Fists clenched at her sides, she walked towards her brother and their longtime friend and this arrogant Cyngael, whoever he was, and, as the stranger turned at her approach, she swung up her own booted foot to kick him in the selfsame way Judit had kicked Athelbert.
Without the same result. This man did not have his eyes closed, and was in the state of heightened awareness that cold fury and a journey into unknown country can both instill.
"Cafall! Hold!" he rasped, and in the same moment, as the dog subsided, the Cyngael twisted deftly to one side and caught Canard's foot as she kicked at him. He gripped it, waist high. Then he pushed it higher.
She was falling. He wanted her to fall.
She would have, had the other, older man not arrived, moving quickly to support her. She hadn't heard the cleric coming over. She stayed that way, her boot gripped by one Cyngael, body held from behind by another.
Outraged, Hakon leaped forward. "You pigs!" he snarled. "Let her go!"
The younger one did so, with pleasing alacrity. Then, less pleasingly, he said, "Forgive me. The proper behaviour here would be… what? To let an Erling tutor me in courtesy? I was disinclined to cut her lungs out. What does one do when a woman betrays her lineage in this fashion? Accept the offered blow?"
This was difficult, as Hakon had no good answer, and even less of a notion why Kendra had done what she'd done.
"I am entirely happy," the Cyngael went on, in the absurdly beautiful voice they all seemed to have as a gift, "to kill you if you think there's honour to defend here."
"No!" Kendra said quickly, in the same moment Ceinion of Llywerth released her elbows and turned to his companion.
"Prince Alun," he said, in a voice like metal, "you are here as my companion and guard. I am your charge. Remember that."
"And I will defend you with my life from pagan offal," the younger Cyngael said. The words were ugly, the tone eerily mild, flat. He doesn't care, Kendra thought suddenly. He wants to be dead. She had no least idea how she knew that.
Hakon drew his sword and stepped back, for room. "I am weary of these words," he said with dignity. "Do what you can, in Jad's name."
"No. Forgive me, both of you, but I forbid this."
It was Athelbert, on his feet, clearly in pain, but doing what needed to be done. He stumbled between Hakon and the Cyngael, who had not yet drawn his own blade.
"Ah. Wonderful. You are not dead after all," the one who appeared to be named Alun said, mockingly. "Let's blood-eagle someone in celebration."
At which point, in what might have been the most surprising moment of a profoundly unsettling encounter, Ceinion of Llywerth stepped forward and hammered a short, hard, punishing fist into the chest of his young companion. The high cleric of the Cyngael was not of the soft, insular variety of holy men. The punch knocked the younger man staggering; he almost fell.
"Enough!" said Ceinion. "In your father's name and mine. Do not make me regret my love for you."
Kendra registered that last. And the fact that the dog did not even move despite this attack on his master, and the pain in Ceinion's voice. Her senses seemed unnaturally heightened, on alert, apprehending some threat. She watched the young Cyngael straighten, bring a hand slowly to his chest then take it away. He shook his head, as if to clear it.
He was looking at Ceinion, she saw, ignoring Hakon's blade and Athelbert's intervention. Judit, uncharacteristically, had kept silent, beside Gareth, whose watchful manner was normal, not unusual.
The two Cyngael servants had remained by the stream. It was still morning, Kendra thought, late-summer, a bright day, just south and west of Esferth. No time had passed in the world, really.
"You will note that my sword is still sheathed," Alun said at last, softly, to Ceinion. "It will remain so." He turned to Kendra, surprising her. "Are you injured, my lady?"
She managed to shake her head. "My apologies," she said. "I attacked you. You insulted a friend."
The ghost of a smile. "So I gather. Evidently not wise, in your presence."
"Judit's worse," Kendra said.
"I am not so! Only when—" Judit began.
"Jad's blood and grief!" Gareth snarled. "Hakon! Sheathe your blade!"
Hakon immediately did so, then turned with the others and saw why.
"Father!" cried Judit, in a voice that might actually have made one believe she was purely delighted, feeling nothing but pleasure as she stepped forward and made a showy, elaborate, attention-claiming curtsy in the meadow grass.
"Sorry, sorry, sorry," Gareth muttered to the high cleric. "Language. Profane. I know."
"The least of all transgressions here, I'd say," murmured Ceinion of Llywerth, before going forward as well, smiling, to kneel before and rise to be embraced by the king of the Anglcyn.
And then to offer the same hug, and his sun disk blessing, to scarred, limping, large-souled Osbert, a little behind Aeldred and to one side, where he always was.
"Ceinion. Dear friend. This," said the king, "is unlooked for so soon, and a source of much joy."
"You do me, as before, too much honour, my lord," said the cleric. Kendra, watching closely, saw him glance back over his shoulder. "I would present a companion. This is Prince Alun ab Owyn of Cadyr, who has been good enough to journey with me, bearing greetings from his royal father."
The younger Cyngael stepped forward and performed a flawless court bow. From where she stood, Kendra couldn't see his expression. Hakon, on her right side, was still flushed from the confrontation. His sword—thanks be to Gareth and the god—was sheathed.
Kendra saw her father smiling. He seemed well, alert, very happy. He was often this way after his fever passed. Returning to life, as from the grey gates to the land of the dead where judgement was made. And she knew how highly he thought of the Cyngael cleric.
"Owyn's son!" Aeldred murmured. "We are greatly pleased to welcome you to Esferth. Your father and lady mother are well, I trust and hope, and your older brother? Dai, I believe?"
Her father found it useful to let people realize, very early, how much he knew. He also enjoyed it. Kendra had watched him for a long time now, and could see that part, too.
Alun ab Owyn straightened. "My brother is dead," he said flatly. "My lord, he was killed by an Erling raiding party in Arberth at the end of spring. The same party blood-eagled two innocent people, one of them a girl, as they fled to their ships after being defeated. If you have assigned any of your royal fyrd to engage the Erlings anywhere in your lands this season, I should be honoured to be made one of them."
The music, still there in his voice, clashed hard with the words. Kendra saw her father absorbing all of this. He glanced at Ceinion. "I didn't know," he said.
He hated not knowing things. Saw it as a kind of assault, an insult, when events took place anywhere on their island—in the far north, in Erlond to the east, even west across the Rheden Wall among the black hills of the Cyngael—without his own swift and sure awareness. A strength, a flaw. What he was.
Aeldred looked at the young man before him. "This is a grief," he said. "My sorrow. Will you allow us to pray with you for his soul, which is surely with Jad?"
From where she stood, Kendra saw the Cadyri stiffen, as if to offer a quick retort. He didn't, though. Only bowed his head in what could have been taken for acquiescence, if you didn't know better. That eerie, inexplicable sensation: she did know better, but not how she knew it. Kendra felt an uneasy prickling, a tremor within.
She became aware that Gareth was looking at her, and managed an almost indifferent shrug. He was shrewd, her younger brother, and she had no way of explaining what it was she was… responding to here.