“Dai?”
“Go,” said his brother, at some limit of control, and turned away.
Alun watched him walk across the room, unbar the heavy front doors of Brynn ap Hywll’s house, open one of them, and go out alone into the night.
Someone got up from the gaming table and barred the doors behind him. Alun saw one of their own band look over at him; he gestured, and their friend swept up Dai’s purse and winnings for him. Alun turned away.
And in that moment he heard his older brother scream an urgent, desperate warning from the yard outside. The last word he ever heard him speak.
Then the hoofbeats of horses were out there, drumming the hard earth, and the war cries of the Erlings, and fire, as the night went wild.
Chapter III
She is curious and too bold. Always has been, from first awakening under the mound. A lingering interest in the other world, less fear than the others, though iron’s presence can drain her as easily as any of them.
Tonight there are more mortals than she can remember in the house north of the wood; the aura is inescapable. No moons to cast a shadow: she has come away to see. Passed a green spruaugh on the way, seethed at him to stop his chattering, knows he will go now, to tell the queen where she is. No matter, she tells herself. They are not forbidden to look.
The cattle are restless in their pen. First thing she knows, an awareness of that. The lights almost all doused in the house now; shining only in one chamber window, two, and in the big room beyond the heavy doors. Iron on the doors. Mortals sleep at night, fearfully.
She feels hooves on the earth, west of them.
Her own fear, before sight. Then riders leaping the fence, smashing through it into the farmyard below and fire is thrown and iron is drawn, is everywhere, sharp as death, heavy as death. She hasn’t come for this, almost flees, to tell the queen, the others. Stays, up above, unseen flicker in the dark-leaved trees.
Brighter and lesser auras all around the farmyard. The doors bursting open, men running out, from house, from barn, iron to hand in the dark. A great deal of noise, screaming, though she can screen some of that away: mortals too loud, always. They are fighting now. A feeling of hotness within her, dizziness, blood smell in the yard. She feels her hair changing colour. Has seen this before, but not here. Memories, long ago, trying to cross to where she is.
She feels ill, thinned by the iron below. Clings to a beech, draws sap-strength from that. Keeps watching, cold and shivering now, afraid. No moons, she tells herself again, no shadow or flicker of her to be seen, unless a mortal has knowledge of her world.
She watches a black horse rear, strike a running man with hooves, sees him fall. There is fire, one of the outbuildings ablaze now. A confusion of dark and roiling mortal forms. Smoke. Too much blood, too much iron.
Then something else comes to her. And on the thought— quick and bright as a firefly over water—between her shoulders, where they all had wings once, she feels a spasm, a trembling of excitement, like desire. She shivers again, but differently. She spies out more closely: the living and the dead in the chaos of that farmyard below. And yes. Yes.
She knows who died first. She can tell.
He is face down on the churned, trampled earth. First dead of a moonless night. Could be theirs, if she moves quickly enough. Has to be fast, though, his soul fading already, very nearly gone, even as she watches. And such a long time since a mortal in his prime has come to them. To the queen. Her own place in the Ride forever changed if she can do this.
It means going down into that farmyard. Iron all around. Horses thundering, sensing her, afraid. Their hooves.
No moons. The only time this can be done. Nothing of her to be seen. Tells herself that, one more time.
None of them has wings any more or she could fly. She lets go of the tree, finger by finger, and goes forward and down. She sees someone on the way. He is hurrying up the slope, breathing hard. He never knows that she is there, a faerie passing by.
He had to get to his sword. Dai screamed a warning, and then he did it again. Men sprang from pallets, roaring, seizing weapons. The double doors were thrust open, the first of their people hurtling into the night. Alun heard the cries of the Erlings, Brynn’s warband shouting in reply, saw their own men from Cadyr rushing out. But his own room, and his sword, were back along the corridor the other way. Terribly, the other way.
Alun ran for all he was worth, heart pounding, his brother’s voice in his ears, a fist of fear squeezing his heart.
When he got to the room, Gryffeth—who knew battle sounds as well as any of them—had already claimed his own blade and leather helm. He came forward, handed Alun his, wordlessly. Alun dropped the harp where they were; he unsheathed the sword, dropped the scabbard, too, pushed the helmet down on his head.
The woman with Gryffeth was not wordless, and was terrified.
“Dear Jad! There are no guards where we are. Come! Hurry!”
Alun and Gryffeth looked at each other. Nothing to be said. The heart could crack. They ran the other way, farther down the same dark hallway, the brown-haired girl beside them, her hand somehow in Alun’s, candle fallen away. Then north, skidding at the hall’s turning, up the far wing to the women’s rooms.
Away from the double doors, from the fighting in the farmyard. From Dai.
The girl pointed, breathing in gasps. They burst in. A woman screamed, then saw it was them. Covered her mouth with the back of a hand, backing up against a table. Alun took a fast look, sword out. Three women here, one of them Brynn’s daughter. Two rooms, a connecting door. He went straight across to the eastern window, which was, inexplicably, open. Moved to close the shutters, slide down the wooden bar.
The Erling hammer, descending, splintered wood, shattered the sill, barely missed breaking Alun’s extended arm like so much kindling. A woman screamed. Alun stabbed through the wreckage of the window, blindly into the dark. Heard a grunt of pain. Someone shouted a high warning; he twisted hard, a wracking movement, back and away. Horse hooves loomed, thrust for the splintered window frame, smashed it in—and then a man hurtled through and into the room.
Gryffeth went for him, swearing, had his thrust taken by a round shield, barely dodged the axe blow that followed. The women pressed back, screaming. Alun stepped up beside his cousin—then had to wheel back the other way as a second man came roaring through the window, hammer in hand. They’d figured it out, where the women were. Erlings. Here. Nightmare on a moonless night; a night made for an attack.
But what were they doing so far inland? Why here? It made no sense. This was not where the raids came.
Alun swung at the second man, had his sword blocked, wrenchingly. He was bleeding from the splintered wood, so was the Erling. He stepped back, shielding the women. Heard a clattering noise, boots behind him, and then longed-for words.
“Drop weapons! There are two of you, five of us, more coming.”
Alun threw a glance back, saw one of Brynn’s captains, a man almost as big as the Erlings. Jad be thanked for mercy, he thought. The captain had spoken Anglcyn, but slowly. It was close to the Erling tongue; he’d be understood.
“You may be ransomed,” Brynn’s man went on, “if someone cares enough for you. Touch the women and you die badly, and will wish you were dead before you are.”
A mistake, those words, Alun later thought.
Because, hearing them, the first man moved, cat-quick in a crowded room, and he seized Rhiannon mer Brynn—whose warning had been the one that had drawn Alun back from the window—and wrenched her away from the others. The Erling gripped her in front of him as a shield, her arm behind her back, twisted high, his axe gripped short, held to her throat. Alun caught his breath on a curse.
One