Caradoc of the North Wind - By Allan Frewin Jones Page 0,66

could you?’ she demanded. ‘How could you have been so stupid as to attack those Saxons at Bevan’s farm? Did you think you’d be a hero? You weren’t, Geraint. You were just another dead boy covered in blood.’ Tears pricked behind her eyes. ‘And I had to sit with you, and guard your body. How could you leave me like that?’

Geraint sighed and shrugged. ‘These things happen in war, Branwen,’ he said. ‘I was doing well. Two arrows loosed and two targets hit. That’s not bad, is it? Admit it – that was pretty good shooting on the run.’

‘But they killed you!’ wailed Branwen. ‘And I was all alone!’

‘You still had mother and father,’ Geraint replied, an achingly familiar tone coming into his voice. Peevish and stubborn – just as she remembered him. Eight months in Annwn had not changed him, it seemed. ‘I’d taught you all that I knew. It was time for you to strike off on your own.’

‘Was it?’ she cried. ‘Do you see where I am? Do you see what I’ve made of my life?’

Geraint wrinkled his nose. ‘You have made some curious choices, I’ll admit,’ he said. ‘Those Old Gods, now. Who would have thought they’d come awake all at once like that and join in the fight against the Saxons? I wish I’d survived to meet them. What was it like, Branwen – coming face to face with the Shining Ones?’

‘Don’t burden her with such questions,’ came her father’s voice, and Branwen saw that he was standing at her brother’s side, although she could not have said when he had appeared. ‘Can’t you see she has enough to think about?’

‘Papa?’ Branwen gasped. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’ Perhaps she could have saved him in the battle under the walls of Garth Milain – but she had chosen to go to her mother’s aid, and so he had died.

‘I know, child,’ he said gently. ‘You did the right thing. How could I have lived on if your mother had fallen? It would have been worse than death.’ He smiled. ‘And things are not so very bad in this place. We feast and we hunt and we tell old tales here.’

‘As you shall soon discover for yourself,’ added a third voice. Gavan ap Huw stood now with her brother and father, the old warrior of the old wars, come to visit her from beyond death in the nothingness of her prison cell.

Branwen stumbled forward, desperate for absolution. The three forms floated away without movement in the black void. ‘You were right!’ she cried, weeping now as she looked into Gavan’s weathered, scarred old face. ‘We should never have gone into the woods. I should have listened to you. You died because of it. My fault!’

‘Hush now, child,’ said Gavan. ‘My death is not on your hands. With eyes wide open I chose to go into the woods. I was the author of my own fate. As are we all. As are you.’

She trembled. ‘Will I die tomorrow?’ she asked in desperation. ‘Or did Ragnor speak the truth? Will I never be allowed to die?’

‘Ravens aren’t the only birds,’ said Gavan.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Saxons aren’t the only horsemen,’ added her father.

‘Ragnar isn’t the only god,’ said Geraint with a smile. ‘Remember what I told you, little sister. Be calm, be silent, be swift, be still.’

The three men began to fade from sight.

‘And remember what the goraig told you!’ called Geraint, almost as an afterthought, his voice echoing from a vast distance. ‘Beware the eyes like two black moons!’

‘Caw!’

The harsh sound brought Branwen to her senses. The darkness in her cell was not so impenetrable as in her dream … or her vision … or whatever it had been when the three dead men from her past had spoken with her. A sliver of grey striped the dark above her head and a faint light filtered in.

‘Leave me be!’ Branwen shouted. ‘Are you so petty a god that you must taunt me even on the day of my doom?’

‘Caw! Caw!’

But it was not the deep, guttural cry of the raven – it was a lighter, more carping, more insistent voice. She frowned, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes with her hand.

‘Fain?’

A grey sickle shape flew down from the slot of dawning light. Instinctively, Branwen raised her arm and the falcon came to rest on her wrist, his claws digging into her flesh.

‘Caw! Caw! Caw!’

Shaking with the thrill of absolute astonishment, Branwen raised her other hand and gently