Valour (18 page)

Corban snatched his sword from the ground, looked about him. Gar tugged his sword from a warrior’s chest. Farrell was standing knee-deep in the surf, swinging his war-hammer at a warrior
who had slipped to one knee. There was an explosion of gore as the hammer smashed into the man’s head. Halion blocked an overhead blow, swept his sword round and chopped into the man’s
ribs, kicked him back into the surf. Edana stood close behind him, holding her sword two-handed. She was staring at the man Halion had just slain. Vonn was trading furious blows nearby, Marrock
running past, hamstringing Vonn’s opponent as he waded into the sea, making for the boat. Corban realized it was moving away, two men pushing desperately on the half-floating hull. An arrow
sprouted in the back of one, sending him face down into the foaming sea, but the other carried on, another arrow skittering off the hull, then the boat was floating, hands reaching down to pull the
man over the side. Before he was over, someone was grabbing him from behind, swinging a sword into the man’s ribs, clutching onto his ankle as the boat gained momentum. Mordwyr.

Spears stabbed down, one piercing Mordwyr between shoulder and neck. He gave a strangled cry and fell into the sea.

Behind Corban there was a scream: Dath. He dropped his bow and ran into the surf, slipped, fell, staggered on. He reached his da and began heaving him back towards the beach.

Along the shoreline the battle was over, but they had failed; the boat they needed so badly was slipping out to sea, the water too deep now for them to chase after it. Then something punched
into the boat’s mast. A flaming arrow. Before Corban registered what was happening, flames caught in the sail, leaping up, consuming the cloth. Another fire-arrow slammed into the mast,
heartbeats later another onto the deck. Men were yelling, running about, throwing buckets of water. Corban looked back and saw a figure standing knee-deep in the surf beside Mordwyr’s
burned-out fisher boat. Camlin – he was tying strips of cloth to arrows, igniting them in the flames that still flickered on the fisher-boat, firing them in a steady stream at the retreating
boat. Marrock joined him and soon a dozen flaming arrows were burning on the enemy ship. Flames were roaring now, smoke swirling thick and black. The shapes of two men appeared near the rail. A
flaming arrow pierced one’s neck, sending him crashing back into the smoke. The other leaped from the rail and began swimming for shore.

Corban splashed into the surf, wading out to Dath. His friend was staggering under the weight of his da, his mouth moving, but Corban couldn’t hear him over the churning sea. He put his
arm under Mordwyr’s arm, the water foaming pink around the fisherman. His mam joined them and together they pulled Mordwyr to the shore.

Dath fell upon his da, calling to him, shaking him, tears blurring his eyes, strings of snot hanging from his nose; one look was clear to Corban. Mordwyr was gone, his eyes empty, the muscles in
his face loose, like melted wax. He put a hand upon his friend’s shoulder.

It is over, and I’m still alive.
Relief washed through him, slowly replacing the rush of fear and desperation that had consumed him during the short battle. He searched for his
mam’s face and saw her standing with her bloodstained spear. Tears streaked her cheeks. Bodies lay limp and twisted about them, blood pooling in the sand, the sea frothing pink.
So much
death. Is it ever going to end?
He felt a wave of nausea, fought to keep the contents of his stomach from rising.

Vonn, Farrell and Anwarth had waded into the sea. They were moving towards the man swimming from the boat, all of them with weapons raised.

‘Wait!’ Marrock yelled, splashing out to them. ‘Don’t kill him.’

Anwarth heard and lowered his blade, Farrell and Vonn obeying more reluctantly. The three of them grabbed the man and dragged him out of the waves, throwing him to the sand close to where Corban
stood with Dath.

‘We saw a host of boats sailing; there is a warband camped beyond these woods. What is happening here?’ Marrock asked, but the warrior just stared defiantly at him. His eyes were
drawn to Storm, stood in the surf beside Corban.

In a burst of speed, Camlin had the man’s hair in his fist. ‘We don’t have time for this,’ the woodsman said, and slashed the prisoner across the back of one leg.

The man screamed, tried to pull away, but Camlin held tight to him, then brought his knife-tip to the warrior’s throat. He was abruptly still, silent except for his laboured breathing.

‘Now answer the question.’

‘Queen Rhin has conquered Narvon. We are sailing to invade Ardan.’

‘How many of you are there?’

‘Over a thousand. Most have sailed.’

‘Why not all of you?’

‘Not enough boats. We’ve got to wait for those that left today to unload in Ardan, then come back for us.’

‘How many still here?’

A shrug. ‘Two, three hundred.’

Marrock nodded grimly. ‘And who leads you?’

‘Morcant.’

Corban stiffened. He knew that name. Rhin’s first-sword, the man who had duelled and lost to Tull, back in Badun on Midwinter’s Eve. The man who had led the ambush where Queen Alona
had died. The man who had killed his friend, Ronan.

‘Is he in the village?’ Edana asked. She also knew who Morcant was. They all did.

‘No, he has sailed already.’

Marrock looked out to sea. ‘And why have you come after us?’

‘Thought you were spies of Owain. He cannot know about us.’ The man shrugged, causing Camlin’s knife to draw a drop of blood.

Marrock sighed and rubbed a hand over his face.

‘I have told you all I know,’ the man begged. ‘Please, let me go. I will say nothing about you, tell them I was knocked unconscious in the battle. Anything you want me to
say.’

Marrock frowned at him. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Haf,’ the warrior said, his eyes pleading.

Marrock opened his mouth to speak, then Camlin cut the prisoner’s throat.

Dark blood spurted, the warrior gurgled and sank slowly to the ground, his blood soaking into the sand.

“He could not live,’ Camlin said, facing Marrock’s glare, wiping his blade clean in the sand. ‘He has seen us, knows our numbers, our strengths. He saw the wolven.’
He nodded at Storm. ‘She’s a surprise that has helped save our necks more than once today.’

Marrock was pale, stiff with anger. ‘Right or wrong, it was not your decision,’ he said. ‘We are no cut-throat rabble. You will wait for a command, is that clear?’

Camlin held Marrock’s gaze, then nodded. ‘Aye, chief,’ he said.

‘What do we do now?’ Anwarth asked, voicing Corban’s own question. ‘We have no boat to escape with.’

‘It’s either steal one or cut inland and walk to Domhain,’ Halion said.

They discussed the options back and forth: Marrock wanting to steal a boat from the village, Halion advocating fleeing inland.

‘Fleeing to Domhain does not seem to have been the safest choice,’ Marrock said.

No one knows what to do
, Corban thought.
All of us exhausted, scared.

‘For what it’s worth,’ Camlin said into the silence, ‘I think there’s more chance of staying alive if we cut across land. I’m not saying we’ll make it
to Domhain, but I think we’ll stay alive longer that way.’

‘But we would move too slowly,’ Marrock said. ‘We do not have enough horses, even if those that you hobbled are still there. We will be chased, and those doing the chasing will
be mounted. We would be run down within a day.’

‘Aye, there is that. But let me have a few hands and I think I could steal us a few extra horses – there were paddocks along the river – my vote is that horses are easier to
steal than boats.’

They discussed it a little longer, until Heb finished the conversation. ‘Talk can accomplish much, but all it will accomplish here is our deaths,’ he said. ‘It will not be long
before the men sent to find us are missed.’

‘Heb is right,’ Edana said.

‘For once,’ muttered Brina.

Cywen was on her hands and knees collecting eggs in the garden. Buddai thought it was an invitation to play and was swatting at her with a paw. Absently she told him to
shoo
.

Days had begun to pass in a kind of haze for Cywen. Two nights had passed since she had been questioned by Nathair. She had filled most of her time since then with routine chores –
cleaning the house, tending the garden, working at the stables. She was worried about Shield, Corban’s stallion. He was such a fine mount, too fine, and there was more than one of
Owain’s men with an eye on him. It would be a grief too far if one of them were to take Shield from Dun Carreg. She must keep him here, safe for Corban’s return. Somehow that was
important to her.

In her mind she had spent almost every waking moment going over the questions Nathair had asked her – about Gar, about Ban. Nathair and Sumur were linked to her family, somehow. And it was
obvious that Sumur knew Gar, though that should have been almost impossible.

And behind all of this was the thought, the possibility, the
hope
, that Corban and Gar and her mam were hiding in the tunnels beneath Dun Carreg. It was a vision that she clung to, that
helped her to rise from sleep every day and put strength in her limbs. All she wanted to do was get a torch and go searching for them, but on the morning after her meeting with Nathair she had
noticed a shadow following her as she’d made her way to the stables.
Conall
. That night someone else had stood in the shadow of a doorway opposite her house. All night. She was being
watched and she could not lead people –
the enemy
– to the hidden tunnels where Edana might be hiding.

But she could not wait forever; her need to know was a physical sensation in the pit of her stomach. And with that, suddenly, she was done waiting, a plan forming in her mind.

She took the eggs indoors, the last of the day melting into dusk. Quickly she gathered all she needed: a bundle of rush torches, flint and tinder, a bag to put it all in, and buckled her belt of
knives across her shoulder. She gave Buddai a thick marrow bone she’d traded for with the butcher earlier. Then, as the shadows were dissolving into night, she stepped into her back garden
and agilely scaled the rose wall at the garden’s far end, slipping almost invisibly through her neighbour’s courtyard and into the street beyond.

Cywen stood staring at the beach. Something was wrong, different.

She had entered the tunnels through the hidden doorway in the fortress high above, made her way slowly through them, and now she was standing in a cave that looked out on the beach and bay. It
was still night, dawn a long way off, although she had spent long hours searching the tunnels for her kin. Only at the end had she found evidence that they had been in the tunnels at all –
the dead wyrm and warrior nearby, lying in the cavern at the end of this cave. But they were not here now. She felt drained, defeated.

They were gone.

Had they escaped into Havan, then made their way to the marshes in the west that everyone was saying were where Ardan’s survivors were fleeing?

A full moon silvered the bay and beach, shimmering on wave-tops and shingle alike. The only shape in the bay was Nathair’s ship, bobbing on the swell of the tide, huge compared to the
fishing vessels on the beach. The fisher-boats were lined along the shore, none out at sea, as all able-bodied men had been taken to the fortress and forced into labouring at defences for Owain as
he prepared for the coming of Queen Rhin.
I hope she rips his heart out,
she thought.
Or the other way round. Either way it is one less that’ll need killing.

Then she realized what was different. A boat was missing, the only boat she’d ever had cause to look for.

Dath’s boat.

She checked again, studying the outline of each boat slumped in the shingle. It was definitely not there. So they had sailed away – her mam, Corban, Gar, Edana and the rest. But where to?
The thought of following reared first in her mind, but follow them where? Perhaps they’d sailed west to the marshes, but perhaps they hadn’t. There was no obvious course, and they would
have been scared, maybe injured among them, the need just to get away driving them.

She sighed, long and deep, then turned and made her way back into the cave, striking sparks into a fresh torch once she had turned a corner on the narrow path, hiding her from anyone looking
from the beach.

She slipped once on the sea-soaked path that snaked into the cave, then pushed through the glamour and found herself inside the great cavern where the dead wyrm and warrior lay. She gave them
hardly a glance as she strode through the room, eager to be back home. Ever up she climbed, the tunnels high and wide, built by giants. Shadows flickered and water dripped, echoing. In time, Cywen
found herself in the other cavern, where the skeleton of another wyrm lay, the one she had found with Ban when they had first discovered these hidden tunnels that bored into the cliffs beneath Dun
Carreg. As she passed through the tunnel, something caught her eye – a reflection on the far wall. She paused, thoughts of her warm fire and curling up next to Buddai calling to her, but her
inquisitiveness won and she walked away from the exit, raising her torch high, looking at the wall.