"Aye, too frequently."
"Then this is one of those times. But remember what you saw—Ironhair's face where simple reason tells us it could never be. The meaning will come clear to you one of these days, and when it does, you'll know what to do. In the meantime, however, you have to find Rufio."
She paused, leaning out and away from me to squint at my reflection in the light of the fire. "You're still not sure, * are you?" I shook my head slowly and she continued. "Very well, here's what to do. Send out the search parties tomorrow, exactly as you had planned to do, to cover the territories you selected earlier tonight, but go by yourself, with several of the men you trust most and who know you best, and search the area you dreamed about."
"Dedalus," I said. "And Donuil. Luke's too old for the kind of terrain we'll be covering, and Philip. Falvo and Benedict should remain with their troops. But they're Rufio's closest friends."
'Then take them with you. They have officers beneath them they can trust, and the troops will all be split up, anyway. Take Rufio's friends with you. Shelagh won't stay behind, either, when one of the men she thinks of as her own is lost. Take her and the four boys. One of you will find him."
"So be it." I pulled her to me and kissed her long and deeply, overflowing with relief and determination, and soon we returned to bed, as impatient for each other as we were for the night to recede.
It was, in fact, Shelagh who found Rufio, in precisely the circumstances I had dreamed, at the farthest end of the valley beneath our escarpment, in an area that I would never have thought even to penetrate, let alone search. And, as Fortune would have it, Shelagh was accompanied by Lucanus, who had refused to remain behind in Mediobogdum, claiming that Rufio would have great need of his skills if he was still alive. I was far beneath them with Arthur and Bedwyr, almost on the valley floor, when they made their discovery, but their cries reached the ears of Dedalus on the slope between them and us, and young Bedwyr's keen ears picked up Ded's bellowing in the distance above our heads.
I knew the clearing, immediately, as the site of my dream. Shelagh and Luke were on their knees beside Rufio, working quickly and with great concentration. Dedalus stood over them, his face a picture of anguish and anger, and beside him Gwin and young Ghilly gazed in pop-eyed horror at the ministrations being performed nearby.
"How is he?" I called, dismounting hurriedly.
"He's alive, but barely," Ded answered.
I turned towards Arthur and Bedwyr, both of whom were preparing to dismount, and ordered them to stay where they were, then I made my way forward to where I could see Rufio. Black and white, I thought immediately, my memory taking me back to the day when I rode into the carnage of the scene at my cousin Uther's last battle. Then, as now, the White had been the pallor of dead flesh and the black the ugliness of dried and crusted blood. Rufio appeared dead, despite Ded's statement to the contrary.
Luke had already removed Rufio's armour, slicing through the leather straps that held it in place with a sharp knife, then cutting away the clothing beneath to lay bare the awful wounds that marred our friend's shockingly pale flesh. I had suspected an accident of some kind, perhaps even an attack, but nothing had prepared me for the sight of Rufio's wounds. He had been savaged, not merely wounded; his flesh lay open at the left shoulder, scored in great, parallel gashes, two of which extended all along his upper arm, and his face was invisible beneath a mask of dried blood that plastered his hair flat against his head so that it seemed to be a polished black skull.
"What in the name of God—"
"It was a bear. Look at that." Ded nodded towards something on the ground almost by my feet and I looked down to see an enormous black paw, tipped with claws longer than my fingers. It had been severed cleanly at what would have been the wrist on a human limb. Mute with disbelief, I looked from it to Rufio. Dedalus read my mind.
"Rufe must have brought one of the two new swords with him. I know of nothing else that could have taken off a thing like that."
I looked all around, but saw nothing. "Where is it now, then?"
"Stuck in the beast, I'd think. Nothing else would explain why it left him here without eating him."
I sucked in a great breath, to settle both my stomach and my mind. Dedalus was right. Lacking a paw, the beast should have been sufficiently enraged to destroy Rufio utterly. Only a greater wound, and greater pain, could have driven it off before it killed him.
I was aware of Lucanus issuing orders to the others who had arrived, and somewhere in the back of my mind I knew that he was telling them to build a litter in which to carry Rufio back to the fort, or at least out of the woods to where Luke could have space to do what must be done to cleanse and bind those dreadful wounds. My thoughts, however, were bound up in what lay before me.
"We have to find it," I said.
"What, the sword or the bear?"
"Both. The one we need, the other we need dead."
"Aye, granted. But I'm not going up against that thing, wounded as it is, without a score of spears around me."
"It should be dead by this time."
"Aye, and so should Rufe, but he's alive."
"You're right." I turned towards the boys. "Arthur, take young Ghilly with you and Bedwyr and find the nearest search party. Tell them we've found Rufio, but that we need assistance to track and kill a wounded bear—a very large bear. We need men with spears, as many as you can find and not less than a score. Tell whoever you find in charge to send someone back to the fort with word to call off the other searchers in the hills above the fort, and to have the Infirmary prepared with fresh bedding and bandages and boiling water. Lucanus always requires large quantities of boiled water. Go now, quickly, then lead the others hack to join us here. We'll be waiting for you. And be careful! We don't know where that bear might be. If you hear it, or see it, stay well clear of it. Go!"
The boys were gone in a matter of moments, and shortly thereafter Luke and Shelagh left, too, walking one on either side of the litter and each holding one of the ends of a leather strap, Rufio's swordbelt, which they had passed beneath the centre of the bier, ready to take up the strain should any of the four bearers, Donuil, Philip, Falvo and Benedict, slip or lose their balance on the treacherous hillside.
Ded and I watched them leave, then turned our attention to the blood-soaked ground around us, looking for the trail of blood left by the departing bear. It was not hard to find, and from the wide swath of blood-smeared destruction leading off downhill into the woods it soon became obvious that the animal had charged away, blinded with pain and fury and bafflement, into the heart of the forest. We went no farther than ten paces along the trail before we turned back to wait for the others, and for the next hour we stood close together, seldom speaking and staring tensely into the silent forest all around us. I found myself looking for the tree that had concealed Ironhair in my dream, but I failed to find it.
"What about him?"
"Who?"
"Ironhair. You said his name."
I wasn't aware that I had spoken. "I dreamed of him last night, that he was here."
Ded turned slowly to look at me. "Ironhair was here, in your dream, with Rufe? D'you mean that?"
I shrugged. "No, not with Rufe—farther back, among the trees. It was but part of the dream, a nonsensical part."
"Hmm." For a long time I thought he would say no more than that solitary grunt, but then he continued. "I don't know anything much about this power of yours, Merlyn, but it seems to me that no part of it can be nonsense when so much of it is potent. If you dreamed of Ironhair being here, then in some way he must have been here."