The Last Light of the Sun (34 page)

“How do you know this?” ab Owyn asked.

“My lord prince, if it is Ragnarson, he will want to take their ships west from here. King Aeldred is riding out now, after them.”

He was very good, Kendra was realizing, at not replying to questions he didn’t want to answer.

In the darkness, she looked at the Cyngael prince. Alun was rigid, so taut he was almost quivering. “He’ll go for Brynnfell again. They won’t be ready, not so soon. I need a horse!”

“I’ll get you one,” said Thorkell calmly.

“What? I think not,” came a slurred, angry voice. Kendra wheeled, white-faced. Saw Athelbert coming across the grass. “A mount? So he can ride my sister and then ride home to boast of it?”

Kendra felt her heart pound, with fury this time, not fear. Her fists were clenched at her sides. “Athelbert, you are drunk! And entirely—”

He went right past her. He might jest and tumble with Judit, letting her buffet him about for the amusement of others, but her older brother was a hard, trained, fighting man, king-to-be in these lands, and enraged right now, for more than one reason.

“Entirely what, dear sister?” He didn’t look back at her. He had stopped in front of Alun ab Owyn. He was half a head taller than the Cyngael. “Look at his hair, his tunic. Left his belt in the grass, I see. At least you made yourself presentable before getting off your backside.”

Thorkell Einarson took a step forward. “My lord prince,” he began, “I can tell you—”

“You can shut your loathsome Erling mouth before I kill you here,” Athelbert snapped. “Ab Owyn, draw your blade.”

“Have none,” said Alun, mildly. And launched himself, in a lithe, efficient movement, at Athelbert. He feinted left, and then his right fist hammered hard at her brother’s heart. Kendra’s hands flew to her mouth. Athelbert went backwards in a heap, sprawled on the grass. He grunted, shifted to get up, and froze.

The dog, Cafall, was directly above him, a large grey menace, growling in his throat.

“He didn’t
touch
me, you Jad-cursed clod!” Kendra screamed at her brother. She was close to tears, in her fury. “I was over watching you and Judit make fools of yourselves!”

“You were? You, er, saw that?” Athelbert said. He had a hand to his chest, was careful to make no sudden movements.

“I saw that,” she echoed. “
Must
you take such pains to be an idiot?”

There was a silence. They heard the noises from behind them, towards the gates.

“Less difficult than you think,” her brother murmured, finally. Wry, already laughing at himself, a gift he had, in fact. “Where,” he said looking up at Alun ab Owyn, “did you learn to do that?”

“My brother taught me,” said the Cyngael, shortly. “Cafall, hold!” The dog had growled again as Athelbert shifted to a sitting position.

“Hold is a good idea,” agreed Athelbert. “You might want to tell him again? Make sure he heard you?” He looked over at his sister. “I appear to have—”

“Erred,” said Kendra, bluntly. “How unusual.”

They heard horns, from the city.

“That’s Father,” said Athelbert. A different tone.

Alun looked over. “We’ll need to hurry. Thorkell, where’s that horse?”

The big man turned to him. “Downstream. I killed an Erling raider in town tonight. Tracked his horse to the wood just now. If you need a mount quickly you can—”

“I need a mount quickly, and a sword.”

“Killed an Erling raider?” Athelbert snapped in the same breath.

“Man I used to know. With Jormsvik now. I saw him in the—”

“Later!
Come on!” said Alun. “Look!” He pointed. Kendra and the two men turned. She gripped her hands together tightly. The
fyrd
of King Aeldred was streaming out of the gates amid torches and banners. She heard the sound of horses’ harness and drumming hooves, men shouting, horns blowing. The glorious and terrible panoply of war.

“My lady?” It was Thorkell. Asking leave of her.

“Go,” she said. He wasn’t her servant.

The two men began running along the riverbank. The dog growled a last time at Athelbert, then went after them.

Kendra looked down at her brother, still sitting on the grass. She watched him stand, somewhat carefully. He’d had a painful day. Tall, fair-haired as an Erling, graceful, handsome, reasonably near to sober, in fact.

He stood before her. His mouth quirked. “I’m an idiot,” he said. “I know, I know. Adore you, though. Remember it.”

Then he went quickly away as well, towards the gates, to join the company riding out, leaving her unexpectedly alone in darkness by the stream.

That didn’t happen often, being left alone. It was not, in fact, unwelcome. She needed some moments to compose herself, or try.

What are you doing here?
he’d asked. The too-obvious question. And how was she to answer? Speak of an aura almost seen, a sound beyond hearing, something never before known but vivid as faith or desire? The sense that he was marked, apart, and that she’d somehow known it, from his first appearance in the meadow that morning?

I have a long way to go,
he’d said, across the stream. And she’d known, somehow, what he really meant, and it was a thing she didn’t
want
to know.

Jad shield me,
Kendra thought.
And him.
She looked towards the trees, unwillingly. Spirit wood. Saw nothing there, nothing at all.

She lingered, reluctant to surrender this quiet. Then, like a blade sliding into flesh, it came back to her that the tumult she was hearing was a response to the death of someone she’d known from childhood.

Burgred of Denferth lifting her onto his horse, so far above the ground, for a canter around the walls of Raedhill. She’d been three, perhaps four. Terror, then pride, and a hiccoughing laughter, giddy breathlessness. Her father’s softened, amused face when Burgred brought
her back and, leaning in the saddle, set her down, redfaced, on chubby legs.

Did you remember things because they’d happened often, or because they were so rare? That one had been rare. A stern man, Earl Burgred, more so than Osbert. A figure of action, not thought. Carried the marks of the past in a different way. Her father’s fevers, Osbert’s leg, Burgred’s … anger. He’d been with Aeldred, and had been loved, when they’d all been very young, even before Beortferth.

An Erling had killed him tonight. How did one deal with that, if one was king of the Anglcyn?

Her father was riding out. Could die tonight. They had no idea how many Erlings were south of them. How many ships. Jormsvik, Thorkell Einarson had said. She knew who they were: mercenaries from the tip of Vinmark. Hard men. The hardest of all, it was said.

Kendra turned then, away from woods and stream and solitude, to go back. She saw her younger brother, standing patiently, waiting for her.

She opened her mouth, closed it. Athelbert would have sent him, she realized. In the midst of chasing down his horse and armour and joining the
fyrd
amid chaos, he’d have done that.

It was too easy to underestimate Athelbert.

“Father wouldn’t let you both go?” she asked quietly. Knew the answer before she asked.

Gareth shook his head in the darkness. “No. What happened here? Are you all right?”

She nodded. “I suppose. You?”

He hesitated. “I wouldn’t mind killing someone.”

Kendra sighed. Others had sorrows, too. You needed to remember that. She came forward, took her brother’s arm. Didn’t squeeze it or anything like that; he’d bridle at obvious sympathy. Gareth knew the Rhodian and
Trakesian philosophers, had read them aloud to her, modelled himself (or tried) on their teachings.
Conduct yourself in the sure knowledge that death comes to all men born. Be composed, accordingly, in the face of adversity.
He was seventeen years old.

They walked back together. She saw the guard at the gate, white-faced. The one who had let her out. She nodded reassuringly at him, managed a smile.

She and Gareth went to the hall. Osbert was there, amid a blaze of lanterns, giving instructions, men coming and going in front of him. Something he’d done all Kendra’s life. His face looked seamed and gaunt. None of them was young any more, she thought: her father, Osbert, Burgred. Burgred was dead. Were the dead old, or young?

There was nothing for her to do, but it was too late to go to bed. They went to morning prayers when sunrise came. Her mother joined them, large, calm, a ship with the wind behind her, sure in her faith. Kendra didn’t see Judit in the chapel, but her sister found them later, back in the hall, soberly garbed, hair properly pinned but with a wild fury in her eyes. Judit did not subscribe to the doctrines of composure advocated by Rhodian philosophers. She wanted a sword right now, Kendra knew. Wanted to be on a horse, riding south. Would never, ever, be reconciled to the fact that she couldn’t do that.

By then, someone had found the dead Erling in the alley and had reported it to Osbert. Kendra had expected that, had been thinking about it when she was supposed to be praying.

Waiting for a pause in the flow of messages to and from, she went over and told Osbert, quietly, what she knew. He listened, considered, said nothing by way of reproach. That was not his way. He sent a messenger
running for the guard who had been on the wall, who came, and another one for the Erling servant of Ceinion of Llywerth, who did not.

Thorkell Einarson, they discovered, had gone south with the
fyrd.
So had the Cyngael cleric, though that had been known: a night ride beside Aeldred on a horse they’d given him. A different sort of holy man, this one. And Kendra knew Alun ab Owyn was also with them, and why.

Someone named Ragnarson. She remembered the way he’d looked, coming out of the wood. She still didn’t want to acknowledge what it was she seemed to know about this, about him—without any idea
how
she knew. The world, Kendra suddenly thought, heretically, was not as well-made as it might have been.

She pictured him riding, and the grey dog running beside the horses towards the sea.

Earlier that same night, a woman was making her way carefully across the fields of Rabady Isle, not precisely sure of her direction in the dark, and more than a little afraid to be abroad after moonrise alone. She could hear the sea and the waving grain at the same time. Harvest was coming, the grain fields were high, making it harder to see her way.

A little before, under the same waning blue moon, her exiled husband and only son had spoken together in a stream near Esferth. A coming-together that could only having been shaped—she would have said—by the gods for their own purposes, which were not to be understood. The woman would have been grateful for tidings of the son; would have denied interest in the father.

Her daughters were also away, across the strait on the Vinmark mainland. Neither had sent word for some time. She understood. A family disgrace could make ambitious
husbands cautious about such things. There was a king in Hlegest now with increasingly clear ambitions of his own to rule all the Erlings, not just some of them in the north. Times were changing. It meant, among other things, that young men had reason to think carefully, mind their tongues, be discreet with family connections. Shame could come to a man through his wife.

Frigga, daughter of Skadi, once wife to Red Thorkell, then to Halldr Thinshank, now bound to no man and therefore without protection, was not bitter about her daughters.

Women had only so much control over their lives. She didn’t know how it was elsewhere. Much the same, she imagined. Bern, her son, ought to have stayed by her when Halldr died instead of disappearing, but Bern had been turned from a landowner’s heir into a servant by his father’s exile, and who could, truly, blame a young man for rejecting that?

She’d assumed he was dead, after they’d gone looking for him and the horse in the morning and found neither. Had spent nights mourning, not able to let anyone see how much she grieved, because of what he’d obviously done, taking the dead man’s funeral horse.

Then, a short while ago, at summer’s end, had come tidings that he hadn’t died. They’d stoned the
volur
for helping Bern Thorkellson get off the isle.

Frigga didn’t believe it. It made no sense at all, that tale, but she wasn’t about to say that to anyone. There was no one to whom she could talk. She was alone here, and still had no true idea if her son was alive.

And then, a few days ago, they had named the new
volur.

One-handed Ulfarson, now governor, did the naming, which was a new thing. There were always new things, weren’t there? But the young
volur
was kin to
her, nearly, and Frigga had offered some small kindnesses when the girl had first arrived to serve in the women’s compound. It seemed now to have been a wise thing to have done, though that wasn’t why she’d done it. A woman’s road was hard, always, stony and bleak. You helped each other, if and when you could. Her mother had taught her that.

She needed help herself now. It had brought her into the night (windy, not yet cold) and these whispering fields. She was afraid of animals, and spirits, and of living men doing what they were likely to do if they had been drinking and came upon a woman alone. She feared the moment, and what the future held for her in the world.

Frigga stopped, took a deep breath, looked around her by moonlight, and saw the boulder. They had done the stoning here. She knew where she was. Another breath, and a murmured thank-you to the gods. She had been to the women’s compound four times in her life, but the last visit had been twenty years ago, and she had come by daylight, each time with an offering when she was carrying a child, and three of her children had lived. Who understood these things? Who dared say they did? It was Fulla, corn goddess, who decreed what happened to a woman when her birth pangs came. It made sense to seek intercession. Frigga moved to the stone. Touched it, murmured the proper words.

She didn’t know if what she was doing now could be said to be sensible, but she was, it seemed, no more willing to be a servant than her son had been—to be ordered to bed any man-guest at the behest of Thinshank’s first wife, the widow who’d inherited, with her sons.