The Silver Hand (6 page)

Then we squatted on our heels, staring up at the hole we had made and listening. When none of the guards stirred, I said, “I will go first.”

I poked my head cautiously through the gap. As Ffand had said, there were two warriors on guard, and both were asleep. I forced myself up into the hole, wriggling and kicking my way until I was able to pull myself through.

I knelt, tense and sweating, behind the heap of debris that covered the pit. The guards slept some distance away—as far from the stench of the place as possible, I suppose. That is why they had not heard Ffand or us.

“Come,” I whispered to Llew.

A few moments later, he crouched beside me. Quickly, quietly, moving with exaggerated care through the tumbled wreckage of Meldryn Mawr's once-great stronghold, we hastened, watchful for other guards. But we met no one else, nor did I wonder. The caer was a charnel mound, stinking and desolate. The warriors, whose lot it was to become guards, could not have been chosen for a more detestable task.

I marveled at little Ffand's courage. The child had dared what bold men shirked.

We hurried to the place where the gates had stood and there paused to overlook the plain. I could see the campfires arrayed below and, toward the curve of Muir Glain, the horse pickets. By skirting the camp to the east, we could reach the nearer horses without being seen.

But we would have to make haste—already the sky was lightening in the east. It would be dawn soon and people would begin stirring. We wanted to be well away before anyone knew we had escaped.

Without a word, we started down the track from the caer. Staying clear of the nearer tents, our hearts racing wildly, we traced the perimeter of the camp, reaching the nearest stake line just as the first rays of the sun broke above the horizon.

There were sentries on watch: two of the Wolf Pack—careless and indifferent, it is true, but present nonetheless. So we paused to decide how best to take the horses without alerting the watchers. Presently, one of them rose from their campfire and walked off along the line of horses. The remaining sentry stayed slumped at the fire, apparently asleep.

“It is now or never,” said Llew, and he made ready to dart in among the horses. But he had not stirred a step when we saw two horses back away from the picket and begin walking toward us. We watched mystified, until they turned and we saw a slender, frail-looking girl— Ffand, it was—between the animals, holding tight to their halters and leading them to meet us.

She came to where we waited at the far end of the picket. She was younger than I remembered, thin, her face smudged with dirt, her smile gap-toothed, her hair bedraggled, her clothes filthy from her digging.

“Beautiful girl!” exclaimed Llew softly.

“May the Gifting God bless her richly,” I murmured, scanning the pickets for any sign of the sentry's return. I saw no one, and a few moments later Ffand stood before us, offering us the reins.

“I did not know which ones belonged to you, so I chose the best,” she said happily. “Did I do right?”

“You have done wonderfully!” I told her.

“I love you, Ffand.” Llew placed a big kiss on her round check. A sudden flush of delight lit her face.

We gathered the reins and swung into our mounts' bare backs. “What about Twrch?” Ffand asked.

“Can I trust you to keep him a little longer, Ffand?” Llew asked. She nodded solemnly. “Good, I will come for him one day.”

“Farewell, Ffand,” I told her. “We will not forget how you have helped us.”

“Farewell!” the young girl replied. “I will keep Twrch safe.”

We turned our mounts to the north and rode for the river. Across the marshes lay the wooded hills and, beyond, the wide Vale of Modornn. We would cross the Modornn River and strike east into Llogres, for there was no longer any help to be had in Prydain. A ride of two days would bring us to Blár Cadlys, the principal stronghold of the Cruin king.

We reached the edge of the marsh, and Llew called out. “Wait! Listen!” I halted.

In the distance I heard the sharp blat of the horn sounding the alarm. Our escape had been discovered.

5
H
UNTED

M
ist hung thick and dense over the marshlands. We drove straight toward the heart of the fen where the fog haze was heaviest. If we could avoid the hunters there, we would have a chance of escape.

But before this small hope could take root, I heard the hounds: the sharp, savage, heart-sinking howl of a hunting hound in pursuit. There were three of the king's pack left, and Meldron had not hesitated a moment in sending them after us.

Llew gained the edge of the fen just ahead of me and disappeared into the mist. I followed, nearly colliding with him at the water marge.

“Which way?” he asked.

“Dismount! Send the horses on!”

“We can lose the hounds in the fog.”

“They would track us by the sound,” I told him. “Send the horses on, and we may yet elude them.”

He slid from the horse's back and slapped it on the rump. “Hie!” The horse bolted riderless into the fen. I slid into knee-deep water, and sent my mount on with a slap and a cry—then followed Llew's quickly vanishing form.

I was sorry to lose the horses so soon, but this way offered our only chance of escape. Dogs can run a horse to exhaustion, and with their keen noses there would be no eluding them. In the marsh, however, the dogs would have to rely on their ears; they would pursue the horses, and the rider would follow the dogs.

The water was cold, the sun dim and distant. We proceeded to a nearby stand of rushes. “Go in there,” I directed. The leaves were dry—new growth had not yet come—and the dead stalks rattled as we entered. After a dozen steps, I halted. “We wait here,” I explained. “As soon as the riders pass, we will run to the river.”

“If they do not ride over us first,” Llew pointed out.

“Listen!”

I heard the splatter of a horse's hooves and the snarl of a dog. Clenching our teeth, we hunkered down and pulled rushes around us.

A little distance away, we heard another horse strike the water marge and splash into the fen. But a heartbeat later, another rider followed . . . and then two more.

Once in the marsh, the mist diffused the sound of the riders, so that they seemed to come at us from every direction. It was impossible to tell where they were, or how near. Llew and I squatted in the water, shivering, listening to the sound of the hunters all around. We heard them directing one another, heard them calling to the dogs, heard the dogs baying and yelping.

The sound steadily diminished as the hunters moved farther away. We waited, shivering, in the water. The fog swirled in the air, and I could see blue sky above us as the rising sun burned through the marsh haze. “We should move,” Llew whispered. “The fog is clearing. They will see us.”

He rose and started forward.

“Wait,” I whispered, grasping his wrist and pulling him back down beside me.

The plunge of hooves striking the water was the only warning we had. A horse careened into the rushes. The rider, sword in hand, slashed as he came.

Llew hurled himself to one side, and I dived to the other.

The startled horse reared. The rider struck again with his sword missing Llew by mere inches.

Thrashing, Llew staggered to his feet and ducked beneath the horse's belly as the rider struck again. He grabbed the warrior's sword arm and pulled him from his mount. I swung out at the horse, swatting it on the flat of the neck. The frightened beast bolted into the fen beyond.

The rider shouted. Llew struck him in the face with his fist—once, and again. His struggling ceased.

We froze, listening.

There came no answering cry, no shout of discovery.

“Help me get him up,” Llew said. We heaved the unconscious rider onto our shoulders and dragged him back across the fen to the water marge, where we left him.

“The river is that way,” I said, looking east. “With speed we might reach it before they circle back this way.”

“To the river, then,” Llew replied.

We floundered across the wetlands, skirting the edge of the marsh, scrambling now over soggy hillocks, and now through water to our thighs. Our lungs burned, our hearts raced, our muscles ached, but we struggled on toward the looming wood which marked the near bank of the Modornn River.

Streaming cold water, our clothing sodden and heavy on our limbs, we gained the brush line and forced our way through thickets of elder, willow, and hazel. Thorns raked at us. We penetrated the brush and drove through the standing wood, making for the steep bank down to the river.

At high tide, the Modornn is a wide, shallow expanse of gray green water. At low tide, it is a broad sweep of mud cut through by a single deep channel. Either way we would have to swim, but I hoped the tide would be high enough to cover our tracks across the muddy stretches on either side of the channel.

By the time we reached the river's edge, I could see that tide was on the ebb. The water level was falling, but there was still enough water to cover our tracks; and if we hurried, we could reach the farther shore before the mudflat became exposed.

Without a backward glance, we lurched across the tidal estuary: sprawling, falling, hauling one another upright, and fighting on through the mud. We floundered through the channel and slithered across the shallows on the far side. Sticky, foul-smelling muck sucked at our feet and legs.

By the time we reached the far bank, the water scarcely filled our footprints. But we dragged ourselves into the undergrowth and lay on our backs, gulping air—listening for the sound we dreaded: the shout of discovery and the clatter of hooves across the estuary.

We waited, but the shout never came. The hoofbeats did not sound.

When it appeared we had eluded the pursuit, at least thus far, we drew together the ragged remnants of our strength and staggered deeper into the wood, away from the bank. Only then did I begin to hope we might yet escape.

We had eaten little since our capture—dry bread and sour beer which the guards let down to us—and hunger had sapped our endurance. We walked east, away from the river, and stopped in a clearing to rest and let the sun dry our clothing.

There we listened intently for any sound of the chase. We heard neither hound nor horse. And slowly the quiet of the wood began to calm us.

“We have no weapons, no provisions, no horses,” Llew said, rolling onto his side. “Can we expect a welcome cup from the Cruin, do you think?”

The Llwyddi and the Cruin have often met face-to-face on the battleground. But just as often have we feasted one another. Meldryn Mawr always enjoyed King Calbha's respect, if not his friendship. “Well,” I observed, “a bard is welcome anywhere.”

“Then lead on, wise bard,” Llew said, “and let us hope Lord Calbha is in as sore need of a song as I am of a hot supper.”

We rose on tired legs to begin our journey through the wooded hills and boggy lowlands to the Cruin stronghold at Blár Cadlys. All that day we walked—with much backward glancing and many a pause to rest and to listen for the sound of pursuit. We reached the grassy banks of a secluded stream as the sun slipped behind the hills.

There, weary and footsore, we stopped for the night, drinking our fill from the stream, and then wrapping ourselves in our cloaks to rest and sleep in the long, winter-dry grass. I woke at dawn and roused Llew. We washed in the stream, and then continued on our way.

Four days we journeyed thus, sleeping at night beside a stream or pool and moving on at dawn. Four days on foot through dense wood and reeking bogland. It was too early for berries, and we could not stop to catch any game. But we kept starvation at bay with shoots and roots that I knew how to find; and we drank from fresh streams and pools.

At the end of the last day, and the end of our strength, we came in sight of the Cruin settlement. Hungry beyond words, we stood at the edge of the surrounding wood and watched the silver smoke rising from the cooking fires within the caer. The scent of the smoke brought water to my mouth and a sharp pang to my empty stomach.

Blár Cadlys is built atop a great oblong hill which guards the entrance to Ystrad Can Cefyl, the Vale of the White Horse, the principal route into the heart of Llogres. On the broad plains of the sprawling valley run the huge herds of horses which give rise to the Cruin boast: horsemen second to none. Indeed, the boast is not without a shade of truth.

“Do you think they know what has happened to Meldryn Mawr?” Llew wondered.

“No, they could not know yet—unless . . .”

“Unless Paladyr has preceded us?”

He spoke my thoughts exactly. “Come, we will soon discover what they know.”

We stumbled from the wood and staggered up to the caer—but slowly so that they would have time to mark our approach. And they did. For as we set foot on the track leading to the gate, three warriors appeared at the breastwork of the gatehouse. The foremost of them called out us, commanding us to halt and declare ourselves.

“I am Tegid Talaryant,” I shouted back to him, “Chief Bard to Meldryn Mawr of the Llwyddi. The man with me is champion to the king. We have matters to discuss with your lord.”

The porter regarded us doubtfully, exchanged a brief word with his fellows, and then replied, “You claim to be men of esteem and honor, yet you come to us as beggars. Where are your horses? Where are your weapons? Why do you come to us ragged and on foot?”

“As to that,” I answered, “I deem it no man's affair but my own. Yet it may be that Calbha will think it worth his while to welcome us as befits men of our rank and renown.”

They laughed aloud at this, but I stopped them quickly enough. “Hear me now! Unless you take my message to your lord, I will declaim against you and against all your kinsmen.”

That gave them something to think about.

“Do you think they believed you?” asked Llew, as the three discussed my threat.