"They are children," said Beorc, "and see their own hurts too well."
"Do they?" She thought back on breakfast tables, on childish tears, on baby faces, and first steps, and skinned knees; and the forest when they were lost; and the gateway, when they were found. But she gazed on Ciaran's sleeping face and that had more power than all these things. "No."
A singing had grown again, some old tree wailing in the wind, some thing of nature, for the wind was strong outside tonight and thunder muttered. For a while that was the only sound. The wind came into the chamber, and Branwyn tugged the covers higher.
"No," she said, when Beorc got up and went to the shutters. "He refuses to have them closed."
He stopped, his mouth set, his eyes troubled. "Curse that thing."
"It's some old tree down by the river; a limb must have broken." She smoothed Ciaran's hair, used her kerchief to wipe his brow. "Hush, hush, go on sleeping."
"Tree," Beorc said. "Lady, do you not hear it?"
She looked at him with a sudden stricture of the heart. "I hear the wind," she said. "Give me none of your imaginings."
"It must be." His shoulders fell. His eyes settled beyond her, on Ciaran, with vast sorrow. She knew the tale. She had heard it, outside the door, the border in disarray, steadings burned. The last refugees were coming. They did not say such things within this room, in Ciaran's hearing. Here the talk was all of peace, of calm, of home and will you take a little soup, love? but he would not. And the borders were afire, the clouds above them narrowing day by day. There were creakings and groanings they could not disguise. What is that? he would say. Oh, supplies brought in, she would answer: he seemed easy to deceive, forgetting that she had said that before; and meanwhile the yard filled, and tents were set, and Caer Wiell pre pared for siege.
"Not the wind," Ciaran whispered, and his eyes had opened some what. "Love, don't you hear it?"
"Out on it," Branwyn said lightly. "Listening after all." She smiled then for him, and dabbed his brow. "Look you, should we not close the shutters?"
"Is that Beorc? Gods, who's in command up there? Ruadhan?"
"Lord." Beorc came anxiously and held his hand. "It's well enough."
"Well." Ciaran's eyes drifted shut again. "Old wolf, to lie to me. I know. I can see, better than either of you. And hear." The voice came faintly, at great effort. "I can't stay longer. I have a ride to make. Aodhan is waiting. Branwyn, Branwyn—"
"O gods, Ciaran." She put her arms about his neck, held him so, her head against his. "I will not let you, No."
The sights afflicted her if she let them, a place of mist, where dark shapes twined amid ghostly trees, where a white figure washed bloody rags in Caerbourne's waters, wailing as she worked. She ban ished the visions, keeping her eyes open, fixing them on the familiar solid stones; and Beorc, Beorc was there. She heard the wailing clearer now, a hungry thing and nearer.
So Rhys came riding in, all unexpected. There were cheers from the walls where anxious folk had gathered to see what this dustcloud meant in the waning of the sun—waning, not setting, for the sun died daily into murk, choked by the cloudy ramparts in the west. In this greenish twilight the folk of the south came riding with their black and silver banners, three companies bristling with spears.
"Dryw's folk!" the cry went out—"Rhys is coming!" from place to place along the walls, from those who had vantages to those who did not.
"Open the gates," Domhnull cried, for once the great gates were shut, someone in authority had to open them; and he sent a page running to bear word to the hah1, to Beorc and to the lady, who might whisper it in their lord's hearing and so give him cheer.
And: "Rhys," he said, embracing the smallish man who dis mounted and met him on the stairs, the while the folk still cheered. "Rhys." Domhnull limped. His face was scarred. There was haunt ing in Rhys' dark eyes and a gauntness about the cheekbones, new lines about the mouth. They held each other at arm's length and tried to read each other, but Domhnull simply hugged the southron a second time with all he had to tell dammed up in his throat, and looked at him again. Others had come up to the foot of the steps, smallish men, two of them, much like Rhys in their dark cloth and darkened metal. "My brothers," Rhys said, "Owein and Madawc ap Dryw."
"Our lord cannot be here to greet you," Domhnull said, "or he would. But welcome to his hall, in his name and in his lady's your cousin. Gods reward you for this, all. Ale and supper for your men— we are not scanted of that." He spied a captain on the wall; he shouted orders. "Come," he said then to Rhys and his brothers. "Come upstairs. I would ask you which you would, rest or news, but this much first: lord Ciaran is hurt—" The truth stuck in his throat. "My lady is there. Come see her."
"Sore hurt?"
He nodded, lips clamped on words he would not say. "Will you come there first? My lady will not leave him."
"Aye," Rhys said. His tired face took on a resolution for still worse than he had seen.
Branwyn wept, quietly, at their coming to the room; and hugged them one and all, Rhys and Owein and Madawc, though talk went in whispers: "He will mend," she said as she had insisted a hundred times. "He sleeps a great deal, and that is to the good. I will tell him you've come. He'll want to see you."
But Ciaran lay very still, his breathing hardly stirring the coverlet, so pale that his flesh and the moonstone on his breast seemed little different. "Yes," Rhys whispered back. "Tell him we have come."
And afterward in hall Rhys hugged his youngest cousins and sat down to ale and meat, he and his brothers, trail-worn and haggard, while the dark fell outside and the wailing began again from the riverside.
"You had no easy ride coming here," Domhnull said. They were all at hand, Beorc, Muirne, Meadhbh and Ceallach by the fire they laid of evenings; Leannan with his harp encased and songless; Siodhachan whose wrinkled face was a map of years and present sor rows.
"No," said Rhys, "it was not. But An Beag has men to bury, by the ford.
"Well done," Beorc said. His eyes burned. His huge hands knotted up in fists.
"There were other things," said Rhys. He did not look up, but the thought was there, the ring of cloud, the darkness through which they had ridden. "There were men we could not bury. Gods help them." His mouth was drawn at the comers. He took a drink of wine and Domhnull looking on him caught a glance of his eyes when the cup had lowered. A chill came on Domhnull then, a keen ache in all his wounds, kinship with all those who had fared outside of daylight, in fell places and old.
"What happened here?" Rhys asked.
"Misjudgment," Domhnull said. His muscles all were hard, and ached on mended bones. "How did you get through?"
There was darkness enough in Owein's and Madawc's eyes, of proud men not used to fear; but Rhys' was more. "With small things in the bushes and arrows in the dark; and two horses gnawed to bone and men we never found. Nor could delay for." Rhys shivered, and leaned on his knees, the cup clenched between his knees; a fury was on his face. "Mist. A lot of that. An unnatural lot of that. We hoped for better here. Some of my folk went home: Gwernach and his folk —I sent them for my father's defence. We saw the sunlight; we had hoped beyond Caerbourne Ford. Easier An Beag arrows than the forest road by night; but something went with us—whether a fair thing or foul I know not, but at the last it led us fair. There have been such things. I saw a pooka once."
"And followed it?" Domhnull asked.
"O, friend, it followed me. That was on my way. This was smaller, a noise in the leaves—it loved the trees too well to leave them, and hung about the streams. And we none of us liked it, but there was no parting from it. And we saw it scampering through the brush, small and quick it was, and always ahead of us till the ford, till the cursed singer—" He fell silent. There was the wind outside, and always, the singing. "We have heard that wailing at night. Two nights upon the road."