Spindle and Dagger - J. Anderson Coats Page 0,31

he’s standing to like any of the lads in the practice yard, gaze blanked, squared up.

After several long moments, Owain bids me pour more wine and asks if I might rub his shoulders a little longer. His voice is easy once again, and Einion penteulu retakes his seat, and before long they’re laughing at a wolfhound licking its nether parts. When their conversation devolves into whether it’s too cold for a pissing contest, I move my hands away and drift kitchenward, but I’m not two steps from the trestle when Owain pretends to collapse on the bench.

“Thief!” He lolls across the table, flopping his wrists like fish on a riverbank. “Take away my muscles and bones, will you? Put ’em back, sweeting, or I’m of no use to anyone.”

Then Owain tips his head enough to grin at me. Einion penteulu snickers and takes another drink. I sigh and start rubbing Owain’s shoulders again. I also keep pouring the wine, but he’s no fool. I can’t even glance at the hall door without him going limp like David and moaning about bone theft and floggings.

When Owain says no comfort, he does not act in half measures.

I BLINK AWAKE WHEN OWAIN SHIFTS QUICK AND sudden, and I scrabble hard when Einion penteulu’s face appears above the bed.

“He’s on us,” Einion says grimly. “Get up. Arm yourself.”

Owain squints at him, the bedclothes tumbling to his waist. “Who?”

“Your whoreson cousin Madog, rot his soul! Bought and paid for by Gerald of Windsor and that bastard English king!”

“Goddamn it!” Owain rolls out of bed, cursing as he puts on his tunic — dawn raid that son of a — but my hands are trembling as I slide into my gown and grab my rucksack. Madog ap Rhirid who thought to be Owain’s penteulu. Who Owain humiliated in the public of his father’s hall and again in the yard in front of all the warbands. Whose sister is a child of eleven and the only one of Owain’s entire volatile family who looks forward to seeing me.

Gerald did not come hellbent. Nor did he come with a big Norman army. He chose more thorough means.

The hall is in chaos. The lads are stumbling over one another, grappling with weapons and cursing whorebegotten Madog ap Rhirid and all his kin to eight generations. In the corner, at Nest’s feet, William is trying to fasten his hose and keeps fumbling the ties. I start toward him, but Owain pulls me up short.

“You’re with me,” he says. “Einion will see to Nest and Gerald’s brats.”

I struggle, but Owain’s grip tightens. “There won’t be a fight. This is an ambush. We’re getting the hell out of here.”

“Alice! Alice! Alice!” David thrashes in Nest’s arms, red-faced, small hands grabbing, but Owain tows me stumbling toward the door.

Outside, the sky is a harsh screaming pink, and it’s bone-chill freezing. Armed men are flooding around both corners of the hall and through the trees, and I paw the air to my left and panic when Rhael isn’t there gripping and regripping the butcher knife. There’s nothing in my hand, when only a moment ago she shoved the fire iron at me and told me not to be afraid. Miv is not crying oh Christ they got to her already Rhael said they would not care about —

— a heavy weight falls on my arm and I jerk into unsteady motion and something catches my sleeve but it’s Owain pulling me along I recognize his coppery curls it’s not —

— Llywelyn penteulu who moves toward me in the steading’s dim light slow like a snake I clutch the fire iron it slips in my sweaty hand a man who looks like him hulks forward too fast grabs me by the wrist and I bring down the fire iron and there’s —

— blood everywhere men shouting fleeing headlong Owain ahead of me blood down one arm —

— there on the floor of the steading with Rhael’s knife buried to the hilt under his arm he looks dead already but I said I could save him and that’s why Einion ap Tewdwr made them let me up and I kneel beside him aching and shaken and bellysick skin crawling Christ now what do I do —

— I follow that’s what I do because they burned my house they burned everything in the vale and they killed them both and seized all the beasts and now I follow because there is nothing else and there is nothing