“My hearth for her warmth, my kill for her food,” I returned. “My shield for her shelter, my corn for her quickening, my love for her contentment, my spear for the throat of the man who offers her harm. There is no more that I have to give.”
“It is enough,” said the hollow voice.
And Guenhumara with the golden apples swaying at the ends of her hair came through the gap of darkness that they had left for her between the torches.
The thing was done, and not to be undone again. The Horned One himself had taken the flint knife and nicked first my wrist, and then Guenhumara’s where the vein showed blue under the brown skin, and let them bleed a few drops into the cup of wine. We had drunk from the cup, both at the same time, our hands linked on the rim as custom demanded, and all the while we were strangers looking at each other with stranger’s eyes, when we looked at all; as though there had never been that other moment up here beside the Nine Sisters, when I had held her under my cloak and felt the life in her leap toward mine.
But stranger or no, she was my woman now, and together we were swept into the wild merrymaking that had begun to boil up through the wonder and the awe. The central part of the mystery was accomplished, and the god had stepped down from his throne to lead the dance that whirled and spun, as the torchlight and the shadows flew, its flaming circle about the smaller circle of standing stones that seemed to join in some secret dance of their own that had nothing to do with movement. We were dancing to the rhythmic stamping of our own heels, to the music of the pipes that whirled us this way and that as a wind whirls through dry leaves and sends them skyward and spins them along the ground — until at last the ring dance burst apart of its own spinning, into groups and couples and single leaping dancers.
Guenhumara danced with me. She had moved through the rituals of her marriage as one moving perfectly, but in her sleep, through the complicated patterns of quite another kind of dance, but now she was awake and under the same spell as the rest of us. The same laughter came from her as from the others around us, the same soft cries from deep in the throat. And we danced our own dance to our own patterns, among all the swirling multitude (but indeed many were doing that, by now), the man-and-woman dance that is one with the buck tearing with his antlers at a bush and the goldfinch showing off the yellow under his wings.
The beer pots had begun to go around and men and women crowded to light more and more torches from one another, and dance with them whirled aloft in ragged mares’ tails of smoky flame, that shone on laughing or sweating faces and clinging hands and flying hair. In one place, a man in a wildcat-skin kilt had withdrawn into a world of his own, and with drawn dirk was spinning and stamping in the complicated rhythms of the war dance. Close beside me, a half-naked girl slipped from the arms of a young warrior and went down, skirling with laughter, and I saw the love-bites on her throat and shoulder before the youngster flung himself joyfully upon her.
With the drum-pulse of stamping heels throbbing in my blood and the pipe music breaking in little sharp waves against me, I do not know how long it was before the knowledge came to me, nor quite how it came at last, that unless I found a way out quickly, I was going to have to take Guenhumara then and there. It seemed only after my brain had begun to clear that the long glances cast in my direction warned me what was expected of me.
And I knew that the thing expected of me was not possible. If it had been any girl plucked at random from the women’s side, I could maybe have played the stallion without much more thought of the rest of the herd than the stallion has when he covers his mare. If I had loved her, then the rest might not have mattered to either of us. As it was . . .
In the same instant I caught the frowning red-brown gaze of Pharic, across a dozen heads between. He was half laughing, but the message was serious; and receiving it, I knew why he had shown me the ancient stronghold, why he had so arranged matters that my horse was within reach.
Scarcely knowing that I did so, I had caught Guenhumara by the wrists and swung her out of the dance. Gault and Flavian were close at hand and still looked to be in their right minds; and I called them up with a jerk of the chin. “Go and get Arian up here, as close as may be,” I muttered to the Minnow, making believe to play with the golden apples on the end of Guenhumara’s braids, while she stood panting a little, with her face in the shadows.
“The other horses, too?”
“No, just Arian. Bring him up to the edge of the torchlight, and whistle for me when you are there. Gault, go and get Amlodd and the rest. It is time to be carrying off the bride, and we shall need you to cover our retreat.”
The thing had passed over so swiftly that I think no one of the swaying, prancing throng about us knew that we had fallen out of the dancing for anything much but to fetch our breath, or maybe because we too were ready for the next thing. And as Gault and Flavian slipped away on their separate errands, I reached out and caught a beer jar from a passer-by, and held it for Guenhumara to drink. There was little enough left in it; a mouthful for each of us, but it served to cover a few moments of time, and she looked up at me over the rim, with a swift and willing understanding of what I was about, her eyes in the ragged torchlight no longer those of a stranger. I flung the empty jar aside, not caring under whose feet it fell, and it was caught by Pharic, who I had not known was still so near. I flung my thanks after it and he put up his hand in a swift odd gesture as though to catch and toss them back. “Am I not one of your captains now?” he said, and was gone again into the swirling crowd as I caught Guenhumara’s hands and swung her in the opposite direction. Then I heard beneath the tumult and the sweet fierce piping, the dull trample of a horse’s hooves on turf, and a moment later caught the moth-pale gleam of Arian’s flank on the farmost fringes of the torchlight, and the high white whistle that a boy makes with his fingers in his mouth.
I laughed, and a sudden warm drunkenness took me, and I was every man who had ever carried off his chosen woman from among her kin. “That is for us! Come, Guenhumara!” and I caught her up and ran. She began to laugh too, and flung her arm around my neck to ease her weight for me, as I headed for that white gleam on the edge of the torchlight. Only the dancers nearest to us could know what was happening, and for an instant, surprise held them from breaking the dance or making any offer to prevent us. And in that instant I reached my horse and flung Guenhumara up across the saddlebow. But as I mounted behind her, Pharic raised the shout, “See! He carries off our sister!” and instantly the tumult of half battle that ends most bride feasts broke out.
I caught the reins from Flavian as he leapt back, and driving my heel into Arian’s flank, swung him half around; my own few lads were springing in behind me for a rear guard, the young warriors, headed by Guenhumara’s three brothers, striving to break through to her rescue. Glancing over my shoulder as the startled horse plunged and snorted under me, I saw Flavian and Pharic straining together in a wrestling grip that was only half laughing. “Ride!” Flavian shouted. “We’ll hold them while we may!”
I jabbed my heel into the white flank and we were away at a full flying gallop, leaving the laughter and the shouting of battle behind us. And Guenhumara was clinging to me, laughing still, with her hair bursting loose of its braids flying like cool spray across my face and throat.
So soon as I was sure of no hunt on our heels, I slackened to an easy canter, for it is not good to ride full tilt among unknown hills by the light of a fading moon, especially with a woman to hamper your bridle arm. And as though with the wind of our going, that other wild warm wind that had swept us together for a while fell away. Guenhumara had drawn herself together, and sat light and undemanding in the crook of my arm now, so that I scarcely felt her there at all. “Where are we away to?” she asked in a little, as though nothing of the past hours was left in her at all. I spat out hair.