Then the light guttered out, and he sat in the dark. The room was very still, and the memories grew harder and harder to push away.
“Sleep,” Arafel whispered across the distance, with pity in her voice. “Ah, Ciaran, sleep.”
“I am a Man,” he whispered back, holding to the stone clenched in his fist. “And if I yield to this I shall not be.”
Music came to him, soft singing, which soothed and filled him with an unspeakable weariness, lulling his senses. He slept without willing to, and dreams crept upon him, which were Liosliath’s proud self, burning pride and sometime heartlessness. He longed for the sun, which would make real the familiar, common things about him; and when the sun came at last, he bowed his head into his arms and did sleep a time, true sleep, and not a warfare for his soul.
Someone cried out. He came awake with brazen alarm clanging in his ears, with cries outside that attack was coming. “ Arms!” echoed down the corridors of Caer Wiell and up from the distant court. “ Arm and out!”
Fright brought him to his feet, and then a wild relief, that it was come to this, that it was no more an enemy within him, but one that yielded to weapons such as human hands could wield. He tugged on his clothing, raced into the hall with others, and finding no Scaga—down the stairs as far as the guard room. Scaga was arming, and others were.
“Get me weapons,” Ciaran begged of them; and Scaga ordered it. Boys hastened about measuring him with their hands, seeking what armor might fit him. Outside the alarm had ceased. The battle was preparing. The room had a busy traffic of boys running with arrows and the air stank of warming oil. They began to lace him into haqueton and leather, and one of the other pages came up panting with an aged coat of mail. Ciaran bent and they thrust it over his arms and head; he straightened and it jolted down over his body with a touch like ice and poison. “No,” he heard the whisper which had been urging at him, ignored. “ No,” he raged in his own mind, with the poison seeping into his limbs and weakening them. Tears came to his eyes, and a bitter taste to his mouth, the harsh sour tang of iron. They did the laces, and he stood fast; they belted on the sword, and by now Scaga, armed, was staring at him with bewilderment, for his limbs had weakened and sweat poured on his face, cold in the wind from the door. The pain grew, eating into his bones and through his marrow, devouring his sense.
“ No,” he cried aloud to Arafel; and “no,” he murmured, and crashed to his knees. He bowed over, nigh to fainting, consumed with the pain. “Take it off, take if off me.”
“Tend him,” Scaga ordered, and hesitated this way and that, then rushed off about his own business, for by now the sound of the enemy was a roar like many waters, and out of it came nearer shouts, and the angry whine of bows.
The pages loosed the belt and loosed the laces, pulled the iron weight off him while he knelt, racked with pain. They brought him wine and tended him among the wounded which began to be brought in from the walls. “See to them,” Ciaran cried, clamping his teeth against the poisoned anguish in his belly. Tears of shame stung his eyes, that they delayed with him, while others died. He gained his feet and held to the stones of the wall, sweating and trembling. He made his way out into the open air to use a bow, that much at least. But when a boy gave him a case of arrows, the iron sickness came on him again: the case spilled from his hand and the arrows scattered on the walk. “He cannot,” someone said. “Boy, get him hence, get him up to the hall.”
He went, steadied by a page on the stairs, staggering because of the pain in his bones. The boy and the maids together laid him down by the fire, and pillowed his head.
“He is hurt,” came Branwyn’s voice, all anguish for him, and gentle hands touched him. A halo of bright hair rimmed the face which bent above him, against the fire. Tears blurred his eyes, pain and shame commingled.
“No hurt touched him,” said a boy. “I think, lady, he must be ill.”
They brought him wine and herbs, covered him and kept him warm, while he hovered half-sensible. Outside he heard the clash of iron, heard battle shouts and heard the reports of boys and maids as they would scurry out and back again, how the battle leaned, this way and that. For a time the tower echoed to a crashing against the gates, and there was a dread splintering which brought him off his pallet and to his feet. The words were in his mouth to beg a weapon of them, but the pain in his bones urged otherwise. He hung there against the wardroom door and listened to reports more and more dire shouted up the stairs, for one of the great hinges of the gate had given way beneath the ram, and they braced it as they could, with timbers, and hailed arrows from the wall.
There were ebbs in the battle. Ciaran sat by the fire and pressed his hand against the stone which lay unseen against his breast, but it was silent, giving back only pain. She is wounded too, he thought, with only slight remorse. He was alone in the hall but for Branwyn and the Lady Meredydd, who stared at him with bewildered eyes when they did not go down to tend men more bloodily wounded.
All that day the battle raged about the gate. Men died. At times Ciaran rose and walked down as far as the edge of the wall, but men-at-arms urged him to go back again to safety, and the sight he saw gave him no comfort. The battered gate still held, though tilted on its hinges. Arrows sleeted both up and down the wall, and there was desperate talk of a sortie, to get the enemy from before the gate before it should fall entire.
“Do not,” he wished Scaga in his mind, but he could not pass that arrow storm to reach the place where Scaga stood above the gate. Scaga was wise and ordered defense and not attack; oil rained down and discouraged those below, but then the enemy set fires before the gate and the oil made them burn the more fiercely. Another hinge had yielded by afternoon, and more and more the enemy came. Wounded men, exhausted men, passed Ciaran empty-handed in his vantage place, some looking on him with bruised and accusing eyes. Women came up the scaffolding to carry arrows, stayed to tend wounds, to take bows, some of them, behind wickerwork defense, and sent shafts winging into the thick press of attackers. Ciaran came out at last, took a bow from a wounded archer, tried yet again; one and a second shaft he launched . . . but the sickness came on him, and his third went far amiss, fell without force, while the bow dropped from his hand across the crenel. A boy took up the bow, while Ciaran rested there overcome by shame, until he found the strength to carry himself back to shelter.
They brought the boy back later, dead, for a shaft had struck him in the throat, and another, younger boy had taken his post. Ciaran wept, seeing it, and stood in the corner in the shadow, wishing to be seen by no one.
He heard at twilight the battle din diminished; and at long last it faded entirely. He went back to the hall, to stand near the warmth of the fire and hear the servants talk. The women came, weary and shadow-eyed, and there was talk of a cold supper from which no one had heart. Men were down in the courtyard trying to brace up the gate, and the sound of hammers resounded through the hall.
Scaga came up, pale and sick from an arrow which had pierced his arm and drawn a great deal of blood. From him Ciaran turned his face, and stared into the embers as he leaned against the stones of the fireplace. The ladies sat; servants brought bread and wine and cold meat.