With spring came the time to ride the old weary war trail again. And by the next autumn Hylin was growing thin once more, and had begun to get strange little sweats that came at night and were gone again in the morning; and Guenhumara, tending her, seemed to have gone away from me to a great distance. I got Gwalchmai to look at the child, and he came with me for kindness’ sake, but when he looked, he said only, “Na na, I have become something of a surgeon in these years; but I know nothing of the sicknesses of bairns. Get Ambrosius’s leech to see her.” So I asked Ambrosius for the loan of Ben Simeon his physician, and the little burly Jew came and looked at her, and shook his head, snapped his ringers and clicked his tongue to make her laugh, and went away using strange words that we did not understand and I think were not meant to understand, and saying that he would send something to help the cough, and soon he would come again.
All that winter the only thing that seemed to soothe Hylin when the fever was on her was the sound of Bedwyr’s harp. And God alone knows how many evenings he came up weary from the colt-breaking yards, the sweat of his day’s work still rank on him, to squat beside the Small One’s cot and make little tunes for her — tunes simple enough to teach to a whistling starling, which must have seemed to him as it would have seemed to the man who carved the marble Demeter in the Forum, had he set himself to fashioning dolls from grass stalks and poppy heads turned inside out.
I was glad that I had already given him a farm from my own estates in Arfon, Coed Gwyn, where the snowdrops whitened the woods in spring, for if I had done it afterward, I should have been afraid that it might seem like payment, and unforgivable.
I carried a heavy heart with me down the war trail that spring, and yet there was relief in the familiar feel of my battle harness. I have always been a fighting man, and for me there was the release, the small sweet death of forgetting, in the clash of weapons and the dust cloud of battle that other men find in women or heather beer.
We were encamped a short way east of Combretovium with the Saxons across the valley within their laager of wagons, and I had gone out to a small isolated knoll to get a good view of the enemy and make some guess at their movements, when a messenger came seeking me out, with word from Guenhumara that Hylin was dying.
It was a very still evening, I remember the shadows lying long from our camp toward the Saxons, and in the stillness I could hear the faint small sound of shouting voices and the ring of the armorer’s hammer across the valley between.
I do not know what I said to the man; something about getting a meal, I think. Then I went on studying the enemy camp. Cabal looked up into my face, whimpering, sensing something amiss. Presently Bedwyr brushed out from the furze bushes and came to a silent halt beside me. I looked around at him, carefully, and saw it in his eyes, that he knew. I suppose the messenger had spread it all over the camp by that time. Neither of us spoke, but he laid his hand briefly on my shoulder, and for an instant I set mine over it. We very seldom made any outward showing of the long-familiar bond. “I have told Riada to saddle Signus,” he said at last.
“Then you must be telling him to unsaddle again. I’ll not be needing Signus until the morning.”
I suppose he thought that I was stunned by what had happened, for he said, “Artos, don’t you understand? The message has been a day and a night on its way to you, already —”
“And if I do not leave now, I may not see the bairn alive. Yes, I understand.”
“Then why —”
“If I go now, I leave my men to face tomorrow’s Saxons without their leader.”
“Don’t be a fool, Artos. Have Cei and I never led troops against the Saxons, yet?”
“Never troops that the Bear had deserted on the eve of battle, to ride off about his own affairs. . . . With three squadrons away, the chances hang unevenly balanced between us and this particular pack of the Sea Wolves. Listen, Bedwyr, I know you and love you, every man, and I know that I can depend on your loyalty to the last ditch; I know there is not one man among the Company will blame me, if I ride away now. But there are the others — I know also what a chancy thing is the mood of a war host. I do not think that I can be well spared until tomorrow’s fighting is over.”
“How if you were killed or laid out in the first charge? We should have to spare you then.”
“That would be another thing. I believe that you would all fight like fiends out of Tartarus to avenge me.” I patted his shoulder clumsily. “Go and tell Riada I shall not be wanting Signus until mounting time at first light tomorrow.”
“And Guenhumara?”
“Guenhumara knows that I will come when I can. She will remember that I was Comes Britanniorum before ever I took her from her father’s hearth; and the old bargain between us.” But in that, I suppose I was expecting Guenhumara to think like a man.
Of the next day’s fighting I remember nothing at all. They told me afterward that at one time we were as near to defeat as ever we had been without being actually driven from the field. And I heard men talking among themselves outside the bothy as I was stripping off my harness while Riada brought around my spare horse, and one said to the other, “Trust the Bear to know the perfect moment to fling in his charge,” and spat appreciatively. So I suppose that I played my part none so ill. A wonderful thing is habit.
I left the clearing up of the day’s end to Cei and Bedwyr, the wounded to Gwalchmai as usual; and when I had snatched a bite of bannock and a hurried draught of beer, and went out to the horse which Riada had brought around, I was surprised to find that the shadows had scarcely begun to lengthen. The smoke of a great burning rose from the Saxon camp, and all across the valley the women were moving among the dead and wounded; and already the ravens were gathering overhead.
I mounted, and rode out of the camp that was silent and full of faces, and set my horse’s head toward the low ridge of hills that carried the old Icenian Way. Riada had provided for me the swiftest and most enduring of my remounts, since Signus, having been in battle, was in no state for a long hard ride that day; but I would have give much to have had him between my knees now, for I never knew his like for speed and endurance. I came near to breaking the willing heart of my mount, for I rode as though the Wild Hunt were on my heels. I rode the sun out of the sky and the moon clear of the hills, drumming mile after long mile down the old ridgeway without let or pause or mercy. Toward midnight I came to the hill fort at Durocobrivae, the first outpost of Ambrosius’s stronghold, and there changed my foundered horse for a fresh one, and rode on again.
Dawn was not far off when, my horse rocking in his stride, I came up the last straight stretch to the north gate of Venta, and the guards opened the great valves, the ironshod newels shrieking in their stone sockets, and passed me through. I was clattering up the still-sleeping streets. The guards at the palace gates passed me through in turn, and I dropped from the saddle ha the outer courtyard, staggering as the solid pavement heaved up to meet me like the deck of a galley in a swell. I tossed the reins to someone who came with a stable lantern as though he had been waiting for me, and headed at a drunken stumbling run for the inner court and the Queen’s Court beyond.