Embers (16 page)

It was Duda who broke, turning his shaggy head to look at him. Brand cursed inside because it could have made Alina look. But she did not. She stared ahead, her spine rigid. But she was aware of him. He knew that without the slightest sign.

His gaze met Duda's, its meaning unmistakable:
look away
. He did not know what else was in his face, but one grubby hand made a sign of the cross, then more surreptitiously a sign against enchantment just to be doubly sure. He blocked the word
berserker
out of his head.

His blood pulsed. The risk goaded him. The rush of that was so strong in him it would take all, mind and sense and the power to control thought.

If he let it.

Duda looked away.

He wished suddenly that he knew whether he was right. He wished Duda was wearing the protection of patched leather that smelled of horse and nameless years of accumulated sweat. He wished he could take the fates by the throat and ensure the life of every man here, and of every man who would ever give him the dues of fealty.

He wished he could pay all the debts that came with honour. He wished he could believe in a future.

Alina.

He turned the horse slightly. There was no room for the smallest error in what he did. Too many debts. He used only his knee to guide the restive stallion, keeping the reins loose.

The movement exposed his back fully. It was the perfect shot. Now. In the clearing, with sun beating on him, casting his shadow forward.

He did not know whether he heard it, or felt it on the tightened edge of awareness, the faint whirring disturbance of the still air. He twisted his body, even though there might not be time, hoping that the arrow would strike obliquely, that the head would stick, that open metal links would be sufficient protection. That he would not be disabled.

He could see even through the fractured second that was all he had, how Duda was already moving away, how the other man, the one he had to trust, had flung himself, shield in hand, at Alina.

The last, unbelievable thing that he saw before he fell was the surprise on Cunan's face.

The impact of the blow stunned. It was knife-sharp, greater than he had bargained for. It was not beyond his capacity to manage, could not be.

He slid forward across the horse's neck in a fall that was less controlled than he wanted, gripping with thighs and knees until the muscles strained. He forced his hand to let the reins go. He could feel the shock rippling through the powerful animal muscle underneath his body.

But the horse was trained. It responded. He stopped the fall, tried to control the horse's urge to bolt after the others who thundered past. He whispered the names of Northumbrian saints into its ear as he watched hooves disappear across the rough ground, moving with planned speed.

He added a further prayer to the full panoply of the saints of Britain that they found something.

The second shot had been harmless. He forced himself to wait until they were out of sight. He would not—Alina screamed.

He slid round, hitting the ground on balance, the jarring pain through his back scarce felt. She was struggling against the man he had set to hold her the way she had struggled against him in the nunnery, with the same complete and mindless force. Like a battle rage. Like the echo of the force inside himself.

It was the kind of force that took account of nothing outside itself.

Until later.

"Cease."

They saw him. Alina's body went dead still. Her face turned the colour of chalk. The face of the man, Eadric, was wild-eyed. He had hold of her arms.

"Let her go."

There was no point in holding her trapped. She could not get to Goadel's men now. Her chance was gone, stopped by the man he had sent to save her skin.

Besides, she would not move. He could see it. The wild rush of strength must have drained out of her with the knowledge that the moment was lost.

The rush of that terrible power still beat through him.

She just stood, like a creature of fine white stone, the sun outlining every pure and beautiful line of her form, her head tilted at that maddening angle that made him want to smash something. Or strangle her slender neck. Or finish what they had started regardless of whether she wished it or no.

She looked as brittle as glass. Something that had to be protected from breaking.

He thought the black weariness inside would kill him.

Eadric's grass-stained hands were still on her arms as though he thought she might shatter. His transparent eyes bright with all the useless unnecessary urge to protect that ran in mockery through his own veins.

"I said, let her go." He did not know what was in his voice, but something made Eadric drop instantly to his knees, head bowed.

"Lord, I meant no wrong but if I have done it you may punish me as you will."

The boy had seen scarce more than twenty winters and had an unspoilt heart. His face had turned the colour of ash. The tearing anger and the guilt turned inwards where they belonged, familiar as his own skin.

"Nay, you have done no wrong. I owe you a debt for saving the lady's—" Honour? Decency? Her beloved brother's neck? "For keeping her life."

He reached down to pull Eadric to his feet. Eadric looked up as his hand closed over an arm and he saw the expression in the fear-widened eyes had changed into the one thing he could not face, the loyalty that was no longer his due.

"I would not have harmed the lady." The words came out in a rush. "But you charged me with her safety and she would have gone to you and I knew, you told me, that the danger would be yours and that we… Lord?"

His hand had frozen, like rock covered in ice. It quite probably bit painfully through Eadric's hide. He could not tell.

"It is true," said the singing voice of Craig Phádraig behind him, equally nervous. "It is not your man's fault. It was mine. I thought you were… I thought you would be killed."

His sight vanished. Just for an instant, darkness shot through with fire that had an uncanny edge, like something that belonged in another time. Such coldness all round him, dragging at him. And Alina's voice shouting.

He did not actually fall. He would not let himself and it was just a split instant, and then control was back.

"Lord, let me help you." It was Eadric, his transparent face creased in anxiety.

"No—"

"Please." Alina. Her black eyes were like twin pools of night in her white face. He could not look at her.

"No. Leave it. Just break the arrow shaft." The discomfort was bearable. The wound was not serious but if they removed the arrow there would be blood. He did not know how much and there was no time for that now. He could hear the sound of hoofbeats on the rough ground. His men returning.

"Lady, I can do it."

Eadric moved behind him. There was a brief tearing of his flesh as the arrow head dragged. Then nothing. He left Eadric to look after Alina. He could not look at her face because of what he might see there. Because of what he might believe.

He walked forward to meet his men.

They were out of luck. Two corpses: one had been killed in the fight, the other had been taken prisoner and should still have been alive.

"Then why—" It was Cunan who spoke. Brand had placed him in the front rank of their discussions because he wanted to weigh his reactions.

There was a shuffling of feet before someone spoke. "The prisoner took his own life. We were not quick enough to stop him."

Brand looked from his men's faces to the face of the second corpse. It was one he recognized. He had seen this man with Goadel before. He was a Northumbrian. Not a hired mercenary. He had a wife and two sons who would grieve for him.

"Why?" He knew full well, but it now seemed possible that Cunan did not. If that look of surprise at the start of the attack had not been the wildness of imagination.

"Lord, he said that even King Cenred would not be enough to protect him if Goadel knew he had been caught. He said he would rather die quickly. He said that with the last man, the last one who left Goadel, they…they got him back and he lived for three days. They all heard the screaming and they saw what…"

The man's voice dropped and Brand let the silence hang. It spoke more truly than words could. It was broken by Cunan's snort of derision.

"Those are tales to frighten children, not warriors. Who is to say that you did not kill this man?"

"No." Brand stopped the rustling movement of half a dozen knife hands with a single gesture. There was no point harming Cunan. And besides, he had seen it: the small flicker of uncertainty, of distaste in the keen, houndlike eyes.

He let his men tell the rest of their story. It needed no embellishment. And he had what he wanted. Goadel would think him wounded. Goadel would believe he had what he so desperately wanted to take. Time.

Cunan was the only one who could tell him otherwise.

He refused to think about Alina.

Clear moving water had its own power, different from the life of a spring, or the deep stillness of well water. But just as strong. Alina listened to its voice.

People were wary of the secret power of water. Brand seemed to seek it out by instinct.

She paused in the shadow of the trees, soundless.

This was the second time she had come on him unawares, in just such a place beside clear running water. The second time she had sought him. Drawn by that power. The water's power and his.

If there was a third time, it might be fatal.

But she knew she would not be able to stay away from it.

He was very still. The hidden corselet of chain mail that had saved his life lay discarded on the sunlit grass, glittering with its own light, like something alive.

He had bathed in the water. His hair was wet It hung in darkened rivulets down his back. He wore his tunic. The arrow wound was concealed. She did not know how deep it went or whether the chain mail had left the tears in his flesh that were more open to poison than the arrow's bite. It was not she who had dealt with the wound.

She had not been able approach him. Because he would not let her. Because she had not dared. Because she had made a terrible mistake this afternoon.

She had said words out loud that should never have been born.

She had to put things right.

And it was beyond her power to stay away from him.

He watched the water.

She could not see his face, only the water-darkened spread of his hair, the broad hand that could throw a knife blade faster than sight and stir magic out of her terrified body with an unknown mixture of power and tenderness. She wondered whether he would throw the blade at her this time. And whether this time he would want to split her heart with it.

He moved his shoulders as though they ached. The sun glinted on the torqued gold at his wrist, on the dark gold streaks in his hair. Light slid over him and he was alive.

"You made me think you were dead."

They were not the words she had meant to say. Her breath choked in her throat. He turned his head. That was it. No surprise, no sudden move wild with danger.

It was as though he knew she would be there. Even what she would say.

"You let me think the same when you left me after

I had taken you from Hun. You let me believe you were dead, killed by thieves on your flight south. How did you do it? Find that charred unrecognizable corpse of a woman?"

"It was chance."

"There is no such thing."

She started. Because the Brand she had known would never have said that. "Then it must have been something else that let my steps pass that place at that time. Your English fate,
Wyrd"

The fair head bent in acknowledgement of a word that was true for him. It was like watching a stranger in the familiar body.

"I came across her on the road south. Some poor woman set upon by outlaws. They had thrown her body on the fire when they had finished with her. You could not recognize the corpse. I paid quite dearly for the news to go north that it was me."

"So I would not follow you on your flight back to Hun."

"Yes
." I did pay. Dearly. I still pay
.

He straightened up and it was as though the wounds and fatigue and all the stress of what he had done did not exist. She could see his eyes.

"How could you think I would not follow Hun to the ends of Middle Earth after what he had done to my brother?"

"I thought… I do not know. You were exiled. You could not so much as set foot in Northumbria without being killed—"

"I could set foot in Wessex."

But it was so far, and I did not know King Osred would send Hun there as ambassador. I did not know because I was hiding from him as much as from you.

"I did not think—"

"I would have taken Hun if he had been seated at the foot of the throne at Bamburgh."

"Yes." She did not say anything else. No need. She walked forward. It was like approaching a wolf. But she did it.

"Aye. I think you do understand the kind of single-mindedness that will take all in its path whatever the odds."

"Yes." She stopped in front of him, light-footed, wary, like a creature poised for flight in any direction.

"That single-mindedness is in you, too."

She planted her feet on the flower-shot grass and she knew she would not move.

"Aye," she said in Northumbrian.

He turned away, watching the water. Reflected light danced across his face. She could see the way the taut skin stretched across the bones.

"What happened after I left? To you? To Lindwood?" She had made her next mistake. Her words echoed through the air, back through time, to the high and brilliant beauty of Brand's home stretching out across the hills, under the wide arc of the Bernician sky.

She could no longer focus on the water and the small compass of the grass. Her eyes saw the hall at

Lindwood, its tapestries and its soaring high-pitched roof and the pillars painted green. Space and light balanced by shadows. The deep calmness like a forest. The rich movement of life.