Caradoc of the North Wind (29 page)

No. If this was evil, it would make itself clearer, I think. The riddling nature of his words makes it more likely to be something to our benefit – if we have the wit to untangle the message! Oh, why is it always so hard?

Because to strive is part of the purpose.

Perhaps. But to strive and to fail is my fear!

You have not failed so far.

Indeed not? Tell that to the ghosts of Geraint and Griffith ap Rhys and Gavan ap Huw and Linette and Blodwedd
…

Have you not learned the lesson yet, you fool?

‘Smoke rises over Pengwern!’ cried Dera. ‘I fear we come too late!’

Branwen had been so wrapped up in her thoughts that she had not realized they were approaching the long hill that rose to the west of the king’s citadel. Here, little more than a month ago, the Gwyn Braw had ridden hard out of the snowy mountains, bearing Meredith and Romney along with them, pursued by Saxon war bands.

She stared into the eastern sky. Dera was right. A veil of smoke hung in the air beyond the crest of the hill.

Branwen slapped the reins, kicking her heels into Terrwyn’s flanks to urge him on. Dera was also riding hard for the hill, Iwan at her side and Banon close behind. Only Aberfa had not joined the wild gallop to the hill – but even she had brought her horse to a brisk trot, riding alongside Rhodri’s horse, one strong hand holding him by the collar so he would not fall.

As they rode up the flank of the hill, Branwen began to hear strange and disturbing sounds faintly from beyond the fast-closing horizon. Dark smoke drifted high, staining the pale clouds.

Branwen was the first to come to the crest of the hill. She rode between thickets of woodland, reining Terrwyn up hard, staring down with horrified eyes into the long valley that lay between them and the king’s citadel.

A dreadful sight met her eyes.

The valley swarmed with Saxons. As thick as bees in a hive, they gathered below her shrinking gaze and her heart withered in her chest to see their numbers.

Even as she reeled in the saddle, the noise of warfare came bursting in her ears, loud and confused and horrible.

Shouts and battle cries filled the air, howls of anger and pain, the neighing and screaming of frightened and dying horses. The jarring scrape of metal on metal, the thud of swords striking shields. The horrible sound of iron slashing and piercing flesh. The hiss of arrows, the thwack of spearheads driving into living bodies.

The army of General Herewulf Ironfist was attacking the citadel from west, north and south, the savage Saxon warriors raging across the open lands in their multitudes. But this was no rabble – the great general had taught them well the art of slaughter. The bulk of the Saxon warriors were divided into blocks of men who moved with the slow weight of mountains, beating the defenders back and back towards the defensive ditch of the citadel. Worse still were the arrowhead wedges of soldiers, hemmed all about with shields, barbed with spears and swords, crashing headlong into the Powys lines, ripping them apart and killing without mercy all who stood in their way. Saxon banners cracked in the air, the white dragon on the red field, pressing forward from all sides as the warriors of Powys were beaten back.

Branwen scanned the hideous battlefield, seeking any sign of Ironfist or of the king of Powys. But the mayhem defeated her eyes – there were too many Saxon banners for her to find the general, and what few red dragons still flew were pressed all about by the enemy.

Rather than have their fortress burned around their ears, the defenders of Pengwern must have chosen to meet their enemy on the field. A more noble option, but surely a doomed one against such numbers? Even as she sat stunned and horrified on the hilltop, Branwen saw a standard fall – the red dragon of Powys fluttering to the ground to be trampled and torn under Saxon feet.

‘Oh, by the sweet saints!’ Iwan’s voice at her side was barely audible over the clamour of the battlefield. ‘We have come too late!’

Too late
.

Too late to do anything other than watch Pengwern burn. The gates were thrown down, the towers ablaze on either side. The causeway to the citadel was clogged with warriors, Saxons hacking and slashing their way forward, the guards and soldiers of King Cynon falling back to the inner ramparts.

Now the others had come to the edge of the hill at her side. Branwen heard their cries of woe and dismay. Too late!

‘Pengwern is lost!’ shouted Dera. ‘Powys is lost!’

Branwen’s eyes were drawn from the carnage of the battlefield to the burning towers of Pengwern – and there she saw a sight that crushed her soul. A sight that had come to her as an omen when she had looked into the fire in Merion’s cave.

Perched high among the flames was a mighty raven – a huge creature, far larger than the monster that had attacked them before. Vast it was, its black wings outspread, its neck stretched and its head thrown back as it screamed its triumph, its eyes smouldering and its tongue of fire.

Ragnar loomed above the bloody battlefield, encompassed by roaring fire, fanning the flames with his sable wings as the smoke billowed thick and ugly into the sky, shrouding the sun and polluting the air.

‘I am no coward, Branwen,’ Iwan called to her. ‘But it would be madness to throw ourselves into this butchery!’

‘What would you have us do, Iwan?’ shouted Dera. ‘Turn tail and run? Hide ourselves in the mountains until Ironfist’s men dig us out like fox cubs in the den?’

‘No, of course not!’ spat Iwan. ‘But neither would I have us throw our lives away uselessly. Pengwern is lost – but we can spread the word – rally warriors – create a force to harry Ironfist’s army every step of their way.’ He looked urgently at Branwen. ‘We could do this – make them pay for every valley they pass through. Attack them in every forest. Ambush them in every mountain pass. Fortify every citadel against them.’ He stared out over the furious and bloody turmoil of the battlefield. ‘That, or ride down into the world’s end.’

‘Rhodri said to come here and deal with what we found,’ Branwen replied, slipping her shield on to her arm and drawing her sword.

‘I did!’ called Rhodri’s voice from behind her. ‘But I’m in my better senses now!’

Branwen swung around. Aberfa and Rhodri were approaching fast, and now Rhodri was sitting up in the saddle and his eyes were clear.

‘And what does wisdom tell you now?’ Branwen asked him, searching his face for some sign that he was still the boy she knew.

‘To escape this battle, and to live to fight on.’ Rhodri rode up to her. ‘I am myself again,’ he said, looking into her eyes. ‘I am changed, but I am not possessed. Say rather, I have grown into something …
older
. Deeper. I see many things. I do not understand them. They rush in my head like …’ He frowned. ‘… like salmon come to spawn in the rivers of their birth … like the evening flocking of starlings …’

‘Can the poetry wait?’ interrupted Iwan. ‘If we are to go, we should go
now
– before we are seen. I would not wish for a hundred horsemen on our trail!’

‘I fear the time for flight is past,’ said Dera. She pointed down the hill. A group of Saxon horsemen were gathered there, captains or favoured lords under Ironfist’s generalship, clearly holding back from the affray while the men under their command ran headlong into battle.

Branwen saw that one was pointing up towards them and shouting. The other horsemen turned, drawing their swords.

Orders were bellowed. Some of the horsemen rode in among the foot soldiers, howling commands. In no more time than it took to draw three breaths, Branwen saw wedges of horsemen and warriors go streaming around either side of the hill, running fast, their swords and spears and iron helmets glinting.

‘They will cut us off from retreat!’ shouted Aberfa. ‘If we are to depart in safety, we must ride like the wind!’

‘It is too late for that,’ Branwen called. ‘We will be pursued and cut down.’

Even as she spoke, more soldiers and horsemen began to swarm up the hillside towards them. An arrow sang, skidding past Iwan’s shoulder.

‘Form a circle!’ Branwen howled, her eyes filled with the fearsome sight of the onrushing Saxon warriors. ‘Back to back! Let them see how the Gwyn Braw meet their end!’

‘And let us take as many of them as we can to the halls of Annwn!’ shouted Dera, her sword ringing as she drew it.

They pulled their horses back from the brow of the hill, gathering together in a gap between two clusters of trees. Branwen stroked Fain’s feathers.

‘Fly to the trees, my brave one,’ she murmured to him. ‘You cannot aid me here – you are too badly hurt.’

The falcon cawed once and then sprang from her shoulder, flying clumsily over their heads. Twice more he cried, as though wishing them well – or wishing them
farewell
– then he sped to the trees and Branwen lost sight of him in among the bare branches.

She looked for the last time into the faces of her companions. Iwan, smiling a little, as though ready to laugh in death’s face. Dera, grim and dark, her eyes burning. Banon, testing her bow-string with her thumb, her red hair blowing about her cheeks. Aberfa with her great limbs and her brow like a boulder, hefting a spear in her hand and watching for the first target to come within range.

And Rhodri, at her side now as they formed a defensive circle with their horses’ heads facing outwards. At her side, as he had always been since that first day of mist in the mountains when Rhiannon’s goraig-goblins had led her to him and she had knocked him off a cliff edge with a tree branch.

‘You were a fool ever to ride with me, Rhodri,’ she called to him – not for the first time. ‘And now your folly reaps its reward.’

‘Perhaps so,’ he replied. ‘But something within me says you are not destined to die here.’

‘Is that so?’ She could almost have smiled. ‘I’m glad to hear it. Although if you knew the doom that Ragnar has planned for me, you might think death less of a burden.’

He frowned, then a look of alarm came into his face, as though he had somehow understood what she meant. ‘No,’ he said. ‘The Shining Ones would never let that happen to you. Ragnar will not take you. Have no fear of that.’

‘The Shining Ones?’ said Branwen. ‘They cannot save us, Rhodri. I know what they said to Blodwedd – they have no power here. Rhiannon said it herself … they are bound to the land and can do nothing to alter the course of the battle that is to come. She was speaking of
this
battle, Rhodri.’

‘They are upon us!’ hissed Aberfa. ‘Farewell, friends, we will meet again in Annwn!’

Branwen turned her face outwards, bringing her shield rim up to her eyes, tightening her fist around her sword hilt, gripping hard with her knees around Terrwyn’s sturdy body.

They were coming.

Like swarming rats the Saxons flooded in from every direction. They pressed forward, their shields locked together in an onrushing wall, arrows and spears flying as they shouted their dreadful battle cries.

A spear ran quivering through the air. Branwen lifted her shield, angling it so that the spear was deflected. She rocked in the saddle from the impact, her arm tingling. She heard Aberfa roaring.

‘Gwyn Braw! Gwyn Braw!’

More arrows hissed. Dera’s horse fell screaming. Rhodri’s sword arm rose and fell, rose and fell as the Saxons pressed in around him.

But then they were upon her, and she had no more time for fear or grief or guilt as she slashed at the yelling Saxons and lost herself in the red fog of battle madness.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

‘Y
ou fool! You fool, Warrior Child! Did you not heed the Lady Rhiannon’s words? Did you not
listen
?’

The voice came sharp as needles in Branwen’s mind through the boil of her blood and the din of battle. Blodwedd’s voice? Geraint’s? Linette’s? It was impossible to tell as she twisted and swung in the saddle, angling her shield to fend off spear and sword, striking down on her attackers with her bloodied blade, kicking at the Saxons to drive them back while Terrwyn reared and struck out with his hooves, cracking skulls and snapping limbs.

I did listen! I did!

‘Remember these words! We three are bound to the land and cannot be called upon to hold back the army that is coming! Tell her exactly these words, Messenger of Govannon – and hope that she understands.’

I do understand. We are alone in this
.

No! No! Think, Branwen –
think
!

‘ … we three are bound to the land …’

We
three
!

But the Shining Ones are four in number
.

‘Caradoc!’ Branwen gasped, a clear light igniting in the blood-red moil of her mind. She filled her lungs and howled to the sky. ‘Caradoc! Caradoc! Aid me! I am Destiny’s Child! Come to me!’

Hardly had the words left her lips than the world seemed to erupt all about her. She saw the Saxons thrown back in disarray on the crown of the hill. Her companions were driven to the ground, horse and rider both, by a mighty wind that came beating down on them from the sky. Terrwyn stumbled, neighing as he was thrown on to his side.