The Mark of the Horse Lord (34 page)

Lastly, he looked at the knot of horsemen who had been waiting a little way off, and now at sight of him were urging their horses in closer. He saw the squat, dark figure of the leader, a bloody clout round the head, and was glad that it was Gault, good, level-headed old Gault, who had had the sense not to bring the War Host out in force and so betray its strength – or rather its pitiful weakness – to the Red Crests.

They were quite close under the Gate now; the hand of the Centurion away to the right flashed up: ‘Near enough!’

And they checked their horses.

They were looking up at him, tossing up their spears to bring them crashing down across shield rims in the Royal Salute, and now they sat their horses, silent, waiting for him to speak. Gault and Dergdian, Niall and hairy Aluin and Finn, young Brys with a white, sullenset face . . . He wondered if they were thinking in their hearts that he had betrayed them now. It was Brys that he minded about most.

He leaned forward, his hands braced on the splittimber coping of the breastwork. They were quite close, he need scarcely raise his voice to reach them across the dry ditch.

‘The Light of the Sun on you, Gault the Strong; you are well come.’

‘And on you, Midir of the Dalriads. I have brought men with me – enough, maybe; you have but to say the word—’

Was that in some way for the benefit of the listening Red Crests? Or simply that the squat, dark warrior with the bitten mouth was so much a fighting-man through and through that his heart turned to battle even when he knew that battle, any attempt at rescue, had no possible place in what was happening at all, or was it a direct question from the only man among that little band who knew the truth about him. ‘You are willing? You who are not the King?’

Either way, the answer was the same. ‘There shall be no fighting, my brothers. No attack on this fort.’ He had spoken in the common British tongue that would be understood both by the knot of horsemen across the ditch and the Red Crests in the fort behind him; but now he changed quickly to the highly inflected speech of Earra-Ghyl, which would be scarcely, if at all, intelligible to the Red Crests. ‘No fighting now – or afterwards. To attack this place with the war bands we have left to us would only be to fling them on disaster. It would mean the death of the Dalriads as surely as though Liadhan stood beside you to urge you on. I keep my faith with you, now; and after, you shall keep yours with me.’ Out of the tail of his eye he saw the men on either side begin to move in closer, distrusting the almost foreign tongue, and changed back to the common British speech. ‘Sinnoch would have said that was a fair bargain.’

‘We will keep faith with you,’ Gault said simply.

And Phaedrus saw in all their upturned faces, even on Gault’s, that they knew and accepted what he was going to do, because he was the King, the Horse Lord, and had the King’s Right.

How loudly the plovers were calling, disturbed by the horses. For a moment their pied wing-flicker seemed all about him as a whole cloud of them swirled across the fort, and among the thinner calling of the rest, he thought he caught the sweeter woodwind whistle of golden plover, who sometimes flock with the lesser of their kind. They swept on and sank again like a falling cloud of storm-spray. And out of the sky where they had passed, a single feather came drifting down, twisting and circling on the quiet air. It drifted past Phaedrus’s face and settled on the parapet, almost touching his hand – a dark feather, spangled with the clearest and most singing gold – clung there an instant, and then lifted off again, and went circling and side-slipping on down towards the ditch.

Phaedrus said, ‘It was told to me that you have had speech already with the Chief of the Red Crests here in this fort, and that he gave you his word that I should speak with you at sunrise, and see, he has kept his word.’

The men below were silent, waiting.

‘The Chief of the Red Crests offers these terms for my release; that he will sell me back to you at his own price, and his price is one thousand of the best of our young warriors, to serve as Auxiliary troops with the Eagles.’

There was a faint stir among the little band of horsemen, and a pony threw up its head in protest against a sudden jab of the bit. But nobody spoke. They were waiting. They were his people.

‘But it is in my mind that I do not like to be bought and sold, I who have been a slave; and so I have thought of a better way— It is this!’

He had been playing idly with the great enamelled brooch at his shoulder as he spoke, working it free. He had it in the hollow of his hand now. His fingers closed over it so that only the tip of the deadly pin that was almost as long as a small dagger, projected between them. He had plenty of time to find the place, the two-inch place just to the left of the breastbone, that meant a quick death. A good exit. The old instinct for good exits and entrances that the arena had trained into him, was still with him now.

The freed folds of his cloak fell away from him as he got a knee across the rampart coping and next instant had sprung erect. There was a shouting and a running of feet behind him and on either side, and a strange deep cry from his own men below, but it all came to his ears like the roaring of a circus crowd. The sun, still rising far north with summer, had sprung clear of the hills and shone full into his eyes as he turned a little to face it, in a golden dazzle that touched as though in greeting the Mark of the Horse Lord on his forehead. He opened his fingers, freeing the whole deadly length of the great pin, and drove it home.

The taste of blood rushed into his mouth. He plunged forward into the sun dazzle and felt himself falling. He never felt the jagged stones in the ditch.

Bonnie Dundee

The Chronicles of Robin Hood

Flame-Coloured Taffeta

Frontier Wolf

Knight’s Fee

Blood Feud

Simon

Song for a Dark Queen

Tristan and Iseult

Warrior Scarlet

The Witch’s Brat

Beowulf: Dragonslayer

Brother Dusty-Feet

The Armourer’s House

Sun Horse, Moon Horse

Sword Song

The Hound of Ulster

The Capricorn Bracelet

The High Deeds of Finn MacCool

The Shining Company

The Light Beyond the Forest

The Road to Camlann

The Sword and the Circle

THE MARK OF THE HORSE LORD
AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 473 50594 0

Published in Great Britain by RHCP Digital,
an imprint of Random House Children’s Publishers UK
A Random House Group Company

This ebook edition published 2014

Copyright © Sussex Dolphin Limited, 1965

First Published in Great Britain

Red Fox Classics 9781782950868 1965

The right of Rosemary Sutcliff to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

RANDOM HOUSE CHILDREN’S PUBLISHERS UK
61–63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA

www.randomhousechildrens.co.uk
www.totallyrandombooks.co.uk
www.randomhouse.co.uk

Addresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited can be found at:
www.randomhouse.co.uk/offices.htm

THE RANDOM HOUSE GROUP Limited Reg. No. 954009

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.