Bristling Wood (17 page)

The crowd nodded sagely at this display of erudition.

“I’ll wager you’re right,” the miller said, “I’ll send my eldest lad to the local priest about this.”

“Do that. He’ll find it interesting, I’m sure.”

When he returned to Lughcarn, Nevyn found that indeed the news of the two-headed goat had preceded him. As soon as Olaedd and he were alone, the priest mentioned it.

“Now, even though you were the one to interpret the omen for the village, I’m sure Great Bel sent it. Your interpretation is the same as I’d give, too. If the civil wars go on much longer, there won’t be any kingdom to fight over, just a pack of minor lords each squabbling over his borders, We discussed this at length, during the convocation. After all, if there’s no king, who will protect the temples?”

“Just so.”

Olaedd looked absently away for a long moment, and even when he spoke, he didn’t look directly at Nevyn.

“There was some small discussion of Gwergovyn. It seems that there are some who are less than pleased with his presidency over the Holy City.”

“Ah. I wondered if that might be the case.”

“There are some good reasons for this dissatisfaction, at least if certain rumors are to be believed.” Again the long pause. “I do not think that they need concern you. Let me only say that I found them most distressing.”

“I have perfect faith in Your Holiness’s judgment.”

“My thanks. You may, however, count on the northern temples for any aid we can render you. Ah, at times I feel so weary! We’re talking of a plan that will take many years, but who better to start a plan than old men who have the wisdom to pick the young men to finish it?”

“Just so. I take it none of the priesthood in the Holy City will be consulted?”

Olaedd smiled, answering the question the only way such things can be answered: by silence.

Late in the autumn, when the trees stood stark beside the road and the morning sky smelled of snow, Nevyn returned to Brin Toraedic. Since the caves were musty and damp from being shut up so long, he lit fires and sent the air elementals sweeping through the chambers to cleanse the fetid air, then took his mule and went down to the village to buy food. When he rode in, everyone ran over to greet him. They all knew what his real work was and were proud to have something that no other village did, or at least, none that they knew of: their own local sorcerer. While he packed up some cheese, a ham, and barley for porridge, Nevyn also heard the summer’s worth of gossip, much of which concerned Belyan, big with a bastard child and not telling a soul who the father was. When Nevyn took his stock over to the blacksmith’s to be reshod, the smith’s wife, Ygraena, invited him in for a drop of ale.

“Have you seen our Belyan yet?” she remarked, ever so casually.

“I knew about the child before I left. I’ll be going out to the farm to buy dried apples, so I’ll see how she fares then.”

“I’ve no doubt she’ll have an easy time of it. I’ll admit to being ever so envious of the way she has hers, just like a cat.” She hesitated, her eyes as shrewd as ever Olaedd’s were. “Here, good Nevyn, some people are saying that she got this child from one of your spirits.”

When he laughed so hard that he choked on his ale, Ygraena looked bitterly disappointed: such a lovely theory, and all exploded.

“I assure you that the lad was real flesh and blood, and hot enough blood at that, judging from what’s happened to Bell. If she’s keeping her own counsel about it, well, she always was a close-mouthed lass.”

Belyan had the baby just four days later. Nevyn was sweeping out his caves when the oldest lad came running to tell him that Mam was starting to have the new baby. By the time he packed a few herbs and rode down, Ygraena’s prediction had come true: Bell’s new son was already born, and an easy time he had coming, too. While the midwife washed the babe and got Belyan comfortable, Nevyn and Bannyc sat by the fire.

“And how do you feel about this new cub in the litter?” Nevyn said.

“Well, I wish she would have married some lad if she wanted a babe that bad, but Bell was always too headstrong for me to handle. He’s healthy, the midwife says, and so he’s welcome enough. You can always use another pair of hands around a farm.”

With a deep heave of a sigh, Bannyc went out to tend his goats. Nevyn stretched his feet out to the warmth of the fire and thought of Maddyn. Quickly enough his image grew in the fire, a tiny figure at first, then swelling until Nevyn could comfortably see the entire scene around him. Maddyn was sitting in a dirty tavern room with about a dozen other men, all of them drinking hard and laughing. At their belts each had a dagger with an identical pommel decorated with three silver balls. When one of the men idly drew his to gouge a splinter out of the table, Nevyn could see that it was some peculiar metal, a kind of silver, he thought, but the vision was not sharp or detailed enough for him to be sure. What did seem obvious was that Maddyn had found himself a place in a mercenary troop. Nevyn’s first thought was pity; then it occurred to him that such a troop, one with no fixed loyalties, might be very useful for the work he had ahead. He made a mental note to keep better track of Maddyn in the future.

Later, Nevyn went in to see Belyan, who was sitting up in bed with the babe at her breast. A big baby, easily eight pounds, Daumyr had a soft crown of fine blond hair, and he was sucking eagerly with an occasional bird chirp of satisfaction.

“I’ll be getting the true milk soon,” Belyan said. ‘The way this hungry little beast is nursing.”

“No doubt. Do you miss his father?”

Belyan considered while she changed the babe to her other breast.

“A bit,” she said at last. “What with all I had to do around the farm, I hardly thought of him all summer, but now that winter’s almost here, I find myself remembering him. I hope he’s safe and well, wherever he is. It’s better to wonder where he is than to go visit his grave.”

“It is, at that, truly.”

With a smile, Belyan gently stroked the baby’s hair.

“He’s a bit different than my other lads were when they were born, and he’ll doubtless look different, with Maddyn’s curly hair and all, but in time, he’ll grow to be like us. It’s a bit like needlework, having a babe. You’ve got your cloth, and you’ve got your colors of thread, but it’s up to you how the pattern grows.”

Nevyn suddenly smiled. She’d just handed him the missing piece of his plan. What better way to have a true and noble king than to raise the prince? Maryn was still young and malleable; he needed tutors, and he would respond to the proper influence. One of us can find a way into the court, Nevyn thought; we’ll make sure the lad grows up well while we lay the rest of the groundwork.

That night, Nevyn walked on the hill just as the full moon was at her zenith. Clouds came in from the north, casting moving shadows across the sleeping countryside. For too long now, darker shadows had killed all joy in Deverry. Nevyn smiled to himself. Deep in his heart, he saw the coming peace and the victory of the light.

THREE

The year 837. Olaedd the high priest died in the spring. Retyc of Hendyr was appointed high priest by the northern conclave. In the summer a little lad with falling sickness was brought to the temple. He had a seizure at Retyc’s feet, and cried out that the king was coming from the west. When he awakened, he repeated that the king was in the west, but he could give no reason why he said it. Retyc declared the speaking a true one . . . 

—The Holy Chronicles of Lughcarn

Up on the dais of the great hall, Ogretoryc, king of all Eldidd and what little of Deverry he could hold with his army, was sitting in his high-backed carved chair. Behind him hung a finely worked tapestry depicting Epona riding with her retinue of godlets in the Otherlands. To either side of the tapestry were long banners in blue and silver cloth, with the Dragon of Eldidd appliqued in green. At the king’s feet lay a blue and green carpet, covering a floor of inlaid slate. His bard sat nearby; his picked guard stood behind him; two pages waited with a golden goblet and a pitcher of mead. The king, however, was asleep, slumped to one side and snoring, a line of drool running from his toothless mouth down his wrinkled, flabby chin. Out in the circular expanse of the hall, the noble lords, their warbands, and the king’s own men went on with their feasting and tried to ignore their liege lord.

Because they were mercenaries, the silver daggers were seated in the back and to one side of the hall, where they caught the drafts from the door and the smoke from the fire, but by leaning back on his bench, Maddyn could keep an eye on the dais and the sleeping king. In only a few minutes, Prince Cadlew, heir to the throne, mounted the dais and hesitantly went over to his father. A lean man, his face positively gaunt, Cadlew was tight-muscled and hard from long years in the saddle. His raven-dark hair was heavily streaked with gray, and his cornflower-blue eyes were webbed with crow’s-foot wrinkles, yet he could still swing a sword with the best of them. Cadlew caught the king’s arm and shook him awake. Surrounded by guards, with the pages trailing uncertainly behind, the prince led his father away. The entire hall sighed in relief. Caradoc leaned over to whisper to Maddyn.

“I’ll wager there’s plenty of men who’d rather see our prince sitting on that fancy chair.”

“It’d be a safe wager, sure enough. Here, I’ve been stewing with curiosity. What did the prince say when he called you to his chamber this afternoon?”

“Offered to take us into his warband. I turned him down.”

“You what?!”

“Turned him down.” Caradoc paused for a calm sip of mead. “Thanked him for the honor, mind, but I’d rather negotiate our wages summer to summer than swear fealty.”

“Ah, curse you to the ninth hell!”

“Listen, Maddo. I know it sounds splendid to think of being honorable men again and all that, but a silver dagger’s got to be free to change sides if he doesn’t want to hang after a defeat.”

“Well, true-spoken. We’ve changed sides too often before to be treated honorably, no matter what a prince says about us.”

“Just that. Not a word of this to the others, mind.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it. You should know that we’d all follow you to the death.”

Caradoc looked away, tears in his eyes. Maddyn was too embarrassed to do more than leave him his silence.

While he sipped his mead, Maddyn considered the troop, seventy-five strong, and everyone of them a blood-besotted man who fought like a demon from hell. It had taken Caradoc three years, but he’d scraped and scrounged and bargained until he had a troop so valuable that the prince would consider taking them into his own warband. Every one of them, too, had one of Otho’s mysterious daggers at his belt. Some of the best smiths in the king’s court had gone down on their knees to beg the dwarf for the secret of that metal, but not even the offer of whole sacks of gold coins and jewels would have softened Otho’s stance. Once he had remarked to Maddyn that someday, when he found a deserving lad, he’d pass the secret on, but so far, no such paragon of smithly virtue had ever appeared.

After a hard summer’s fighting, the men of Eldidd, paid and pledged alike, were back in winter quarters in the king’s palace at Abernaudd. They’d fought late, that autumn, skirmishing in the hills with Cerrmor troops, or riding raids up to the borders of Pyrdon, which the people of Eldidd still insisted on calling a rebellious province. The rumors were going round that in the spring they’d make a proper attack on Pyrdon, but those rumors went round every winter. The truth was that Eldidd couldn’t afford to drain off men and supplies to conquer Pyrdon when it had two bigger enemies at its eastern borders. Maddyn frankly didn’t care where they rode in the spring. All that mattered was that for the winter they’d be well fed and warm.

To avoid drunken brawls between his men and the king’s, Caradoc led the silver daggers back to their own barracks before the great feast was truly over. As they crossed the ward, Maddyn lingered to walk with Caudyr, whose clubfoot slowed him down. With the clatter of hooves and a jingle of tack, a squad of the king’s personal guard came through the gates. Back from a cold, long patrol, they were hungry and eager to get to the warm feast inside. Even though there was plenty of room to pass, they started cursing and yelling at Maddyn and Caudyr to move aside. They were both willing, but Caudyr had no choice but to lurch slowly along. One of the horsemen leaned over in his saddle.

“Move your cursed ass, rabbit! They should have drowned a lame runt like you at birth.”

When most of the squad laughed, Maddyn swirled around, reaching for his sword, but Caudyr grabbed his arm.

“It’s not worth it. I’m used to being the butt of a jest.”

As they went on, Caudyr tried to hurry.

“Look at him hop!” called another guardsman. “You were right enough about the rabbits.”

At that, the squad leader, who’d drifted on ahead, turned his horse and trotted back.

“Hold your tongues, you bastards!” It was young Owaen, and he was furious. “Who are you to mock a man for a trouble that the gods gave him?”

“Oh, listen to you, lad!”

Like a bow shot, Owaen was out of his saddle. He ran over to the guardsman and grabbed, pulling him down and dumping him on the cobbles before the startled fellow could react. With an oath, the man leapt up and swung at him, but Owaen dropped him with one punch. The laughter and catcalls abruptly stopped.

“I don’t want to hear anyone else mock a man for a trouble he can’t help.”

Except for the nervous horses, stamping restless hooves, the ward was dead silent. Puzzled as much as pleased, Maddyn kept his eyes on Owaen, who was barely seventeen, for all that he’d been riding to war for the past three years. Normally he was the most arrogant man Maddyn had ever met. Wearing the Eldidd dragons on his shirt wasn’t enough for Owaen, who had his own device of a striking falcon marked on his shirt, his dagger, his saddle—on every piece of gear he owned, from the look of it. He was also the best swordsman in the guard, if not the entire kingdom, and his fellow riders knew it. When the squad dismounted, it was only to pick up the unconscious man and sling him over his saddle to carry him away. With a small, friendly nod in Caudyr’s direction, Owaen followed them.