Spindle and Dagger - J. Anderson Coats Page 0,32
else because of Owain ap Cadwgan who I follow —
IT’S LONG PAST FULL DARK WHEN OWAIN STOPS MOVing. My wrist hurts from where he kept hold of me, and there’s a blurry bloodsmear where his grip was. Owain stops moving because he collapses against a tree and slides down the trunk till he’s slumped among the roots. He’s muttering something, and I hear my name.
The dawn raid scattered the warband, and the greenwood is empty but for us. I’m crouching into a hedge. I’m cold. I should say something. Go to him. This morning I was safe in a hunting lodge. Now I’m in the wilderness. Madog ap Rhirid swept down with fire and sword and would have kicked in the door were it not for Owain ap Cadwgan.
Then I realize Owain is thanking Saint Elen for keeping him. I lay my cheek on my knees.
There’s a measure of forest stillness, then Owain draws a long breath, lets it out in a whistle, and smiles at me halfway. “Well then. That was much closer than I like. You keep pace like a warbander. Like you were born in the field.”
There was no clatter in the dooryard. Madog came swift and silent and single-minded, his own vengeance at hand as much as Gerald’s, and I have Einion ap Tewdwr to thank once more for helping to pull me clear.
“Sweeting? You’re not hurt, are you? Come here.”
He beckons and I cannot go. He’s the one who grabbed Rhael. He’s the one who came to my vale to burn, to unman whatever lord held the ground beneath my steading. He beckons me to the curtained bed when the scar beneath his arm is finally healed. Saint Elen turns her back because this is what I asked her for. I begged for my life and she granted it.
I stumble over to him. Just as I did then. I let him put an arm around me. Just as I did then. I curl against him because he’s warm. Because he’s always kept me safe and close to him. Because I made him this way with effort, with will, with intent. As the months became years, I held my breath a little less with each raid.
What Owain did to Gerald of Windsor was not a raid, though. The moment Nest put one bloodied bare foot into the courtyard, the war Cadwgan planned became something else entirely.
Something my playact was never intended to cope with.
Owain says we should start moving once more, but I can’t take more than three steps before my muscles turn to water and I sink. So he sets trip lines, then gathers me under his arm and pulls his cloak over us both. I lay my head on his shoulder and close my eyes so I don’t have to see darkness seeping through bony winter trees in and down and toward us.
He’s talking. His voice murmurs like a stream over rocks and rumbles against my ear. Something something northward something something Gerald of Windsor. Low and calm and confident. Even now. The voice of a man with a saint over his shoulder, unquestioning.
When Owain shifts into something something Nest something something Einion penteulu, I can’t bring myself to listen any longer because he might be talking about William and David and Not Miv, how Einion was to look to them, how Einion will not hesitate to kill the children and their mother if it means keeping Madog from recapturing them and returning them to Gerald of Windsor.
I can’t tell Owain that Saint Elen said Gerald has more than paid whatever blood debt he owes to Owain’s warband. That every man the length and breadth of the kingdoms of Wales and the border too has received his message grim and clear. I can’t tell him that Nest asked me what I wanted like she would give it to me.
Saint Elen would likely say all these things and more, but I will not say them for her. I dare not. She is the saint, not me. So I stay silent. I wrap my arms tight around him, but not before I run my thumb over the place where armor hides his scar.
EVERY FORT WE SIGHT OR PASS WHERE WE MIGHT take refuge is a burned-out husk. We find the charred timbers of what used to be steadings, and the holy houses are clearly being watched with an eye to ambush. Owain moves a little quicker. His temper gets shorter. He curses his cousin again and