The Last Light of the Sun (25 page)

Aeldred’s younger daughter was considerably milder of manner than her sister, and was thought, therefore (though not by her siblings), to be softer. Something peculiar seemed to be happening to her now, however. A feeling, a sensation within … a presence. She didn’t understand it, felt edgy, angry, threatened. A darkness in the sunlight here, beside it.

Fists clenched at her sides, she walked towards her brother and their longtime friend and this arrogant Cyngael, whoever he was, and, as the stranger turned at her approach, she swung up her own booted foot to kick him in the selfsame way Judit had kicked Athelbert.

Without the same result. This man did not have his eyes closed, and was in the state of heightened awareness that cold fury and a journey into unknown country can both instill.

“Cafall!
Hold!”
he rasped, and in the same moment, as the dog subsided, the Cyngael twisted deftly to one side and caught Kendra’s foot as she kicked at him. He gripped it, waist high. Then he pushed it higher.

She was falling. He wanted her to fall.

She would have, had the other, older man not arrived, moving quickly to support her. She hadn’t heard the cleric coming over. She stayed that way, her boot gripped by one Cyngael, body held from behind by another.

Outraged, Hakon leaped forward. “You pigs!” he snarled. “Let her go!”

The younger one did so, with pleasing alacrity. Then, less pleasingly, he said, “Forgive me. The proper behaviour here would be … what? To let an Erling tutor me in courtesy? I was disinclined to cut her lungs out. What
does
one do when a woman betrays her lineage in this fashion? Accept the offered blow?”

This was difficult, as Hakon had no good answer, and even less of a notion why Kendra had done what she’d done.

“I am entirely happy,” the Cyngael went on, in the absurdly beautiful voice they all seemed to have as a gift, “to kill you if you think there’s honour to defend here.”

“No!” Kendra said quickly, in the same moment Ceinion of Llywerth released her elbows and turned to his companion.

“Prince Alun,” he said, in a voice like metal, “you are here as my companion and guard. I am your charge. Remember that.”

“And I will defend you with my life from pagan offal,” the younger Cyngael said. The words were ugly, the tone eerily mild, flat.
He doesn’t care,
Kendra thought suddenly.
He wants to be dead.
She had no least idea how she knew that.

Hakon drew his sword and stepped back, for room. “I am weary of these words,” he said with dignity. “Do what you can, in Jad’s name.”

“No. Forgive me, both of you, but I forbid this.”

It was Athelbert, on his feet, clearly in pain, but doing what needed to be done. He stumbled between Hakon and the Cyngael, who had not yet drawn his own blade.

“Ah. Wonderful. You are not dead after all,” the one who appeared to be named Alun said, mockingly. “Let’s blood-eagle someone in celebration.”

At which point, in what might have been the most surprising moment of a profoundly unsettling encounter, Ceinion of Llywerth stepped forward and hammered a short, hard, punishing fist into the chest of his young companion. The high cleric of the Cyngael was not of the soft, insular variety of holy men. The punch knocked the younger man staggering; he almost fell.

“Enough!” said Ceinion. “In your father’s name and mine. Do not make me regret my love for you.”

Kendra registered that last. And the fact that the dog did not even move despite this attack on his master, and the pain in Ceinion’s voice. Her senses seemed unnaturally heightened, on alert, apprehending some threat. She watched the young Cyngael straighten, bring a hand slowly to his chest then take it away. He shook his head, as if to clear it.

He was looking at Ceinion, she saw, ignoring Hakon’s blade and Athelbert’s intervention. Judit, uncharacteristically, had kept silent, beside Gareth, whose watchful manner was normal, not unusual.

The two Cyngael servants had remained by the stream. It was still morning, Kendra thought, late-summer, a bright day, just south and west of Esferth. No time had passed in the world, really.

“You will note that my sword is still sheathed,” Alun said at last, softly, to Ceinion. “It will remain so.” He turned to Kendra, surprising her. “Are you injured, my lady?”

She managed to shake her head. “My apologies,” she said. “I attacked you. You insulted a friend.”

The ghost of a smile. “So I gather. Evidently not wise, in your presence.”

“Judit’s worse,” Kendra said.

“I am not so! Only when—” Judit began.

“Jad’s blood and grief
!"
Gareth snarled. “Hakon! Sheathe your blade!”

Hakon immediately did so, then turned with the others and saw why.

“Father!” cried Judit, in a voice that might actually have made one believe she was purely delighted, feeling nothing but pleasure as she stepped forward and made a showy, elaborate, attention-claiming curtsy in the meadow grass.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” Gareth muttered to the high cleric. “Language. Profane. I know.”

“The least of all transgressions here, I’d say,” murmured Ceinion of Llywerth, before going forward as well, smiling, to kneel before and rise to be embraced by the king of the Anglcyn.

And then to offer the same hug, and his sun disk blessing, to scarred, limping, large-souled Osbert, a little behind Aeldred and to one side, where he always was.

“Ceinion. Dear friend. This,” said the king, “is unlooked for so soon, and a source of much joy.”

“You do me, as before, too much honour, my lord,” said the cleric. Kendra, watching closely, saw him glance back over his shoulder. “I would present a companion. This is Prince Alun ab Owyn of Cadyr, who has been good enough to journey with me, bearing greetings from his royal father.”

The younger Cyngael stepped forward and performed a flawless court bow. From where she stood, Kendra couldn’t see his expression. Hakon, on her right side, was still flushed from the confrontation. His sword—thanks be to Gareth and the god—was sheathed.

Kendra saw her father smiling. He seemed well, alert, very happy. He was often this way after his fever passed. Returning to life, as from the grey gates to the land of the dead where judgement was made. And she knew how highly he thought of the Cyngael cleric.

“Owyn’s son!” Aeldred murmured. “We are greatly pleased to welcome you to Esferth. Your father and lady mother are well, I trust and hope, and your older brother? Dai, I believe?”

Her father found it useful to let people realize, very early, how much he knew. He also enjoyed it. Kendra had watched him for a long time now, and could see that part, too.

Alun ab Owyn straightened. “My brother is dead,” he said flatly. “My lord, he was killed by an Erling raiding
party in Arberth at the end of spring. The same party blood-eagled two innocent people, one of them a girl, as they fled to their ships after being defeated. If you have assigned any of your royal
fyrd
to engage the Erlings anywhere in your lands this season, I should be honoured to be made one of them.”

The music, still there in his voice, clashed hard with the words. Kendra saw her father absorbing all of this. He glanced at Ceinion. “I didn’t know,” he said.

He hated not knowing things. Saw it as a kind of assault, an insult, when events took place anywhere on their island—in the far north, in Erlond to the east, even west across the Rheden Wall among the black hills of the Cyngael—without his own swift and sure awareness. A strength, a flaw. What he was.

Aeldred looked at the young man before him. “This is a grief,” he said. “My sorrow. Will you allow us to pray with you for his soul, which is surely with Jad?”

From where she stood, Kendra saw the Cadyri stiffen, as if to offer a quick retort. He didn’t, though. Only bowed his head in what could have been taken for acquiescence, if you didn’t know better. That eerie, inexplicable sensation: she
did
know better, but not how she knew it. Kendra felt an uneasy prickling, a tremor within.

She became aware that Gareth was looking at her, and managed an almost indifferent shrug. He was shrewd, her younger brother, and she had no way of explaining what it was she was … responding to here.

She turned back and saw that her father was now gazing at her as well. She smiled, uncertainly. Aeldred turned to study Judit, and then his sons. She saw him register Athelbert’s awkward stance and the sword on the grass.

She knew—they all knew—the expression he now assumed. Detached, amused, ironic. He was a much-loved
man, Aeldred of the Anglcyn, he had been from childhood, but he dealt out his own affection thoughtfully, and given what he was, how could he not? Their mother was an exception but that, all four children knew, was also complex.

Waiting, anticipating, Kendra heard her father murmur, “Judit, dear heart, don’t forget to bring my longsword back.”

“Of
course,
Father,” said Judit, eyes downcast, her manner entirely subdued, if not her hair.

Aeldred smiled at her. Added gently, “And when you chastise your older brother, and there is no doubt in me he will have deserved it, try to ensure it doesn’t affect the likelihood of heirs for the kingdom. I’d be grateful.”

“Ah, so would I, actually,” Athelbert said, in something approaching his customary voice.

He was not standing normally yet, there was a cramped tilt to his posture, but he was getting closer to upright. Kendra was still in awe, often, at how precisely her father could draw conclusions from limited information. It was something that frightened Athelbert, she knew: a son entirely aware he was expected to be able to follow this man to the throne. The burden of that. You could understand much of what Athelbert did if you thought of it in this way.

“Please come,” her father was saying to the two Cyngael. “I walked out to greet Hakon Ingemarson, our young eastern friend, rather than wait for my errant children to bring him back so that he might offer his father’s latest explanation for an unsent tribute.” Aeldred turned and smiled at Hakon, to take some of the sting from that. The young Erling managed a proper bow.

The king turned back to Ceinion. “This is a gift, your early arrival. We will offer thanks in chapel for a safe journey, and our prayers for the soul of Dai ab Owyn, and then—if you will—we shall feast and talk, and there will
be music in Esferth while you tell me you have answered my prayers and are come here to stay.”

The cleric made no reply to that last, Kendra saw. She didn’t think her father had expected one. Hakon, of course, was red-faced again. She felt sorry for him. A likable, well-meaning boy. She ought to think of him as a man, but that was difficult. It was curious: Athelbert was
far
more childish, but you always knew there was a man there, playing at boy-games because he chose to. And she had seen her brother riding with the
fyrd.

Aeldred gestured. Ceinion and the younger Cyngael fell into stride with him, walking towards the walls of the town, out of sight north of them. Kendra saw Judit step quietly over and reclaim the sword. She hadn’t recognized it as their father’s. Athelbert’s mutilated cap was left where it had fallen, a redness in the grass. Their own servants, who had hovered cautiously at a distance all this time, now came to gather the remains of their meal. Kendra looked west, saw the two Cyngael servants moving forward from the stream, leading a laden donkey.

It was only then that she saw that one of them was an Erling.

Ebor, the son of Bordis, never minded being posted to night duty on the walls, wherever the court happened to be. He’d even made some friends by taking watches assigned to others, leaving them free for the taverns. A solitary sort of man (much the same when a boy), he took a deep, hard-to-explain comfort from being awake and alone while others feasted or drank or slept, or did the other things one did in the night.

Sometimes a woman, walking near the walls, offering her song to the dark, would call up to him from the bottom of the steps. Ebor would decline while on duty, though not
always afterwards. A man had his needs, and he’d never married. Youngest son of a farmer, no land, no prospect of it. He’d joined the standing army of the king. Younger sons did that, everywhere. The way the world was made, no point brooding on it. The army gave you companions, shelter, enough money (usually, not always) for ale and a girl and your weapon. Sometimes you fought and some of you died, though less often of late, as the Erling raiders slowly took the measure of Aeldred of the Anglcyn and the forts and fortified
burhs
he’d been building.

Some of the Erlings were allies now, actually paying tribute to the king. Something deep, passing strange in that, if one thought on it. Ebor wasn’t a thinker, exactly, but long nights on watch did give you time for reflection.

Not tonight, however. Tonight, under drifting clouds and the waning blue moon, had been raddled with interruptions, and not from night-walkers offering interludes of love—though one
was
a woman. If you forced a man to make two decisions in haste, Ebor would later tell the king’s chamberlain, humble and contrite, chances were he’d make a bad one, or two.

That, Osbert, son of Cuthwulf, would say quietly, is why we have standing orders about the gates at night. To remove the need to make a decision. And Ebor would bow his head, knowing this was so, and that this was not the time to point out that every guard on the wall disobeyed those orders in peacetime.

He would not be punished. The one death in the night was not initially thought to be connected in any way with events at the gate. This was, as it happened, another error, though not his.

The women were beginning to leave the hall, led by Elswith, the queen. Ceinion of Llywerth, placed at the
king’s right hand, had the distinct impression that the older princess, the red-haired one, was disinclined to surrender the evening, but Judit was going with her lady mother nonetheless. The younger daughter, Kendra, seemed to have already left. He hadn’t seen her go. The quiet one, she was less vivid, more watchful. He liked them both.

His new Erling manservant, or guard (he still hadn’t decided how to think of him), had also gone out; he’d come and asked permission to do so, earlier. Not a thing he’d really needed to do, under the circumstances, and Ceinion wasn’t sure what to make of it. A request for dispensation, in some way. It had felt like that. He’d wanted to ask more about it, but there were others listening. Thorkell Einarson was a complex man, he’d decided. Most men, past a certain age, could be said to be. The young ones usually weren’t, in his experience. The youths in this hall would want nothing more than glory, any way they could find it.