In Winter's Shadow (37 page)

I had not gone far when I saw the sentry outlined against the sky again, and I dropped to my knees in the mud of the plowed field, huddled in my cloak, praying that he would not see the rope. He passed without giving me a glance: I was simply a dark patch in the black and white of the field and the snow. When I was certain he had gone, I jumped up, fell over again as my ankle gave under me. I sat up, feeling the tears of exhaustion in my eyes and wishing that I had eaten something that day after all. But I had no option but to stumble over to the far end of the field and wait. There I sat leaning against the fence. The wet snow fell from the heavy sky, and everything was very, very quiet.

After a dark age I heard hooves and the jingle of harness, and stood up. The sound became more distinct: two horses. I hobbled forward.

They loomed out of the dark, an indistinct figure on a dark mount, leading another horse. I called Rhuawn’s name and they stopped.

“My lady?”

“Here,” I said. He came over, dismounted, and helped me into the saddle. I was ashamed to need his help.

“Yours is Constans’s horse, Sword-dancer,” Rhuawn said. “He is a war horse, and well trained.” I nodded, gathering up the reins and patting the horse’s neck. The animal flicked his ears back restlessly, uncertain about leaving his stall on such a night.

“My lady,” Rhuawn continued, speaking in a low voice. “You recall Eivlin, the wife of Gwalchmai’s servant?” I looked up at him, trying to make out his face in the dark. “Medraut wished to kill her and her children, but I thought it dishonorable to make war on servants, women, and children. I said nothing of it to Medraut, but I warned the woman when Medraut first seized power, and helped her to leave Camlann. Her husband’s clan lives near Mor Hafren, and have a holding on a river called the Fromm: it is reached by the second turning east from the main road from Baddon to Caer Ceri. The chieftain of the clan is called…is called.”

“Sion ap Rhys,” I said, remembering.

“Yes. If you go there, my lady, I am certain that the woman will remember you, and see that you are concealed and kept safe from Medraut.”

Yes. Medraut would never know or remember a servant’s clan.

“Good,” I said. “But you will come with me, I hope.”

He laughed strangely. “I think I will soon find a hiding place, my lady, if one not altogether to my liking. But perhaps not. My lady, by now they will know that you are gone. We must hurry, and hope that the snow hides our trail.”

He turned his horse, spurring it to a gallop, and I followed. Constans’s horse Sword-dancer ran swiftly enough, though I had to set my teeth to stay on against the jolting.

We galloped a long way, until the horses were sweating heavily even in the cold; then trotted; then galloped again. The wind was bitter, and I bent low in the saddle, riding blind, content from the feeling of his gait that my horse kept to the road. The snow froze in my eyelashes.

Rhuawn’s horse shied suddenly across my path, and I drew rein, saw, looking up at last, that the saddle was empty. I stared blankly for a moment, then guided my mount over to Rhuawn’s, caught its bridle—not difficult to do, for the horses were both tired—and turned back down the road. We were on the main road by then, the north road; it was about midnight, and we might have come sixteen or seventeen miles from Camlann.

I found Rhuawn a few paces down the road, kneeling in the center of it and vomiting convulsively. I jumped from my saddle. “Rhuawn!” I said, and he looked up, his face a pale shadow in the dark. “What has happened?”

Silence, “I am sorry. It is so hot.”

The wind whipped the wet snow into our faces. The reins over my arm seemed frozen there. I went to Rhuawn, caught his arm, touched his forehead. Though the collar of his cloak was glazed with ice, his skin was burning hot. “What has happened?” I whispered, suddenly very much afraid.

Rhuawn laughed, a laugh that ended in a sob. “I went to Medraut this morning and pleaded for you. He asked me to dine with him that night, to discuss the matter. But he said nothing of it at table. Only…he looked at me. I remember that he looked at Constantius with those eyes, the last night that he dined with him. They say Constantius died in a burning fever. Medraut said it was a fever.” There was a long silence. The tired horses breathed heavily, champed their bits loudly in the stillness. “It must have been in the wine,” Rhuawn said. “I thought it tasted bitter. But Medraut complained of it and said it was because of the war with Less Britain that we had no good wine. So I did not suspect.”

“You should have told me!” I began—but what could I have done if he had? Perhaps a surgeon might have helped Rhuawn if he acted at once, but no surgeon in Camlann would have been permitted to. And now it might be too late. “You must have water,” I said, thinking rapidly. “Eat some snow.”

“I will lose it.”

“That is the point. The poison makes you sick; if you lose enough of it, and if you can wash enough of it from your body, what is left may not be enough to kill you. Here.” I scooped up handfuls of the snow, and he took them, vomited again and again, began shaking. I helped him to his horse, managed somehow to get him into the saddle, and took some leather straps from the harness and tied Rhuawn in. “We must hurry,” I told him. “Perhaps we can find a place to stop.”

“No! We cannot risk stopping. Medraut will find us.”

I did not have anything to say to that, so only shook my head and spurred my horse to a gallop. Perhaps the whole flight was pointless. Medraut had many ways of learning things, by spies and by his private sorceries. I could only pray that neither means would serve him this time, and pray that Rhuawn had lost enough of the poison, and would recover.

The journey became a nightmare. The horses were now too tired to gallop, and we trotted and walked and trotted and walked, while the snow fell harder, and the world narrowed to the road directly before us, and to my horse and Rhuawn’s. Presently Rhuawn’s mount began to wander from side to side of the road and fall behind. I went over to it and took the reins from Rhuawn’s hands. He was delirious and did not reply to my questions, merely muttering incoherently. I looked about for lights, for a place to stop, but there was no light. It was too late for that, and the snow swallowed everything into a white darkness.

Perhaps three hours after we stopped the first time, Rhuawn went into convulsions. I turned off the road, dragging the horse—which was terrified, despite its tiredness—and began to cross a field. The wind stopped, and I found that we had reached a patch of woodland. I followed the edge of this until I found a hollow of the ground, sheltered from the wind and clear of snow. Here I dragged Rhuawn from his horse, hobbled the animals, and collected some wood for a fire. Rhuawn had a tinderbox and a blanket in the pack behind his saddle, and by some miracle I managed to kindle some wood that was not too damp. I then moved Rhuawn closer to the fire, wrapping him in the blanket. I tried to feed him more snow, but his teeth were set and his body torn by the convulsions, and he could not take it. His face in the firelight was almost unrecognizable: twisted, flecked with foam and vomit. The pupils of his eyes had dilated until it seemed that a living darkness boiled within his skull. I touched his forehead again, and still it was burning and dry. Standing by that fire off a road in Dumnonia, I remembered suddenly, as from another world, a conversation I had had with Gruffydd the surgeon, about, of all things, cosmetics. “Nightshade,” he had said, “is a deadly poison, but if you put it in your eyes it will make them bright. Dilates the pupils. Also causes fever, vomiting, delirium and convulsions. My lady, why do women tamper with such things? No sane
man
would employ them.” “Men like bright eyes,” I had replied, “but do not complain to me; I do not use nightshade. Can it even kill?” “In the right dosage,” he said, snorting with disgust. “Too much and it is lost in the vomiting. Not a poison for amateurs.”

But Medraut was not an amateur.

We could ride no further that night. The horses were nearly spent as it was. But I doubt that anyone could find us in the snow. I built the fire up, unharnessed the horses, and tried to construct some kind of shelter for Rhuawn.

Rhuawn died some two hours before dawn. He said nothing that whole while and did not regain consciousness. I realized, when he no longer breathed, that I had not thanked him for saving me.
Well
, I told myself,
it is an evil world. May God reward him.

I sat for a long while looking at his body, then, because the night was cold though the snow had now stopped, I pulled the blanket from over him and wrapped it round me.

I had no way to bury him. I had neither the tools nor the strength to dig a grave. Nor could I load his horse with his body and continue down the road. It would attract too much attention. Alone, in my muddied peasant dress, I might pass unremarked as a farmer’s wife who happened to have a fine horse, but leading another horse burdened with a warrior’s body I would be noticed, remembered, found, and the whole escape would go for nothing. But I could not simply leave the body lying there for the scavengers: besides, Medraut’s men, if they followed, might find it or hear of its finding, and know that I had taken this road. Moreover I had neither food for myself nor fodder for the horses, and could not travel another day without them.

I huddled near the fire, and must have drowsed a little, for when I looked up again the sun was above the fields. The snow glittered brightly, and the trees stood above fields slashed with their long blue shadows. Northeastward, and quite near, a plume of smoke rose white and thick into the morning air.

I rose, caught and saddled Rhuawn’s horse, and managed to drag the body over and tie it there. Then I saddled my own horse, mounted, and rode toward the smoke, leading the other animal.

It was a small holding: a barn and two houses. When I rode into the yard a woman was crossing from the barn to one of the houses carrying two pails of milk. She looked at me, shrieked, dropped one of the pails, just caught the other one and clutched it to her.

“I mean you no harm,” I told her, as men ran out of the barn and the nearest house. “Does your holding want a horse?”

It was a risk, but not too great a one. I knew that the countryside of Dumnonia was very hostile to Medraut—he had killed their king and unleashed a struggle which would certainly harm their lands. And it was likely that they would be pleased with the gift of a fine horse like Rhuawn’s and, if they took it, would fear to lose it by informing.

The men of the holding clustered around the woman, staring at me. I had a sudden vision of what I must look like, my face pinched and red with cold, blotched with bruises, my hair down in matted tangles, covered from head to foot with mud, riding a spent high-bred horse and leading another horse burdened with a corpse.

“Eeeeh,” said one of the men, then, “You are from Camlann?”

“Yes.”

He came over to Rhuawn’s horse, staring at the body. He touched it gingerly and felt that it was cold. He looked back at me. “Your husband? Did the witch’s bastard kill him?”

“Yes,” I replied, feeling too far removed from the world to add to either lie or truth. “I will give you the horse if you will take care of the body, and give me some grain for my own horse. I still have far to ride.”

The man could, of course, take from me whatever he wished without bothering to pay me. But this was a Dumnonian holding, and near the road. Law ought to rule here if anywhere—and it did. The man nodded. “It is a fine horse. And probably he was a fine man, as well. I am sorry for you, lady. Here, come inside and rest. I will see that your horse is cared for.”

“I must hurry.”

“Leave whenever you wish. But do not fear that we will betray you. Indeed, I think it would cost us our souls, to betray a lady to a sorcerer born out of incest.”

I stayed at the holding until the evening. I was lucky to have found the place: had I tried to ride on to Mor Hafren without pausing for food or rest, I believe I might have died. It was bitter weather, and I was already much weakened.

The people of the holding were cautiously friendly. They had heard tales of what had happened at Camlann, heard of executions, of their king’s death; knew of a few servants who had fled the place. They treated my horse well and, at my request exchanged its silver-adorned, enameled harness for one of inconspicuous plain leather, and gave me some clothing to make up the difference in value. They gave me hot food, hot water to wash in, exchanged my muddy clothing for clean, and gave me a warm bed to sleep in. They woke me in the late afternoon, saying that they were ready to bury “my husband.” They laid Rhuawn in a grave behind their barn with a mingling of old superstitions and Christian prayers, and gave me his jewelery and his dagger—I told them to leave him his sword. I was grateful to them. But I knew that they believed me only a warrior’s widow. What they might have done if they had known who I really was I did not know and did not wish to discover, so, when the burial was done with, I took my leave.

“But it will be cold tonight,” the head of the holding told me. “You should not travel. And there have been many bandits about since the news came of the king’s death and the emperor’s absence. It is not safe for a woman to travel alone.”

“It has never been safe for a woman to travel alone,” I replied. “But it is not safe for me here, or for you while I am here, and it will be better if I travel at night. There are fewer bandits and…other dangers about.”