"Waylay him, you mean, and murder him!" said Mordred savagely. "That is, if Lamorak does not kill him first. And his brother, too. It's very possible. He is a veteran, one of the King's Companions, and a good fighter. He is also a man dear to the King."
She stared, her face whitening. Her hands crept, shaking, to clasp one another below her breast, as if to protect the child who lay there.
"If you value your lord's life," said Mordred grimly, "you'll tell me everything. This castle. Is it Caer Mord?"
She nodded dumbly.
"Where is it, and how far?" He put out a hand. "No, wait. Get me some food, quickly, while I saddle my horse. Anything. You can tell me the rest later, while I eat. If you want to save your lord's life, help me to get on my way. Hurry now."
She caught up the basket of eggs, and ran. He dashed water over face and hands at the trough, then threw saddle and bridle on his horse, and, leaving it tethered, ran back into the tower. The girl had set bread and meat on the table by the cold ashes of the fire. She was crying as she poured wine for him.
He drank quickly, and chewed bread, washing it down with more of the wine.
"Now, quickly. What happened? What more did you hear?"
The threat to Gaheris had loosened her tongue. She told him readily: "After you'd gone up last night, sir, they were talking. I was in bed. I went to sleep, then when my lord did not come to bed, I woke, and I heard…"
"Well?"
"He was speaking of this Lamorak, who was coming to Caer Mord. My lord was full of joy because he has sworn to kill him, and now his brother had come, just at the right moment to go with him. He said—my lord said—that it was the work of the Goddess who had brought his brother to help him avenge his mother's death. He had sworn on his mother's blood…" She faltered and stopped.
"Yes? Did he tell you who shed his mother's blood?"
"Why, the evil knight! Was it not so, lord?"
"Go on."
"So he was overjoyed, and they planned to ride straight away, together, without telling you. They did not come to bed at all. They thought I was asleep, and they went out very quietly. I — I did not dare let them know I had heard what was said, but I was afraid, so I lied to you. My lord talked as if—" she gulped, "—as if he were mad."
"So he is," said Mordred. "All right. This is what I feared. Now tell me which way they have taken." Then, as she hesitated again: "This is an innocent man, Brigit. If your lord Gaheris kills him, he will have to answer to the High King Arthur. Now, don't weep, girl. The ship may not be in yet, nor Lamorak on the road. If you tell me the way, I may well catch them before the harm is done. My horse is rested, where Agravain's is not." He thought, with a thread of pity running through the desperate need for haste, that whatever happened the girl had probably seen the last of her lover, but there was nothing he could do about that. She was just another innocent to add to the toll that Morgause had taken through her life and death.
He poured some of the wine for her, and pushed the cup into her hand. "Come, drink. It will make you feel better. Quickly now. The way to Caer Mord."
Even this small act of kindness seemed to overset her. She drank, and gulped back her tears. "I am not sure, lord. But if you ride to the village — that way — and down to the river, you will find a forge there, and the smith will tell you. He knows all the ways." And then, sobbing afresh: "He will not come back, will he? He will be killed, or else he will leave me, and go south to the great court, and I have nothing, and how will I care for the child?"
Mordred laid three gold pieces on the table. "These will keep you. And as for the child—" He stopped. He did not add: "You will do well to drown it at birth." That went too close for comfort. He merely said goodbye, and went out into the grey dawning.
By the time he reached the village the sky was whitening, and here and there folk were stirring to their work. The tavern doors were shut, but a hundred paces on, where the roadway forded a shallow stream, the forge fires were lit, and the smith stretched himself, yawning, with a cup of ale in his hand.
"The road to Caer Mord? Why, this road, master. A matter of a day's ride. Go as far as the god-stone, then take the eastward track for the sea."
"Did you hear horsemen going this way in the night?"
"Nay, master. When I sleep, I sleep sound," said the smith.
"And the god-stone? How far?"
The smith ran his expert's eye over Mordred's horse. "Yon's a good beast you've got there, master, but you've come a long ways, maybe? I thought so. Well, then, not pressing him, say by sunset? And from there, a short half hour to the sea. It is a good road. You'll be safe at Caer Mord, and no mishaps, well before dark."
"That I doubt," said Mordred, setting spurs to his horse, and leaving the smith staring.
9
TO MORDRED THE ORKNEY MAN the god-stone, standing alone on the rolling moor, was a familiar sight. And yet not quite familiar. It was a tall standing stone, set in the lonely center of the moor. He had passed its mate many a time, single, or standing with others in a wide ring, on the Orkney moors; but there the stones were thinly slabbed and very high, toothed or jagged as they had been broken from the living cliff. This stone was massive, of some thick grey whinstone carefully shaped into a thick, tapering pillar. There was a flat altar-like slab at its base, with a dark mark on it that might be dried blood.
He reached it at dusk, as the sun, low and red, threw its long shadow across the black heather. He trotted the tired horse up to it. At its base the track forked, and he turned the beast's head to the south-east. From the pale wild look of the sky ahead, and something more than familiar in the air that met him, he knew that the sea could not be far away. Ahead, on the edge of the heather moor, was a thick belt of woodland.
Soon he was among the trees, and the horse's hoofs fell silently on the thick felt of pinedrift and dead leaves. Mordred allowed it to drop to a walk. He himself was weary, and the horse, which had gone bravely through the day, was close to exhaustion. But they had travelled fast, and there was a chance that he might still be in time.
Behind him the clouds, piling up, stifled the colours of sunset. With the approach of evening, a wind got up. The trees rustled and sighed. Sooner than he expected, the forest began to thin, and lighter sky showed beyond the trunks. There was a gap there; the gap, perhaps, where the road ran?
He was answered almost immediately. There must have been other sounds, of hoofs and clashing metal, but the wind had carried them away from him, and the sighing of the trees had drowned them. But now, from almost straight ahead, there came a cry. Not of warning, or of fear, or anger, but a cry of joy, followed by a shout of triumph, and then a yell of laughter, so wild as to sound half mad. The horse's ears pricked, then went flat back to its skull, and its eyes rolled whitely. Mordred struck the spurs in, and the tired beast lurched into a heavy canter.
In the forest's darkness he missed the narrow track. The horse was soon blundering through a thicket of undergrowth, bramble and hazel twined with honeysuckle, and fly-ridden ferns belly high. The canter slowed, became a trot, a walk, a thrusting progress, then stopped as Mordred sharply drew rein.
From here, hidden from sight in the deep shadow of the trees, he could see the level heath that stretched between the woodland and the sea, and, dividing it, the white line of the roadway. On this lay Lamorak, dead. Not far off his horse stood with heaving sides and drooping head. Beside the body, their arms flung round one another, laughing and pounding each other's shoulders, were Agravain and Gaheris. Their horses grazed nearby unheeded.