”
With a wary look at her, he took the pillow, reached inside, and tugged the sacking into the open. Unfolding the top, he looked inside, looked at her, and then reached in. Out came a six-foot length of black cloth. It cascaded through Dafydd’s hands. They both stared at it, and then Dafydd stood up and shook it out.
“It’s a cloak.” He held it higher. It was designed for a man of his stature and looked much like the cloaks the demons at the wedding had worn, with enveloping expanses of fabric and deep hoods.
“Put it on, my lord.”
Shrugging his acceptance, even if the comparison to the demons’ cloaks gave him a moment’s pause, Dafydd swung the fabric over his shoulders. He held out his arms and spun on one heel full circle until he faced Angharad again. “It’s just a cloak. Why would Mabon want this one? He’s got dozens probably.”
Angharad sat with her hand to her mouth.
“What is it? I haven’t grown horns have I?”
“Take it off!” The words came out strangled, as if Angharad’s throat had closed over them. “Right now! Give it to me!”
Puzzled, Dafydd did as she asked. “What’s wrong?” And then when Angharad began stuffing the cloak back into the sacking with frantic movements, “What are you afraid of?”
Angharad stopped. Visibly trying to gain control, she tipped her head back to look up at the leaves above her head and took a deep breath. “This isn’t an ordinary cloak, Dafydd.” She eased the cloth back out of the sacking, stood, and held it high so that it wouldn’t drag on the ground. “When you put it on, you disappeared.”
Dafydd stared at her. “Surely not.”
“Watch.” Angharad swung the cloak around herself as Dafydd had earlier.
As soon as the fabric settled on her shoulders, she vanished. Dafydd’s heart sank to see it. Or rather, not see it. Somehow, he wasn’t even surprised. He studied the space where he’d last seen her and rubbed his jaw line with his good hand. “I hate magic. It up ends too much of what I think I know.”
“But it isn’t all bad.” Angharad reappeared, three feet away from where she’d been when she’d put the cloak on. It lay limp in her hand, looking like nothing more than a fine garment that any lord would be proud to wear. “Perhaps we need the use of it in order to face Mabon. We can hardly be expected to counter him if he has all the advantages and we have nothing to hand ourselves.”
“Maybe you have something there,” Dafydd said. “Certainly, we couldn’t have defeated Arawn without King Cadwaladr. He is sidhe and carries a magic sword.”
“There you go.” Angharad allowed the cloak to settle onto her lap in folds. “Magic has its uses.”
“I never said it didn’t, but just think what could happen if this cloak fell into the wrong hands.”
“Mabon’s hands.”
“Those hands wouldn’t have to be Mabon’s to do great damage.”
“It would be of benefit to a thief at the very least,” Angharad said.
“To anyone who planned mischief,” Dafydd said.
Angharad carefully encased the cloak in its pillow once again. When she finished, she clutched it to her chest and just stared at Dafydd. He didn’t know her well enough to read her eyes as yet, but surely there was uncertainty there, as well as calculation.
“You were right,” Dafydd said. “This is a more dangerous and precious thing than I could have imagined. More so even than a sword. No wonder your father refused to give it to Mabon.”
“But he wants to leave it in King Cadwaladr’s keeping.” Angharad looked down at the pillow. “Why?”
“Because even if your father didn’t use it himself, he doesn’t want Mabon to have it.”
“And why didn’t my father use it for himself?” Angharad grabbed Dafydd’s pack without asking his permission and stuffed the pillow into it. Before he could protest, she answered her own question. “Maybe it was too tempting. Like misers who count their gold but never spend it. Their possessions haunt them, even as they can’t enjoy them.”
“I suspect your father didn’t feel he could use it, or else he wouldn’t have given it to you to keep.”
“Perhaps,” Angharad said.
Dafydd settled himself back onto the log, the strap to his pack in his hand. He didn’t know what to do with it. He daren’t let it out of his sight and would probably have to actually use it as a pillow from now on, just to keep it safe. “I’m wondering why Mabon wanted it. He disappeared during the fight in the hall all on his own. He doesn’t need a magic cloak to become invisible.”
“And although he had a magic sword, it didn’t do him any good either,” Angharad said.
“What do you mean?”
Angharad gestured to Dafydd. “You defeated him.”
“That’s because his sword wasn’t magic—or at least not the way Dyrnwyn should be or King Cadwaladr’s Caledfwlch is.” Dafydd went to his horse and pulled out the sword. He looked down at it, tracing the writing etched into the blade with his eyes. The swirls were impossible for him to decipher, and he dismissed them as meaningless, just like the sword. He held it out to Angharad, but she put up her hands and backed away.
“No, not for me.”
“It’s all right,” he said, still urging it on her. “It won’t hurt you. It feels lifeless when I hold it.”
“Then you hold it. Besides, why would it respond to you? You’re not a god like Mabon.”
Dafydd swallowed hard, finding that her criticism hurt. He’d hoped they were beyond that. Then he met her eyes and realized that she wasn’t disparaging him. She honestly didn’t know the mythology of the sword. “Only a noble man can wield Dyrnwyn. Those who fall short will find that the hilt burns their hand, and they can’t hold it.”
“And because it doesn’t burn yours, you think it isn’t the true sword? Maybe you are worthy of it.”
Dafydd was suddenly feeling much better. He decided that telling her the truth about his experience with Dyrnwyn wasn’t boasting, but instead was necessary so she could understand what they faced. “I held Dyrnwyn in Arawn’s cavern. I pulled it from King Cadwaladr’s belly after Arawn thrust it through him. At the time, it allowed me to hold it, that’s true, but it certainly didn’t feel this comfortable in my hand. This can’t be the same sword. This one is a fake.”
“Why would Mabon bring a false Dyrnwyn to Castell Clydog?” Angharad said.
“I don’t know. To frighten us? Mabon sent two demons to Deganwy Castle to get Dyrnwyn, since he believed King Cadwaladr had it. When this sword lit in your father’s hall, it didn’t make me happy, but I merely assumed that he’d found it after all.”
“Yet he didn’t.”
“So has he given up the search? He came to Castell Clydog seeking this cloak,” Dafydd said.
“And almost found it.”
“But again, didn’t.”
Angharad tugged on a stray red curl as she thought. “He seems to be looking for magic items, my lord, ones that might be useful to us if we found them first or kept them from him.”
“What else might he be seeking—and why?”
Chapter Five
Goronwy
Caerleon in Gwent, a fort the Romans called Isca, was as far away from the Isle of Man where Goronwy had grown up as he’d ever been. At thirty, with over ten years of fighting on the mainland under his belt, it had been a long time since he’d thought of Man as home. Leaving the island had been the right decision, for him and for Dafydd. The island was too small for so many brothers to share, and it was their eldest brother, Merfyn, who would succeed to the throne upon the death of their father, Cynin.
It was fortunate that Merfyn, Goronwy, and Dafydd, each born to a different mother and many years apart, felt no animosity towards one another. Goronwy had understood since he was a small child that the kingdom would ne
ver be his, and he would have to make his way in the world on his own merits, with no land to claim and no inheritance, other than the sword he carried and the training to use it.
Still, memories of his childhood came increasingly back to him the older he grew and the longer he stayed away. If he survived the coming confrontation with the Saxons, he’d make a trip home to see his family one more time before his father died.
Goronwy passed a marking stone and traced the writing on it with his eyes. Few knights knew how to read these days. It seemed that knowledge had left Britain with the Romans, except for a few bastions of learning. Like all royal sons on the Isle of Man, however, Goronwy had learned Latin, for no other reason than because his father believed that a man wasn’t educated unless he knew Latin and by God his sons were going to be educated!
Goronwy was Christian enough to find the language—and the religion that came with it—useful, whatever Taliesin thought. He appreciated the way the language gave shape to his thoughts that his Welsh couldn’t properly express. But the Romans were gone now, and all that remained of them were their roads and ruined forts. The Welsh still used the roads, though only a few lords and kings were brave enough to rehabilitate their forts. Clydog, the man to whom Dafydd had been sent was one. King Arthur of Gwent, a man Cade called his uncle, but who was actually a slightly more complicated older relation, was another.
The fort of Caerleon was a huge and sprawling complex of buildings, and Goronwy couldn’t see how Arthur could possibly defend it. It lay in a bend of the River Usk, less than five miles as the crow flies from the sea, though longer by boat along the winding river. Goronwy passed through the open gate into a bustling courtyard that was more small city than fort.
“Welcome, my friend!” King Arthur’s great voice boomed from the entrance to one of the main buildings. “Pardon the crush, but it’s market day.”
“I’m glad to see things are going well for you.” Goronwy dismounted and allowed Arthur to hammer him on the back. The man was fifty if he was a day, but he was still as broad and strong as the bear for whom he was named.
The Pendragon's Champions (The Last Pendragon Saga Book 5) Page 5