Caradoc of the North Wind (20 page)

‘And I shall welcome them, King of Powys,’ Ironfist replied.

The king and Prince Llew turned their horses and rode away down the snowy hillside, the warriors of Powys following after them without a backward glance.

Branwen was alone, desolate and unarmed among her enemies.

Ironfist rode up to the stone where Branwen was standing.

‘Well now,’ he said. ‘I have got what I came for.’ The chilling smile widened across his ravaged face. ‘Will you return with me to my camp willingly or bound to a horse’s tail? Either way, I will not be denied the joy of your company.’ His voice hardened. ‘We have much to discuss – we must speak of how you murdered and mutilated my only son. We have that and many another deeds of yours to debate.’ His pale-blue eye flashed with an evil that made Branwen’s heart falter in her chest. ‘I have a welcome prepared for you in Chester,’ he continued with horrible relish. ‘A welcome the like of which you cannot even begin to imagine!’

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

B
ranwen huddled under scabby furs, her head tucked into her shoulders, her knees clamped to her chest, her arms wrapped around her empty belly. She stared up at a single narrow slot high in the stone wall, a thin, raw gap just under the ceiling through which the meagre, watery daylight oozed. It was the only glimpse she had of the world outside her cell.

That lean sliver of light was a blessing and a curse. Through it she could see a fraction of the sky. On good days when the clouds were being herded along under the whip of the wind, she would sit staring up for hours at the constantly changing shapes that coiled and rolled across her field of vision. On bad days, it was blank white or grey or yellowish and had no life to it at all. Early on in her imprisonment, snow had fallen frequently, sometimes so thickly that it almost blocked her view. But more recently there had been no snow. She guessed that in the world outside her prison, the long hard winter was finally coming to an end.

Sometimes the cold air would trickle down the wall from the raw slot and come creeping across the floor like icy water. Sometimes the gap allowed a vicious wind to gust into the cell and bite at her with its frozen teeth.

Voices and other sounds of everyday life in Chester bled down to her in her chilly cell. The shouting and calling of Saxon men and women – sometimes the laughter of a child. The pattering of feet. The creak of wheels. The clop of horses or the muddled percussion of hooves and the plaintive bleating of animals being driven to market. On days when the bustle of the busy townsfolk was especially loud, she longed for the absolute silence of the black night. To know that people were living free lives just beyond her reach was a torment that she found hard to bear. And yet, in the throbbing dark, she yearned for some sound to prove she was not dead and in her grave. By day and by night the torture in her mind never ceased.

‘Rhiannon!’ she cried in her despair. ‘Govannon of the Wood! Come to me! Help me!’

But the Old Gods did not come.

I am no longer of use to them – no longer under their protection, no longer destiny’s chosen child
.

She had lost count of the days she had been here in this sunken box of cold, sweating, lichen-stained stone. Once a day the heavy wooden door opened a fraction and a hand would throw in some scraps of food and a wooden bowl of water. Sometimes the bowl tipped over on the uneven floor and the water was spilled. Then she had to soothe her parched lips with muddy rainwater dripping from the gash in the stones. When it did not rain, she went thirsty.

Branwen had given up shouting and beating on the door – it gained her nothing but a ragged throat and bruised hands. No one ever came in response to her howls, no one cared when she threw herself with all her strength at the solid oak of her prison door. She was like a caged animal, kept barely alive and in torment for the amusement of unseen eyes.

All her possessions had been taken from her – sword, shield, her leather hunting clothes, the golden comb that her mother had gifted her and which she had carried with her always. Her slingshot and the leather bag of stones, her tinder and flint. Everything. She had been thrown in here wearing nothing but a brown linen shift and with nothing but a pair of mangy hides to keep out the cold.

They didn’t. She was cold all the time. So cold that sleep seemed impossible – and yet she did sleep, fretfully, shallowly, waking often from hideous nightmares to a nightmare that was even worse, and from which there was no way of waking.

She had not seen Ironfist since she had been thrown sprawling in here and the door had slammed behind her with the crack of hard timbers and the clang of iron.

At first she had dreaded the moment when the cell door would be flung wide and soldiers would rush in to drag her to her death. As days followed days and nothing happened, dread turned to anger, and anger to bewilderment, and bewilderment to dull apathy. She dreaded now that the soldiers might
never
come – that she would be left here frozen and hungry for the rest of her life. Sometimes in the deep dark silence of the night, she wished she had something sharp that she could draw across her wrists to put an end to her dreary, aching, wretched existence.

Sometimes her own thoughts terrified her more than anything that happened outside her head.

Sometimes she thought of Iwan and Rhodri and Blodwedd and Dera and the others, but as the hellish days bled one into the other, she found she could no longer see them in her mind – no longer hear their voices.

It was as if the hunger and the cold and the misery and the loneliness were hollowing her out from the very roots of her soul and leaving her as nothing but wasted skin over a frame of brittle bones.

Branwen gnawed at the chicken carcass, holding it to her mouth with both hands, pulling the bones apart, tearing at the scraps of meat with her teeth. A whole carcass was a rare delicacy and despite the fact that most of the meat had already been cut off, there was still plenty to eat for someone famished enough to grind the gristle and sinew and cartilage between her teeth.

She was barely aware of the guttural, animal noises she was making as she ate; of how she squatted in the corner of her cell, her knees up to her chest, her feet splayed filthy on the straw-matted stones, the fur hides draped over her shoulders, her hair matted and tangled, her hands black with grime.

She lifted the bowl to her lips and swigged the icy water. It went down like knives into her stomach. She made a grunting noise and attacked the chicken bones again, her eyes darting this way and that as she ate.

It occurred to her that she was losing her mind. But what did that matter? Who would ever know or care?

Her head snapped round at a sharp noise from the door. Her mad eyes narrowed. What was this? She had been fed. Why was the door opening? What was happening now?

Two Saxon soldiers armed with spears entered, one of them carrying a thick round chunk of log. They saw Branwen squatting in the corner and they turned their spears to point at her, their eyes wary, as though they feared she might fly at them with nails and teeth. The log was placed in the middle of the floor.

A third man swept into the cell. Branwen bared her teeth at the sight of him.

Ironfist!

The general was wearing his great red cloak, and there was a sword at his hip, but he wore no armour and seemed to be at his ease. He said something to the two guards and they left, slamming the prison door behind them.

He looked around the cell and sniffed, pursing his lips at the stink that Branwen no longer even noticed. Then he sat astride the log, as a man might sit on a stool, his elbows on his wide knees, his back bent and his chin in his hands as he looked at Branwen with his one good eye.

His one
bad
eye, rather – blue as ice and filled with wickedness. The eye of a snake staring out from a mind that seethed like the blood of wolves.

For a long time the two of them stared at one another without speaking. Until a growing pain in her chest made her suck in air, Branwen had not even been aware that she was not breathing. She had not used her voice for so long that talking seemed odd.

‘How long have I been here?’ she croaked.

‘Thirty-five days,’ Ironfist replied blandly.

‘So,’ she said, ‘are you here to gloat over me or to kill me at last?’

‘Neither, Branwen,’ Ironfist replied, his voice strangely soft and mild. He straightened his back and let his two hands dangle between his knees. ‘I’ve come to see if we can come to some understanding.’

She glared at him, waiting for treachery and malice.

‘We have quite the history, don’t we, Branwen?’ he said after a few moments of heavy silence. ‘It was on my orders that your brother and your father were killed and your home burned – and it was on your orders that my son Redwuld was murdered in the forest and his head impaled on a spike.’

Branwen lowered the gnawed carcass to the ground. ‘What of it?’

Ironfist sighed. ‘Do you know what they call you in Pengwern?’ he asked, his voice strangely casual, as though they were passing the time of day in some ordinary market square. ‘They call you the thorn that has no rose,’ he said. ‘And sometimes they call you the flea that worries the hound. And when they are feeling especially vindictive they call you the …’ He paused, shaking his head. ‘No. I’ll not repeat it – I’m sure your dealings with the Old Powers are not so base as that.’

‘What do you want?’ Branwen murmured.

Ironfist rubbed his two hands together. ‘What do I want?’ he echoed. His pale eye glittered. ‘I want you to understand that we need not be enemies.’

Branwen gave a hard croak of laughter.

‘You disagree?’ he asked with a trace of disappointment in his voice. ‘Listen, Branwen, and tell me the truth – were you loved by the people of Powys? Were you cherished by them?’

Branwen rose slowly to her feet, drawing the hides around her. She didn’t answer him. But she was very aware how he kept using her name.
Branwen
. Over and over. As though they were old friends. A new trick to addle her mind?

‘You need not answer,’ Ironfist said with a wave of his hand. ‘I know the truth of it. They hate you. They loathe and fear and despise you, those people to whom you have given every last breath of your life.’ He shook his head. ‘Did you see how readily Llew ap Gelert and the moist-handed king gave you up to me? Do you know how long it took them to agree to hand you over into my custody in the hope of saving their own skins?’ He snapped his fingers, a sharp sound that startled Branwen. ‘That is how long! They were glad to be rid of you, Branwen. Trust me on this; they were pleased that the thorn without a rose was taken from their sides.’

Branwen wiped the back of her hand across her mouth, suddenly aware of the chicken grease and scraps that clung about her lips, suddenly embarrassed by her appearance. ‘I never asked for their love,’ she said. ‘I did what I had to do to save my homeland from you and your savage hordes. I’d have done the same had every last man and woman and child in Powys spoken out against me.’

‘Well answered,’ said Ironfist. ‘You’d follow your destiny wherever it led you, is that so?’

‘I would!’ Branwen said, a rekindled defiance and pride glowing in her heart.

‘And your destiny has led you
here
,’ said Ironfist. ‘And where are your guardians now, Branwen? Where are your Old Gods?’

Branwen’s eyes glittered. ‘Do not dare to ridicule them, Saxon,’ she warned. ‘You’ve seen what they can do – you were there at Gwylan Canu when Govannon unleashed the wind that sank your ships and set loose the forest creatures that devoured your men. Don’t laugh at them, for they have long ears and long arms and they will not be mocked.’

‘I do not mock them,’ said Ironfist. ‘I respect them. I bow down in awe to the power of the Old Ones.’ He stood up now, and she found herself backing away although he had made no move to approach her. ‘Listen to me, Branwen,’ he said. ‘We are not so very different, you and I. We hold to the old ways – we revere the ancient powers and we follow the paths set out for us by them.’ He sighed and a curiously sad look passed over his face. ‘Do you know where I would be, Branwen, if fate allowed? I would be on my estates in Winwaed in the north, riding to hunt through the long days of summer, feasting and merrymaking and listening at the winter fireside to the old sagas.’ A wistful tone came into his voice, and Branwen got the impression he was seeing faraway things. ‘Winwaed once belonged to the kingdom of Elmet – before you were born, Branwen. It was a broad and prosperous land, bordered by rivers to the east and west, with the kingdom of Deira to the north and the vast expanse of Mercia to the south. It was a fine place, my homeland, swallowed up long ago by King Oswald of Northumbria.’

The kingdom of Deira? Where had Branwen heard that name before? Yes! She remembered. Rhodri had been born in Deira – it was the homeland of the half-Saxon boy’s mother.

‘But destiny had other plans for me, Branwen,’ Ironfist continued. ‘Destiny decreed that I become a warrior, a
general
– a man of violence and conflict.’ He looked at her, tilting his head slightly, angling it as though to focus better on her face with his one eye. ‘Is my destiny so very different from yours?’ he asked.