The Dark Mirror (6 page)

A thread of smoke began to rise at the cave’s entry and a pungent smell wafted into the dim interior, making him want to cough. The thread became a ribbon, a plume, a small cloud, and all at once there was a crackling. The gray-clad assassin rose to his feet and turned, exposing his back for a long moment. Bridei sighted, balanced the weapon and threw even as the sound of running
feet came to his ears, and a shout in a familiar voice. As the knife spun, satisfactorily, through the thickening pall of smoke, a form came hurtling across Bridei’s vision, a furious, long-limbed form that crashed into the gray-clad man, removing them both from sight. The knife had disappeared. Bridei shrank back. Flames crackled before the gap, men shouted, metal clashed. There was a strange
gurgling sound that ended in a rasping sigh. The flames began to die down; someone was stamping out the fire. Someone was saying, “You’ve killed him.” The little cave was full of smoke; Bridei’s eyes stung, his nose itched, his chest was heaving with the effort not to cough. He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his lips tight. Wrong; he had got it wrong. Someone was dead. His knife had killed
someone. Probably Donal. Donal had come to rescue him, and instead of waiting as he should
have done, Bridei had thrown the knife without looking properly; without assessing the risks as Donal had taught him to do. He had done something truly bad and now he was shaking and crying like a baby, he could not seem to stop himself.

Voices, outside. “He’s done for, all right. Snapped his neck. Worthless
scum.”

“Better to have kept him stewing; could’ve got the truth out of him, who sent him, who’s paying him. Why’d you—Donal?”

Then a shuffling sound, like someone trying to get up and not making much of a job of it. It was getting harder and harder not to cough. Bridei needed to sniff; his nose was running like a stream in spate.

“What’s this, man? You’re bleeding like a stuck pig! Did the
fellow wing you?”

“It’s nothing. A scratch. Go after the others and be quick about it!”

Feet on the path, many of them now, and jingling metal, and then silence. Or almost silence; Bridei could hear breathing, his own, snuffling with tears, and another’s, somewhat labored. Donal was alive.

“Bridei?” It was little more than a whisper. “Are you somewhere near, lad? Answer me, curse it!”

Donal
sounded strange. Perhaps he was angry. A warrior would not have hidden like a coward, and hit the wrong target, and then shed tears over it. Bridei found himself unable to move, unable to speak.

“Bridei!” Donal was attempting a shout. Bridei could see a little bit of him now, his shoulder in the familiar old leather jerkin, and the other hand clasped over it, and blood oozing between the fingers.
“Bridei, you foolish wee boy, if you’ve gone and got yourself killed I’ll—I’ll—” The warrior’s voice faded; Bridei had never heard him speak like that before, as if the life were draining out of him quicker than sand through a glass. Bridei edged forward, slipping out between the rocks, stepping over the smoldering heap of leaves and twigs to stand, small and still, by Donal’s side. He tried
not to see the form of that other man lying not far off with his head on a strange angle. Donal was sitting on the ground; his eyes were closed and his face was the color of last week’s porridge. There was quite a lot of blood on his shoulder and upper arm, and he had Bridei’s small knife held loosely in his right hand.

“I’m sorry,” Bridei said solemnly, and gave a monumental sniff. “It was the
other man I meant to hit, the one who was trying to shoot me.”

Donal’s eyes flew open. His mouth stretched in a grin and he half rose to his
feet, then subsided again with a groan. “Blessed All-Flowers be praised! Where were you, you wee—in there? How can that be? Yon crack’s not wide enough to admit a half-grown pup, let alone a great lad like you! I can’t credit it!”

It was true. The opening
looked hardly big enough for him to fit one shoulder through, let alone the rest of him. No wonder that man had failed to reach him with the sword . . . The thought of that slashing, rending blade made Bridei feel suddenly odd, and he sat down abruptly by Donal’s side.

“Tell me.” Donal’s voice had changed again; now he really was angry, but Bridei sensed it was not for him. “Tell me what happened
here, lad. All of it, every detail, everything you saw.”

“You’re bleeding,” Bridei said. “I know how to tie a bandage, Broichan showed me. I’ll do that now, and then I’ll tell you while we go home. You should have a poultice of wormwood and rue, and drink mead, and go to bed early. That’s what my foster father would say”

Donal regarded him in silence.

“I’m sorry I hurt you,” Bridei said once
more, and felt his lower lip tremble ominously.

“Oh, aye,” said Donal, his voice oddly constrained again. “I think the usual thing is to rip up a shirt or two. It’ll have to be yours; I can’t get mine off over this shoulder. But make sure you put your jacket back on straight away, it’s cold up here. And get on with it, will you? That mead’s beginning to sound very good.”

I
T HAD BEEN A mistake, Donal said. It was Broichan whom the fellow and his companions were trying to harm, not Bridei. Bridei knew this was wrong. He had seen the expression in that man’s narrowed eyes, had watched as his finger tightened on the bowstring. Broichan did have enemies. A man who is everybody’s friend has no need of guards on the perimeters of his property, or doors with bolts. Perhaps
those attackers were the druid’s foes, but the one they wanted to kill was Bridei. Why, he could not tell. His father was a king, certainly, but Gwynedd was a distant place with its own councils, its own wars, far removed from the realms of the Priteni. Besides, his father had sent him away. If he’d been of any special importance, surely his family would have kept him. The attack just didn’t
make sense.

The man Donal had killed was buried in a corner of the sheep yard. Others, sighted from Broichan’s guardposts, had escaped into the forest despite energetic pursuit by the druid’s men at arms. They remained unaccounted for, their mission and origins a mystery. Donal cursed that the fellow had obliged him to kill or be killed; he’d rather have bruised the other a little, trussed him
up and got the truth out of him one way or another. Too late now; the gray-clad man could only tell his story to the worms.

Bridei was no longer permitted to wander on his own, but must go accompanied by at least two of the guards, and only when there was a real
need for it. The daily rides were curtailed, for Donal was much occupied. Tense exchanges in lowered voices were frequent, and all the
men had a guarded, edgy look about them. Mara muttered over the washtub. Ferat cursed as he plucked geese, and Bridei learned new words, which he did not repeat. He spent a lot of time in the stables grooming Pearl and talking to her, for her warm body and sweet, accepting eyes made her a good companion, as horses went. In the afternoons he studied. He tried not to notice how empty the house seemed,
how quiet. He tried not to think of how small he was, how little he really knew of how to be strong, how to fight back. He tried not to worry about Broichan and what a long time it was taking him to come back home.

Without the druid, the household had not observed the ritual of Gateway, marking entry to the dark time. Mara said that farther along Serpent Lake there would be a big heap of logs,
pine, ash, oak, set by the shore ready for burning. Bridei would have liked to go down and watch folk leap through the flames, as Mara had told him they did. But there had been no point in bothering Donal; why ask when you know already the answer will be no? So all Bridei had done was set out a little bowl of mead and a platter of oatcakes on the step outside the kitchen. This was a sign of respect;
thus, he invited the dead to share the household’s gifts, to be welcome there on this night when barriers opened and the worlds merged. In the morning, mead and cakes were gone; there was nothing left but a scattering of pale crumbs.

Gateway night was well past now, and it would soon be Midwinter. The king’s council must be long over, but there had been no word from Broichan. The nights stretched
out. Lamps burned in kitchen and hall throughout the day, illuminating an interior that was always smoky, for the fire was constantly burning save when all slept. Mara muttered about the soot and hoarded supplies of oil. In his small chamber Bridei huddled in a blanket, candlelight flickering on the stone walls, and tried to concentrate on the lore. It felt as if his foster father had been gone
forever. When was Broichan coming home?

Three days short of Midwinter it snowed. The air had been hinting at it since early morning: there was no mistaking that stillness, that odd, deceptive sensation of warmth, as if the soft cloud blanket were easing winter’s grip even as it blotted out the sun. Bridei was outside helping the men move sheep from one field to another. The guards kept their
long watch on the upper margins of Broichan’s land; their stalwart forms, their blue-patterned features were clearly visible up under the bare oaks on the forest’s edge.
They worked shorter shifts in winter; at any time, there would be men coming in for roast meat and ale with spices, and other men putting on layers of clothing, skin cloaks, leather helms, heavy boots, ready for another battle
with the chill. Ferat was so busy he’d no time to grumble. There were two fellows to help him, both too terrified of the cook’s temper to do anything but work at top speed and pray that they made no errors.

The snow began to fall as the last of the ewes were going through, herded by the overexcited dogs. Bridei’s job was to sit on the drystone dike by the gap and make sure they separated out
the right ones. The farming side of Broichan’s affairs was handled by a man called Fidich. It was clear Fidich had once been a warrior of some note, for the patterns he wore on his face were almost as elaborate as Donal’s, and he had markings on his hands, too, twists and spirals from wrist to fingertips. Fidich had strong shoulders and a grim expression, and a right leg that ended just below the
knee. He walked with a crutch of ash wood, and could cover the difficult terrain of the farm with astonishing speed. He lived in a but on the far side of the walled fields all by himself. Never a sheep dropped an early lamb, nor a pig ventured out into a forbidden plot of land, but Fidich knew of it. The leg did make some things difficult. That was why a boy for gate-work was useful.

“Right,
lad, that’s the last!” Fidich called over the voices of three large hounds clamoring in chorus, and Bridei hauled the gate shut and fastened the bolt. The sheep on the other side, the ones relegated to a winter of sheltering under scrubby bushes and gleaning a living from what little feed could be spared, showed momentary confusion, then wandered off as if nothing untoward had happened.

The snow
made its presence felt first in isolated flakes, descending in a slow, graceful dance. As men, boy, and dogs headed downhill to the house, the flakes became soft flurries and swirling eddies, settling patchily on the frost-hardened mud of the track. Over the lake, the tree-clad hillside was disappearing behind a blanket of low cloud. The wind stirred, and the pines moaned in response. By the time
Bridei and his companions reached the house, the dogs bore a wintry coating on their shaggy gray hair and the wind was howling in earnest. Looking back up the hill, Bridei could not see the field where they had been working, nor the sheep, nor the guards pacing beyond. There was only the white.

“Settling in for a good blow,” Fidich commented. “I’ll not stay; need to get home while I can still
find the way. Hard night for the lads up on watch.”

“Aye,” said another man. “Be a foolish fellow would try to get in here in such a blizzard; he’d be wandering in circles, lying down for a rest and never getting up again, I reckon. Sure you won’t stop in for a bite to eat?”

“Ah, no, I’ve my own fire to get lit and my own porridge oats,” Fidich said, as he always did.

It was cold even in the
hall before the fire. Bridei was in no rush to go off to bed, for he knew how icy his little chamber would be on such a night. Everyone was quiet. Mara was mending by lamplight; Ferat sat on a bench staring morosely into his ale cup. Most of the men had already gone off to their quarters. Donal was at the table working on some arrows. A variety of small knives and other implements, feathers and
twines and lengths of wood, was set out before him. He was whistling under his breath. Bridei sat beside him, too tired tonight to do more than watch.

The kitchen door crashed open, making them all start. A chill draft swirled through into the hall, setting the fire sparking. Donal grabbed his biggest knife and sprang to his feet, and the other men at arms leaped to block the doorway between
kitchen and hall. Mara stationed her ample form in front of Bridei, effectively stopping him from seeing a thing.

“What the—?” was all Ferat had time to say before the door was heard slamming shut again, and the men at arms stepped back to let two figures through, one supporting the other. One was Cinioch, who had been on guard up in the snow by the dike, and the other, ashen-faced, blue-lipped,
and covered with the scratches and bruises of a headlong flight across country in the dark, was Uven, one of the men at arms who had traveled with Broichan to the king’s council.