Sword at Sunset (33 page)

‘It seems that you are a conqueror in all things,’ Maglaunus said, as I came up to the high seat, with the great hound stalking beside me.

Supper flared into a feast of triumph for our victory over the raiders, and I sat with Maglaunus at the upper end of the hall, on a seat spread with a magnificent red stag’s hide, with
Cabal crouched alert in the strewed fern at my feet, and ate broiled bear’s hams and fine pale barley bread and ewe’s-milk curds, while Flan the chieftain’s harper sang the song
that he had made in my honor because it was I and my Companions who had played the foremost part in that matter of the Scots. It was not such a song as Bedwyr would have made, but it had a good
strong lilt to it like the swing of a west coast swell and the dip of oars – it would have made a good war boat’s song to keep the rowers together.

In Maglaunus’s hall they still followed the old custom of the Tribes, and the women did not eat with the men, but apart by themselves in the women’s place. But when the eating was
over, they came in to pour the drink for their menfolk, while the little dark slaves who had served throughout the meal melted away or curled up among the hounds about the fire. So this evening,
when the eating was done, Guenhumara came in as usual, walking up the hall with the other women behind her. She had tended me in my sickness as often as old Blanid her nurse, and far more gently,
but save for those vivid moments of awareness beside the Midsummer Fire, I had never seen her at all. Nor did I seem to see her now. And yet, looking back, I can remember very clearly what she
looked like, and that is a strange thing ...

She wore a gown of blue and russet checkers, clasped somewhere about the shoulder with red amber and gold, and the long tawny braids of her hair had small golden apples at their ends which swung
a little as she walked, so that one expected them to ring like bells. She came up the hall slowly, carrying a great cup of dark green glass between her hands, and her face was so strongly painted
that while she was still far down the hall I could see the green malachite on her eyelids; and the way her brows were drawn out long and dark with stibium, like the dark, dagger-sharp wings of a
swift.

She came on slowly, slowly, while the hall fell quiet behind her, and mounted the step to the dais, and gave the brimming cup into her father’s hands.

Maglaunus lurched to his feet and raised the cup, spilling a little as he did so. I saw the liquid dribble through his fingers, golden and almost as thick as run honey. He turned to look at me
under his russet brows. ‘Shlanther to Artos the Bear. I drink to you, my Lord the Count of Britain. May the sun and the moon shine on the path of your feet, and may your sword arm never grow
weaker.’ And he tipped back his head and drank; and when he had done so, stood holding the cup and looking at me over it with a kindling and speculative eye. I knew that something else was
coming, and with a sudden warning beating in my head, I waited for what it might be.

‘I have been thinking much of those things we spoke of before the raiders came – you see that I was right in that matter – but none the less, it grows in my mind that we must
indeed come to stand shield to shield, even as you have said, against the Barbarians in the time that lies ahead. Therefore it grows in my mind also that there should be made a bond between us to
bind our shields together; and to the bond between us, I drink again.’

When he had more than half emptied the great cup, he held it out to me – I also had risen by that time – saying, ‘Drink you also.’

The light of the flames on the central hearth shining through the thick glass filled the cup with a dimly golden fire as I took it into my hands. ‘To what bond shall I drink?’ I
asked, with the small clear sense of danger still beating in my head.

He said, ‘Why not to the bond of kinship? That is the surest bond of all. Let you take Guenhumara my daughter from my hearth to yours. So shall we be kinsmen, knit together by the blood
tie of brother to brother and father to son.’

For an instant I felt as though I had taken a blow in the root of my belly. I have never known what made Maglaunus broach the matter so publicly, risking his daughter’s humiliation before
every warrior in his hall; maybe he desired to put all his rejoicings together and make of the evening one grand and glorious blaze, and never thought of my refusing what he offered. Maybe he
thought to force my hand. Maybe he was a gambler – or merely wiser in the ways of men and women than he seemed. Without will of my own, my startled sight jumped to Guenhumara’s face,
and I saw the tide of painful color flood up to the roots of her hair, and knew too that she had had no warning, but that unlike me, she had feared in advance; and that the heavy paint of her face
had been put on as a young man takes up his armor. My mind was racing, seeking in all directions for a way out for both of us that would not make me enemies where I so sorely needed allies. Then I
heard myself saying, ‘Maglaunus, my friend, you lay great honor upon me, but you must forgive me my answer for tonight. It is forbidden, taboo for me from my birth, even to so much as think
of women, in each year between the dying of the Midsummer Fires and the kindling of the Lammas torches.’

It sounded a wildly unlikely excuse, but after all, it was no more unlikely than the taboos laid upon Conary Môr, the Scottish hero, that he should never drive right-handwise around Tara
nor sleep in a house from which firelight shone at night ... At all events, since no man could disprove it, it might at least gain me a breathing space ...

There was a murmuring all down the hall, a whispering among the women; the chieftain’s brows drew together and they all but met across the bridge of his nose, and a dark flush burned
beneath his eyes. Guenhumara, on the other hand, when I cast another quick glance at her, was so white that the paint stood out sharp-edged and ugly on her lids and cheekbones, though she met my
look quietly and with the shadow of a smile.

Then the deep rumble of his laughter boomed into the moment’s hush. ‘Aye well, what is five days? We can pass the time cheerfully enough, and at the end of it you shall give me your
answer. Meanwhile, drink to the bond of friendship between us, my Lord Artos the Bear!’

Five days! I had forgotten how long I had lain sick; the lateness of the summer. Well, five days’ respite was better than none. ‘To the bond of friendship between us,’ I said,
and drank off what was left of the sweet fiery stuff and gave the cup back into Guenhumara’s hands as she stood to take it from me; and felt as I did so, that her hands were shaking. She
smiled, and took it with a lovely dignity that made me the more aware of her armor, and turned to rejoin the other women.

The uneasy silence in the hall was engulfed suddenly in the snarling flurry of a dog fight as Cabal, who had lain quiet at my feet all evening, only raising his hackles and snarling a warning
from time to time whenever one of the other hounds, stiff-legged and hostile, drew too near, rose with a full-throated roar of fury and flung himself against three of them at the same time. (I was
to learn, when I knew him better, that he was not a fighter among his own kind, but that when he did fight, odds meant nothing to him.) Most of the other dogs flung themselves into the battle, and
for a while we had hot work to separate them, even with a few firebrands and the contents of a pot of beer flung into their midst; and when finally I had succeeded in strangling Cabal off a howling
adversary and most of the other dogs had been kicked outside to finish their fighting where they would, the scene that was just past seemed to be forgotten, and the beer went around faster than
before.

I was as grateful to Cabal as though he had sprung into battle in defense of my life.

chapter sixteen

N
EXT MORNING
I
WHISTLED
C
ABAL TO HEEL, AND TOOK TO
the moors behind the Dun, heading for the high empty
places as I had always done in time of stress since I was a boy. Also I was bent on testing my strength, for once Lammas was over, the sooner I was away from the Dun of Maglaunus the better. It was
a day of hurrying storm clouds and swiftly changing lights that came and went across the great slow billows of the moor where the heather was coming into flower, so that at one moment a whole
hillside would be bloomed dark as sloes, and the next, the color of thin spilled wine. And as the light came and went, changing and scurrying about the moors, so my thoughts changed and shifted,
scudding about my mind as I walked. The only thing that remained constant amid the turmoil was my determination not to take Guenhumara from her father’s hearth. It was not only that I
flinched from the idea of taking any woman, but quite simply that I had no place for her in my way of life, no life to give any woman. Yet I knew that that would not satisfy Maglaunus; and there
was the war alliance with him to be taken into the account, the hope of men and aid that we desperately needed, the necessity of bonding the tribes together that was our only hope of throwing back
the Barbarians. Last night he had said, ‘Drink to the bond of friendship between us.’ But would that hold, after the slight that, however I tried to soften it, I must put on his
daughter in four days’ time? And the woman herself? Would it be better for her (supposing that I could get the word to her) to save her pride and maybe gain her father’s anger, by
herself refusing the marriage – or to be shamed by my refusal before the whole tribe and keep her father’s favor? And would it make any difference whether she refused or not? Which was
worse for a woman, the shame or the danger? The danger or the shame? As to my chances now of winning Maglaunus to the Red Dragon, whichever way things went, they were not worth a brown tufted rush
in the wind. Oh gods! What a tangle! I cursed, and stumbled on, not taking much notice of anything about me, until a chill scurry of rain on the back of my neck woke me to my surroundings, and to
the knowledge that I had walked too far and was spent.

I sat down in the lee of a hump of thorn trees, with Cabal lying nose on paws beside me, while the rain squall blotted out the moors, and then blew over and left the world refreshed and shining.
I sat on for a while after, listening with one ear to the rich contented boom of bees in the young bell heather, and when I was somewhat rested, turned westward again and set off toward the coast,
at an easier pace.

Presently I was walking into the eye of a wild sunset, with gray clouds racing across a western sky of saffron and silver gilt, and the sea running translucent gold to the skyline; and found
that I was heading directly toward the hill shoulder with its ring of standing stones where we had danced on Midsummer’s Eve. They stood up, shadow-bloomed, dark with rain against the tumbled
brightness of the sky. The shining lances of the sunset were in my eyes, and it was not until Cabal pricked his ears at one of the standing stones, that I saw a figure standing in the shadow of it.
I whistled the hound to my side as he started forward with an uncertain sound between a snarl and a whimper, and caught him by the collar. But the figure never moved, indeed in its utter silence it
might have been one of the standing stones, and it was not until I was almost within reach that I knew it for Guenhumara in a tunic of unbleached gray sheep’s wool that was one in color with
the stone behind her.

‘My Lady Guenhumara! What is it that you do here?’

‘I was waiting for you,’ she said composedly.

‘But how could you know that I should come this way?’

‘Maybe I called you.’

Fear touched me with a cold fingertip, and I was remembering another woman in a saffron gown, standing in a bothy doorway with that same air of stillness of having stood there since time began,
saying, ‘I have waited for you a long time ... ’

Then Guenhumara laughed. ‘Na, I am no witch to comb my hair and call down the moon. I saw which way you walked, and came out after you, that is all. Here, from the Nine Sisters you can see
far across the moors, and I hoped to be able to meet you on your way back. One cannot talk in the Dun without the very jackdaws crying the thing that one talked of from the rooftops next
morning.’

‘I can well believe it. What is the thing that you would say to me?’

She had moved a little toward me, out from the shadow of her standing stone, and the light of the stormy sunset tangled in her hair and turned it to an autumn fire. She said, ‘When the
Lammas torches are lit, what will you say to my father the chieftain?’

I was silent, not knowing what to reply; and after a pause, she said in a low faintly mocking voice – her voice was the lowest I have ever heard in a woman, yet very clear, vibrant as a
bronze bell. ‘Na, my Lord Artos, you need not say it; I know. I knew while you were still searching under my father’s eyes for your way out.’

‘Did I show it so clearly to all the hall, then?’

‘To no more than half, maybe.’ Her eyes were fixed on my face, and suddenly I saw them dilate until the black swallowed all the color; and she laid the mockery aside as though it
were a weapon. ‘I came to tell you something that it may be well for you to know, before the Lammas torches. If you take me as Maglaunus my father wishes, he will give you one hundred men
with their mounts, for my dowry. That I know in truth ... Our horses are not so great as yours, but they are good horses, bred in the first place from some cavalry mounts of a Legion that was lost
somewhere among the Lowland hills in the far-off days, and we have kept the strain pure.’

I was more startled, I think, than I had been when Maglaunus first bade me take her; and when I spoke at last, it was more harshly than I had meant. ‘Did Maglaunus your father send you to
tell me this?’

‘If so, I would have died before I came!’

‘Would you? I want horses and men, but not – like that.’

I could scarcely have complained if she had spat in my face, but she only said with a small quickly suppressed sigh, ‘No, I suppose that you would not,’ and then, bracing herself to
a yet more rigid stillness, ‘Artos, until now, I have counted myself a proud woman; and I am laying my pride at your feet for you to trample it into the dirt if you choose. I beg you to take
me.’