by Headlee, Kim
A few women, some with squalling bairns riding their hips, lingered in wretched anguish near the pit. Hooded monks consoled the living and performed rites to send the valiant to eternal rest. If Dafydd worked among them, Gyan couldn’t tell. The monks’ chants lent a somber chorus to the mourners’ wails and the violent percussion of the soldiers’ labors.
The requiem coaxed a familiar tingling to course through her. Eyes closed, she silently recited the Caledonach warrior’s lament.
A warrior is slain today, ne’er to fight another day…
The pyres, the common grave, taking items from the dead of both armies…all his foes around him lay, the price in crimson blood to pay…
It seemed so hideously impersonal.
None was comelier of face, wielding sword with braver grace; no bolder lover did embrace his lass, and none can ever take his place.
She understood the reasons well: custom, expediency, space limitations, and economics. She hoped she had masked overt signs of being affected. The moisture in her eyes dictated otherwise.
Leaders, she realized with abrupt clarity, were never meant to become hardened to war’s tragic aftermath lest they forget its primary purpose as a method of enforcing peace.
Now fights he in the Otherworld, helmet golden, sword of pearl, bright banner proudly unfurl’d, dark minions into hell forever hurl!
The lament never would be sung for her son.
And because of her rash actions, it never would be sung for the warrior who had failed to save him.
Her heart felt as wrung out as damp linen.
Angusel she might never see again, but the monks reminded her of one final service she could perform for Loholt. She spurred Macmuir into a breakneck plunge down the hillside, an echo of the previous night’s battle frenzy thrumming in her veins. She might have enjoyed it if grief weren’t throttling her soul.
“God’s wounds!” shouted a familiar voice behind her.
As the ground leveled, she halted Macmuir and twisted in the saddle to watch Arthur careen to the valley floor and rein his borrowed horse to a sliding stop beside her. With his cloak fretting in the breeze, sunlight exploded off his bronzed shoulders in a blazing aura.
“How many went lame in the charge?” His expression’s fiery intensity made him seem less like her consort than Nemetona’s.
She studied the steep, rock-strewn terrain and shrugged. “I haven’t seen the reports yet.” His disapproval smote her with palpable force. “It was a calculated risk. Something Gideon the Hebrew might have planned.” Mentally, she girded herself for his inevitable rebuke.
He surprised her with a chuckle. “The Lord indeed granted you a miracle.”
Obtaining Angusel’s forgiveness and other such miracles seemed far beyond reach. Achieving peace with herself topped the list. Eyes watering, she looked away.
“Your victory didn’t leave me a lot to do. The Saxons at the beachhead were exhausted. We took few prisoners.” Sorrow lurked within his quiet words and not, she suspected, because of an easy win.
Nearby, a soldier swiped at a raven. The bird flapped lazily out of reach and fluttered down to peck at another corpse, gulping gobbets of flesh. Gyan grimaced.
“My victory? You don’t intend to claim the credit?”
“The bards may insist on giving it to me, but I know you did a brilliant job. That hell-bent charge must have been divinely inspired.” He groped inside a pouch dangling from his belt and withdrew a shining object. Her eyes widened with surprise spawned by recognition. “You have earned this, Comitissa Britanniam.”
“‘Lady-Companion of Brydein’?” she asked. Arthur, as the legion’s war-chieftain, was called Dux Britanniarum, “Duke of Brydein.” She’d never heard of this other Ròmanach title.
“That is one interpretation. Another is ‘Countess of Brydein.’”
“An army designation?”
“More than a hundred years ago, the men filling the post were titled Comes Britanniarum.” He offered her the cloak-pin. “I am officially reinstating the office.”
“Ha. As what? The war-duke’s bedchamber accessory? Heir-bearer? Chief shield-polisher?”
He rolled his eyes. “As my second-in-command, effective at once. We will conduct a formal ceremony in a few days, in conjunction with the presentation of unit and individual awards.”
Her irritation rose. She craved love and forgiveness from him—and intimacy, if she hadn’t driven him into someone else’s bed. Not military accolades.
A wailing bairn reminded her of her destination. Leaving Arthur holding the cloak-pin, she jabbed Macmuir’s flanks and raced off.
She didn’t get far.
“Commander Gyan, come see what I found!”
Suppressing a sigh, she reined Macmuir toward the shout. Gawain cradled something in his upturned palm, which he surrendered to her.
“What is that?” Arthur asked as he joined them.
Hefting the garnet-studded treasure, she asked Gawain for the body’s whereabouts, and he pointed to a headless corpse. “Prince Ælferd Wlencingsson, the Saxon commander. We extracted the name from one of the wounded prisoners,” she explained to her consort. She dropped the buckle into Gawain’s hands. “Put it back exactly as you found it, Gawain, and remove the body to Port Dhoo-Glass. It’s not to be stripped and burned with the others.”
“Now, Gyan—” Arthur began.
She knotted her eyebrows. “For what I have in mind, that body must not be looted.”
“What, exactly, do you have in mind?”
“A way to inform the Saxons of their invasion’s outcome by receiving a gift from me: Ælferd’s body. His headless body, of course. I will not surrender my prize.” Her glare defied Arthur to disagree. “And I will personally compensate you for the value of the prince’s gear and adornments, if that is your concern.”
He regarded her for a long moment but didn’t countermand her order. She wheeled Macmuir about and kicked him into a canter to put the battlefield—and her consort—behind her as fast as possible.
Chapter 31
ARTHUR WATCHED GYAN’S diminishing form, his hopes for a joyful reunion dwindling just as rapidly. The brooch’s weight dragged at his palm. He tightened his fist and cocked his arm.
“Lord Artyr!”
He lowered his hand and glanced toward the shout. At the valley’s edge, Cynda stood struggling in a soldier’s grasp. He stashed Gyan’s brooch in his pouch, rode over to them, and dismissed the soldier. Cynda glowered at the man’s receding back before returning her attention to Arthur.
“My men have orders to keep the battlefield clear until burial detail is finished,” he said in Caledonian. “What are you doing here?”
“Gyan needs to rest. I came to tell her.” She glanced westward, in the direction Gyan had disappeared. “Where did she go?”
He couldn’t share his guess about her physical destination with Cynda. Of her emotional whereabouts, he felt far less certain. Gyan could have succumbed to anger, pride, grief, despair…“I don’t know.”
“You will follow her.” Not a question but a command.
“She needs to be alone.”
Cynda snatched the bridle and held it firmly. “Dog spittle! She has been alone, my lord, separated from clan and consort and most of her kin these past two turnings of the moon. It has helped her”—she spat, causing the horse to fidget—“that much.”
Good point. And his vow to rescue Gyan from her grief wouldn’t be worth a lake of dog spittle if he let her moodiness best him.
“You win, Cynda.”
She released the bridle, and he tightened his grip on the reins. “Nay, my lord.” She flashed a grin. “You and Gyan win.”
As he set spurs to the gelding’s flanks and the animal cantered forward, he earnestly hoped she would prove to be right.
GYAN KNEW what she had to do, but not in the Caledonach way.
At Arbroch, the hillside above the clan’s burial site featured a vast granite slab gouged with doze
ns of cuplike depressions, many surrounded by rings or spiral patterns. Its carvers had lived and worked and died in mist-shrouded antiquity. Of their stone legacy’s original purpose, not even the seannachaidhean could recall.
Clan Argyll used the slab to memorialize the dead. On a windless evening, candles set into the cups could be seen from the gate tower for all to share in the mourner’s loss.
Regret and sorrow shredded Gyan’s soul. Because Loholt’s body hadn’t been found—and likely never would be—she could not conduct the traditional outdoor memorial service for him.
Standing inside the Sanctuary of the Chalice, she gazed plaintively at the bank of candles on a table before her. Two tapers, flanking a basket of twigs, shed thin beams upon the rows of stubby votive candles, only a few of which had been lit.
The rest stood as dark monuments to dead unremembered.
She reached for a twig but stopped, unable to wrest her mind off her consort to focus upon her son.
That Arthur blamed her for Loholt’s death was the only reasonable explanation for his actions in her quarters. He owed her the courtesy of telling her. By everything holy, Gyan had a right to know! However painful the revelation might prove to be.
Her eyes stung. She rubbed them, trying to fault the pervasive incense, and despised the lie.
The bell’s tolling and the choir’s soft hymn signaled vespers. The chapel’s doors opened, and threescore pairs of sandal-shod feet pattered past her. She had planned to conclude her memorial sooner, to prevent her presence from intruding upon the brethren’s worship.
No. That was a lie, too. She felt utterly unworthy to join them.
Overwhelming remorse and guilt forced her to her knees. Tears spilled from her closed eyes, and she bowed her head lower and lower as the music swelled, until only her hands separated her forehead from the stone floor.
Loholt, my son, please forgive me!
The light touch of a hand on her head startled her. Expecting Dafydd, she straightened to find Arthur kneeling beside her, concern and questions engraved upon his face.
Embarrassment caused her to rasp, “Why are you here?”
Pain flared in his eyes, making her wish she could call the words back. “To grieve for my son.” The pain transformed into frankness. “And for my marriage.”
She arched an eyebrow. As she stood, so did he, and she beckoned him to follow her. They slipped outside, and she set a brisk pace across the monastery’s grounds, ignoring the twilit serenity of their surroundings. Grief had expunged “serenity” from her vocabulary.
As they neared her intended destination, she groaned inwardly.
A year ago in this same apple grove, she and Arthur had reveled in the bliss of their private Eden. This night, they might find themselves banished from it forever.
She faced her consort, her feet planted and arms crossed. “You mourn our marriage? Because you have found someone else to warm your bed?” Sighing, she studied the broken, dead leaves underfoot, feeling just as broken and dead inside. “Not that I would blame you.”
“God’s wounds, Gyan!” She glanced up. “God’s holy, bleeding wounds—another woman, is that what you think?”
“I know not what to think.” She averted her gaze to hide her quivering chin. “Except that…you don’t need a wife who insists on pursuing her own selfish causes. You don’t need”—she twisted away, losing her emotional battle—“me.”
“Yes. I do.” His arms encircled her. “You, Gyanhumara nic Hymar, are the most precious person on earth to me.”
Desperately, she yearned to believe him, but his eyes seemed hooded in the fading light, unfathomable. “Even after Loholt?”
Sorrow invaded his gaze, and he released her. “I grieve for our son, but I don’t hold you responsible. I never did.”
Self-loathing goaded her to say, “Then perhaps you don’t know the whole story.” Heaping fresh reproach upon herself, she confessed point after bitter point.
He gripped her shoulders. “Gyan, you cannot blame yourself. Any other woman would have acted exactly as you did.”
I am not just “any other woman!”
Another lie. A leader she might be, but only by happenstance. She had proven no less selfish and petty than the most vulgar, mean-spirited varlet…and probably even more so.
Tears threatened, and she drew a shuddering breath.
He stroked her shorn hair. “I grieve even more for us.”
“After what I did…can there be an ‘us’ anymore?” Not only for what she’d done to Loholt but to everyone else through her grief-induced rage, everyone except the one man truly deserving of retribution, who lay safely beyond her reach. She chewed a knuckle and looked down.
His fingertips beneath her chin brought her gaze back to his, where she found compassion and love in far greater measure than she deserved. “Gyan, I wouldn’t—couldn’t have it any other way.”
Her throat tightened. She threw her arms about his neck, and he held her close, clasping her head to his chest while her tears washed away her remorse and guilt. The anguish remained, but at last she felt forgiven. And ready to forgive herself.
SHE DRIED her face on her undertunic’s sleeve and offered him a wan smile. He lowered his lips to hers, tentatively, as if exploring unmapped territory. She increased the pressure, and he gladly answered in kind. Their arms and bodies twined like mistletoe to oak. Their lips worked ravenously together until he was unsure who would devour the other first. Her lips tasted sweeter to him than the finest wine.
“God in heaven, Gyan,” he murmured. “I was so worried about you.”
“Because of the Saxons?”
“And our son.” He motioned for her to sit on a nearby bench. She obeyed him as he marshaled his words. He dropped to one knee at her feet. “I need no oaths to remind me how much I love you.” He tapped his neck. “But this scar does remind me that my obligation to serve you doesn’t always mean protection.” He clasped her hand. “You know I would die for you. What I vow to you this day, Gyanhumara nic Hymar of Clan Argyll of Caledonia, is to temper my instincts with judgment and to be more trusting of yours.”
“My—what? Instincts or judgment?”
“Both.” He branded the back of her hand with a lingering kiss.
“I must admit, your instincts about the Saxons were right all along. Arthur map Uther of Clan Cwrnwyll of Brydein, I vow to heed your warnings.” She grinned. “No matter how mad they sound.” As their chuckles faded, her expression turned pensive. “But what about when ‘serving me’ means permitting me the freedom to follow my conscience when my purposes differ from yours?”
“Even then.” He rose and sat beside her. “But I trust you’re not planning anything—risky.”
“Against Urien?” Sighing, she drew up her legs, clasped her arms about them, and wedged her knees under her chin. “What can I do? Cultivate spies? His clansmen are as loyal to him as mine are to me. All the wealth of Argyll couldn’t buy their treason.” Her gaze seemed distant, unfocused. “And even if it could, the satisfaction of revenge isn’t worth impoverishing my clan. I have but one choice to force his hand.”
Arthur hugged her to him. Her too-short hair smelled of rose petals, and it amazed him how much he’d missed that simple sensation. Stretching out her legs, she leaned against his chest.
“That choice would be?” He had a guess but wanted her to name it. Otherwise, the truth would be much easier to dodge.
“We both know it’s me Urien wants.” She uttered a mirthless laugh. “But I doubt you would agree to my challenging him to single combat.”
“Damned right.” Though he respected Gyan’s martial prowess, he knew she couldn’t survive Urien’s lust for revenge—and other things.
She expelled a heavy sigh. “Single combat would solve nothing, anyway. The loser’s clan would declare a blood feud on the winner, and Caledonia and Brydein would plunge back to where we’d started. Before Abar-Gleann.” Her hand felt as smooth and cool as a blade against hi
s cheek, and she regarded him longingly. “Before you.”
He captured her hand and brought it to his lips. “My love, I am so glad you’ve thought this through.” As he gazed into the sea-green depths of her eyes, he lowered his voice to a throaty whisper. “Now that I have you back, I will not give you up again.”
“Another vow, Lord Pendragon?”
“No, Chieftainess. Fact.”
Wrapping both arms around her, he fastened his mouth to hers. Their armor blunted the pleasure of bodily contact, but he was enjoying the intimacy far too much to care.
“I love you, Artyr, and I want you—need you more than ever.” A flash of fear eclipsed her desire. “But I can’t bear to think that any more children we might have are fated to become Urien’s targets.”
Arthur glared at the bronze cloak-pin, gleaming dully in the waning light. He understood her fear but was heartily tired of their adversary coming between them. Caressing her cheek, he wished he could do more yet knew they had to proceed at her pace. “We can bring pleasure to each other in many ways, Gyan.”
“I know.” Her lips brushed his, lightly at first, then harder, harder still, and finally with a passion as hot and wild as kissing elemental fire. After they parted, she said, “But it isn’t the same.”
“Surely, there are ways to prevent conception.”
“I wish the solution could be that simple.” She shook her head resolutely. “It is my sacred duty to ensure the future leadership of the clan.” The desire in her eyes raged hotter than before. “We must, Àrd-Ceoigin.”
He stood, wanting nothing more than to act upon their passions, but propriety restrained him to helping her rise. Hand in hand, they left the orchard. When he would have angled toward the monastery’s guesthouse, however, she continued toward the church. He stopped her on the threshold and voiced his query, submerging his disappointment.
“I cannot begin working toward the future,” she whispered, “until I make peace with the past.”
That he could well understand.
She tugged open the door and stepped inside. Although most monks had departed, some still clustered near the altar for private prayer and meditation. She strode to the tiered bank of votive candles and pulled a twig from the basket.