Caradoc of the North Wind - By Allan Frewin Jones Page 0,49
end, ask them to breathe life back into Linette’s body. Ask them to show us the true meaning of devotion.’ His voice trembled with anger. ‘Ask them what measure of blood spilled will be sufficient to please them. Ask them how much blood it will take to set Branwen free!’ He drew his knife and held it to his upturned wrist. “I’ll give freely enough, if one body will suffice.’
‘Stop it, Iwan!’ Branwen said, pulling the knife away from his wrist. ‘They need no blood sacrifices.’ She forced down her grief and looked keenly at Blodwedd. ‘I do not know what to do,’ she said. ‘When Linette was well enough to travel, I had intended to take you all out of Pengwern and to go back to the mountains to seek a new path. But what purpose would that serve, if the Shining Ones deny me? What end would we come to but an ignoble one in the deep snows, our bones gnawed by the wild wolves, our souls mourned by none?’
‘I’ll not travel west to do service to the Old Gods,’ growled Aberfa. ‘I’d rather ride full-tilt into the east and die in battle with the Saxons.’
‘That would be a futile gesture,’ said Rhodri, sitting red-eyed among the scattered remnants of his ineffective herbs and potions.
‘Indeed, it would,’ said Blodwedd, rising to her feet and staring fiercely at Branwen. ‘I will do as Iwan suggests,’ she said defiantly. ‘I will go alone into the western forests. I will seek my lord Govannon. I will hear his words and I will return. Do not throw your life away in the east, Branwen. Not till you have heard what word I bring from the Shining Ones.’
Branwen looked at her, too tired to argue. She nodded wearily.
‘Dawn is come,’ said Banon. ‘We should give thought to the departed.’
Most eyes turned to Branwen, but she looked away, losing herself for a moment in the glow of the fire-pit.
‘We shall pass through the gates when morning has come,’ said Aberfa. ‘We shall bury our dear friend in some fitting place where she can see the mountains of her home.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Iwan. ‘We’ll find some sheltered spot upon the ridge to lay her to rest. And then Blodwedd shall travel westwards and we shall return here to be the king’s eyes and ears for a while longer.’ He frowned. ‘Dera has been gone a long time. Need we go and find her?’
Dera had not returned to the hut following Branwen’s manic incursion into the king’s Great Hall. She had stayed behind to try and pacify the ants’-nest that Branwen had stirred up, to explain her leader’s wild behaviour and to seek forgiveness and compassion for them in their grief and loss.
But that had been the whole night ago. And yet there was still no sign of the daughter of Dagonet ap Wadu. She had not sat vigil over their lost comrade with the others of the Gwyn Braw. She had not been there to share their grief.
Branwen wondered again whether Dera’s loyalties had been stretched to the breaking point. Was she still one of them – or had her father’s love sent her down a different course?
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The sky was cloudless, a bright, burning sapphire blue and so huge that Branwen felt herself to be little more than an insect crawling on the rind of the world as she and the Gwyn Braw rode out towards the long hill that lay to the west of the king’s citadel.
As the sun had risen that morning, so the snow clouds had slipped away, sliding slowly into the north on a curiously balmy southern wind. Everyone in Pengwern felt the change in the weather. People emerged with puzzled, delighted eyes to see such a sky and to feel such a wind on their faces. The geese cackled and the goats bleated and the few remaining cattle lowed and snorted in their pens.
It was almost as though spring had come all in a single morning.
Branwen was riding on Terrwyn at the head of her solemn, melancholy band. A stretcher was tied to Aberfa’s horse. Linette lay upon it under a white shroud. None but the Gwyn Braw had passed through the high gates of Pengwern. No one else cared that Linette ap Cledwyn was dead. A few soldiers watched them without interest from the walls. The gates had been drawn closed at their backs.
But not all of the Gwyn Braw were in the mournful cavalcade. Dera had not retuned