Spindle and Dagger - J. Anderson Coats Page 0,2
rush like ghosts through the still, snow-lined trees. The lads draw steel and fall hard on the attackers. There’s a burst of shouting in harsh French, the solid sound of bodies colliding, the clatterclunk of metal on metal. The hiss of a name — Gerald of Windsor.
Normans. Butchers invading the kingdoms of Wales, but not just for killing. They’ve come to take what they can, and they’d have the kingdom of Powys from Owain’s father. His province of Ceredigion as well.
Owain is amid it. If he dies, no saint can help me. If he dies, I’m done for.
The fight is sharp and grim and over quickly. Three Normans lie slain, and the rest are pelting through the greenwood toward wherever they came from. The lads stand panting, their eyes wild and their sword-arms fidgety. Owain is whole and unharmed, and I thank every saint who ever lived even as I struggle to keep my breakfast down.
“Oh, Christ. Dear God Almighty, no.”
Owain’s voice is raw and desperate, both hands shoved through his hair. The man crumpled at his feet isn’t Norman. It’s Llywelyn penteulu, and Owain is pushing away the lads who have gathered and dropping to his knees at the side of his warband chief and oldest friend.
“Die,” I whisper, and the greenwood falls away and I’m up against the steading wall held fast, cold everywhere can’t struggle, and Miv is wailing but there are other cries too, panicked, angry, and faint amid that noise is a haphazard shuddery weeping that turns my stomach.
Oh saints, no. Not the echoes again. They’d all but faded to shadows.
“We’ve got to do something.” Owain’s wild gaze rakes the lads, all standing like pallbearers, red-eyed, shuffling, looking to the branches above and the torn-up mud and everywhere and nowhere.
“What of her?” Einion ap Tewdwr steps forward, hopeful and urgent. “The miracle girl?”
I freeze. I would have to touch him. Skin to skin. The blood. The smell of him.
But every last one of the lads is looking to me. Owain, too, even as his color drains and cold mud climbs the hem of his tunic.
I’ve never once used the word miracle, though if I’m honest, I have let it hang there.
So I make myself go, but when I get to Llywelyn penteulu’s side, it’s plain there’s no doing for him. Not by me. Not by anyone. The Norman blade caught him across the neck and took a wedge of wet red flesh with it. His stare is already going blank.
I should beg Saint Elen to intercede with the Almighty the way she did for Owain, but I don’t. Instead I look Owain in the eye and say as steady as I can, “Saint Elen kept you safe. Did you see how she knocked that blade aside? Every man of those Normans wanted you dead. Are you dead?”
Einion’s mouth falls open and he chokes on a few broken curses. Owain stifles a shuddering breath that’s suspiciously like a sob. Then he presses his forehead against Llywelyn penteulu’s and grips his friend’s hand and chokes out some odd garble of the paternoster and last rites.
In less time than it takes to piss, Llywelyn penteulu is dead.
At my elbow, Owain sits back on his heels, panting sharp and shallow. He scrubs a wrist over wet cheeks as he regards the body. Then he reaches out a shaking hand and closes his warband chief’s dull staring eyes. At length he whispers, “Saint Elen kept me.”
“Yes, she did,” I reply to my knees as they gouge the bloody, mud-slick ground, “because she looks to you always.”
We stay pressed together for a long moment. Then all at once, Owain rocks to his feet and stomps a handful of paces away. He tips his head to the sky and roars, “Gerald of Windsor! You miserable Norman bastard! You’re a dead man! You hear me? I will find you and kill you!”
I scrape blood from my hands with my handkerchief. He’s dead. Llywelyn penteulu is actually dead. I will never again catch his eye by mischance. I will never again shiver outside a door waiting on his departure. Every echo of him will soon be gone.
The lads drift toward Owain, gathering, murmuring Saint Elen and hairsbreadth and blessed. They stand together like a flock of crows, shoulder to shoulder, solid as a fist. Now and then one of them glances at me, crossing himself, slow and reverent like he just walked out of mass.
“We mustn’t linger here.” Einion ap Tewdwr seizes Owain’s sleeve.