And the war was long, long and bitter, and Evald felt little of glory in it: they named him in songs, but more and more he understood the Cearbhallain, for what they sang as brave he remembered most as mud and fear and being cold and hungry. But all the same he fought, and when he had time to think at all, he spent it missing Meredydd and his daughter and his fireside. He had pains in his joints and his scars when it rained. A great deal of the war seemed to be marching and riding, moving bands of men here and there and forestalling the enemy at one point to have them break out in another burning and looting of what they had lately made safe, so that they had had great pains to make a border and to hold it, for the marshes could never be trusted and the hills were full of warfare.
But at Dun na h-Eoin all that had changed, where campfires gathered and the enemy massed so many they looked like a blight upon the land, their backs against the hills.
Then was a battle, fierce and long, fought from the breaking of one day to the evening of the next, and the dark birds gathered thick as the smoke had been before. But the King prevailed.
“Your leave,” Dryw ap Dryw asked of the King that day on the field: “They’ll have no rest of me.”
“Go,” said the King. Dryw was himself pale and spattered with blood, straining at the recall like some hound called back from the hunt. “Keep them on the move.”
So Dryw leapt onto his horse and gathered his men about him, afoot, many of them, accustomed to move like shadows among the hills.
“By your leave,” said Evald, “I would go with Dryw. An Beag and Damh are old enemies of my hold—and they have force left. The most of my men are here with me; if they should come at Caer Wiell now—”
“We will come at their backs,” said the King. “At all possible speed. Let Dryw harry them as he can.”
“But Caer Wiell—” said Evald. His heart was leaden in him looking around at the desolation, the clouds of birds vying with the smokes of fires to darken the sky. It was not well to dispute with Laochailan King; he was a man of middling height, Laochailan, fair with eyes of a pale cold blue that never took fire. He had outlived his counselors. They had held him on the leash most of his life, and he was cold, seldom roused. Even in battle his killing was cold; in policy he was deliberate and immovable. And Evald turned his shoulder and strode away with a turmoil in his thoughts. It was treason in his mind, but the will of the Cearbhallain still held him, so that it was would and would not with Evald. He was on the verge of gathering his folk and riding away despite the King; Beorc Scaga’s son hurried to his side seeing stormclouds in his eyes, seeing wrack and ruin in the offing, on the bloody field.
“Cousin,” the King called after him.
Evald strode to a stop and turned, lifted his head, keeping his anger behind his eyes. “My lord King.”
“I will not be scattering my men, some here, some there. You will not be leaving this place without my will.”
“Caer Wiell was refuge for your cousin and stronghold for men that held against all your enemies. It holds now against An Beag and Caer Damh and makes their homecoming dangerous. My steward is a capable man to hold against the force they left behind, but he has too few men in his command. I have stripped my land, giving you every man, every weapon I could bring. Now the onslaught comes at Caer Wiell, and what profit to you if Caer Wiell should fall? You would lose all the valley of the Caerbourne; and it would be strong against you—as strong as it ever was for you, lord King, and as dearly bought.”
Not even this brought passion to the King’s face. “Do you think to ride against my command, cousin?”
For a moment breath and sense failed Evald. The field, the King, the counselors about him swam in a bloody haze. They were close by the ruins of Dun na h-Eoin: the black birds settled on its broken walls to rest, some too sated to take wing. They began to pitch tents, some bright with the green and gold and most leathern brown, even among the slain, amid the wailing of the wounded. Men removed the bodies, looting them too; or carried the wounded to what care they could give them; or despatched the hopeless or the fallen enemy. That was the manner of the King’s war, and the sound and the stink of it muddled the mind and made right and wrong unclear. Evald’s hand was on his sheathed sword; and blood had gotten into his glove and dried about his fingers, whether his own or others’ he had not yet explored. He thought only of his home, and his eyes saw nothing clearly.
“Will you obey,” the King asked, “or no?”
“The King knows I am loyal.”
“Then come. Come take counsel with me. Now.”
Evald considered, looked at Beorc, Scaga’s younger image, beside him. Beorc would ride; and gladly. And thereafter they would be rebels against the King, and no less to be hunted. If they were rebels, then the King might fall, for Dryw would go with them, and so the southern mountains and dale would do the thing that would ally them with An Beag and Caer Damh, in deed though never in heart. And perhaps the King saw that looming before him, since he had called him cousin twice in the same address and spoke to him courteously. Laochailan was cold, but he was clever too, outside the cold determination which had peopled this field with dead. And he knew what was necessary.
“Come,” Evald said to Beorc quietly, and so they went, across the littered field with its canebrake of spears standing in corpses, of tattered banners of the Bogach and the Bradheath of, death and agony.
They had pitched a tent for the King among the ruined stones of Dun na h-Eoin, in the courtyard, by the struggling oak which had somehow survived the fires. They had driven the pegs between the shattered paving stones and into what had been a garden. Doves had sung there. Now carrion crows flapped their dark and sluggish wings, startled by their coming. And to this state the King retreated, drawing with him others of the lords.
As they gathered, Evald glowered about him and tried to think what there was to do—for he would far rather now have been the least of men in Dryw’s company than the lord he was. There was Beorc by him and no other, for he had no kinsman but the King himself, a king who would as lief not remember that dark history or how he had come to be. Ciaran of Donn was there with his sons Donnchadh and Ciaran Cuilean, a fey and strange lot. Fearghal of Ban came with his cousins, small dark men and blood-handed, like Dalach of Caer Luel and his brothers. They were northerners all of them and some from the plains, and none of them had any close ties to the dale or the south.
So perforce Evald came into the tent with them, and bided his time while the King’s servants helped Laochailan with his armor and one brought them wine to drink. It was the color of blood. Evald took the cup and it had the taste of it as well, a coppery ugliness in the smoky air, the reek of sweat that was on them.
“Dryw has sped after them,” the King said to those who had not been there earliest. “He will keep them moving and never give them rest.”
“I say again,” Evald began, but Laochailan King turned that pale cold glance on him.
“You have said much,” said Laochailan. “You try our patience.”
“I serve my King from a hold that has been his from my father’s time.”
“From the Cearbhallain’s,” the King said softly, as if it had to be explained, and the color leapt to Evald’s face.