The cleric made a reproving face, then chuckled. “You do know him.”
Of course they did. “We don’t know you,” Dai said, finally recovering the capacity for speech. He’d lowered the knife. “How did you get up here?”
“Same way you did, I imagine.”
“We didn’t hear you.”
“Evidently. I do apologize. I was quiet. I’ve learned how to be. Not quite sure what I’d find, you know.”
The long yellow robes of a cleric were ill suited to silent climbing, and this man was not young. Whoever he was, he was no ordinary religious.
“Brynn!” Alun muttered grimly to his brother. The name—and what it meant—reverberated inside him. His heart was pounding.
“I heard.”
“What evil, Jad-cursed luck!”
“Yes, well,” said Dai. He was concentrating on the stranger for the moment. “I did ask who you were. I’d count it a great courtesy if you favoured us with your name.”
The cleric smiled, pleased. “Good manners,” he said, “were always a mark of your father’s family, whatever their other sins might have been. How is Owyn? And your lady mother? Both well, I dare hope? It has been many years.”
Dai blinked again. You are a prince of Cadyr, he reminded himself. Your royal father’s heir. Born to lead men, to control situations. It became a necessary reminder, suddenly.
“You have entirely the advantage of us,” said his brother, “in all ways I can imagine.” Alun’s mouth quirked. He found too many things amusing, Dai thought. A younger brother’s trait. Less responsibility.
“All ways? Well, one of you does have a knife,” said the cleric, but he was smiling as he said it. He lowered his hands. “I’m Ceinion of Llywerth, servant of Jad.”
Alun dropped to his knees.
Dai’s jaw seemed to be hanging open. He snapped it shut, felt himself going red as a boy caught idling by his tutor. He sheathed the knife hurriedly and sank down beside his brother, head lowered, hands together in submission. He felt overwhelmed. A saturation of the unexpected. The unprepossessing yellow-robed man on this wooded slope was the high cleric of the three fractious provinces of the Cyngael.
He calmly made the sign of Jad’s disk in blessing over both of them.
“Come down with me,” he said, “the way we came. Unless you have an objection, you are now my personal escorts. We’re stopping here at Brynnfell on our way north to Amren’s court at Beda.” He paused. “Or did you really want to try attacking Brynn’s own house? I shouldn’t advise it, you know.”
I shouldn’t advise it. Alun didn’t know whether to laugh or curse again. Brynn ap Hywll was only the subject of twenty-five years’ worth of songs and stories. Erling’s Bane they’d named him, here in the west. He’d spent his youth battling the raiders from overseas with his cousin Amren, now ruling in Arberth, of whom there were stories too. With them in those days had been Dai and Alun’s own father and uncle—and this man, Ceinion of Llywerth. The generation that had beaten back Siggur Volganson—the Volgan—and his longships. And Brynn was the one who’d killed him.
Alun drew a steadying breath. Their father, who liked to hold forth with a flask at his elbow, had told tales of all of these men. Had fought with—and then sometimes against—them. He and Dai and their friends were, Alun thought, as they walked down and out of the wood behind the anointed high cleric of the Cyngael, in waters far over their heads. Brynnfell. This was Brynnfell below them.
They had been about to attack it. With eleven men.
“This is his stronghold?” he heard Dai asking. “I thought—”
“Edrys was? His castle? It is, of course, north-east by Rheden and the Wall. And there are other farms. This is the largest one. He’s here now, as it happens.”
“What? Here? Himself? Brynn?”
Alun worked to breathe normally. Dai sounded stunned. His brother, who was always so composed. This, too, could almost be funny, Alun thought. Almost.
Ceinion of Llywerth was nodding his head, still leading the way downwards. “He’s here to receive me, actually. Good of him, I must say. I sent word that I would be passing through.” He glanced back. “How many men do you have? I saw you two climbing, but not the others.”
The cleric’s tone was precise, suddenly. Dai answered him.
“And how many were taken?”
“Just the one,” Dai said. Alun kept quiet. Younger brother.
“His name is Gryffeth? That’s Ludh’s son?”
Dai nodded.
He’d simply overheard them, Alun told himself. This wasn’t Jad’s gift of sight, or anything frightening.
“Very well,” said the cleric crisply, turning to them as they came out of the trees and onto the path. “I’d account it a waste to have good men killed today. I will do penance for a deception in the name of Jad’s peace. Hear me. You and your fellows joined me by arrangement at a ford of the Llyfarch River three days ago. You are escorting me north as a courtesy, and so that you might visit Amren’s court at Beda and offer prayers with him in his new-built sanctuary during this time of truce. Do you understand all that?”
They nodded, two heads bobbing up and down.
“Tell me, is your cousin Gryffeth ap Ludh a clever man?”
“No,” said Dai, truthfully.
The cleric made a face. “What will he have told them?”
“I have no idea,” Dai said.
“Nothing,” Alun said. “He isn’t quick, but he can keep silent.”
The cleric shook his head. “But why would he keep silent when all he had to say was that he was riding in advance to tell them I had arrived?”
Dai thought a moment, then he grinned. “If the Arberthi took him harshly, he’ll have been quiet just to embarrass them when you do show up, my lord.”
The cleric thought it through, then smiled back. “Owyn’s sons would be clever,” he murmured. He seemed pleased. “One of you will explain this to Ludh’s boy when we are inside. Where are your other men?”
“South of here, hidden off the road,” Dai said. “And yours, my lord?”
“Have none,” said the high cleric of the Cyngael. “Or I didn’t until now. You are my men, remember.”
“You rode alone from Llywerth?”
“Walked. But yes, alone. Some things to think about, and there’s a truce in the land, after all.”
“With outlaws in half the forests.”
“Outlaws who know a cleric has nothing worth the taking. I’ve said the dawn prayers with many of them.” He started walking.
Dai blinked again, and followed.
Alun wasn’t sure how he felt. Curiously elated, in part. For one thing, this was the figure of whom so many stories were told, some of them by his father and uncle, though he knew there had been a falling-out, and a little part of why. For another, the high cleric had just saved them from trying a mad attack on another legend in his own house.
A man of Cadyr might be worth two Arberthi, but that did not—harp-boasting and ale-born songs aside— apply to the warband of Brynn ap Hywll.
These were the men who had been fighting the Erlings before Dai and Alun were born, when the Cyngael lived in terror of slavery and savage