Gwenhwyfar (24 page)

She straightened, and allowed the smile to slip from her face. “You might as well,” she added. “I will have it from you anyway.”

By the time the man fainted, he had told her everything he knew. Not a great deal, but it was enough. Indeed, this group had been advance scouts to test the borders of Pywll, moving ahead of the Saxon army. As she had suspected, they were making a push here, but not only because of the pressure that High King Arthur was putting on the Saxon kingdoms in the east; they hoped to flank him by spring, and when his army rode out again, to cut it off from his lands and supplies.

As her men looted the bodies—and she made a good trade with Owain, to whom the short sword had fallen, her longer blade for the Roman gladius—they discussed this. She glanced over at the unconscious prisoner, belting on the new blade.

“I have an idea in mind,” she said, finally, as the other three debated the merits of trying to haul him back with them or killing him outright. The men broke off the discussion, which was getting a little heated, and gave her silence. “I’m thinking we should take off his thumb so he’s spoiled as a warrior and turn him loose to make his way back to his lines.”

They stared at her in utter astonishment. “But—why?” Aeron asked, finally.

But Meical had the answer already. “He thinks you be a thing uncanny, lady,” the eldest of them said, slowly. “And you be wanting him to take that back with him. That King Lleudd has some terrible spirit bound to his service. Ghost, fae, witch, any or all. It doesn’t matter, the tale will grow in the telling.”

She nodded, and looked to the other two. “What say you?”

Aeron grinned broadly and spread his hands. “Peder’ll be proud, girl. He’ll wreak more havoc on his own with his tales than we could with a hundred men.”

Owain finally chuckled. “Aye. Aye. I’m for it.”

She wiped the chalk off her face with the fur of her cloak. “Right then. Take the thumb so he can’t use an ax or any other weapon. I’ll not send another fighter back to them. Cauterize the stump and that wound in his arm, and leave him with food and water enough to get back to his lines. He’ll leave a trail a blind man could follow. Aeron, you and Owain ghost after him, make sure he actually
gets
there, and come back to our lines when you see the Saxon army so we know where they are. Meical and I will get back to our people and report.”

Aeron gave the old Roman fist-to-shoulder salute some of the men, particularly those that had served with the High King, still used. It was the first time, however, that anyone had ever given it to
her,
and she felt warm inside. “As you will it, lady. ’Tis a privilege to serve you.”

That warmth stayed with her for the long miles back to the main camp, better far than any heated stone.

Those were the first words to greet Gwen as she and her troop rode into the camp of the small force her father had sent with her. Aeron and Owain had caught up with her easily enough; she and Meical had been taking their time, and Aeron and Owain had made sure to harry their Saxon along by making uncanny noises at night. The wound to his arm and the loss of his thumb were both painful of course, but in the winter after being cauterized, they were unlikely to fester and were not going to slow down a seasoned fighter significantly. These Saxons were tough, and a seasoned fighter would have survived other, more serious wounds than that.

According to the men, he hadn’t even stopped to make camps; he’d make himself a warm nest with whatever he could find when it was too dark to keep going, sleep till dawn, and move on as if demons were after him.
“Or as if you were,”
the men had joked. He had stumbled into his own army within three days, and that was when Aeron and Owain turned back and put on all speed. The weather had remained good, and the snow was not too deep; her father’s sturdy horses made good time in it.

So they knew now where the Saxon army was and that it was waiting for word from the scouting parties—for the ones they had come across were surely not the only ones. And Gwen had done something that, she hoped, would make the night a hell of fear for any more small groups the Saxons would send out. The White Phantom was hunting them, the Fair Apparition knew them, and being unsure if she was mortal magician or fae or even some bloody-handed goddess, they would be looking for her in every shadow. It gave her great satisfaction to imagine them so. And she knew men on campaign; they were greater gossips than any girls. The tales would only grow in the telling. If the commanders were foolish enough to forbid their men to speak of the White Phantom, it would only inflame them further.

Gwen and her men rode in to the camp on a bright, crisp, sunny afternoon having made all speed with their news, and she knew thanks to her work that a messenger sent to her father would have a substantial force here in plenty of time to give the Saxons second thoughts about invading. Her spirits were high, and with good luck she would see some fighting.

Above them was a sky of cloudless perfection. Before them was the camp, laid out in ordered rows. “Roman style,” was what Peder said, though he would never, ever have used those words to her father. But Gwen now knew exactly what he meant. The Romans had perfected the art of making a defensible camp, and High King Arthur was not above using that art. King Lleudd’s war chiefs and captains had learned it from him, found it good, and adopted it.

Such a camp could be made in much less than half a day in summer; in winter, it was oddly much easier. Square in shape, and surrounded by a ditch and wall system, it was possible to make snow walls higher and faster than dirt or brush walls, and in place of a ditch, simply making a fast fire of brush, allowing the snow to melt and freeze into ice served the same purpose. There was an entrance to the camp in the middle of each of the four walls, guarded night and day; the tents and pavilions inside were arranged in orderly rows, every tent was always in the same place in every camp, and if those tents were not as uniform as the ones that the Roman army had once had, at least it was possible to know exactly where everyone was in the camp. In the event of an attack, that was vital.

This wasn’t a huge force or a huge encampment, not like the big Roman ones, which had held tens of thousands. Only a couple of hundred—just enough to for hit-and-run delaying tactics in case there
had
been a Saxon army actually marching across the border. It looked very peaceful, with the horses picketed neatly, the stacks of hay brought from the nearby village, each man with his cook fire going. Almost like a village in itself. But peace was not what they were here for, and she knew the others were chafing for some fighting just as much as she was. Strange thing about winter—some people nearly went mad with inactivity, and some just contentedly drowsed the dark days away. She, it seemed, was one of the former. The ambush of the scouting party had only whetted her appetite for more.

But her good humor came plummeting down when the first person she met—aside from the sentry who challenged them—was Peder, who greeted her with those warning words.

Medraut. Son of Lot of Orkney, now eighteen years old. The only person she wanted to see less than Medraut was the woman he had married, her sister Gwenhwyfach.

Which, of course, utterly ruined her mood. She pulled her horse up; he was not happy about being halted so close to his picket and that lovely, lovely hay, and he curveted restlessly despite his weariness. Peder stepped back from him; this was her warhorse, Rhys, one of her father’s famed grays; it was not safe to be too near those hooves and teeth if a mood was on him. “What is
he
doing here?” she demanded sharply. There was no need to mince words with Peder; her old mentor knew exactly how she felt about the little pest. She had good reason for her dislike.

It had all begun five years after Anna Morgause had taken Little Gwen off to foster. The Queen of Lothian and the Orkneys had been making a state visit to the High King, which was a politic thing to do every so often, and had made sure to include in the journey a long pause at Castell y Cnwclas so that Little Gwen “could be with her family.” And it had been unpleasant enough to have Gwenhwyfach swanning about, trying to lord it over Gynath, doing not a bit of work but making plenty. But that was not the end of the unpleasantness, for Anna Morgause had brought Medraut with her.

Now, when this planned visit had been announced, Gwen had thought that her worst difficulty was going to be with the queen herself again and attempts to work magic on King Lleudd. After all, this visit might just have been another excuse to lure her father into marrying Morgana again. Morgana was five years older now and still unwed; Pywll was four times the size it had been. King Lleudd had been a tempting prize before; now he was a brilliant one.

But she made no attempt to work magic, and old Bronwyn was watching her like a cat at a mousehole. Not only Bronwyn but also Gynath and just about every other woman that had been involved in thwarting the queen the last time.

It was not Anna Morgause that caused any difficulty; it was Gwenhwyfach, and that was merely petty. Gwen managed to avoid everything but feelings of irritation, and if had only been that, the visit might have been inconsequential enough.

Except for Medraut. It was absurd that a five-year-old child should trouble Gwen—yet trouble her he did.

Gwen had disliked him as an infant, and in her opinion, five years had not improved him. He was simply nothing like a normal child. He was thin, preternaturally agile; he looked more like an adult who had somehow been shrunk to a miniature size than like a child. He didn’t play with other children. He didn’t play at all. He was either somewhere doing secret things or . . . well, not underfoot exactly, but always there, nonetheless. His mother seemed to allow him to go where he wished and do as he pleased without supervision. And for some reason, he decided that what he wanted was to attach himself to Gwen.

He followed her about as much as he could, always watching her; he’d have followed her
everywhere
if she hadn’t figured out that there were places he wasn’t welcome, like the stable and the practice grounds. Horses disliked him, as did dogs, and a small child was forbidden from being on the practice grounds; it was too dangerous. There, at least, she could escape him.

She could not account for how he made her feel, since no one else seemed to have that strong a reaction to him. She couldn’t help herself. With his smooth cap of black hair, his thin little face, and those flat gray eyes that seemed to be looking for secrets, he made her skin crawl.

She couldn’t escape him at meals, though, nor any other place where he knew she was supposed to be serving as page or squire. He never said anything to her, never interrupted her. He would simply be there, tucked into a corner, staying out of the way. And he just kept staring at her.

That is, that was what he did right up to the point where the queen’s party was due to leave. That night, as she was serving the men and had gone to refill her ale jug, she felt a grip on her elbow and looked down into his flat gray eyes.

“I am going to marry you,” he announced. A command. A princely command, from a prince to a servant. It was not the way a normal child would have said such a thing, with the silly baby-love some little boys got with a pretty woman, or in the manner of a joke, or even as if it were something he had overheard his mother discussing and was parroting. It was . . . imperious. It sounded as if it was something he had decided for himself without any coaching from Anna Morgause. And he spoke the words as if he, and they, were very, very certain. It made her skin crawl.

She stared at him, then laughed uneasily. She decided that the best way to deal with him was to treat him as . . . well . . . a child. Even if he wasn’t acting like one. “Go away, infant,” she replied, with a lift of her lip. “Or I will tell your mama that you have gotten into the mead, and you are making up lies and silly tales. You are too young to think of marriage, and even if you were not, I am not for your marrying.”

She pushed past him and went back to her serving . . . but she could not help the strange chill that went up her back. The relief she felt when they were all gone on their way was so intense it seemed to brighten everything around her for days.

The next time she saw him, he was ten, and the years had not changed him, except to make him taller and even more uncanny. At ten, he was a full two heads taller than any other child his age—and he seemed more like a miniature man than a boy. He was Gwenhwyfach’s great pet and Anna Morgause’s pride. By this time, Cataruna was back, established as the Lady of Lleudd’s lands, and the queen sought her out on all possible occasions in order to discuss matters of magic. For the most part, Gwen had very little to do with that, but it was impossible to avoid some of it. Anna Morgause expected great things from her youngest child, and she went on at great length about how powerful, magically, the boy was.

“If I have no daughters, the gods have chosen to give me a son as gifted as any girl,” she asserted. And Cataruna (somewhat reluctantly, Gwen thought) agreed. At the time, Gwen wondered if that was what made her so uneasy around him. Men’s Magic was that of the Druids, who did have to do with the warriors . . . maybe it was that unpredictable vision of hers that was trying to tell her that the child was strong in such things.

But after only a day, she knew it was not that. It was that Medraut was obsessed, unnaturally obsessed, with her.

At least this time he did not follow her about, but every time she was near him, she was acutely conscious of his eyes on her. More than once, she suspected he was trying to work some sort of magic on her—as mad as it would have been in anyone else, she had more than a suspicion that he had not given up his idea of marrying her. But if he was trying to bespell her in anyway, it didn’t work.