It sounded a wildly unlikely excuse, but after all, it was no more unlikely than the taboos laid upon Conary Môr, the Scottish hero, that he should never drive right-handwise around Tara nor sleep in a house from which firelight shone at night. . . . At all events, since no man could disprove it, it might at least gain me a breathing space. . . .
There was a murmuring all down the hall, a whispering among the women; the chieftain’s brows drew together and they all but met across the bridge of his nose, and a dark flush burned beneath his eyes. Guenhumara, on the other hand, when I cast another quick glance at her, was so white that the paint stood out sharp-edged and ugly on her lids and cheekbones, though she met my look quietly and with the shadow of a smile.
Then the deep rumble of his laughter boomed into the moment’s hush. “Aye well, what is five days? We can pass the time cheerfully enough, and at the end of it you shall give me your answer. Meanwhile, drink to the bond of friendship between us, my Lord Artos the Bear!”
Five days! I had forgotten how long I had lain sick; the lateness of the summer. Well, five days’ respite was better than none. “To the bond of friendship between us,” I said, and drank off what was left of the sweet fiery stuff and gave the cup back into Guenhumara’s hands as she stood to take it from me; and felt as I did so, that her hands were shaking. She smiled, and took it with a lovely dignity that made me the more aware of her armor, and turned to rejoin the other women.
The uneasy silence in the hall was engulfed suddenly in the snarling flurry of a dog fight as Cabal, who had lain quiet at my feet all evening, only raising his hackles and snarling a warning from time to time whenever one of the other hounds, stiff-legged and hostile, drew too near, rose with a full-throated roar of fury and flung himself against three of them at the same tune. (I was to learn, when I knew him better, that he was not a fighter among his own kind, but that when he did fight, odds meant nothing to him.) Most of the other dogs flung themselves into the battle, and for a while we had hot work to separate them, even with a few firebrands and the contents of a pot of beer flung into their midst; and when finally I had succeeded in strangling Cabal off a howling adversary and most of the other dogs had been kicked outside to finish their fighting where they would, the scene that was just past seemed to be forgotten, and the beer went around faster than before.
I was as grateful to Cabal as though he had sprung into battle in defense of my life.
NEXT morning I whistled Cabal to heel, and took to the moors behind the Dun, heading for the high empty places as I had always done in time of stress since I was a boy. Also I was bent on testing my strength, for once Lammas was over, the sooner I was away from the Dun of Maglaunus the better. It was a day of hurrying storm clouds and swiftly changing lights that came and went across the great slow billows of the moor where the heather was coming into flower, so that at one moment a whole hillside would be bloomed dark as sloes, and the next, the color of thin spilled wine. And as the light came and went, changing and scurrying about the moors, so my thoughts changed and shifted, scudding about my mind as I walked. The only thing that remained constant amid the turmoil was my determination not to take Guenhumara from her father’s hearth. It was not only that I flinched from the idea of taking any woman, but quite simply that I had no place for her in my way of life, no life to give any woman. Yet I knew that that would not satisfy Maglaunus; and there was the war alliance with him to be taken into the account, the hope of men and aid that we desperately needed, the necessity of bonding the tribes together that was our only hope of throwing back the Barbarians. Last night he had said, “Drink to the bond of friendship between us.” But would that hold, after the slight that, however I tried to soften it, I must put on his daughter in four days’ time? And the woman herself? Would it be better for her (supposing that I could get the word to her) to save her pride and maybe gain her father’s anger, by herself refusing the marriage — or to be shamed by my refusal before the whole tribe and keep her father’s favor? And would it make any difference whether she refused or not? Which was worse for a woman, the shame or the danger? The danger or the shame? As to my chances now of winning Maglaunus to the Red Dragon, whichever way things went, they were not worth a brown tufted rush in the wind. Oh gods! What a tangle! I cursed, and stumbled on, not taking much notice of anything about me, until a chill scurry of rain on the back of my neck woke me to my surroundings, and to the knowledge that I had walked too far and was spent.
I sat down in the lee of a hump of thorn trees, with Cabal lying nose on paws beside me, while the rain squall blotted out the moors, and then blew over and left the world refreshed and shining. I sat on for a while after, listening with one ear to the rich contented boom of bees in the young bell heather, and when I was somewhat rested, turned westward again and set off toward the coast, at an easier pace.
Presently I was walking into the eye of a wild sunset, with gray clouds racing across a western sky of saffron and silver gilt, and the sea running translucent gold to the skyline; and found that I was heading directly toward the hill shoulder with its ring of standing stones where we had danced on Midsummer’s Eve. They stood up, shadow-bloomed, dark with ram against the tumbled brightness of the sky. The shining lances of the sunset were in my eyes, and it was not until Cabal pricked his ears at one of the standing stones, that I saw a figure standing, in the shadow of it. I whistled the hound to my side as he started forward with an uncertain sound between a snarl and a whimper, and caught him by the collar. But the figure never moved, indeed in its utter silence it might have been one of the standing stones, and it was not until I was almost within reach that I knew it for Guenhumara in a tunic of unbleached gray sheep’s wool that was one in color with the stone behind her.
“My Lady Guenhumara! What is it that you do here?”
“I was waiting for you,” she said composedly.
“But how could you know that I should come this way?”
“Maybe I called you.”
Fear touched me with a cold fingertip, and I was remembering another woman in a saffron gown, standing in a bothy doorway with that same air of stillness of having stood there since time began, saying, “I have waited for you a long time . . .”
Then Guenhumara laughed. “Na, I am no witch to comb my hair and call down the moon. I saw which way you walked, and came out after you, that is all. Here, from the Nine Sisters you can see far across the moors, and I hoped to be able to meet you on your way back. One cannot talk in the Dun without the very jackdaws crying the thing that one talked of from the rooftops next morning.”
“I can well believe it. What is the thing that you would say to me?”
She had moved a little toward me, out from the shadow of her standing stone, and the light of the stormy sunset tangled in her hair and turned it to an autumn fire. She said, “When the Lammas torches are lit, what will you say to my father the chieftain?”
I was silent, not knowing what to reply; and after a pause, she said in a low faintly mocking voice — her voice was the lowest I have ever heard in a woman, yet very clear, vibrant as a bronze bell. “Na, my Lord Artos, you need not say it; I know. I knew while you were still searching under my father’s eyes for your way out.”