Caradoc of the North Wind - By Allan Frewin Jones Page 0,58

when the Emerald Flame is about to be snuffed out, when the Bright Blade is to be broken? Maybe this is how the Shining Ones punish those who turn away from them.

Or perhaps this was always the end of destiny’s path for me.

Her heart breaking, she threw down her sword and let her shield drop from her grip.

Ironfist smiled. Saxon swordsmen surrounded the stone upon which she was standing.

Dera finally wrenched herself free of her father’s hands. She dropped to her knees. ‘Branwen! I’m sorry! I did not know!’

‘But your father knew you well enough, Dera ap Dagonet, the saints help you to come to your true senses!’ said the king. ‘He said you would act as you did – and he was right.’ He smiled a cold smile. ‘Happy is the father who knows his child so well.’

‘No!’ screamed Dera. ‘No!’

Dagonet hauled his daughter to her feet, ripping her sword from her belt.

‘Silence, child!’ he growled. ‘It’s done!’ He gestured to a couple of warriors, who came forward and dragged the weeping Dera away between them.

‘We return to Pengwern,’ said the king. ‘Farewell, General Herewulf. I shall send ambassadors to Chester in due time to debate the terms of a full and final peace between us.’

‘And I shall welcome them, King of Powys,’ Ironfist replied.

The king and Prince Llew turned their horses and rode away down the snowy hillside, the warriors of Powys following after them without a backward glance.

Branwen was alone, desolate and unarmed among her enemies.

Ironfist rode up to the stone where Branwen was standing.

‘Well now,’ he said. ‘I have got what I came for.’ The chilling smile widened across his ravaged face. ‘Will you return with me to my camp willingly or bound to a horse’s tail? Either way, I will not be denied the joy of your company.’ His voice hardened. ‘We have much to discuss – we must speak of how you murdered and mutilated my only son. We have that and many another deeds of yours to debate.’ His pale-blue eye flashed with an evil that made Branwen’s heart falter in her chest. ‘I have a welcome prepared for you in Chester,’ he continued with horrible relish. ‘A welcome the like of which you cannot even begin to imagine!’

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Branwen huddled under scabby furs, her head tucked into her shoulders, her knees clamped to her chest, her arms wrapped around her empty belly. She stared up at a single narrow slot high in the stone wall, a thin, raw gap just under the ceiling through which the meagre, watery daylight oozed. It was the only glimpse she had of the world outside her cell.

That lean sliver of light was a blessing and a curse. Through it she could see a fraction of the sky. On good days when the clouds were being herded along under the whip of the wind, she would sit staring up for hours at the constantly changing shapes that coiled and rolled across her field of vision. On bad days, it was blank white or grey or yellowish and had no life to it at all. Early on in her imprisonment, snow had fallen frequently, sometimes so thickly that it almost blocked her view. But more recently there had been no snow. She guessed that in the world outside her prison, the long hard winter was finally coming to an end.

Sometimes the cold air would trickle down the wall from the raw slot and come creeping across the floor like icy water. Sometimes the gap allowed a vicious wind to gust into the cell and bite at her with its frozen teeth.

Voices and other sounds of everyday life in Chester bled down to her in her chilly cell. The shouting and calling of Saxon men and women – sometimes the laughter of a child. The pattering of feet. The creak of wheels. The clop of horses or the muddled percussion of hooves and the plaintive bleating of animals being driven to market. On days when the bustle of the busy townsfolk was especially loud, she longed for the absolute silence of the black night. To know that people were living free lives just beyond her reach was a torment that she found hard to bear. And yet, in the throbbing dark, she yearned for some sound to prove she was not dead and in her grave. By day and by night the torture in her mind never ceased.

‘Rhiannon!’ she cried in her despair. ‘Govannon of the Wood! Come to