For Camelot's Honor (31 page)

But the king only sighed. Adev could see nothing of his face in the night's shadows. “What lie does he tell?”

“He claims all your deeds as his own, and lays his deeds at your feet.”
My cousin Rhys risked his life when he told me this, when I crept up to the king's walls to try … to try to do something for the ones who did so for us. Please, do not waste this.
“It is only these lies that make the lady and her knight hate you.”

“What of it, Adev? This is Gwiffert's way.”

Here it was. Here was the hope he had never thought to find in his lifetime. “If they could be shown the lie before too long, they would turn against him. They have power. The lady is gifted. The knight is strong. They came in from the outside of their own will. They might be able to show us the way out from this place.”

But the Great King only shook his head slowly. “They have been taken into the hall. You know as well as I do they are his now, Adev. Whatever they were before they entered those gates is turned now to his purposes.”

“But not yet …”

The Great King did not let him finish. “I'm sorry, Adev, but you have lived under his rule, and you know how swiftly he works.”

Anger, heady and unfamiliar surged through Adev, quickening his old blood. “You are like us. You have come to believe he is a god. You are as afraid as we are who crouch in the mud unable to raise a hand against him.”

The Great King turned his face away from the accusation and said only, “You should have come before, Adev. I looked for you, all those years ago, after I saved you from the Grey Men. I would have done my best to protect you and yours if you had come to me.”

Shame for shame. I should have expected no less.

“Before I thought we could live as we were, but now … now we will starve with the winter, and there is nothing left to lose.”

“He may come for you before then. The owl searches for you eve now”

“I know,” said Adev simply. “So at this last, I have remembered I am a man.” He stood, bones and joints creaking from cold and long travel. “I am going now, and I will do no more in life. What will you do, Great King?”

He did not wait for an answer, but turned stiffly on his old feet and stumped down the hillside, coming again to the darkness beneath the trees. He knew if he looked back, he would see the giant no more, so he did not bother. Instead, he turned his path down the north-facing slope, his face set in determination, his eyes ahead, as a man will who knows his road by heart.

Presently, he heard an owl hoot, and he nodded. He lifted his chin and spoke to the trees. ““You may tell him you were in time. I have spoken to no one.”

Adev sat down on the ground, born down by the heavy years of his life and he waited patiently for the sound of hoofbeats.

Geraint awoke knowing it was dawn. He felt it in his bones, even though the broad hall with its painted walls offered no view of the sky. The coals burned redly beneath their blankets of ash. In their dim light, he saw the men around him began to stir, rolling over, grumbling, scratching, trying to decide if they could burrow under the blankets for just a little more sleep. Despite its size, the hall smelled strongly of human warmth and unwashed bodies.

Some of these men would soon march to war with him, if all went well, and he knew none of them. The thought troubled Geraint as he eased himself out of the bed and reached beneath it for his tunic and sandals. Before attended to that disquiet, though, he needed to see Elen. He badly wished they had not been separated, but neither had he wanted to offend his host.

Her door was slightly ajar when he reached it. From the other side, he could hear cloth rustling, and Calonnau's complaints. He knocked softly.

“My wife?”

There was a pause. “Come in, please, my husband.”

Inside the room, Elen stood between the bed and the serving woman Gwiffert had given her, smoothing down her unbound hair. She wore a borrowed dress of fawn colored wool that had been twisted with darker threads to make black flecks amid the brown. Its colors startlingly matched those Calonnau's feathers, and Geraint wondered if it had been chosen by their host on purpose.

“Good morning,” she said, but her smile was tired. “Meg, you may go break your fast.”

The woman bridled, but in the end, turned and left the room. Elen sighed as she did, but her stance relaxed as the door closed.

“How was the night?” he asked.

Elen shook her head and sat down on the bed. Concerned, Geraint sat beside her, but it was a long time before she spoke to him. She stared at Calonnau preening on her perch and stretching out her talons.

“I could not sleep, and, I … walked the halls a little. And I saw …” She pressed her lips together, cutting off the words that wanted to emerge. “I found the king in his courtyard,” she said instead. He listened carefully while she described the speech she held with him, and how he returned her to her room through the twisting corridors.

When she fell silent, he asked. “What else did you see?”

Elen frowned. “I tell you true, husband, I am not sure. It was a nightmare, but I'm not sure it was a dream.” She stared at the painted trees that surrounded them. “I don't like these walls. They prey on my mind. The king, he does his best, but this hall of his … I don't know what it was made to hold.”

That last echoed through his mind, and for all it held no objective fact, it carried all the weight of truth. “What do you suspect?”

But Elen only shook her head once. Wisps of hair drifted in front of her cheeks and she brushed them back impatiently. “I don't even know that much.”

Geraint took her hand. There was no other comfort he could give her. “I wish I did not have to leave you here.”

That drew a smile from her and she was able to look at him. “So do I.” She covered his hand with her cool palm. “Do you know where you're going?”

“King Gwiffert's captain, Rhys is his name, has some thoughts, but the man is badly afraid. I don't believe they've ever hunted the Grey Men or their cohort before. I cannot get much out of him. I wish …” It was his turn to shake his head. He remembered standing on the walls with Rhys and Taggart the day before, and the short answers the men gave to his questions, and how little they could say about anything that lay beyond the terraced hillside. It was as if their idea of the land ended at the last ditch. That, more than anything else, worried him. What sort of warrior did not know the land around his home like he knew his own name? The first and simplest explanation was that neither captain wished to speak with this stranger who had been set over them. That boded only ill for their riding into battle together.

“What do you wish?” Elen asked.

“I wish Gawain were here,” Geraint said with bitter honesty. “He's a born leader, my brother. I've seen him rally a troop that the day before didn't know him from Adam, but once the battle began they'd follow him to the gates of Hell. Such gifts are not mine.”

“You will do what you must, Geraint. That is your gift.”

I wish I could believe as you do.
“It is a hard, Elen,” was all he said aloud.

“I know.”

They stayed like that for a little while, holding each others' hands, surrounded by a stranger's stone walls, bound by promises made perhaps in foolish haste. He could not have said why so many doubts plagued him this morning. Yesterday, he was certain of what needed to be done, and he still could see no other way, and yet, and yet …

In his brooding silence, Elen spoke. “Let me send out Calonnau to view the country. She is anxious to hunt, and she may show you where your quarry can be found.”

“A good thought.” It was. Geraint berated himself for not having had it, although he was reluctant to ask her to do such a thing, knowing how the hawk's flight, and more, its hunt affected her. A different, thought now came to him. “Although, I do not like the danger. They have spears, these Grey Men. They may have arrows.”

“And why will they waste them on a hunting bird? Come, Geraint.” She shook his shoulder gently. “This place does not know all our secrets.”

“Yet.”

They looked at each other for a long moment before Elen got to her feet and went to the perch. “So we should make use of them while they are still ours.”

They stood there together, the grimly determined woman and the sullen bird, both with their brown robes and their dangerous eyes.

“I cannot argue with this.”
Would ‘twer there was an argument to make.
“Let her fly then, and let us see.”

Outside, the morning was damp and grey with mist. Despite this, Geraint felt better out in the fresh air. The doubt and brooding that had taken him since waking were easier to shake off. He was still himself, after all, and he knew wars and he knew the men who fought them. Elen stood beside him. He would do as he promised. A way would be found.

Despite the early hour, the yard was busy with animals and their folk, and all the noisy chaos of an overfull house. The great gates stood open. The walls were thick with men on watch. Four men stood on guard at the gates themselves. As Geraint and Elen approached, they raised their spears in sharp salute.

“I must ask where you are bound, my lord,” said the tallest of them. His cloak was clasped with silver rather than the bronze the others wore. “It is not safe past the gates.”

“We only mean to step outside the gates. My lady's hawk must hunt or it will pine away. We will not go beyond the shadow of the walls.”

The man's face twitched nervously as he struggled with himself. Some order had been left with him, and he was unsure how closely to apply it to these guests.

“Let them pass,” said one of the bronze-clasped guards roughly. “For Heaven's sake, Ren, let them go.”

Ren looked sharp at his fellow, but his pained face stilled and he nodded. Geraint and Elen passed between them. The pressure of her fingers against his said she noted this strangeness and wondered about it, as he did. They both held their silence as they walked through the archway.

Once they were outside the walls, Calonnau stretched her neck toward the sky and gave her sharp, pleading cry. Elen loosened the jesses. The hawk beat her wings hard, taking to the air at once. The heaviness of the mist and clouds made no difference to her. She soared high, wheeling around, and making her course over the fortress, she swiftly disappear into the gloom.

Elen stared up at the sky for a long time after the bird was lost to sight. The wind rose, sliding between her and Geraint, bringing the mists with it to prickle their skins with cool and insidious damp.

“Will you stand near me?” murmured Elen at last.

Geraint moved closer, putting himself between her and the freshening wind. She was so cold.

“She is going to kill again. I want … I do not want to be alone with that.”

He wrapped his arms around her, making himself a cloak for her shoulders. He felt her breathing, felt her ease herself closer to him. But there was no heartbeat. Her heart was as far away as her gaze, and that truth brought a deep and increasingly familiar sorrow. The stillness at her center was an everpresent reminder of the wound he did not know how to heal, and of the things he had not yet said to her.

This place does not know all our secrets …. Yet … So we should make use of them while we keep them … Or we should set them free.

She was not aware of him now. She had the wild hunger in her eyes that belonged wholly to the hawk. Her hands crooked and her head strained forward. He tightened his arms around her. Her hands grabbed him suddenly, her fingers digging deep into his flesh until he winced with the pain. Then, it was over, and she was back with him, her face tight with shame.

“It's getting worse, Geraint,” she whispered. “I thought it would ease, but it's getting stronger.”

He had no answer. He could only stroke her hair and hold her close, and curse his helplessness. He would tear Morgaine apart with his bare hands for what she had done. He would slit Urien gut to gullet. He would do everything, and he could do nothing.

“We will finish this thing quickly. I will take you out of here and we will go to Merlin. There is a way to break this gaes. There must be.”

“Yes.” She rested her hands against his chest, struggling to master herself again. “You are right, of course.”

He waited. Gradually, she was able to lift her head and smile a little, to step away and stand alone. He let his arms fall to his sides. She was gazing into the distance again, seeing whatever it was Calonnau saw. Although he could have reached out and touched her easily, he felt as if she were a thousand miles away.

But she did return, her eyes focused on what was before them both, the slackness in her features replaced with her own vitality. “I … she saw them. To the north.” She pointed to one of the ragged hills, black and white the morning's mist. Geraint took note of its shape and where it stood among its fellows. “They are moving toward that hill, coming toward us. She just saw the valley beyond it. There were a dozen of the Grey Men, half those in the full helms, half of the other kind.”

Half still living, half already dead.
“Thank you,” breathed Geraint. He did not want to acknowledge what must come next, but as with so much else on this darkening adventure, promises had removed choices. “We must go at once if we are to have a hope of catching them.”

She nodded, biting her lip. He thought she was going to tell him to take care, to come back to her, but she just pulled him down and kissed him with a fierceness that spoke more clearly than words.

When she let him go, he strode away into the hall, and did not dare look back.

Elen was still standing in the shadow of the fortress walls when Geraint and his men rode out. They were twenty althogether. They looked better armed and more sternly martial to her eye than the men of Pont Cymryd would have, but less so than the ones from Arthur's court. She knew this from the rueful look Geraint's gave her as he passed. She waved to him, blowing a kiss in imitation of the great ladies she had heard of in the songs and epics. He bowed gravely to her from the saddle, saluting with the spear he carried. Then, with harness and corslet jingling, he was past her, leading his men down the hill and through the earthworks, to find the enemy and set his plan in motion.

When they reached the level ground, Geraint raised his hand, making a motion as if casting a stone. His horse broke into a cantor, and all those following him did the same. The sound of hooves was distant thunder. From her height, Elen could see nothing but the colors of the horses and helms, but she watched them as they flowed away from her, a living river along the valley floor. The hoofbeats faded to a faint thudding like rain on a high roof by the time they reached the forest. The trees admitted the tiny band to their shelter, and they were gone from sight.

Elen rubbed her arms, but it did no good. She was cold, inside and outside. Still, she did not make any move to return to the yard, much less the hall. She lingered in the damp and mist. She could breathe out here. She could see the sky and the land beneath it. She could not let herself be closed up in stone again. Not yet.

She paced beside the walls, breathing the fresh air deeply. Calonnau was sated now, and settled in some distant tree, viewing the land over with her sharp, predatory eyes. She would venture no further in the damp than she must. Elen found herself wishing the hawk would fly, so her mind could go with her. The illusion of freedom would be a fine thing now.

I am becoming used to this,
she thought and worry settled heavily on her mind.
How soon before I forget the way I used to be?

She did not know how long she stood there in the shadows, her mind swinging between that question and her fears for Geraint. She could order Calonnau to follow him, and watch where he went, but she was afraid of that as well. She was feared the more she made use of the hawk, the closer they would grow, and the harder it would be to remember that she wanted to be free.

“Lady Elen”

Elen jumped and turned. King Gwiffert stood beside her, a serving woman in tow. She carried a basket over her arm. The odor of fresh bread wafted from under its covering of rough cloth.

Elen swallowed, suddenly ravenously hungry. She began to kneel for formality, and the king stopped her with a gesture and nodded to the servant. She came forward and held the basket out at arm's length to Elen with a respectful curtsey. Elen took it, and grateful she did not have to watch Gwiffert watching her, she gave all her attention to investigating its contents. There was fresh, warm bread, broken open and spread thick with new butter and honey. There were two winter apples, wrinkled and sweet, and a wedge of bright, white cheese.