Текст книги "The Dreamstone "

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 12 страниц)

The blue eyes were nearer, and had a glamor of their own. He gazed entranced while the harper sang.

“Cling to the stone,” the whisper came again, but he had Branwyn’s fair hand within closer reach of his upon the table. He touched her fingers and they clung to his. The harper sang of love, and heroes. Ciaran held her hand for more tangled reasons, that it was of this world, and that it too had power to hold.

At length the harper ceased. Ciaran drew back his hand, lest others remark it, for she was a great lord’s only daughter, however dire the times.

And in time he went alone to his bed in the room which had been Evald’s in his youth, the vast soft bed of broidered hangings. He stripped off his clothing, shivered in the wind which blew in out of the dark, through the slitted window—stripped off all that he wore but the stone on its silver chain and lay down quickly, drawing the heavy quilts over him, tucking up his limbs until he could warm him a spot in the bed. He reached out again to snuff the wick of the lamp on the table, drew the arm quickly back beneath the covers, as dark settled strange shapes over the unfamiliar objects of the borrowed room. There were creakings and movings, from outside and in; a child cried somewhere in the dark, from the courtyard on the other side, far, far away. His own slit of a window faced the river. He heard a distant whisper of leaves or water: wind, he thought; and somewhere hounds belled, a sound greatly out of place in besieged Caer Wiell. He clutched the stone in his hand, drew warmth from it, and no longer heard the dogs.

He dreamed of groves, vast trees; and of a hill. This was Caer Wiell; but he called its name Caer Glas, and there was no well, but a clear spring bubbling out over white stones, flowing unhindered to Airgiod’s pure waters in the vale, and the view was clear and bright toward the Brown Hills. He rode the plain, tall and bearing the same pale stone on his breast—rode among others, with the blowing of horns and flourishing of banners. Arrows came down like silver sleet, and the sullen host before them fled, seeking the mountains, the dark places at the roots of the hills. The Daoine Sidhe warred, and in the sky glittered the jeweled wings of dragons, serpent-shapes passing like storm in the blowing of horns and the clash of arms.

Then were ages of peace, when the pale sun and green moon shone down without change, and harpers sang songs beneath the pale, straight trees.

There came the age of parting, when the world began to change, when Men came, and Men’s gods, for the vile things were driven deep within the hills, and Men found the way now easy. Came bronze, and came iron, and some there were of the Sidhe who abided the killing of trees, small wights who burrowed in the earth close to Men; but the Daoine Sidhe hunted these, in bitter anger.

Yet the world had changed. The fading began, and the heart left them. One by one they fell to the affliction, departing beyond the gray edge of the world. They took no weapons with them; took not even the stones they had treasured—for it was the nature of the fading, that they lost interest in memory, and in dreams, and hung the stones to stay in rain and moonlight to console those still bound to the world. Most parted sadly, some in indirection, simply bewildered; and some in bitter renunciation, for wounded pride.

He felt anger, a power which might have made the hills to quake—Liosliath, the stone whispered in his mind, and he drew breath as if he had not breathed in a long, long age, and looked up and outward, forcing shapes to declare themselves in the mist which had taken the world, trees and stones and the rush of wind and water.

Ciaran waked, caught at the bed on which he lay, all sweating and trembling, for his heart beat in him far too loud. He stared into the shadowed beams above him, wiped the sweat from his face with hands callused and coarser than the hands he had had in his dream, rested them on a body rough with hair and sweating, with the pulse jarring at his ribs—not at all the body he had worn in the dream, slim and shining fair, with the stone aglow with life and light, with bright armor and a slim silver sword which shadows feared and no Sidhe enemy wished to face.

Liosliath, star-crowned, prince of the Daoine Sidhe, the tall fair folk.

And himself, who was earthen, and coarse, and whose power was only that in his arm and his wits.

He shivered, sweating as he was, and tears ran from the edges of his eyes. He tried again to sleep, and dreamed of Arafel, of sunlight and silver, and the phantom deer leaping in and out of shadow, for it was her waking and his night. The pale elven sun shone, blinding, and she walked the banks of Airgiod, up to the point where it faded into mist and nothingness, as near to him as it was easy for her to come.

Kinsman, she hailed him. It was as if she had suddenly turned her face toward him. He waked with a start in his own darkness, and in trembling, put off the stone, laid it and its chain on the table by the bedside, by the lamp. He wished no more such dreams, which tormented him with what he was and was not and could never be, which thrust an elflord into his heart with all the melancholy doom of the fair folk, all their chill love and colder pride. They were dread enemies when stirred: he knew so; and so, he thought, might shebe, who had been kind to him.

Kinsman she had hailed him; but it was Liosliath who was her cousin, Liosliath whose cold pride wished to live again, Liosliath, the terrible bright lord whose sword had slain Men.

“A terrible enemy,” a shadow whispered.

And far away, even waking, Arafel cried to him: “The stone, Ciaran!”

He was dreaming then. He was naked and a part of him blew in tatters. There was a forest like the Ealdwood where a wild thing fled, and he was that creature. Limbs rustled, black branches, and even the leaves were black as old sins; the sky was leaden, with a moon like a baleful dead eye.

“Terrible,” it said again, and a wind blew through the inky leaves.

Behind him. It hunted him and he must not look at it, for he was in its land, and if he saw the enemy’s true face it would be real.

“The stone!” a voice wailed on the wind.

He reached for it, straining all his heart into that reaching. It met his fingers, and his hand glowed with that moonbright fire. Shadows yielded, as he retreated out of that third and dreadful Eald. He passed other creatures less fortunate, shadows which cried and pleaded for aid he could not give. Elf prince, some wailed, asking mercy; elf prince, some hissed, spitting venom. He dared not shut his eyes, dared not look.

Then he lay again within walk of stone, and Arafel’s voice was chiding him. He shivered in his borrowed bed, with the stone safe in his fingers. He lay shivering, with sullen day breaking through the windowslit. A chill breeze stirred his hair. Thunder rumbled outside.

He took the cold silver chain in his hands and slipped it again about his neck, lay still a time holding to the stone with both hands, shivering at the flood of elvish memories . . . of old quarrels with this shadow-lord. The courage seemed bled out of him, through the wounds the hounds had made in his soul. He knew himself maimed—maimed forever, in a way which others could not see and he could not forget. The stone must be forever about his neck to shield him, and it was more powerful than he. His hands were cold that clutched it, and would not warm easily; they were mortal, and that jewel was elvish memory—of one who had not loved Men.

He stirred at last, hearing others astir in the keep, the calling of voices one to the other, ordinary voices, recalling him to a world no longer fully his. He rose, his teeth chattering, and pulled on his breeches and went to the windowslit, hugging his arms about him. He saw the muddy hill, the forest verge, wet green leaves and gray sky. Of attackers there was no sign but the marks which had been there before. The rain was nothing but dreary mist. He turned back and sought after his shirt and the rest of his clothing. He tucked the stone within his collar, tied the laces which concealed it at his throat. He dared not leave it . . . ever.

FIFTEEN

Of Fire and Iron

The ladies were in the great hall to give him morning’s hospitality, Meredydd and Branwyn and their maids; and two of the pages had stayed to serve them. He walked among them with a hope of a seat near the fire and a bit of bread crowded upon him; but there were places laid at the table, and he heard the lady Meredydd send a page for porridge. Scaga appeared in the door as the boy dodged and scurried mouselike about his errand, and nodded a good morning. “All’s quiet,” Scaga said. There was no great joy in the report, and Ciaran frowned too, wondering how long till it came down on them doubled. Perhaps the enemy had no liking for rain. Perhaps—the thought came worrisome at his empty stomach—there was something else astir. Perhaps something had gone amiss with the King, some trick, some trap prepared. The King, Dryw, his father—should come soon. They should make some move.

Perhaps—the thought would not leave him—they had tried and failed while he slept in Eald, unknowing. Some ambush in the lower end of the dale could have prevented them. The desolation before the walls of Caer Wiell was as wide as that at Dun na h-Eoin—and he could not judge whether the enemy was greater in the dale than they had reckoned in the first place or whether the forces fled from Dun na h-Eoin had joined them.

He sat where the Lady Meredydd bade him, at her right; and Branwyn sat at her left. Scaga sat down too, and others, but many seats at the great table stayed vacant, the hall of a hold long at war, its lord and young men absent. The harper sat with them, late arrival; there was the Lady Bebhinn, elderly and dour; and Muirne, all of twelve, who was a shy, pale-cheeked child, silent among her elders. The hall at Caer Donn came to his mind unbidden, his parents’ faces, the laughter of servants, joyous mornings, full of noise, himself and dour Donnchadh always at some friendly odds over trivial things. But it would be lonely there this morning too.

“You did not rest well,” the demoiselle Branwyn said, who sat facing him. Her face was troubled.

“I slept,” he said, straightening his shoulders; but the stone seemed a weight against his heart. And because his answer did not seem to satisfy those who stared at him: “I ran far—in coming here. I think the weariness has settled on me.”

“You must rest,” said Lady Meredydd. “Scaga, no harrying of him today.”

“Let him rest,” Scaga replied, a deep rumbling. “Only so theydo.”

The porridge came. Ciaran ate, small familiar motions which gave him excuse not to talk. In truth he felt numb, endured a moment’s fear that he might have begun to fade into elsewhere, so distant he was in his thoughts. He imagined their dismay if he should do so.

And in this homelike place he thought a second time of home, and meetings. Of facing his father and mother and Donnchadh, bearing an elvish stone forever against his heart, with close knowledge of that past which Caer Donn tried never to recall. He could never again see the farmer’s wards against the fair folk without feeling his own peace threatened; could not see the ruins on the mountain above Caer Donn without seeing them as they had been before any Man set foot there; could not walk the hillsides without knowing there were other hills within his reach, and knowing what fell things swarmed beneath them, never truly gone. Worst, to face his father and Donnchadh, knowing what they must never know, that he and they were closer to those things than ever they had believed, these things which lurked and crept at the roots of the hills; and to look on his father’s and his brother’s faces and to wonder whether the taint always bred true.

Unsavory, Donnchadh had called the dale—but he must live with an enemy always a breath away, Man’s shadow enemy, who would take the rest of him—without the stone.

Then he looked about him at the faces of the folk of Caer Wiell, whose war was the same as his, but without such protections as the stone; it was the same Enemy. Death had been outside the walls yesterday, hunting souls. Do we not, he wondered, all bear the wound? And am I coward, because my eyes alone are cursed to see him coming?

The stone seemed to burn him. “Be wise,” a whisper reached him. “O be wise. He is myold enemy, before he was yours. He wants one of elven-kind. Me he waits for . . . and now you. Your fate is not theirs. Your danger is far more.”

He touched the stone, wished the whisper away. I am Man, he thought again and again, for the green vision was in his eyes and the voices about him seemed far away.

“Are you well?” asked Lady Meredydd. “Sir Ciaran, are you well?”

“A wound,” he said, bedazed into almost truth, and added: “Healed.”

“The rain,” Scaga said. “I have something will warm the aches.—Boy, fetch me the flask from the post downstairs.”

“ ’Twill pass,” Ciaran murmured, ashamed; but the boy had sped, and the ladies talked of herbs and wished to help him. He swallowed sips of Scaga’s remedy then, and accepted salves of Meredydd and the maids; and before they were done, warmer clothing and a good cloak all done with Meredydd’s own fine stitching. Their kindness touched his heart and plunged him the more deeply into melancholy. He walked the walls alone after that, staring toward the camp of the enemy and wishing that there were something his hands might do. All the mood of the keep was grim, with the drizzling rain and the unaccustomed silence. Women and children came up onto the walls to look out; and some wept to see the fields, while youngest children simply stared with bewildered eyes, and sought warmer places again in the camp below.

Beyond the river he saw the tops of green trees, and shadowy greater trees high upon the ridge beyond the Caerbourne, over which the clouds were darkest. Those clouds cast a pall over his heart, for it was Death’s presence, and the castle was indeed under siege by more than human foes. The thought came to him that he might bring danger on others, that Death who hunted him might take others near him. This enemy of his might bring ruin on Caer Wiell, on the very folk he came to aid. The thought began to obsess him and cause him deeper and deeper despair.

“Come back,” a voice whispered to him, offering peace, and dreams. “You’ve done your duty to Caer Wiell. Come back.”

“Sir,” said a human, clear voice, and he turned and looked on Branwyn, cloaked and hooded against the mist. He was dismayed for the moment, and recovering, made a bow.

“You seemed distressed,” she said. “Is there moving out there?”

He shrugged, looked across the wall and turned his gaze, back to her, a pale face framed in the broidered mantle, eyes as changing as the clouds, mirroring his own fears, unfearing while he was brave, frightened when the least fear came to him. “They seem to have no love of the rain,” he said. “And your father and mine, and the King himself—will come soon and teach them other things they will not be fond of.”

“It has been so long,” she said.

“It cannot be much longer,” he said in desperate hope.

Branwyn looked on him, and on the field before them, and they stood there a time, comforted in each other. Birds alit on the stone . . . wet and draggled; she had brought a crust of bread with her, and broke it and gave it to them, provoking battle, damp wings and stabbing beaks.

“Enchantress,” Arafel breathed into his heart. “They have stopped being honest; and it has always amused her.”

But Ciaran paid the voice no heed, for his eyes were on Branwyn, discovering how graceful her face, how pale on this gray day, how bright her eyes which surprised him with a direct glance and jarred all his senses.

A boy ran, scurried past them and stopped where they stood; he pointed silently and hastened on. With dread Ciaran turned and looked beyond the walls, for in that moment there was change. A group of riders had come out from the enemy camp, advancing toward the keep. There began to be a stirring in Caer Wiell as other sentries saw it. He looked back at Branwyn, and so distraught was her face that he reached out his hand to comfort her. Her chill fingers closed about his. They tood and watched the enemy ride closer.

“They wish to talk,” he said, seeing the fewness of the riders. “It is no attack.”

Scaga came thumping up the steps to the crest of the wall, leaned over the battlement and glared sourly at the advance. “My lady,” he wished Branwyn, looking about at them both, “I would have you back under cover. I do not trust you to luck. I would not have you seen.”

“I shall stay,” Branwyn said. “I have my cloak about me.”

“Stay away from the edge,” Scaga bade her, and stalked along the wall, giving orders to his men.

The enemy came into clear view, a score of riders bearing banners, most of them the red boar of An Beag, and the black stag of Caer Damh. But they had another banner trailing crosswise of a saddlebow, and this they lifted and showed. A cry of rage went up from the walls of Caer Wiell, for it was the green banner of their own lord.

“Surrender,” one rider of An Beag rode forth to shout against their walls. “This keep is yielded; your lord is dead, the King fallen, and his army scattered. Save your lives, and those of your lord’s wife and daughter—no harm will come to them. Scaga! Where is Scaga?”

“Here,” the old warrior roared, leaning out over the stones. “Take that lie hence! We name you the liars you are, in the one and in the other.”

A second rider spurred forward, and lifted a dark object on a spear, a head with hair matted with blood, a ruined face. He slung it at the gate.

“There is your lord! We offer you quarter, Scaga! When we come again, we will not.”

The lady Branwyn stood fast, her hand limp in Ciaran’s; but when he gathered her against him for pity, she failed a little of falling, and hung against him.

“Ride off!” Scaga roared. “Liars!”

A bow bent, among the riders. “Ware!” Ciaran cried, but Scaga had seen it, and hurled himself back from the edge as the shaft sped, a flight which hissed past and spent itself. Arrows sped from the walls in reply, and the party rode away not unscathed, leaving the green banner in the mud, and a bloody head at Caer Wiell’s gates.

“These are lies!” Ciaran said, turning to shout it over all the range his voice could reach, to walls and the courtyard below. “Your lord sent me to forewarn you all of tricks like these—a false banner and some poor wretch’s ruined face—these are lies!”

He was desperate in his appeal, only half believing it himself. The whole of the keep seemed frozen, none moving, none seeming sure.

“When was there truth in An Beag?” Scaga roared at them. “Trust rather the King’s own messenger than any word from them. They know they have no other hope. The King has won his battle. The King is coming here, with our own lord beside him, with Dryw ap Dryw and the lord of Donn. Who says he will not?”

“It was not my father!” Branwyn shouted out clear, stood on her own feet and flung back her hood. “I saw, and I say it was not!”

A handful cheered, and others followed. It became a tumult, a waving of weapons, a hammering of shields by those who had them.

“Come inside,” Ciaran urged Branwyn, and took her arm. “Haste, your mother may have heard.”

“Bury it,” she said, shuddering and weeping, and Ciaran looked at Scaga.

“I will see to it,” Scaga said, and with a word to his men on the wall to keep sharp watch, he went down the steps to the gate. Ciaran wrapped the corner of his cloak about Branwyn and walked with her inside the tower, into torchlight and warmth, and up into the hall, to bear the news themselves.

But he went down again when he had seen Branwyn to her mother and given report, into the court where Scaga stood.

“Was it?” he asked Scaga when he could ask with none overhearing.

“It was not,” Scaga said, his eyes dark and grim. “By the way of an old scar my lord has I know it was not; but no other feature did they leave him. We buried it. Our man or theirs—we do not know. Likest theirs, but we take no chances.”

Ciaran said nothing, but turned away unamazed, for he had fought the ilk of An Beag for years, and still it sickened him. He yearned for arms, for a weapon in hand, for an answer to make to such men. It was not the hour for it. No attack was coming. Their enemy meant they should brood upon what they had seen.

There was silence all the day. Ciaran sat in the hall and drowsed somewhat, with moments of peace between visions of that gory field and more terrible visions of silvered leaves, of all Eald whispering in anger beyond the walls. He would wake with a start and gaze long at something homely and real, at the gray of a stone wall, or the leaping of flames in the hearth, or listen to the folk who went about their ordinary business nearby. Branwyn came to sit by him, and that peace too he cherished.

“Ciaran,” a faint voice whispered from time to time, destroying that tranquility, but he refused to pay it heed.

They placed double guard that night, trusting nothing; but there was firelight and comfort in the hall. Ciaran recovered his appetite which had failed him all the day, and again the harper played them brave songs, to give them courage: but the stone plagued him—in his ears echoed other songs of slower measure, of tenor never human, of allure which made the other songs seem discordant and sour. Tears flowed down his face. The harper misunderstood, and was complimented mightily. Ciaran did not gainsay.

Then must be bed, and loneliness and the dark—worse, the silence, in which there were only inner echoes and no stilling them. He was ashamed to ask for more light, like a child, and yet he wished he had done so when all were abed and he was alone. He did not put out the light, having trimmed the wick to nurse it as long as he might. The stone and he were at war in the silence, memories which were not his nor even human, memories which grew stronger and stronger in the long hours of solitude, so that even waking was no true defense against the flood of images which poured down upon his mind.

Liosliath. He felt more than memories. He took in the nature of him who had worn these dreams so many ages, a pride which reckoned nothing of things he counted fair—which flung against them elvish beauties to turn them pale, and showed him the sadness in his world. He tried taking off the stone with the light there to comfort him, but that was worse still, for there was that aching loss, that knowledge that a part of him was in that darker Eald. Worst of all, he felt a sudden attention upon himself, so that the night outside seemed more threatening and more real, and the light of the lamp seemed weaker. He quickly placed the chain back about his neck and let the stone rest against his chest, which warmed the ache away . . . and brought back the tormenting bright memories.

Then the light guttered out, and he sat in the dark. The room was very still, and the memories grew harder and harder to push away.

“Sleep,” Arafel whispered across the distance, with pity in her voice. “Ah, Ciaran, sleep.”

“I am a Man,” he whispered back, holding to the stone clenched in his fist. “And if I yield to this I shall not be.”

Music came to him, soft singing, which soothed and filled him with an unspeakable weariness, lulling his senses. He slept without willing to, and dreams crept upon him, which were Liosliath’s proud self, burning pride and sometime heartlessness. He longed for the sun, which would make real the familiar, common things about him; and when the sun came at last, he bowed his head into his arms and did sleep a time, true sleep, and not a warfare for his soul.

Someone cried out. He came awake with brazen alarm clanging in his ears, with cries outside that attack was coming. “ Arms!” echoed down the corridors of Caer Wiell and up from the distant court. “ Arm and out!”

Fright brought him to his feet, and then a wild relief, that it was come to this, that it was no more an enemy within him, but one that yielded to weapons such as human hands could wield. He tugged on his clothing, raced into the hall with others, and finding no Scaga—down the stairs as far as the guard room. Scaga was arming, and others were.

“Get me weapons,” Ciaran begged of them; and Scaga ordered it. Boys hastened about measuring him with their hands, seeking what armor might fit him. Outside the alarm had ceased. The battle was preparing. The room had a busy traffic of boys running with arrows and the air stank of warming oil. They began to lace him into haqueton and leather, and one of the other pages came up panting with an aged coat of mail. Ciaran bent and they thrust it over his arms and head; he straightened and it jolted down over his body with a touch like ice and poison. “No,” he heard the whisper which had been urging at him, ignored. “ No,” he raged in his own mind, with the poison seeping into his limbs and weakening them. Tears came to his eyes, and a bitter taste to his mouth, the harsh sour tang of iron. They did the laces, and he stood fast; they belted on the sword, and by now Scaga, armed, was staring at him with bewilderment, for his limbs had weakened and sweat poured on his face, cold in the wind from the door. The pain grew, eating into his bones and through his marrow, devouring his sense.

“ No,” he cried aloud to Arafel; and “no,” he murmured, and crashed to his knees. He bowed over, nigh to fainting, consumed with the pain. “Take it off, take if off me.”

“Tend him,” Scaga ordered, and hesitated this way and that, then rushed off about his own business, for by now the sound of the enemy was a roar like many waters, and out of it came nearer shouts, and the angry whine of bows.

The pages loosed the belt and loosed the laces, pulled the iron weight off him while he knelt, racked with pain. They brought him wine and tended him among the wounded which began to be brought in from the walls. “See to them,” Ciaran cried, clamping his teeth against the poisoned anguish in his belly. Tears of shame stung his eyes, that they delayed with him, while others died. He gained his feet and held to the stones of the wall, sweating and trembling. He made his way out into the open air to use a bow, that much at least. But when a boy gave him a case of arrows, the iron sickness came on him again: the case spilled from his hand and the arrows scattered on the walk. “He cannot,” someone said. “Boy, get him hence, get him up to the hall.”

He went, steadied by a page on the stairs, staggering because of the pain in his bones. The boy and the maids together laid him down by the fire, and pillowed his head.

“He is hurt,” came Branwyn’s voice, all anguish for him, and gentle hands touched him. A halo of bright hair rimmed the face which bent above him, against the fire. Tears blurred his eyes, pain and shame commingled.

“No hurt touched him,” said a boy. “I think, lady, he must be ill.”

They brought him wine and herbs, covered him and kept him warm, while he hovered half-sensible. Outside he heard the clash of iron, heard battle shouts and heard the reports of boys and maids as they would scurry out and back again, how the battle leaned, this way and that. For a time the tower echoed to a crashing against the gates, and there was a dread splintering which brought him off his pallet and to his feet. The words were in his mouth to beg a weapon of them, but the pain in his bones urged otherwise. He hung there against the wardroom door and listened to reports more and more dire shouted up the stairs, for one of the great hinges of the gate had given way beneath the ram, and they braced it as they could, with timbers, and hailed arrows from the wall.

There were ebbs in the battle. Ciaran sat by the fire and pressed his hand against the stone which lay unseen against his breast, but it was silent, giving back only pain. She is wounded too, he thought, with only slight remorse. He was alone in the hall but for Branwyn and the Lady Meredydd, who stared at him with bewildered eyes when they did not go down to tend men more bloodily wounded.

All that day the battle raged about the gate. Men died. At times Ciaran rose and walked down as far as the edge of the wall, but men-at-arms urged him to go back again to safety, and the sight he saw gave him no comfort. The battered gate still held, though tilted on its hinges. Arrows sleeted both up and down the wall, and there was desperate talk of a sortie, to get the enemy from before the gate before it should fall entire.

“Do not,” he wished Scaga in his mind, but he could not pass that arrow storm to reach the place where Scaga stood above the gate. Scaga was wise and ordered defense and not attack; oil rained down and discouraged those below, but then the enemy set fires before the gate and the oil made them burn the more fiercely. Another hinge had yielded by afternoon, and more and more the enemy came. Wounded men, exhausted men, passed Ciaran empty-handed in his vantage place, some looking on him with bruised and accusing eyes. Women came up the scaffolding to carry arrows, stayed to tend wounds, to take bows, some of them, behind wickerwork defense, and sent shafts winging into the thick press of attackers. Ciaran came out at last, took a bow from a wounded archer, tried yet again; one and a second shaft he launched . . . but the sickness came on him, and his third went far amiss, fell without force, while the bow dropped from his hand across the crenel. A boy took up the bow, while Ciaran rested there overcome by shame, until he found the strength to carry himself back to shelter.

They brought the boy back later, dead, for a shaft had struck him in the throat, and another, younger boy had taken his post. Ciaran wept, seeing it, and stood in the corner in the shadow, wishing to be seen by no one.

He heard at twilight the battle din diminished; and at long last it faded entirely. He went back to the hall, to stand near the warmth of the fire and hear the servants talk. The women came, weary and shadow-eyed, and there was talk of a cold supper from which no one had heart. Men were down in the courtyard trying to brace up the gate, and the sound of hammers resounded through the hall.