Through a loop in her belt she attached a small scabbard for a quillon dagger. She pondered the dagger a moment before sheathing it. This was no peasant’s clumsy weapon, but it was important that she be well armed. It was long, shaped like a miniature sword, made of the finest metal. She ran her thumb along the edge of the honed blade. She would use it if she must, to defend her honor, for no man would pay a
cowyll,
the virgin-price, for a tainted bride. No, the loss of her virginity would bring shame not only on herself but on all her kindred.
“My honor …” she whispered, and her fist tightened around the dagger’s embossed silver hilt.
The knight.
His image haunted her mind just as she had seen him in the vision—his black horse rearing, his eyes and mouth so hard and so ruthless. And his lance … pointed at her heart.
She stared for a long time at the golden mazer. The thing seemed dully ordinary in the day’s light, yet still it frightened her. She would leave it behind; it would only
hamper her flight if she had to make a quick escape. No, she was lying to herself. She feared the awful power of the visions that came from the bowl, but she could never give it up. She couldn’t bear to think of it falling into Norman hands. Not if it truly had belonged to the great magician Myrddin.
She touched the mazer and was relieved to feel the metal cool against her fingertips. She attached it by one of its handles to her belt, then covered her whole drab ensemble with a mantle trimmed in cheap, spotted-yellow civet fur.
Arianna sucked in a breath through her mouth, wrinkling her nose. These clothes she had borrowed were none too clean, but then their barnyard-like odor would only enhance her disguise. For good measure she took some ashes from the brazier and dirtied her face.
The tower stairway was dark, for the rushlights had burned down, and she groped her way, running her palms along the rough stones. A guard on the battlements called out as she left the tower and dashed through the gate of the keep. Ignoring him, she descended the steep timber stairs that led down the side of the motte. Her boots were slightly too big for her feet and their thick leather soles slapped against the wood, sounding like sheets flapping in the wind. She crossed the drawbridge that spanned a dry, narrow ditch and entered the bailey.
The morning air was still and humid. Leaden clouds the color of slate pressed down and the air felt thick and damp against her face. In spite of the wet rawhides that had been draped over all the bailey’s wooden roofs, a flaming pitch arrow had managed to set the hay grange alight. Now a raging fire crackled and choking gray smoke blanketed the yard. The burning hides stank so vilely that Arianna’s stomach heaved.
A pair of ravens swooped down low over her head and Arianna swiftly made the sign of the cross. They were
called corpse-geese, these scavengers of the battlefield, and she hated them. They were harbingers of death.
The ravens wheeled across the gray sky, their caws mixing with the coos coming from the dovecote and the shrill screeches from the hawks in the mews. The bailey was a tumult of sounds—the lowing of the cows in the byre, crying out to be milked; the clang of the blacksmith’s hammer as he banged out one last spear; the baying of the excited dogs in the kennels. And the steady, pounding thud of the missiles from the catapults as they struck the outer wall.
She found her brother on the eastern parapet, standing with Madog behind the square, toothlike protection of a merlon. The men dissected the enemy’s next move, for the Normans had abandoned the town and marched to the edge of the great forest that lay to the east of the castle. Arianna’s step disturbed a roosting pigeon into flight, and both men whirled.
Ceidro’s face registered instant anger. “What in hellfire are you doing out here? You should be back within the keep where it’s—” His brows came together and he sniffed loudly. “God’s bones. What have you done to yourself? You stink worse than a butcher’s midden.”
Arianna started to open her mouth.
“Never mind about that,” her brother snapped, waving an imperious hand in her face. “Just get yourself back to the keep this instant.”
Arianna decided to ignore him. The men in her family were always ordering her about, and she was always ignoring them. Ceidro must have come to terms with his fear sometime during the night. A light of excitement blazed in his eyes. It was a light she had seen often in the eyes of her father and brothers before they set out on a fight or a raid. He wore his gambeson, and at his thigh hung his sword and a buckler.
“Arianna …” Ceidro growled.
Arianna stepped around her brother, intending to
sneak a look at the besieging army through a crenel in the parapet. Ceidro seized her arm, yanking her away from the wall.
“Curse you, girl! Are you trying to get yourself—” He stopped abruptly, as if someone had clamped a hand over his mouth. It took Arianna a moment to realize what had happened. The barrage from the catapults had ceased.
Ceidro dropped her arm and looked cautiously over the parapet. Arianna moved in beside him, standing up on tiptoe to peer over his shoulder.
Rows of knights and arbalesters were lined up at the edge of the woods, just out of bowshot. They stood in a splendid, colorful array: gaudy pennons fluttering from blue-painted lances, kite-shaped shields decorated in all the hues of a peacock’s tail, helms and mail polished to a shine. Against the backdrop of black forest and gray clouds soggy with rain, it was a sight to dazzle the eyes.
“Pretty, are they not?” Ceidro said with a scornful twist of his mouth. The Welsh thought it cowardly to fight, as the Normans did, in chain-mail armor.
After the constant pounding the silence was unnerving. Even the castle dogs had stopped their yapping. It was so quiet, Arianna could hear a frog croaking in the algae-covered moat below. A pall of smoke drifted over them from the burning hay grange, and behind her Madog coughed. They were the only sounds to shatter the silence.
“Do they mean to attack?” Arianna asked in a hoarse whisper.
“Splendor of God,” Madog exclaimed softly. “I think they’re withdrawing.” And, indeed, as they watched, first the men-at-arms and then the knights turned about and disappeared up the high road, toward England. The war machines were left behind, abandoned and silent.
The Welsh burst into loud jeers and a hail of javelins and arrows flew from the battlements. A few of the enemy shouted a return barrage of insults, but they didn’t
fire back. Like a patch of ice on a sunny winter morning, the Norman army melted away….
Until only one knight remained.
He stood within the shadow of a tall pine. The tree was black and withered, with a lightning scar down its side, and it seemed a part of the knight somehow, for his armor was burnished to a dull black and he was mounted on an enormous soot-colored war-horse. Then slowly, man and horse separated from the tree, coming forward until they stopped fully exposed in the middle of the cleared field below the castle walls.
Lightning flared across the sky, followed almost immediately by a crack of thunder. The black horse reared. A sudden gust flattened the pennon on the knight’s lance—a black dragon on a bloodred field.
Fear knocked Arianna in the chest, as fierce as the sudden wind. “Oh, God, no …” Her hand fluttered up to her heart.
But unlike in her vision, the knight didn’t charge. Instead he regained control of his skittish mount and stood there as the wind whipped around him, and the first drops of rain began to fall. Stood there as if waiting for something.
“Don’t move, ye bastard. Don’t move,” Madog muttered, snatching up his longbow. He took an arrow from the quiver at his feet, knocking it over in his haste. Arrows spilled from the leather case with a clatter and rolled across the uneven paving stones.
In one swift movement Madog nocked the arrow, lifted the bow, and pushed it forward, stretching the taut string. His eyes narrowed and his arm tensed, the muscles bulging around his leather arm-guard….
“No!”
Arianna cried.
Ceidro whipped around, his mouth agape. But Madog kept his sight on the knight, the bow steady. He released the string, the arrow hissed, cleaving the air … to bury
itself in the rough marsh grass inches from the destrier’s hooves.
For one poised second more the knight stood motionless, then he whirled his horse around and cantered off into the forest.
“Damn it, Arianna!” Ceidro raged. “What in Christ’s name possessed you to bleat like a poked sheep? You spoiled his aim.”
Arianna could only stare at the place where the knight had been, bewildered by herself, over what had made her do such a thing. She had wanted the man dead. She did.
“I thought—” Her voice cracked. She tried again. “He was out of range.” But he wasn’t. Not for a Welsh longbow. And not for an expert shot like Madog.
“It wasn’t milady’s fault,” Madog said. “I missed, that’s all. Ye’re forgetting the bastard’s got the devil for a guardian angel.”
“Sound the horn!” Ceidro cried. “We’re going after him. We’ll make the man swallow his own blood before this day is through!” He brushed past Arianna, his sword knocking against the parapet.
“Wait, lad, it could be a trap,” Madog called after him.
But Ceidro’s back was already vanishing down the battlement stairs. “Hurry, Madog. Else the whoresons will be halfway to England ere we can catch them.”
Madog hesitated a moment longer, then, cursing, he scooped up his longbow and arrows and lumbered after the younger man. “Ceidro, for the love of Christ, let’s think on this minute. I don’t like the looks of this …”
Arianna looked across the field at the silent and empty forest. Another bolt of lightning flashed, thunder rumbled. A raven circled, black wings against a black sky.
She whipped around, crying her brother’s name, but in that moment the shrill blast of a trysting horn rent the air. The rain, which had started with scattered drops, suddenly pattered down hard on the walls and packed dirt of
the bailey. The wind shrieked, seizing Arianna’s mantle and swirling it around her head.
Ceidro’s small war-band poured out the sally-port with a bloodcurdling cacophony of battle cries, and still the field and forest were empty.
Once, their ancestors had fought naked except for a helmet and a torque. Today the men of Gwynedd rode forth wearing leather gambesons and carrying longbows and war clubs. But many still painted their faces blue in the old way and went to battle laughing and bellowing the ancient songs. They were brave and valiant and strong, these men of Cymru, and Arianna’s heart beat hard with a fierce pride at the sight of them.
And then her pride turned to horror.
The enemy erupted from the forest, as if trees and brush had suddenly metamorphosed into men and horses. Within seconds they enveloped Ceidro’s pitiful band. Suddenly thunder crackled and rain spewed down as if pouring from the mouths of a thousand gargoyles. Arianna clung to the parapet, squinting through the curtain of water, her hands pressing so hard into the rough stone that the skin tore, leaving smears of blood. Lightning flared, giving her a brief glimpse of flashing blades and flying hooves. Then she saw nothing again, though the air quivered with the sound of clashing swords, whinnying horses and the wails of the dying, and a sharp metallic smell floated to her on the wind.
She heard the hoarse blast of the olifant sounding the retreat.
She ran along the wall-walk, slipping and sliding on the wet stones. She hurled herself down the stairs and into the bailey just as the huge iron-bound gate screeched open and the drawbridge crashed down with a clatter of its mighty chains.
There was no time for her brother and his men to enter the castle back through the sally-port. Their only chance was to make it through the gate and close it behind them
before the enemy could get through. The blinding rainstorm, which had first been on the side of the Normans, would help them now.
But no sooner did the thought form in Arianna’s mind than the downpour stopped, as suddenly as it had begun.
Through the open gate Arianna saw her brother and what was left of his men race across the field. A group of mailed knights rode in hard pursuit, cutting down the stragglers like a woodcutter felling trees. In the forefront of those knights was a man in dull black armor on a soot-black steed.
And yet, yet … there was a chance that they would make it.
“Virgin Mary, Mother of God, save them,” Arianna prayed as the first of the Welshmen reached the drawbridge. Their horses’ hooves pounded on the old wood. Hundreds of crossbow bolts rained down, striking the wall and the gate and the bridge, clattering like hail. Ceidro pulled up beside the bridge, letting his men go first, and Arianna thought how their father would be proud.
Then Ceidro was across the drawbridge and through the gate. The doors started to swing shut behind him as he turned to face the charging enemy. A high-pitched squeal echoed throughout the bailey as the guard in the gatehouse began to wind the windlass, hauling up the chains to the bridge.
“Ceidro!” Arianna’s shout turned into a scream as the knight in black armor easily leapt the growing span between the ground and the bridge. His iron-shod lance caught Ceidro square in the chest, lifting him from the saddle, hurling him to the ground.
Horses thundered past Arianna where she stood among the fighting men, frozen with horror. Then, heedless of the slashing blades and flying hooves, she ran to where her brother sprawled in dreadful stillness beside the gate.
He lay on his back, his eyes staring sightless at the sky.
She threw herself across his blood-soaked gambeson, cradling his cheeks between her palms. “Ceidro, please …” Her hands slid down his face to clutch his shoulders and she shook him roughly. “Ceidro, please don’t be dead.”
She wanted to scream, to wail, but it felt as if some great beast had ripped open her chest, tearing out her heart and lungs. She opened her mouth, tried to breathe, and thought she was dying. She wanted to cry, but she couldn’t.
She didn’t notice the horn that trumpeted the Norman victory, or hear, in the heavy silence that followed, the groans of the dead and the dying. Nor did she see the horses milling around her, trampling blood-soaked pennons into the mud, or the shattered shields and broken stubs of lances. But when a raven landed nearby, she screamed at it to go away, that it had no business being here.