Frost Against the Hilt (The Lion of Wales Book 5) Read online

  Nell stretched out a hand to Gareth as if to bring him back into the circle of counselors, though he was out of reach. “We will do what we must, Gareth, as we always have. There is no doubt that Modred has sent men after us—”

  “—which means we must do what we can right now to prepare,” Myrddin said, “and we don’t have time for dithering.”

  “What do you suggest?” Gareth swung back around. “I say we send the king and you on your way immediately.”

  “That’s exactly what we mustn’t do. It’s more important that we send you and Edgar west,” Myrddin said. “You need to marshal your men, especially those that don’t yet know their true allegiance.”

  Edgar blew out a breath. “You are referring to my men.”

  “Lord Cedric will come if you call, my lord.” Godric spoke for the first time. Myrddin didn’t know if he simply hadn’t had anything to say, or if he had become lost in the rapid exchange of Welsh.

  King Arthur nodded. “You are right that this is the time for choosing, and if ever I needed Cedric as an ally, it is now.”

  Gareth wasn’t having any of that either. “We have sixteen riders and only three horses. What can we do with so few?”

  “Six of you go now, riding double,” Myrddin said. “As soon as each pair comes upon a settlement, get yourselves a second horse and then ride for Wales as if the hounds of Arawn were at your heels.”

  “Which they might well be.” Arthur moved to Gareth, who still had not acquiesced. “What is it?”

  “Gah! Don’t you see?” He threw up his hands. It was rude and despairing at the same time, which revealed more about what he was feeling than anything else could have. “You three are Wales. Without you, we fall. And Modred won’t forgive my betrayal a second time.”

  “All the more reason for you to ride as hard and as fast as you can for Wales to ensure that we don’t fall,” Myrddin said. “What would you have the king do—retreat to Anglesey? Hide in a cave in Snowdonia? Modred is marching on Wales. If we don’t meet him, if we don’t draw him to us for a great battle to decide all, he will ride through Wales like a hurricane, burning, raping, and pillaging until he finds each one of us defending our forts alone or until we finally come out to meet him. And by then the ground will be of his choosing, not ours.”

  Gareth stared at Myrddin. “That’s what you saw?”

  “Yes.” Myrddin kept his gaze steady on Gareth’s face. He didn’t tell him that the fact of Modred’s coming and the outcome of the battle had been ancillary to the dream—basic facts that he’d known in the moment he’d dreamt because Nell in the dream had known them. For now, Nell’s death and the rest of what he’d seen would have to wait for a quieter moment with Nell, possibly Huw, and the king.

  “That leaves ten of us remaining with more than fifteen miles to go to Caer Fawr,” Huw said.

  “Which is where you are not going, remember?” Gareth said.

  “Wherever you go, you won’t make it running.” The thane’s daughter stepped through the doorway, still dressed as she’d been in men’s gear. Tall and slender and of an age with Huw, she’d braided her honey-colored hair in a long plait and wound it around her head to keep it out of the way of her bow and quiver. “You’re going to have to stand and fight. They’re coming.”

  Myrddin’s head came up as he too heard the baying of Modred’s hounds.

  King Arthur went to the doorway and looked out. “They were so far behind, I hoped they hadn’t been able to track us in the snow, but then, it wasn’t as if our tracks weren’t clear.” He looked at the girl. “Why aren’t you with your father?”

  “He’s not my father. My mother married him four years ago after the death of my true father. I’m Welsh and stand for you, my lord.”

  “You must go now!” Myrddin wasn’t talking to the girl but to Edgar and Gareth. “Huw too.”

  “No.” Huw shook his head vehemently. “I will not run away.”

  “Edgar and Gareth aren’t running away,” Myrddin said. “They’re rousing the countryside.”

  “But if I went, I would be. You can’t protect me, Father. Not from this.”

  Grief left over from the vision stabbed all the way through Myrddin. He wanted to force the issue, make Huw leave and take Nell with him. “If I send you riding to Wales with Edgar and Gareth, it could be a way to change the future just a little.”

  “I thought you said the future couldn’t be changed—that the battle was coming no matter what?” Huw said.

  Myrddin shook his head, finding it impossible to explain. The battle was inevitable. The events around it, however, were not, and he would not follow any path the dream had laid out for him. They needed to act otherwise, in as many ways as possible. But then again, maybe he was wrong. Maybe in that dreaming past, he’d sent Huw away, and Huw had still returned in time to fight and die at Myrddin’s side.

  Nell rubbed Myrddin’s shoulder. “There are no good answers.”

  He nodded. Every way he looked showed him the same image of Nell in an unmarked grave, dead, as King Arthur would be dead, by Modred’s hand.

  “Nell and Huw are right, Myrddin. He has a right to make a stand as much as you and I do. We should prepare.” King Arthur pointed to Edgar and Gareth. “And you should ride.”

  “Where will you go once you defeat these trackers?” Gareth said. “We can’t bring men if we don’t know where we’re riding to!”

  The girl, whose name Myrddin still didn’t know, spoke again. “My uncle rules at Caer Caradoc, my lord. He has ever been a loyal ally, and his stronghold isn’t far—fewer than ten miles from here.”

  Arthur swung around to look at her. “King Cador is your uncle? I did not know he still lived.”

  “Yes, my lord,” the girl said. “He fought with you at Mt. Badon. He has held his lands for you for thirty years. He will stand with you again against Modred.”

  “He is a cousin on my mother’s side, not that kinship is a reason to trust him, given my family.” Arthur looked back to Edgar and Gareth. “You heard the girl. We will be at Caer Caradoc!”

  The baying of the hounds had been growing closer by the heartbeat. Thus, Edgar, Gareth, and four of Godric’s men—those who were lightest along with anyone who’d suffered wounds at Wroxeter and might not be fully capable in a fight—raced out the back of the barn in the opposite direction from which the hounds were coming. One of them would go to Cedric personally and tell him of King Arthur’s need.

  Meanwhile, Huw approached the girl. “You should leave this place. Find your father.”

  “I already told you that he is not my father.”

  “Why do you live with him if your uncle is such a great lord?” Huw said.

  “After my mother died last year, Uncle Cador tried to arrange for me to live with him, but my stepfather thought to use me for an alliance with a neighboring thane. Either that or—” she indicated her quiver, “—as long as I was unmarried he didn’t have to pay a man to hunt or to guard his home.”

  With a finger, Huw touched the fletching of one of the arrows in her quiver. “Have you ever killed a man before?”

  For the first time, some of the girl’s confidence wavered. “No. Have you?”

  Huw’s expression softened. “Yes.”

  King Arthur snapped his fingers at Huw. “Our need is pressing, and I will take all the help I can get. Girl, what is your name?”

  “Anwen, my lord.”

  “I assume you are proficient with that weapon?”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “Are we going to kill the dogs?” That was Alan, one of the younger Saxons.

  Myrddin rolled his eyes. “Of course we aren’t going to kill the dogs—not unless we have to. The girl’s bow is going to be used on men.”

  King Arthur turned to the others. “The dogs are easy. A few of us will lure them into the barn and shut the door behind them so they are trapped inside. The rest of us will take on the men who follow.”

  With an economy of motio
n afforded only to the young and agile, Huw swung up onto the rafter above his head and perched there. “Get me a rope. I will pull the doors closed behind the dogs while someone drops the bar on the outside. I’ll leave by the hayloft door.”

  Nell shivered. “I’ll bar the door behind the dogs. The rest of you go do whatever you have to do.”

  “I guess this is as good a way as any to get ourselves some horses.” Myrddin grasped Nell by the waist and pulled her to him for a kiss. “We’ll be fine.”

  “You’d better be.”

  Fortunately, the farmer’s barn had no shortage of rope. Leaving Huw and Nell with their hasty preparations, Myrddin ran with the others out of the barn. He made sure to stay exactly in the tracks they’d made when they’d come in not even a half-hour ago. Dogs were smart, but they were single-minded creatures, and if one of Myrddin’s companions veered away from the main track, one of the dogs might follow, and then they’d lose them all. Perhaps it would have been wiser to put the dogs on the trail of Gareth and Edgar since, on horseback, they could outpace dogs over time. But then the men who followed might catch up too. Better to end this here.

  Once in the deeper woods through which the path ran, Godric caught hold of an overhanging branch and swung himself onto it, in much the same move that Huw had used in the barn. “Up!” He reached down and pulled the girl Anwen after him. “Climb higher and aim well.”

  “Yes, my lord.” Anwen started through the branches as if climbing trees was something she did every day. Maybe it was. Maybe even this tree.

  King Arthur stopped beneath Godric’s branch and looked up at the grinning Saxon, who was looking down at him. “No.”

  Myrddin caught the king’s elbow, pretty sure that he himself wasn’t going to be as agile as Godric either. “I have another way.”

  Twenty yards on, a series of rocky outcroppings buttressed the path on one side. Myrddin and Arthur clambered onto them to crouch at the top so they could overlook the path. The snow continued to fall steadily, which was good. It would soon coat them completely, hiding their dark cloaks enough to allow them to blend in to some degree with the rocks around them.

  “We forgot one thing,” Myrddin said.

  Godric groaned from his perch in the tree. “I know it.”

  “I’ll do it.” Alan, the youngest of Godric’s men, swung down from his branch and dropped to the ground in the middle of the path. “I’m fastest.”

  “You’d better be,” Godric said. “We can’t afford to lose you, even if you are a worthless excuse for a soldier.”

  All of the Saxons chuckled at the obvious jest. Alan, as far as Myrddin could tell, had fought well at Wroxeter and, presumably, at Buellt too, since he’d lived. “Don’t worry.” Alan went up on his toes and down again, preparing himself. “As soon as I’m inside the barn, I’ll swing up to the rafter like Huw did.”

  Arthur had been looking east towards the sound of baying hounds, coming closer and closer. They must have been at least a mile away when Anwen had brought the baying to their attention. The only reason Modred’s hunters hadn’t reached this spot already was because they’d started so much later than Myrddin and his companions. They were nearly ten miles from Wroxeter, and not even dogs could keep to a flat-out run for so many miles.

  Myrddin braced himself on his rock. “Here they come!”

  Alan didn’t wait for the dogs to appear out of the snow but started running at top speed towards the barn. Myrddin was confident he would make it, but he was sorry that they’d be one short when they fell upon the men who came after. As much as he hadn’t wanted to use her, they needed Anwen now.

  “How many, do you think?” Arthur pulled a knife from the sheath at his waist. Modred had taken the king’s weapons, including his fearsome sword, Caledfwlch, so Arthur had borrowed the knife from one of Godric’s Saxons. Huw had also left Wroxeter without appropriate weaponry and had been forced to borrow. Fortunately, Saxons carried multiple knives as a matter of course.

  Before Wroxeter, King Arthur might have said that his sword was more valuable than his life, but of course that hadn’t proved to be the case. Hopefully, once Modred was defeated and Wroxeter fell into Welsh hands, Myrddin could get Caledfwlch back for him. In a moment they would have swords to spare, or they would have no need of swords ever again.

  “It depends on how many men and dogs Modred sent and in how many directions,” Myrddin said. “Presumably, this is not the only hunting party.”

  Arthur crouched lower on the rock. “I despise the need to presume anything. I didn’t become High King of Wales on presumption.”

  Three long and rangy bloodhounds bounded into view, running flat out towards Alan, who had a hundred-foot head start. He was going to need it.

  Once the dogs passed by, baying louder than ever, Myrddin and the others silently waited for the men who would follow, praying that there wouldn’t be too many for seven men and a girl to handle.

  King Arthur growled low. “You haven’t seen this in any vision, have you?”

  “No, my lord.”

  Arthur nodded, as if that was a piece of information he’d been missing. “I know that what you see appears sometimes like a path laid before your feet, and at other times like a stone wall in front of you. But you and I both know that you do not see all ends. Don’t forget that our real task is to live the life we’ve been given, without regard to possible futures. We have only one future. That’s all we’ve ever had.”

  Chapter Three

  14 December 537

  Huw

  Every soldier Huw had ever spoken to had told him that waiting was far worse than fighting. Once the battle began, there was no time for thinking, for fear, or for anything but immediate survival.

  He had fought before, of course. He’d been knighted by King Arthur himself after they defeated a traitorous incursion into Aber. And he found that he had to agree with how hard it was to wait, especially today, since he was perched inside the barn and couldn’t see anything that was happening outside. Why oh why had he swung up onto this beam? He could tell himself that it was because he was the youngest of the group, except perhaps for the girl, and that he’d felt at the time that his sacrifice would give them the best chance for success.

  But the truth was that he’d been showing off for Anwen. This was her barn. She could have done this job instead of him, and then he could have been the one out there with his father. He cursed again at his stupidity and pride and swore that he wouldn’t allow it to get the better of him again.

  The baying of the hounds grew steadily louder until Huw felt like the barn was shaking with the noise. He was shaking with the noise, which was the entire intent of loosing them this way, he was sure. The hounds bayed to invoke fear in their prey. Intellectually, Huw knew this to be true, but every instinct told him to run screaming from them anyway.

  He also knew that the hounds were the least of their problems. They would be dealt with, either by being locked in the barn or with a quick knife to the throat. It was the men who followed them that were the greater concern.

  A shout came from the front of the barn. “Now, my lady!”

  Huw recognized Alan’s voice, and prayed that Nell had just leapt from the ladder on which she was perched at the back of the barn and was even now running around to the front to drop the bar across the doors, once Huw closed them. A heartbeat later, Alan burst through the door, the hounds hard on his heels. He reached for the same beam on which Huw was standing, even as one of the dogs leapt up and bit Alan’s ankle, hanging on with a locked jaw.

  Alan cursed. Though Huw wanted to help him, he had other business first, which was to yank on the ropes he held in each hand and the doors swung to. Once done, he didn’t wait to hear if Nell had done her job and grasped Alan’s arm to haul him upwards. The dog held on, and Huw lay on his belly on the beam in order to slash at the dog’s muzzle with his knife. The dog yelped and let go of Alan’s ankle, and Alan scrambled all the way up to lie on the beam like Huw, bre
athing hard and near to weeping.

  “I thought I was a goner,” he said.

  “They’re just dogs,” Huw said. “They’re only threatening if you don’t have a blade and if you let them scare you.”

  Alan shivered. “Maybe to you.”

  Ignoring the barking dogs below him, Huw straightened. He was taller than the roof at this location allowed, so he had to hunch over to make his way along the rough beam towards the loft. “Come on. Let’s get out of here. Can you move?” Alan’s heel was bleeding profusely. Huw hoped the dog hadn’t severed something important.

  “Enough,” Alan said.

  In single file, they picked their way to the loft, which was half the size of the main floor below, climbed out the hayloft door, and took the ladder to the ground. Nell met them at the bottom, breathing hard herself. “It’s done.”

  She’d left distinct footprints in the snow, coming around from the front of the barn, so he could have figured that out for himself. Instead of saying so, Huw hugged her.

  The baying of the hounds resounded through the open hayloft door, but the dogs couldn’t get out. Ignoring the sound as best they could, Nell took one side of Alan and Huw the other, and they helped him hobble to an overturned bucket near the well. Once they’d moved away from the barn, the noise of the dogs diminished slightly, muffled by the wood. Huw’s heart began to settle into a more normal pattern.

  “What happened to you?” Nell said as they sat Alan down. She picked up his foot and rested it on her knee. The snow was falling as hard as ever, but she ignored it. Blood dripped from the gash in Alan’s heel. The dog had bitten all the way through his boot and ripped the leather away.

  Alan grimaced as Nell gently worked the torn boot off his foot. “I wasn’t quite quick enough, I guess.”

  With the boot on the ground, the puncture wounds from the dog’s teeth were clearly evident in Alan’s ankle. The gashes needed to be cleaned soon, or they would fester, and Alan could die.

  “If you were afraid of dogs, why did you volunteer to lead them to the barn?” Huw said.