Gwenhwyfar (22 page)

For some, the choice was obvious. Tall, meaty boys with a lot of sheer brute strength already were clearly made for fighting afoot. To them, Peder now assigned training with the staff, the cudgel, the hammer, the ax. Those with the best eye—Gwen among them—got extra training with bow and spear. Those who clearly were not doing well with their horses either had their difficulties sorted out or were (to their profound relief) dismissed from the chariot and cavalry altogether. Peder spent all of a day studying them, measuring them, looking at their parents, and consulting with the oldest folk in the village about their grandparents, in order to try to determine what they might grow to be like.

And that was when Gwen’s own abilities became apparent. “Ye’ll never be a giant,” was Peder’s shrewd assessment. “They tell me for size ye be the spit image of yer grammar and granther on king’s side. Except the hair. Otherwise, small and fast and sleekit, not tall, like the queen. Braith was right. Epona put her stamp on ye. And the best place for ye, bodyguard to yer kin and scout. Cavalry or chariot an’ ye
must,
but I’d sooner see ye scoutin’. Ye’ve got the way of movin’ quiet and not being seen that it bain’t possible to teach. That’s not be from the king’s blood.”

Now this was a revelation to Gwen, but it occurred to her immediately that this was true: She
did
have a knack for getting around without people noticing her when she didn’t want to be noticed. It had worried her that she was so little and would have to go up against much larger and stronger men. But Peder had found the right place for her, and it was something no one else would have been as well suited to, and she felt suddenly as if everything was
right.

Meanwhile, Gynath had made up with Bronwyn, and part of her day was spent in learning more of Women’s Magic, so that she could try scrying as soon as Bronwyn thought she had the strength for it. In fact, Bronwyn heartily approved of the planned attempt. None of the other women had so much magic in them, and the mere fact that Gynath was going to at least try to see what was happening with their men made them all encourage her and look to her.

On the afternoon when Gynath was going to make her first attempt, Gwen found herself at a variation of her old chore taking goose feathers that she herself must have cleaned and carefully stripping the vanes, so that the fletcher could use them to feather his arrows. Of all of those who were left, she was the best at it, perhaps because she had cleaned so many and knew how to handle them. She spoiled very few; most were so perfect that the fletcher had very little to do but trim them to fit and glue them in place.

Her thoughts drifted to Gynath, wondering if she had begun . . . wondering what it felt like to be the center of a circle of Power . . . and that was when the feathers vanished from her hands, and she found herself . . . elsewhere.

On the top of a mountain? It seemed so, but this was not like standing on any real mountain, for she could see everything below her as clearly as if she stood within arm’s length. A battle was about to begin.

A battle not between men but between two armies of animals.

On the one side, boars, an army of boars. Huge, brutish creatures, with greedy eyes and long, vicious tusks, with ravens circling above them. Leading them, a white dragon.

On the other side, another army, of mixed beasts: hounds, stags, keen-eyed wolves, with falcons on-watch above, and a great bear leading. Beside the bear, a noble white stallion.

She had only time enough to take this all in before the two forces leaped at each others’ throats.

She had no experience of human wars, to know if this was more or less bloody, noisy, confusing, and chaotic. She wanted to look away, sickened by the slaughter, but she could not.

It seemed to go on forever. And then, at last, the boars began to lose. The mixed army drove them back over a field slick with blood and thick with fallen bodies. The white dragon turned tail and ran, leaving the boars alone.

Then it happened; pressing eagerly ahead, the white stallion stumbled over the corpse of a boar. Another, its tusks dripping with the blood of its victims, saw the chance, and leaped for him. Other animals saw what was happening but were too far away; they would never reach him in time to save him—

All but one.

With a high, thin cry, a falcon dove out of the sky, talons slashing at the boar’s eyes. The boar roared with pain, reared, and snapped, catching the falcon before she could escape, killing her instantly. But that was enough time for the stallion to scramble to his feet and rejoin the army, which rushed on the boar and slew it before it could even drop the poor, mangled corpse in its mouth.

And then—she was back, dazed, feathers still in her hands. But this time, this time she knew what she had seen. The boars were the Saxon army, for boars were sacred to them. The bear must have been the High King Arthur, the stallion, her own father. And the falcon—the falcon could only have been Braith.

And she had just seen how Braith had died . . .

Heedless of the feathers, she buried her face in her hands, and wept.

Gwen’s breath steamed
in the frozen air as she looked down on the encampment of Saxon raiders, settling in for the night. She was in a tree at the edge of a natural meadow; they were camped just inside the trees, where the smoke from their fire would be broken up by the branches so that it wouldn’t betray them. It was an orderly camp; that argued for a group that fought together regularly, with one man commander over the rest. They traveled lightly, no animals, one pack each, and their weapons. They camped properly, arranged around the fire, pine boughs and bracken over the boughs laid out to keep them off the snow. The fire had been well made in a scrape, so that melting snow didn’t overwhelm it and put it out. They thought they were alone in the wilderness, roasting their stolen sheep, counting over their loot. Which was, all things considered, not much; they’d managed to find one poor peddler and had raided a single farmstead. It scarcely seemed worth the effort. They were bold, or desperate, to be making raids on her father’s lands this deep in winter.

Unless, of course, they were scouts for a larger force. And if that was the case, they were looking to see what defenses were here once the snow fell and hoping to drive well into enemy territory before any organized defense could move in. The more she considered them, the likelier that seemed. Probably they were counting on the fact that her father was known, still, for his skilled charioteers, and chariots did not travel in snow at all.

But Gwen was not her father, she was her father’s guard and right hand, and she had been schooled in a generation that was coming to rely on horsemen. More and more, the king was listening to her recommendations. And at her urging, he had gradually increased the strength of his cavalry over the past several years. His own near-escape in the battle where Braith had fallen had shown him that chariots were of limited use and even an actual hazard on broken ground. Now his chariots were mostly used for massed charges and rescues over good flat land. This year, for the first time, horsemen in his ranks had outnumbered chariot drivers by two to one. Even the High King was taking notice of his tactics.

She had a good idea what the Saxon leader was probably thinking, if that was a scouting force below her. Even if someone saw them and reported their presence back to King Lleudd, the winter would keep him and his warriors bound to their holdings. Meanwhile, the Saxon scouts could roam with impunity and bring back intelligence to the army in time for them to drive deep into this kingdom. Once there, it would be costly to dislodge them. This land was less populous than the area to the east; easier to take, easier to hold, and the Saxons actually tended to be decent to farmers who didn’t resist them. If you could stay hidden until the worst of the fighting and looting was over, you’d likely survive. Saxon fighters didn’t till the land, and they needed to eat; there was no point in killing the hands that would feed them, so farmers were generally safe. If they could take this country, they might have a better chance of holding it than the lands the High King was pushing them out of.

Ah, but horsemen could go anywhere, regardless of the weather, so long as food for the horses could be found. And all villages within her father’s lands were required to put in hay and keep it for the use of the cavalry in winter. That had been another of Gwen’s suggestions, and she was unreasonably proud of it. It meant that the cavalry could get anywhere quickly, even in winter, unburdened by the need to bring fodder with them.

The villages were not doing badly by the policy. King Lleudd permitted the unused hay to be fed to local animals as soon as the snows melted, and until this year, that was what had generally happened. Gwen wondered, as she crouched on her tree branch, if the pressure that High King Arthur was putting on the Saxons in the east was making them concentrate on him, and they were not even taking her father’s reputation into consideration. Perhaps in concentrating on Arthur, they underestimated a “lesser” king, one who was old enough to be a grandfather to boot.

The tree Gwen was in, though leafless, hid her perfectly. Not that they ever looked up. But she, in her white furs and gray clothing, merely blended into the snow-covered branches and the haze of leafless twigs. She had mastered the art of holding absolutely still for as long as she needed to. And there was, of course, that subtle magic that was all her own, the ability to will herself unseen.

The ironic thing was that Arthur, by all accounts, would have been perfectly ready to accept the Saxon surrender and alliance, would honor their rulers and their customs as he honored those of his other allies, like Gwen’s father, and Lot of Orkney and Lothian, and the King of Gwynnedd. But they would have none of this. And so they fought him, lost, slunk back behind their shrinking borders, recovered, and fought him again. In more than fifteen years since her father had sent out his levies, they still had not learned that lesson.

This tree was not in the familiar hills that she had trained in and run over in her first years as a warrior. Over the last several years, Pengwen, Calchfynelld, and Caer Celemion had come into her father’s hands, and all peacefully.

First had been Pengwen; when those levies of so long ago had come home amid mingled rejoicing and grief, the young—very young—ruler of Pengwen had come with them, had seen Gynath, and within a day even a fool would have known that the lad had lost his heart. From that moment, the conclusion had been forgone. And because he was so young, his father fallen in that last battle, with the agreement of his own chiefs, he had given over governorship of his land to King Lleudd.

He could have taken his throne by now, but he was not the least interested in having it back. Quarrels among the chiefs bewildered and upset him as a youngling, and as an adult, they bewildered and exasperated him. He hated fighting, he hated having to judge men, and above all, he hated being
looked
to for answers. He was happier by far doing the work of a steward; he deeply understood the land and the farmers and herdsmen. He had an instinct for what would be a good year, and what would be a poor one; those who followed his advice prospered. And so, instead of ruling, he served as steward and seneschal for what had once been four kingdoms, adored his wife and his children, and was a blessing on King Lleudd’s house.

As for Calchfynelld, and Caer Celemion, the entire ruling household of the former had been taken by a rheumy plague one winter, and the latter’s king died within an hour of his son on yet another battlefield against the Saxons. Seeing how well and justly her father had dealt with Pengwen, the assembled chiefs of both lands had come to him and begged him to accept their fealty. From the time of Gwen’s second year in warrior training to now, the little Kingdom of Pywll had quadrupled in size.

Which was why Gwen was perched in a tree in the winter, just inside the border of what had been Caer Celemion, looking down on the evening camp of a band of Saxon raiders. She had no mind to move just yet; not until it got darker. She was as at home up a tree as under it, as cozy under a snow covered bush as any rabbit, and so quiet and near-invisible in her ghostings about that the men of her troop all said she truly was a “white spirit.”

In fact . . . that was what the Saxons called her as well, except that they were sure she was a spirit in truth.

I should think about that,
she reflected, as the odor of burned mutton came to her nose.
That could be very useful. There must be some way to encourage them to believe I really am some vengeful phantom.

Peder had been right. And so had Braith. She was Epona-touched; there wasn’t a horse in all her father’s herds that she couldn’t ride. She took to weapons work with the same ease that Gynath danced or Cataruna sang. Clearly, she had been born to walk this path, and Peder’s careful weighing of her talents and physical abilities, his selective training, had made her the best scout in King Lleudd’s entire army.

Her father was not just indulging her; she was of great value to him doing what she was. And it was not as if he lacked for heirs, for Gynath and her beloved Caradoc had already given him five living grandchildren. If that were not enough, Cataruna had graced him with two more. Four years ago she had returned from the Ladies of the Well not only a Lady full trained but with a bard husband who just happened to be one of the King of Gwynnedd’s younger sons and well schooled to be Forest Lord to her Lady of the Fields in all the rites.

Which left Gwen free to do as she pleased, and what she pleased was to serve in peace as her father’s right hand, and in war as his eyes and ears, and the eyes and ears of his army.

She bent her ear to the rough talk about the fire; she had schooled herself in the Saxon tongue this past year and more, reckoning it would be useful both in questioning prisoners and in understanding things she was not meant to overhear. It was an ugly speech, harsh and guttural, having none of the lilting beauty of her own, the song of that used down in Cornwall, the poetry of the Gaels, the measured grace of the languages of the east, or even the logic and cadence of the Latin it was said that the High King spoke. Cataruna’s husband, Ifan, was the one who taught her all these tongues, and perhaps he had worked some special magic to put them into her head, for surely they came to her as easily as breathing.