The Pendragon's Champions (The Last Pendragon Saga Book 5)

by Sarah Woodbury

  Both of them were soaked through, having left their cloaks with the horses in Goch’s hut. They’d dressed in black, which was Bedwyr’s normal gear, but Hywel had to borrow from him, and his shirt was larger than he liked, though as the rain had plastered it to his body, the size was no longer so noticeable. Hywel hoped their black clothing would give them a moment of grace before the enemy guards recognized them. In that space of time, as short as it might be, he and Bedwyr would disarm, disable, or kill them. In preparation for the task of climbing, which they had to manage first, Hywel wore gloves, had slung his sword over his back by the leather belt, and left off his armor.

  “Time to go,” Bedwyr said.

  Hywel grasped the rope and began to climb up the sheer cliff face, hand over hand, his feet searching for purchase in the crevices in the rock. He reached the point where the curtain wall joined the bedrock and rested on the six-inch-wide landing afforded by the top of the cliff face. In Vortigern’s time it might have been wider, but whatever grass and dirt had once embedded itself there had eroded away.

  Hywel tugged again on the hook.

  “Steady,” Bedwyr said, the sound coming out a harsh whisper.

  “I’m good.” Hywel back tipped his head to see up the wall. His sister’s window showed twenty feet above him. Rain blew in his face, forcing him to close his eyes against it. The weather had turned out to be a blessing: its patter on the stones was so loud, coupled with the rushing river, that it disguised the sound of their movements. It also discouraged the enemy from putting much effort into scouting the exterior of the castle.

  Goch had knotted the rope every foot to help with the climb, and now Hywel abandoned the quest for crevices and merely climbed straight up the rope with the strength of his arms. At last, he flung one arm over the window sill, rested a moment just hanging on, and pulled himself inside the room. As Hywel’s father had promised, no one slept in the bed. A single candle stood on a table by the door, flickering in the breeze that came through the open window.

  The instant Hywel’s weight left from the rope, Bedwyr began climbing. Hywel leaned out the window, watching for his dark head to reach the level of the sill. It felt far longer than it had taken Hywel, but Bedwyr was a much larger man and hadn’t ever climbed this way before. And it was probably just Hywel’s imagination anyway.

  At last, Bedwyr flung a boot over the window frame, swung the rest of his body up and into the room, and collapsed on the floor with a muffled thud. Hywel was already at the door, but Bedwyr held out a hand to stay him.

  “Give me a moment.” His breath came hard and he bent over, gripping his knees. “I don’t know that I could hold a sword just now.”

  Hywel channeled his impatience by closing his eyes and breathing deeply and evenly, talking himself through what they might face on the other side of the door. Then Bedwyr straightened, and Hywel opened his eyes.

  “Once I open this door, there’s no going back,” Hywel said.

  “I know,” Bedwyr said.

  “Are we searching the fort separately or together?” Hywel said.

  “Separately,” Bedwyr said. “Point me in the proper direction and I’ll do what needs doing—just as I know you will.”

  “I find it likely that whoever has taken the fort will have placed men along the wall walk. To reach it, once you’re through this door, turn to the left. The corridor leads to a door at the end of the hall which opens onto the battlements. I will go to the right—to my father’s room.”

  Bedwyr held his knife, rather than his sword, which he’d buckled again at his waist in preparation for a fight. Hywel did the same, tightening the leather and loosening the sword in its sheath. They shared a glance, Bedwyr nodded, and Hywel carefully opened the bedroom door. He muffled the sound of the latch with one hand as he’d learned to do as a boy when he wanted to leave his room without waking his nanny or his father.

  The door opened inward. Hywel eased past it and poked his head into the hallway. Quickly he pulled back. A man stood guard outside his parents’ room. The man had his shoulder braced against the wall but was looking towards the stairs, not down the hall in Hywel’s direction. The guard had the expectant set to his shoulders of a man waiting for his relief.

  Hywel held up one finger to Bedwyr before stepping around the doorframe on tiptoe. The guard in front of him still hadn’t moved—perhaps too focused on the stairs—which was his bad luck. In two strides, Hywel reached him. Before the guard had a chance to turn or shout an alarm, Hywel wrapped his arm around his head, stuffed the curve of his bracer between the man’s teeth, and twisted. The man’s neck cracked.

  Hywel grasped the body under the shoulders, and Bedwyr came around to lift the feet. Rather than drag him, which would have made noise, they carried him into the bedroom they’d just vacated. They laid him on the floor, mindful of Nest’s unstated preference for not spoiling the bed.

  “Quickly now,” Bedwyr said.

  Through the doorway again, they moved in opposite directions. Hywel glanced back once to see Bedwyr open the door to the battlements and disappear through it. Hywel pulled the latch to his parents’ bedchamber, praying that his father expected him, and nudged the door open. His father stood in the center of the room, fully clothed, watching for him. He grimaced as Hywel entered but, for once, it wasn’t in disappointment with Hywel.

  “We’re dealing with madmen. I have never felt so helpless in my life.” It was the most honest statement Hywel had ever heard from him.

  “Whose men are they?” Hywel said.

  “I don’t know. All they do is keep asking where is it? and nothing else. As if I would ever tell them.”

  In friendlier times and because Hywel was his father’s only son, Deiniol had confided in him, so now Hywel nodded his understanding. “They want the knife.”

  “It appears so,” Deiniol said. “But I still don’t know who wants it.”

  “Perhaps I do.” Hywel glanced around the room. “Where’s mother?”

  “Seeing to a woman in the village. Births continue, whether the men in black want them to or not.”

  “And you made sure they asked for her, even if the woman only thought the baby might come tonight.”

  His father tipped his head in acknowledgement of this deception.

  “We’ve three of us now.” Hywel pulled his sword from its sheath and handed it, hilt out, to his father. “Use this.”

  Deiniol gazed at the sword, at his son, and then reached for the weapon. “I knew you’d come.”

  Hywel gaze held a wary cast. “I would hope so.”

  “We’ve exchanged harsh words in the past, and will again,” Deiniol said. “Nothing’s changed.”

  “I’ve changed.” Hywel turned from his father and strode to the door, looked out, and waved a hand for his father to come beside him. “I killed one. Bedwyr is attending to the guards on the battlements. Goch said a dozen men had overtaken the castle. Is that accurate?”

  “There are ten of them,” Deiniol said. “I may never allow a stranger in the door again.”

  “How did they overpower the garrison?”

  “They didn’t. They asked for hospitality, and I admitted them, not knowing why I shouldn’t. It wasn’t that we weren’t prepared, but …” He paused and pursed his lips.

  Hywel studied his father’s downturned head, waiting.

  Deiniol nodded. “No, you are right, though I thank you for not saying it. We were unprepared. They were Welsh, and no Welsh lord has challenged me in many years. They murdered half the garrison in their sleep and poisoned the rest.”

  “I don’t judge you, Father,” Hywel said. “Anyone could have made the same mistake.”

  “Including King Cadwaladr?”

  Hywel gave him a grudging laugh. “Perhaps not him. But betrayal is a recent memory for him. His father was murdered by one of his own lords who then usurped the throne and married his mother. It isn’t easy for him to trust.”

  “And yet he allowed Cadfael to ambu
sh him and kill all of his men, including his foster-father, Cynyr of Bryn y Castell.”

  “As I said, yours was a mistake anyone could have made.” He led the way out of the bedroom and down the stairs, keeping to the wall, his knife extended. Below him in the hall, men snored in a cacophony of sound.

  “Five watch, five sleep,” Deiniol said. “It’s been this way for three days.”

  “All ten die,” Hywel said.

  He and his father stepped into the hall. Hywel pointed to two men opposite each other, asleep with their heads on the table, their glasses of mead empty.

  Those are yours, Hywel’s hand said. He took the three at a near table. Two slept as the others, while the last sprawled on his back on a bench.

  His father nodded and moved toward the sleeping men. When they reached the tables, father and son gazed at each other for half a heartbeat. Then, Hywel put the knife between his teeth and held up his hand to count with his fingers: one, two three. He killed the first sleeping man as he had the guard in the hall: with a hard twist that snapped his neck.

  Then, recapturing the knife, Hywel leapt on the table and kicked at the head of the second sleeping man with such force that it threw him backwards off his bench. The third man died with his throat slit. That one wasn’t a clean death, however. When blood spattered all over Hywel’s clothing, he had to swallow the bile that threatened to unman him, and he finished the job with an awkward slash that nearly severed the man’s neck from his body.

  His father, meanwhile, had dispatched his first opponent, but was having trouble with the second, who’d woken in time to pull his belt knife from its sheath and fend off Deiniol’s attack with it. The man grabbed a spindle chair that had been set against the wall behind him to keep Deiniol at bay.

  Hywel strode towards the soldier. “Surrender and you’ll live.”

  Deiniol glanced at him, a flash of skepticism in his eyes, but Hywel ignored it. He believed King Cadwaladr would have given the man a chance.

  The man didn’t take it. “Never!”

  Before the soldier could do something they all might regret, the front door flew open, and Bedwyr strode in. Blood, distinguishable from the black of his water-logged shirt only in that it glistened in the torchlight, covered his front.

  “Are you all right?” Hywel said.

  “A minor head wound.” Bedwyr brandished his sword, also coated in blood. He took in the scene with a glance, then walked toward this last enemy soldier. “You have a death wish, eh?”

  The man refused to cower, but he was trying to look out of the corners of both eyes at the same time, to keep Deiniol, Bedwyr, and Hywel in view. He was outnumbered, however, and his three opponents were in accord. Deiniol grabbed the leg of the chair the man held while Bedwyr prodded him in the back with the tip of his sword. “Put up the knife.”

  The man raised his hands in surrender, and Hywel stepped forward to grasp his arm at the wrist. The knife clattered to the floor. “Who is your master? You should at least be able to tell us that.”

  “I serve Barinthus, the mighty.”

  “Who?” Hywel said. The word came out instinctively, and he cursed himself for showing ignorance. It was a mistake to show any weakness, and he’d been holding himself together hard for the last hour, even if throughout the entire adventure he’d worried that a puff of wind would pull him apart at the seams.

  Deiniol leaned in, his voice low. “He is a charioteer to the Underworld.”

  That explained a lot.

  “And whom does he serve?” Hywel said.

  “Mabon, lord of the worlds.” The man was a font of information.

  Bedwyr smirked. “That’s what he’s calling himself these days?” He shook his head. “Such cheek.”

  “And what is Mabon up to now?” Hywel said.

  “I don’t know,” the man said. “He told us to ask for it and when Lord Deiniol gave it to us, to bring it to him.”

  “Where?” Hywel said.

  “A Saxon place. Near Shrewsbury.”

  Hywel and Bedwyr exchanged a look and Hywel said, for his father’s benefit, “It is near Shrewsbury that the Saxons gather, and at Caer Fawr where we are to meet King Cadwaladr.”

  “I wonder what Taliesin would have to say about this?” Bedwyr said.

  “I don’t like this meddling from the world of the sidhe,” Deiniol said. “I have heard many rumors these last weeks, with King Cadwaladr at the center of them.”

  “Some might even be true,” Bedwyr said.

  Deiniol flushed red, and he put his face right into the captive’s. “You’re telling me that this Mabon is responsible for the death of my men and the terrorizing of my people?”

  The man swallowed and then gave Deiniol a slight nod. Deiniol glared at him for another count of ten and then stepped back, his color subsiding. He glanced at Hywel. “If even a fraction of what I’ve heard is true, King Cadwaladr might be one of the few men who can stop Mabon.”

  “I believe he can,” Hywel said. “I ask your leave to go to him.”

  Deiniol had been studying the captive again and now faced his son fully. “You do not need my leave.”

  “But I would like it.”

  “Then you have it,” Deiniol said.

  Just like that. As if the two of them hadn’t spent the last fifteen years fighting about what Hywel could and could not do.

  Deiniol gestured to Barinthus’s man. “What do I do with him?”

  Hywel shrugged. “Let him go. He has failed in his mission. Either Barinthus or Mabon will find him. We all might prefer it if he wasn’t here when that happens.”

  “No! No!” The man fell to his knees at Hywel’s feet. “You can’t send me out there alone!”

  “What you planned for my family was far worse,” Hywel said.

  The man’s face took on an even more desperate look. And then before Hywel realized what he was doing, he grasped Hywel’s hand with both of his and thrust himself upon the knife that Hywel still held. Hywel staggered to one knee under the man’s weight while blood from the wound poured over their hands. Deiniol grasped the man’s shoulders to try to pull him away, but by the time he managed it and laid him on the floor, death had taken him.

  “I don’t understand what this gains the poor bastard,” Bedwyr said. “He’s dead. Now he goes to Arawn, Mabon’s father, in the Underworld.”

  Hywel chewed on his lip as he looked down at the body. “I think he has unknowingly given us a gift.”

  Bedwyr glanced at his friend. “What do you mean?”

  “Mabon has been with Arianrhod since she took him out of Arawn’s cavern at Caer Dathyl. Thus, we can’t assume that Arawn knows what Mabon has been doing since then.”

  “But now he does,” Deiniol said, understanding in his face. “This man will tell him.”

  “You do realize that Arawn could approve of his son’s activities,” Bedwyr said.

  “I wouldn’t be so sure that he will,” Hywel said. “Arawn has spoiled Mabon, but meddling in the human world as Mabon has—in pursuit of his own power, possibly at their expense—is not something any of the sidhe take lightly. Taliesin told me that the truce between the children of Don and the children of Llyr is predicated upon none of them using the human world as a tool or a shield. If nothing else, Beli, King of the Otherworld, will not approve.”

  Bedwyr toed the body. “Would someone mind telling me why Barinthus sent men here? What is it, this time?”

  Chapter Nine

  Dafydd

  They’d traveled through two nights and two days, hardly stopping for rest, but now they had to. Dafydd’s wound ached more with every hour that passed. He had been trying to keep his pain a secret from Angharad, but he was pretty sure he hadn’t succeeded, and even more, wasn’t sure how much longer he could go on pretending he was fine.

  Fear. He’d known it before, of course. The bitterness of it caught in the back of his throat. He’d been afraid for himself and Rhiann at the battle by Llanllugan. He only peripherally
had had the consciousness at the time to be afraid for all the people behind him, though those thoughts had preoccupied Rhiann’s mind. Fear had nearly overwhelmed him again in Arawn’s cavern and, that time it had been for his friends, more than himself, and specifically for Cade. Blood had pooled in Cade’s mouth, but Dafydd had tasted it in his.

  Now, it was not for himself that he was afraid, but for Angharad, who was nearly as innocent has he’d been when he’d left Orkney over a year ago. There had been times, as they passed through the mountains that formed a barrier across Wales, when he’d thought about using the cloak—for protection, for relief from the fear of prying eyes—but something had always stayed his hand. He was afraid that its use wouldn’t be without consequences. At the back of his mind, he even wondered if wearing the cloak wouldn’t make him more visible to Mabon, that in joining the unseen world of the sidhe, the sidhe could see him more clearly.

  He wished the cloak was at least warm. He could have risked swinging it over both of them if it could have provided them with something to keep the cold at bay. He’d slept outside plenty in his life. Why he was so cold tonight he didn’t know, even with the blankets they shared. But now his arm ached so much that it threatened to drive everything else from his mind. Angharad had checked his wound again, and there was no pus within it, but his arm felt wrong. Over the last two days, he’d been able to use it less, not more, as it supposedly healed.

  They lay side by side. Dafydd hadn’t offered to bring her into the circle of his good arm, though he’d thought about it. So they lay back to back instead, each gazing into the darkness beyond their immediate circle of trees.

  “I’m glad I came with you, my lord,” Angharad said.

  Dafydd had hoped she was asleep. He scootched a little and rolled onto his back. “I can’t imagine why. This has to be the worst two days of your life.”

  “I’ve never done anything important before.” And then she paused. “No one has ever needed me to.”

  Dafydd thought about that for a moment. “Before I left the Isle of Man, that was true for me as well. I think feeling that way is part of growing up.”