“I do not lay this kind of hazard before Bedwyr and Pharic and the rest, and then step aside from it myself. It is stupid, isn’t it, to give so much weight to that when, long straw or no, we are all going to die so soon?”
She was silent for a while, and then for the first time she looked up. “You have no hope, then, of their getting through?”
“None,” I said, and we were silent again. Then I laid aside helmet and scissors, and knelt down beside her and put my arms around her under the rough thickness of her cloak. “Try not to be afraid, Guenhumara.”
“I don’t think I am,” she said, wonderingly. “I don’t want to die, but I don’t think I am afraid — not very afraid.” And then a swift change of mood came on her; her eyes in her famished face were suddenly shining and enormous in the last guttering light of the lantern, and her voice had a low vibrant quality like the musical throb of a swan’s wings in flight. “I am so glad that the thaw has come. I should have hated to die while the world was still dead; it would have seemed so — so hopeless. But tonight the world is stirring into life again, it is breathing in the darkness. There’s something in the wind — can’t you smell it? Almost like the scent of wet moss.”
“I know,” I said. “Yes, I can smell it, too.”
“It is so sad that it is too late for us. One day there will be moss soft and damp under the trees again, and wood anemones, and they will light the Beltane Fires — and somewhere a vixen will mate and have cubs . . .”
“Don’t, Guenhumara. Don’t, Heart-of-my-heart.” I tightened my arms around her and felt how she was shivering from more than the cold. And scarce knowing it until the thing was done, I caught her up and, lurching to my feet, carried her across to the bed place and — for my strength was so far gone from me — collapsed headlong beside her. I dragged the beaver-skin robe over us both, and under its soft darkness, held her close. I could feel the light bones that had so delighted, me, sharp and brittle through the thick stuff of her tunic, and the icy shuddering that wracked her, and dragged her against me as though I would have drawn her inside my own body and warmed her there. I kissed her face, the sunken eyes and poor cracked mouth and the corded column of her throat, trying to comfort her for the spring and the summer and the harvesttime that she would not see; until at last her shuddering ceased, and she lay quiet with her arms around my neck as mine were around her body. And lying so, gradually, I knew that Ygerna had no more power over me, because in a few days, a week or two at most, I should be dead.
I do not know, I have never been able to remember, whether it was she or I who unclasped the strap about her waist; I only know that it was accomplished as something inevitable. There was a great sense of peace in me, peace so strong that it formed a refuge, and the old foul fly-cloud of hate could not break in to smother and drive me back as it had always done before. I was aware of the present moment as something with the light shining through it, a gift, a revelation, a flower growing on the edge of an abyss, with nothing beyond it; but it was the flower that mattered and not the abyss. And I loved Guenhumara then as I had so longed to love her. I came free and untrammeled into her deepest sanctuaries, and she sprang to meet me and make me welcome, and give me what I had never known that she or any other woman had to give. For a little while we were healed of the loneliness, the amputation of being separate people, and fused into one, so that the circle became perfect.
Next morning when the lots were drawn, the longest straws fell to Alun Dryfed, and to Prosper, my trumpeter. Food from the little that still remained to us had been made ready in advance for whoever were Fate’s chosen, and the two thickest cloaks in the fort, and whatever else might be of use to them. The two remaining ponies stood ready loaded, and there was nothing to wait for. We thronged the old red ramparts to cheer them and watch them plowing away down the road to the south, or rather, down the line of the hidden road that still lay deep under the thawing snow. Presently, when the loads were lightened and by God’s grace the snow grew thinner, the men would ride — if they lived so long — but now, at the outset, they led the ponies, and it was four figures that we watched, four shapes of darkness dwindling into the distance, floundering up the steepening slopes into the hazel woods. They looked very small in the white immensity of the hills, and I seemed to see beyond them all the long hopeless road to Corstopitum stretching into eternity. When the shoulder of the valley had taken the last dark laboring speck from our sight, we dragged ourselves off about whatever there was to do with the rest of the day. Gwalchmai had of course taken no part in the draw, but held the helmet for us; if he had not been lame, we still could not have spared him with so many sick in the camp; but I shall not forget his face.
It was not long past noon of that same day when a hoarse incredulous shouting from the southern walls brought half the fort crawling and stumbling (few of us could run) toward the Praetorium Gate. The man on watch there came staggering to meet us, his eyes wild in his head, crying and jibbering out something about four men, four riders on the road. We thought that his wits were gone, but in a few moments more, others had swarmed up onto the crumbling rampart walk and out through the gateway, and then they too were shouting and pointing. I scrambled up the rampart steps, thrusting through the men who were there ahead of me, and stared south, shielding my eyes with one hand against the dazzle of snow in the sun that had that instant burst through the drifting rain clouds.
Far off on the edge of the hazel woods, four horsemen were struggling toward Trimontium, and as they drew nearer, I saw that two of the riders were Prosper and Alun Dryfed. The third was a stranger, or at least no one whom I knew well enough to recognize at that distance. The fourth, I could have sworn, was Druim Dhu or one of his brothers! Nearer they drew, and nearer yet. We lined the walk and thronged the gateway, more and more of us every moment, waiting for them, straining our aching eyes in their direction. But I do not think that we made any sound now. We did not dare to hope. . . .
Level with the far end of the practice field, the horsemen urged their ponies into a floundering canter, throwing up the snow behind them like spray. They were waving to us, then we heard them shouting, but we could not catch the words. They came up the slope, the grossly overladen ponies stumbling and rocking, and were in through the gate. Men surged forward to surround them as the ponies staggered to a floundering halt; and suddenly word was spreading back from those nearest, to the outermost fringes of the throng. “It’s the supply train! The supply train’s coming! God’s mercy. They are almost through to us!”
Garrison of walking corpses that we were, we set up a hoarse aching roar that might surely have been heard in Corstopitum itself. I thrust through to the core of the crowd, just as the four men dropped wearily from their mounts, and demanded dazedly of the stranger, “Man, is it true?”
He was dirty gray with exhaustion, leaning on his foundering pony for support. “Surely, my Lord Artos. They’ll be here by tomorrow night. We were sent ahead to bring you word.” He indicated with a jerk of the head the small dark man beside him, and I saw that it was indeed Druim Dhu.
“But how in God’s name did you know our need?”
“The first man you sent got through to us,” he said.
The supply train arrived at dusk next day, a ragged stumbling file of mules and pack ponies led and driven by panting and straining men, almost as spent as we were, though less gaunt. And among them were some of our own auxiliaries, and also of the Little Dark People.