He rose in the morning certain that he could manipulate his brother as surely as he had always done before. The blood that held them together could not be washed away by however monstrous a misdeed. For the sake of that blood, once the die was cast, Owain would do better than he had said, and stand by his brother to the hilt, against whatever odds.
All Cadwaladr had to do was cast the die that would force Owain’s hand. The result was never in doubt. Once deeply embroiled, his brother would not desert him. A less sanguine man might have seen these calculations as providing only a somewhat suspect wager. Cadwaladr saw the end result as certainty.
There were some in the camp who had been his men before Hywel drove him out of Ceredigion. He reckoned their numbers, and felt a phalanx at his back. He would not be without advocates. But he used none of them at this juncture. In the middle of the morning he had his horse saddled, and rode out of Owain’s encampment without taking any formal leave, as though to return to the Danes, and take up his bargaining with them with as little loss of cattle or gold or face as possible. Many saw him go with some half-reluctant sympathy. So, probably, did Owain himself, watching the solitary horseman withdraw across open country, until he vanished into one of the rolling hollows, to reappear on the further slope already shrunken to a tiny, anonymous figure alone in the encroaching waste of blown sand. It was something new in Cadwaladr to accept reproof, shoulder the burden laid on him, and go back without complaint to do the best he could with it. If he maintained this unexpected grace, it would be well worth a brother’s while to salvage him, even now.
The reappearance of Cadwaladr, sighted before noon from the guard-lines covering Otir’s landward approach, excited no surprise. He had been promised freedom to go and to return. The watch, captained by the man Torsten, he who was reputed to be able to split a sapling at fifty paces, sent word inward to Otir that his ally was returning, alone and unmolested, as he had been promised. No one had expected any other development; they waited only to hear what reception he had had, and what terms he was bringing back from the prince of Gwynedd.
Cadfael had been keeping a watchful eye on the approaches since morning, from a higher spot well within the lines, and at the news that Cadwaladr had been sighted across the dunes Heledd came curiously to see for herself, and Brother Mark with her.
“If his crest is high,” Cadfael said judicially, “when he gets near enough for us to take note, then Owain has in some degree given way to him. Or else he believes he can prevail on him to give way with a little more persuasion. If there is one deadly sin this Cadwaladr will never fall by, it is surely despair.”
The lone horseman came on without haste into the sparse veil of trees on a ridge at some distance from the rim of the camp. Cadwaladr was as good a judge of the range of arrow or lance as most other men, for there he halted, and sat his horse in silence for some minutes. The first ripple of mild surprise passed through the ranks of Otir’s warriors at this delay.
“What ails him?” wondered Mark at Cadfael’s shoulder. “He has his freedom to come and go. Owain has made no move to hold him, his Danes want him back. Whatever he brings with him. But it seems to me his crest is high enough. He may as well come in and deliver his news, if he has no cause to be ashamed of it.”
Instead, the distant rider sent a loud hail echoing over the folds of the dunes to those listening at the stockade. “Send for Otir! I have a message to him from Gwynedd.”
“What can this be?” asked Heledd, puzzled. “So he might well have, why else did he go to parley? Why deliver it in a bull’s bellow from a hundred paces distance?”
Otir came surging over the ridge of the camp with a dozen of his chiefs at his heels, Turcaill among them. From the mouth of the stockade he sent back an answering shout: “Here am I, Otir. Bring your message in with you, and welcome.” But if he was not by this time mulling over many misgivings and doubts in his own mind, Cadfael thought, he must be the only man present still sure of his grip on the expedition. And if he was, he chose for the moment to dissemble them, and wait for enlightenment.
“This is the message I bring you from Gwynedd,” Cadwaladr called, his voice deliberate, high and clear, to be heard by every man within the Danish lines. “Be off back to Dublin, with all your host and all your ships! For Owain and Cadwaladr have made their peace, Cadwaladr will have his lands back, and has no more need of you. Take your dismissal, and go!”
And on the instant he wheeled his horse, and spurred back into the hollows of the dunes at a gallop, back towards the Welsh camp. A great howl of rage pursued him, and two or three opportunist arrows, fitted on uneasy suspicion, fell harmlessly into the sand behind him. Further pursuit was impossible, he had the wings of any horse the Danes could provide, and he was off back to his brother in all haste, to make good what he had dared to cry aloud. They watched him vanish and reappear twice in his flight, dipping and rising with the waves of the dunes, until he was a mere speck in the far distance.
“Is this possible?” marvelled Brother Mark, shocked and incredulous. “Can he have turned the trick so lightly and easily? Would Owain countenance it?”
The clamour of anger and disbelief that had convulsed the Danish freebooters sank with ominous suddenness into the contained and far more formidable murmur of understanding and acceptance. Otir gathered his chiefs about him, turned his back on the act of treachery, and went striding solidly up the dunes to his tent, to take counsel what should follow. There was no wasting time on denunciation or threat, and there was nothing in his broad brown countenance to give away what was going on behind the copper forehead. Otir beheld things as they were, not as he would have wished them. He would never be hesitant in confronting realities.
“If there’s one thing certain,” said Cadfael, watching him pass by, massive, self-contained and perilous, “it is that there goes one who keeps his own bargains, bad or good, and will demand as much from those who deal with him. With or without Owain, Cadwaladr had better watch his every step, for Otir will have his price out of him, in goods or in blood.”
No such forebodings troubled Cadwaladr on his ride back to his brother’s camp. When he was challenged at the outer guard he drew rein long enough to reassure the watch blithely: “Let me by, for I am as Welsh as you, and this is where I belong. We have common cause now. I will be answerable to the prince for what I have done.”
To the prince they admitted, and indeed escorted him, unsure of what lay behind this return, and resolute that he should indeed make good his purpose to Owain before he spoke with any other. There were enough of his old associates among the muster, and he had a way of retaining devotion long after it was proven he deserved none. If he had brought the Danes here to threaten Gwynedd, he might now have conspired with them in some new and subtle measure to get his way. And Cadwaladr stalked into the presence in their midst with a slight, disdainful smile for their implied distrust, as always convinced by the arguments of his own sanguine mind, and sure of his dominance.
Owain swung about from the section of the stockade that his engineers were reinforcing, to stare and frown at sight of his brother, so unexpectedly returned. A frown as yet only of surprise and wonder, even concern that something unforeseen might have prevented Cadwaladr’s freedom of movement.
“You back again? What new thing is this?”