“Two wounds.” Nimue spoke for the first time since I had snatched her from the flames.
“What?” I turned to her. She was huddled in the bow, the black cloak wrapped about her thin body and with one hand clasped over her empty eye.
“I've suffered two Wounds of Wisdom, Derfel,” she said in a voice of crazed wonderment. “The Wound to the Body and the Wound to the Pride. Now all I face is madness and then I shall be as wise as Merlin.” She tried to smile, but there was a hysterical wildness in her voice that made me wonder whether she was not already under the spell of madness.
“Mordred's dead,” I told her, 'and so are Norwenna and Hywel. The Tor is burning." Our whole world was being destroyed, yet Nimue seemed strangely unmoved by the disaster. Instead she almost seemed elated because she had endured two of the three tests of wisdom.
I poled past a line of willow fish traps, then turned into Lissa's Mere, a great black lake that lay on the southern edge of the marshes. I was aiming towards Ermid's Hall, a wooden settlement where Ermid, a chieftain of a local tribe, kept his household. I knew Ermid would not be at the hall for he had marched north with Owain, but his people would help us, and I also knew that our boat would reach the hall long before the swiftest of Gundleus's horsemen could gallop around the lake's long, reed-thick and marshy banks. They would have to go almost as far as the Fosse Way, the great Roman road that ran east of the Tor, before they could turn around the lake's eastern extremity and gallop towards Ermid's Hall, and by then we would be long gone south. I could see other boats far ahead of me on the mere and guessed that the Tor's fugitives were being carried to safety by Ynys Wydryn's fishermen. I told Nimue my plan to reach Ermid's Hall and then keep going southwards until the night fell or we met friends. “Good,” she said dully, though I was not really sure she had understood anything I had said.
“Good Derfel,” she added. “Now I know why the Gods made me trust you.”
“You trust me,” I said bitterly, and thrust the spear into the muddy lake bottom to push the boat forward,
'because I'm in love with you, and that gives you power over me."
“Good,” she said again, and said nothing more until our reed boat glided into the tree-shaded landing beneath Ermid's stockade where, as I pushed the boat still deeper into the creek's shadows, I saw the other fugitives from the Tor. Morgan was there with Sebile, and Ralla was weeping with her baby safe in her arms next to Gwlyddyn her husband. Lunete, the Irish girl, was there, and she ran crying to the waterside to help Nimue. I told Morgan of Hywel's death, and she said she had seen Guendoloen, Merlin's wife, cut down by a Silurian. Gudovan was safe, but no one knew what had happened to poor Pellinore or to Druidan. None of Norwenna's guards had survived, though a handful of Druidan's wretched soldiers had reached the dubious safety of Ermid's Hall, as had three of Norwenna's weeping attendants and a dozen of Merlin's frightened foundlings.
“We have to go soon,” I told Morgan. “They're chasing Nimue.” Nimue was being bandaged and clothed by Ermid's servants.
“It's not Nimue they're after, you fool,” Morgan snapped at me, 'but Mordred."
“Mordred's dead!” I protested, but Morgan answered by turning and snatching at the baby that lay in Ralla's arms. She tugged the rough brown cloth away from the child's body and I saw the clubbed foot.
“Do you think, fool,” Morgan said to me, 'that I would permit our King to be killed?“ I stared at Ralla and Gwlyddyn, wondering how they could ever have conspired to let their own son die. It was Gwlyddyn who answered my mute look. ”He's a king," he explained simply, pointing to Mordred,
'while our boy was just a carpenter's son."
“And soon,” Morgan said angrily, “Gundleus will discover that the baby he killed has two good feet, and then he'll bring every man he can to search for us. We go south.” There was no safety in Ermid's Hall. The chief and his warriors had gone to war, leaving only a handful of servants and children in the settlement.
We left a little before midday, plunging into the green woods south of Ermid's holdings. One of Ermid's huntsmen led us on narrow paths and secret ways. There were thirty of us, mostly women and children, with only a half dozen men capable of bearing arms and of those only Gwlyddyn had ever killed a man in battle. Druidan's few surviving fools would be no use, and I had never fought in anger, though I walked as a rear guard with Hywel's naked sword thrust into my rope belt and the heavy Silurian war spear clasped in my right hand.
We passed slowly beneath the oaks and hazels. From Ermid's Hall to Caer Cadarn was no more than a four-hour walk, though it would take us much longer for we travelled on secret, circuitous paths and were slowed by the children. Morgan had not said she would try to reach Caer Cadarn, but I knew the royal sanctuary was her probable destination for it was there that we were likely to find Dumnonian soldiers, but Gundleus would surely have made that same deduction and he was just as desperate as we were. Morgan, who had a shrewd grasp of this world's wickedness, surmised that the Silurian King had been planning this war ever since the High Council, just waiting for Uther's death to launch an attack in alliance with Gorfyddyd. We had all been fooled. We had thought Gundleus a friend and so no one had guarded his borders and now Gundleus was aiming at nothing less than the throne of Dumnonia itself. But to gain that throne, Morgan told us, he would need more than a score of horsemen, and so his spearmen would surely even now be hurrying to catch up with their King as they marched down the long Roman road that led from Dumnonia's northern coast. The Silurians were loose in our country, but before Gundleus could be sure of victory he had to kill Mordred. He had to find us or else his whole daring enterprise would fail.
The great wood muffled our steps. Occasionally a pigeon would clatter through the high leaves, and sometimes a woodpecker would rattle a trunk not far off. Once there was a great crashing and trampling in the nearby underbrush and we all stopped, motionless, fearing a Silurian horseman, but it was only a tusked boar that blundered into a clearing, took one look at us and turned away. Mordred was crying and would not take Ralla's breast. Some of the smaller children were also weeping out of fear and tiredness, but they fell silent when Morgan threatened to turn them all into stink-toads. Nimue limped ahead of me. I knew she was in pain, but she would not complain. Sometimes she wept silently and nothing Lunete could say would comfort her. Lunete was a slender, dark girl, the same age as Nimue and not unlike her in looks, but she lacked Nimue's knowledge and fey spirit. Nimue could look at a stream and know it as the dwelling place of water spirits, whereas Lunete would simply see it as a good place for washing clothes. After a while Lunete dropped back to walk beside me. “What happens to us now, Derfel?” she asked.
“I don't know.”
“Will Merlin come?”
“I hope so,” I said, 'or perhaps Arthur will." I spoke in fervent but disbelieving hope, because what we needed was a miracle. Instead we seemed trapped in a midday nightmare for when, after a couple of hours walking, we were forced to leave the woods to cross a deep, winding stream that looped through grassy pastures bright with flowers, we saw more smoke pyres on the distant eastern skyline, though whether the fires had been set by Silurian raiders or by Saxons taking advantage of our weakness, none could tell.
A deer ran out of the woods a quarter mile to the east. “Down!” the huntsman's voice hissed and we all sank into the grass at the edge of the wood. Ralla forced Mordred on to her breast to silence him and he retaliated by biting her so hard that the blood trickled down to her waist, but neither he nor she made a sound as the horseman who had startled the deer appeared at the trees' edge. The horseman was also to the east of us, but much closer than the pyres, so close that I could see the fox mask on his round shield. He carried a long spear and a horn that he sounded after he had stared for a long time in our direction. We all feared that its signal meant that the rider had seen us and that soon a whole pack of Silurian horsemen would come into view, but when the man urged his horse back into the trees we guessed that the horn's dull note meant that he had not seen us at all. Far away another horn sounded, then there was silence.