"He swore an oath!" the Erling bubbled, spitting teeth. Blood in the broken mouth.
"Jad curse you," said Brynn. "My people died here. And my guests. Rot your ugly soul!" He moved, barefoot, half-naked. The Cadyri blade in his hand flicked right. The Erling moved to block it. The younger man wore armour, was big, rangy, in his prime.
Had been. The annihilating backhand blow swept down like a falling of rocks from a mountain height, crashing through his late parry, biting so deeply into his neck between helmet and breastplate that Brynn had to plant a foot on the fallen man, after, to lever and jerk it out.
He stood back, looked around slowly, flexing his neck and shoulder muscles, a bear in a circle of fire. No one moved, or said a word. Brynn shook his head, as if to clear it, to release fury, come back to himself. He turned to the door of the brewhouse. A girl stood there, in an unbelted tunic, flushing in the torchlight, her dark hair loose, for bed. For being bedded. Brynn looked at her.
"That was bravely done," he said, quietly. "Let all men know it."
She bit at her lower lip, was trembling. Ceinion was careful not to look to where Enid stood beside her daughter. Brynn turned around, took a step towards him, then another. Stopped squarely in front of the cleric, feet planted wide on his own soil.
"I'd never have forgiven you," he said, after a moment.
Ceinion met that gaze. "You'd have been alive to not forgive me. I spoke truth: you do not have leave to go from us. You are needed still."
Brynn was breathing hard, the coursing rage not yet gone from him, the big chest heaving, not from exertion but from the force of his anger. He looked at the young Cadyri behind Ceinion. Gestured with the blade.
"I thank you for this," he said. "You were quicker than my own men."
Owyn's son said, "No thanks need be. At least my sword is blooded, though by another. I did nothing at all tonight but play a harp."
Brynn looked down at him a moment from his great height. He was bleeding from the right side, Ceinion saw, the tunic ripped open there; he didn't seem aware of it. Brynn glanced away into the shadows of the farmyard, west of them. The cattle were still lowing on the other side in their pen. "Your brother's dead?"
Alun nodded his head, stiffly.
"Shame upon my life," said Brynn ap Hywll. "This was a guest in my house."
Alun made no reply. His own breathing was shallow, by contrast, constricted. Ceinion thought that he needed to be given wine, urgently. Oblivion for a night. Prayer could come after, in the morning with the god's light.
Brynn bent down, wiped both sides of the blade on the black grass, handed it back to Alun. He turned towards the brewhouse. "I need clothing," he said. "All of you, we will deal with…"
He stopped, seeing his wife in front of him.
"We will deal with the dead, and do what we can for the wounded," Enid said crisply. "There will be ale for the living, who were so valiant here." She looked over her shoulder. "Rhiannon, have the kitchen heat water and prepare cloths for wounds. Fetch all my herbs and medications, you know where they are. All of the women are to come to the hall." She turned back to her husband. "And you, my lord, will apologize tonight and tomorrow and the next day to Kara, here. You likely gave her the fright of a young life, more than any Erling would have, when she came to fetch ale for those still dicing and found you sleeping in the brewhouse. If you want a night's sleep outside the doors, my lord, choose another place next time, if we have guests?"
Ceinion loved her even more, then, than he had before.
Not the only one, he saw. Brynn bent down and kissed his wife on the cheek. "We hear and obey you, my lady," he said.
"You are bleeding like a fat, speared boar," she said. "Have yourself attended to."
"Am I permitted the slight dignity of trousers and boots first?" he asked. "Please?" Someone laughed, a release of strain. Someone else moved, very fast.
Siawn, a little tardy, cried out, following. But the red-bearded Erling had torn free of those holding him and, seizing a shield from one of them—not a sword—crashed through the ring around Brynn and his wife.
He turned away from them, looking up and south, raised the shield. Siawn hesitated, confused. Ceinion wheeled towards the slope and the trees. Saw nothing at all, in the black night.
Then he heard an arrow strike the lifted shield.
"There he goes!" said the Erling, speaking Cyngael very clearly. He was pointing. Ceinion, whose eyes were good, saw nothing, but Alun ab Owyn shouted, "I see him. Same ridge we were on today! Heading down the other way."
"Don't touch the arrow!" Ceinion heard. He spun back. The big Erling, not a young man, grey in his hair and beard, set down the shield carefully. "Not even the shaft, mind."
"Poison?" It was Brynn.
"Always."
"You know who it was, then?"
"Ivarr, this one's brother." He jerked his head towards the one on the ground. "Black-souled from birth, and a coward." "This one was brave?" Brynn snarled it.
"He was here with a sword," said the Erling. "The other one uses arrows, and poison."
"And Erlings should be much too brave to do that," Brynn said icily. "Can't rape a woman with a bow and arrow." "Yes, you can," said the Erling quietly, meeting his gaze. Brynn took a step towards him.
"He saved your life!" Ceinion said quickly. "Or Enid's." "Buying his own," Brynn snapped.
The Erling actually laughed. "There's that," he said. "Trying to, at any rate. Ask someone what happened inside."
But before that could be done, they heard another sound. Drumming hooves. An Erling horse thundered through the yard, leaped the fence. Ceinion, seeing the rider, cried out after him, hopelessly.
Alun ab Owyn, pursuing a foe he was unlikely ever to see or find, disappeared almost immediately on the dark path that curved around the ridge.
"Siawn!" said Brynn. "Six men. Follow him!"
"A horse for me," cried Ceinion. "That is the heir of Cadyr, Brynn!"
"I know it is. He wants to kill someone."
"Or be killed," said the red-bearded Erling, watching with interest.
The archer had a considerable start and poison on his arrows. It was pitch black on the path among the trees. Alun had no knowledge of the Erling horse he'd seized and mounted, and the horse wouldn't know the woods at all.
He cleared the fence, landed, kicked the animal ahead. They pounded up the path. He had a sword, no helmet (on the ground, in mud, beside Dai), no torch, felt a degree of unconcern he couldn't ever remember in himself before. A branch over the path struck his left shoulder, rocked him in the saddle. He grunted with pain. He was doing something entirely mad, knew it.
He was also thinking as fast as he could. The archer would come out and down from the slope—almost certainly—at the place they had reached earlier today, with Ceinion. The Erling was fleeing, would have a horse waiting for him. Would anticipate pursuit and head back into the trees, not straight along the path to the main trail west.
Alan lashed the horse around a curve. He was going too fast. It was entirely possible that a stump or boulder would break the animal's leg, send Alun flying, crack his neck. He flattened himself over the mane and felt the wind of another branch pass over his head. There was a body behind him, on the churned-up earth of a farmyard far from home. He thought of his mother and father. Another blackness there, darker than this night. He rode.
The only good thing about the moonless sky was that the archer would have trouble finding his way, too—and seeing Alun clearly, if he came close enough for a bowshot. Alun reached the forking trail where the slope came out on the path south-west. Remembered, only this afternoon, climbing up with Dai and then both of them coming down with the high cleric.