Morning's Journey (55 page)

As Gawain rubbed his hands over the brazier, he glanced through an eastern bow-slit. A distant flash caught his eye. He blinked hard and looked again. The apparition didn’t vanish. He snatched his spear and stuck his head through the door.

“Claudius!” He restrained his voice to a loud whisper. “Someone’s coming!”

Claudius whirled and ran back to the guard tower. “Where?”

Gawain pulled him onto the east wall and scanned the rolling hills. The bobbing light flickered through a clearing. He pointed.

The shadows resolved into a rapidly traveling horse and rider. Now, Gawain could hear the approaching hoofbeats and crackling twigs.

Claudius studied the horseman for several seconds. “I can’t tell who it is. Better report this to Conall.”

“Of course!” Gawain slapped the wall for not thinking of it himself.

Arms pumping, he pelted to the main gate tower. At his shout, Guard Captain Conall sat bolt upright on the cot, fully dressed save cloak and boots.

Gawain thumped fist to chest in salute, drawing a breath to steady his voice. “Sir, a horseman approaches from the east.”

“A loner? How far?”

“At his pace, sir, he’ll be at the hedge at any—”

“Hail, Tanroc!” called the Brytoni voice.

Conall strode to the window slit and shouted, “Suilean?” The signs and countersigns were Caledonian. This one meant “eyes.”

“Suil a mhàin,” the courier answered, confirming that he carried an “only one eye” dispatch—and that one eye belonged to the man in charge. Gawain’s pulse quickened.

“Get Commander Peredur out here!” Conall ordered.

The troops were roused and ready before another candle-ring had vanished. Gawain, on the grounds that Commander Gyan was kin, talked his way out of guard duty to join them. His elation convinced him he could handle the entire enemy force by himself.

To say nothing of the chance to be on hand in case that whore-spawned Angusel failed her again.

ANGUSEL KNEED Stonn into a trot, hoping to stay ahead of the Sasunach scouts. He held his stallion to the valley’s tree line to maximize speed yet minimize detection.

It didn’t work.

At the foot of the ridge, he heard the unmistakable scrape of a sword being drawn. “Caraid!” he rasped, halting Stonn.
Friend.
The watchword applied to him, but only just. He subtly freed his sword hand from the reins in case he’d guessed wrong.

“Ainm,” stated the soldier as he appeared from the brush, flanked by several companions. None carried torches, but Angusel needed no light to show him their readied weapons.

They wanted his name; standard protocol, conducting the exchange in Caledonaiche, since Gyan had deemed it unlikely their foes would know the language well enough to decrypt her signs and countersigns. He sucked in a breath, quelling the stab of remorse, and whispered the appropriate response: “Optio Aonar, Third Turma, Manx Cohort.”

The lead soldier sheathed his sword, saluted, and motioned Angusel forward. As he complied, he noticed many men lugged bulging water skins. Stranger still, they began dousing the brush.

He knew better than to waste time asking but warned them about the enemy scouts. The men exchanged a glance, thanked him with their nods, and signaled the entire unit to slip back into cover.

That seemed like a fine idea. He pointed Stonn toward the trees, and they crossed the remaining ridge and valley to Port Dhoo-Glass.

The fortress, guarding the harbor from atop the promontory, looked dark and quiet. Too dark and quiet. His puzzlement mounted as he guided Stonn toward a portal near the closest harbor-defense tower. After identifying himself and gaining admittance, he posed his question. The porter relayed a message Rhys had left, directing him to report to the north infantry drilling fields. Angusel couldn’t prevent the chorus of yaps as he spurred Stonn through the town toward the far wall, but he prayed the dogs’ noise wouldn’t destroy whatever surprise Gyan had devised for their unwelcome Sasunach guests.

He exited the opposite portal to find the infantry standing four abreast, paralleling the wall. Behind the signifer, who gripped the languidly fluttering cohort banner, the cavalry turmae headed the column, followed by units of archers and armed torchbearers.

Gyan, Rhys, and the other officers reined their mounts a few paces from the column to gaze pensively upward. As Angusel neared, a series of muffled hoots drifted over the wall. Gyan eyed him stonily.

“Optio, report,” she demanded.

Rebuking himself for expecting a miracle, he delivered his estimate about the size and speed of the enemy force, as well as his sighting of the Sasunach scouts. The words marched out briskly to shield his hurt. She gave no reaction save a curt nod, which wasn’t directed at him but at another courier mounted beside her. As that man galloped away and Gyan again cocked her head, more owl screeches split the night.

He couldn’t hope to win her respect if he couldn’t even claim her attention. “Commander, I—”

“Silence, soldier!” she snapped. “If Stonn is rested enough to fight, rejoin your turma. If not, stay to help guard the fort.”

Some choice. He’d sooner die than relive the uselessness he’d felt atop Senaudon’s walls while his clansmen’s blood reddened the firth at Abar-Gleann. Stonn shook his head, snorting and wrestling with the bit as if in agreement. He calmed him with a pat, straightened in the saddle, and captured Gyan’s gaze. “We fight, Commander.”

She dismissed him to his assigned place, far too many paces behind the one he yearned to reclaim.

At a third set of hoots, she cantered Macsen to the column’s head, the officers trailing behind her. Flanked by torchbearers, she wheeled her stallion to face the troops, her lips split in a grin made feral by the wild light. “The scouts are gone. We shall learn soon enough whether we have duped them. To arms, for Maun and honor!”

Her upraised fist set the column in motion.

THOUGH MIDWAY through nightwatch, Ælferd felt no fatigue as he marched among his bodyguards near the head of the army, buoyed by excitement over his imminent victory. The scouts’ report described a minimal force guarding the port’s walls. Clearly, the Brædeas expected no danger.

So much the worse for them!

He wished Camilla could help him eradicate this nest of Brædan vermin, but her father had refused to let her join Ælferd’s Manx expedition. Ælferd couldn’t fault him. The King of the South Saxons didn’t want his daughter to be so far from home with the man who loved her more than life itself.

He led his men to the first of three ridges separating them from their goal and signaled a slower pace. Only a fool would attack with warriors half-dead from the march.

The army topped the second ridge and poured into the valley. Ælferd had ordered silence, but he sensed the eagerness of his men, who surged like questing hounds against the leash. One more ridge separated them from their quarry.

As the first rank began to climb, an owl’s haunting cry pierced the night. After several heartbeats, a second, fainter owl answered.

Arrows whined, drawing fiery arcs across the sky. The first flight fell into brush near the column’s right flank. The twigs exploded into fireballs.

Oil-soaked brush!

As light flooded the valley, more deadly swarms followed. Too many good warriors fell under the steel-barbed onslaught.

Ælferd’s standard-bearer took an arrow in the throat. His cry drowned in a bloody gurgle. Another soldier rushed forward to catch the Green Griffin, but a corner of the cloth dragged through a torch. As flames devoured it, Ælferd’s men began to panic. Fear gripped his gut and loosened his bowels. Grimly, he ignored it and shouted more orders to the men. With his exhortations ringing in their ears, they regrouped and renewed the attack.

AS ARROWS rained fire upon the valley floor, Angusel steadied Stonn, his blood beating its anxious tattoo in his ears.

Gyan had rejected him again.

He leaned over to stroke Stonn’s neck, drawing comfort from its sleek warmth. The stallion answered with a toss of his head and a soft snort. Angusel sighed, wishing he hadn’t been relegated to the turma fighting the farthest from Gyan’s side.

Stonn’s ears swiveled forward, and he impatiently chewed the bit. Angusel saw the turma’s commander’s signal and readied his first javelin. Tightening his grip with knees and hands, he cast a swift glance toward Gyan.

Looking like the warrior-goddess Nemetona in the flesh, the torchlit Braonshaffir a fiery beacon aloft in her fist, she sat proudly astride Macmuir, shouting encouragement.

Her words seemed to embrace everyone but him.

He couldn’t hate her. Not while he despised himself.

As the turma decurion’s arm dropped and Stonn surged forward, Angusel begged Nemetona for extra measures of courage, strength, and skill so he could do something—anything—to earn Gyan’s favor.

Plummeting down the hillside, he banished his anxiety. Yelling helped. So did watching the Sasunach faces in the whipping torchlight twist into expressions of surprise and terror. The heat of answered prayer flooded his veins and braced his heart.

GAWAIN MARCHED as he’d been drilled again and yet again, with his gaze riveted to the helmet of the soldier in front of him. The bouncing torchlight challenged that directive but didn’t prevent him from straining to catch the first sounds of the battle that surely must be taking place at Port Dhoo-Glass.

What he heard were the hoofbeats, snorts, and whinnies of the fifty horses at the head of the column, the crunching of two hundred pairs of booted feet upon dry grass and twigs, the creak of leather, the clink of metal, the rustling of branches, the sigh of the sea. Everything except what he sought.

What on earth had he been thinking when he’d asked Arthur for this assignment? He should have requested a turma posting. The view from horseback always furnished a definite improvement.

What if there was no battle? As disappointing as that would be, a night’s reprieve from guard duty was worth the cost in blistered feet of the twenty-mile hike to Dhoo-Glass and back.

Perhaps Gyan’s forces hadn’t yet engaged the enemy. Ha! Against the entire Manx Cohort, they wouldn’t have a prayer. Why, she could defeat them all by herself, according to the tales.