The men around the campfires had turned about to stare, and others loomed out of the shadows of the tumble-down barrack rows, drawn by some sudden sense of happening; and a great stillness took us all so that for a long moment we stood and looked at each other, the girl with the seven lithe young warriors, and ourselves in the firelight.
“Who are you?” I said. “And what do you here?”
“I am Daughter among the People of the Hills, up yonder,” she said, then, speaking the Celtic tongue with a hesitance and a strange cadence that betrayed it for a tongue that was not her own, “As to what I do here, I come — we come, my brothers and I, to say to you, ‘Oh my lord, let you give back to us our sister.’ ”
There was a stirring and a harsh indrawn breath among the men around the campfire, and she looked about her quickly. “You know, then. You have seen her?”
“We have seen her. . . . How did she fall into the hands of those who were here before we came?”
“She was cutting sallows to make a basket, by the river; we both were by the river. And they came upon us — the Sea Wolves and the Painted People.” She showed small teeth between drawn-back lips, teeth sharp and pointed as a field vole’s, but there was no expression in her voice. “We ran, and they came behind us. Then I suppose she tripped and fell, and her hand was torn from mine, and when I looked around, they were upon her.” She came a step closer, her eyes fixed on my face, her hands held out toward me. I smelled the faintly vixen smell of her, and the firelight splintered on the little bronze dagger, pointed as a bee’s sting, that was thrust into her belt. “You are the one they call Artos the Bear, are you not? Let you give her back to us, my lord.”
“Gladly, if I could,” I said. “She is dead.”
There was no change in the still, narrow face. “It has been in my heart all this night that she is dead. You found her dead when the strong place fell to you?”
“Yes.”
“Then give us her body, that we may take it and lay it in the Long House, among her own people.”
In the silence, we heard the wind harping softly across the crumbling ramparts, and the sudden spurt and crackle of the watch fire. Somewhere among the picket lines a horse fidgeted and was still. It was unthinkable to get those nine great carcasses out again; it would be a week’s work with ropes and levers; and if it could have been done by the lifting of a finger, I knew that I would not let this girl see what came out from under them, for it seemed to me that they had been near each other, these sisters. “If I had known that her own people would come for her, surely I would have delayed. Now I cannot give you her body, for she is buried already.”
“Where?”
I moved aside, so that she might see the mouth of the old grain pit with its rough covering of sods and thatch. Better that she should know it all, as swiftly as might be. “Here at the bottom of the pit, with the carcasses of nine war-horses laid above her. We wrapped her in a cloak and covered her thick with yellow bracken before we tumbled the horses in.”
There was a sudden flicker of wild mocking laughter in her face, like summer lightning; the very air about her seemed to quiver with it, but she made no sound. “And all men know that horses are creatures of the Sun, with power over such as we are who belong to the dark warm womb of the Earth. You have taken pains that she should not walk in your sleep. Nine war-horses above her should surely hold her deep enough.” And then the laughter died out of her face. “If indeed she lies there at all.”
“If?”
“Listen. Listen, Great Man, Sun Man whom they call Artos the Bear. You have told us that our sister is dead. You have told us that you found her so when the strong place fell to you. You have told us that she lies here with nine horses to keep her down. But what proof have we of these things? It is in my heart that she is dead indeed, but fear and longing may trick the heart. If I may not see her body, how may I be sure that you do not hold her here alive for your pleasure? If she be dead, how may I be sure that it was the Sea Wolves and not yourself that brought her to it?”
“How could you be sure of that, though I showed her to you ten times over?”
She looked at me in silence for a while, her eyes wide and still like the dark bitter willow-bark water under trees. Then she said, “No, I am sure of that, though you will not show her to me at all.”
“I cannot set my men to hauling nine horses out of a pit, when they are weary from battle, Daughter among the Dark People of the Hills.”
She sighed. “Na, I see that you cannot. So be it then, she must lie where she lies. Only come back with me to the Old Woman in my hills, that you may tell her, and she may give you the Dark Drink to pour and the sacred herbs for her sleep-place.”
There was a startled silence, and I was aware of the young warriors she had called her brothers, drawn close about her and watching me as intently as she herself, with dark inscrutable eyes.
Bedwyr, who had stood at my shoulder all the while, was the first to speak. “If there be need of this Dark Drink and the herbs, then send one of your brothers back here with them.”
“It is for the Sun Lord to do,” the girl answered, but her eyes never left my face.
“I am as the Sun Lord’s sword hand. I will come, then, in his name.”
“You will not, then,” I muttered.
But it was as though neither of them heard me. “Thinking maybe that music is a powerful talisman against the spells of the dark.” The low tone of mocking was back in her voice again. “But we also have our harpers in the Hollow Hills.” Then abandoning him as though he had ceased to exist: “Will you not come, my Lord Artos? It is such a simple thing, but it must be done by the Leader, the Lordly One.”
“Why should I come?” I asked at last.
And she moved closer still and set one hand on mine that was clenched on the hilt of my sword. “For a token of faith, maybe,” she said.
So I knew that I must go, and I knew why. “When do we start?”
“So soon as you have laid aside your sword and dagger.”
“That also?” I said.
“That also. Did I not say ‘for a token of faith’?”
I pulled off my sword belt, with the dagger that was thrust into it, and handed both to Bedwyr, who took them without a word. It was Cei who cut in, his voice rough with urgency. “Artos, don’t be a fool — armed or unarmed, for God’s sake don’t go with her!” His big hand was on my arm as though he would have held me back by force. “It’s a trap!”
“I think not.”
“Don’t go!”