Caoimhin would not, not without arguing about it; but Niall slid down and put him up, and on his own shoulders he took the healthy pack Aelfraeda had put up for them. He kissed her cheek and pressed Beorc’s hand. He looked round on all the faces, and they seemed already far from him, slipping away from him, a love he did not know how to hold onto any longer.

“Scaga,” he said, missing one. “Where is Scaga?”

Everyone looked around, but the boy was not to be found. “He was with me,” said Siolta, “only a moment ago.”

“He is hurt,” said Lonn.

So Niall shook his head heavily, well understanding that. “Come,” he said to Caoimhin, and hitched the cords of the pack on his shoulder. “Good-bye,” he said. “Good-bye.”

“Farewell,” said Beorc, “and wisely. A blessing beyond that I cannot give you, though I would.”

Niall turned his shoulder then and walked beside Caoimhin on Banain. The wind battered at them, and never a drop of rain fell from the black clouds above. The grass and the tender crops flattened in waves, and now and again the lightning flashed in the clouds. He looked back more than once and waved each time, but now they all seemed hazy, shadowed under the storm that had come over the Steading. His heart felt heavier and heavier and his steps were leaden.

“Have care,” a small voice wailed from the hilltop at his right “Have care.” It was the Gruagach, sitting on a stone in a sea of blowing grass. “O Man, it is no common rain this brings.”

“That fell creature,” Caoimhin muttered.

“Speak it fair,” said Niall. “O Caoimhin, speak it only fair.”

But it was gone, the rock deserted. Banain tossed her head and snorted in the wind.

“Here, lord, she can carry two,” Caoimhin said. “Ride with me.”

“No,” said Niall. A last time he looked back, but a hill was passing between him and those behind: he waved a last time, but they perhaps did not see. He felt a loneliness and desolation, blinked as some wind-borne dust hit his eyes and rubbed at them as he walked along, blind for the moment. When he had gotten them clear he looked back again, squinting in the gusts.

The fences at least should have been in sight. There was only the blowing grass. “Caoimhin,” he said, “the fences are gone.”

Caoimhin looked, but never said a word. Again Niall rubbed his eyes, feeling a great cold settle into his bones, as if the wind had finally gotten through. Caoimhin had found his way back again, the thought came to him; Caoimhin had come as the harper had come, never reckoning how hard it was—for need, for need of him.A haste had come on him, all the same, a blind numb haste to go back to the world again: Ogan, Caoimhin had named the names—Ogan and Dryw and the others, names that he had known, bloody names of bloody years, of hisyears with the King—

And Caer Wiell, to go home again, to whatever home was left—

“Niall!” he heard cry from the hill above him, a human, cracking voice, wind-thinned. “Caoimhin! Niall!”

“Scaga,” Niall said, and bis heart turned over in him. “Scaga, no.”

But the boy came running—boy: he was near a man. He came down the hill and joined them, panting as if his ribs would crack, for he had come the longer, harder way.

“Go back,” Niall said, shaking him by the arms.

“I will follow,” Scaga said reasonably, “lord.”

Niall flung his arms about him; there was nothing left to do. Caoimhin had gotten down off Banain and hugged him too.

So they went, down among the hills, Caoimhin riding mostly and they two jogging along beside, then taking turn about.

“By the river we will find them,” Caoimhin said. “There.”

SEVEN

Meara

Women grieved in Caer Wiell, a slow sort of grief, lacking substance or hope. The hunters came home by evening without their quarry and without their lord—men scratched and torn and haunted by long wandering in the wood. They drank together now in the hall, a silent, brooding crowd, whose eyes kept much to the table and to their ale. One man wept, his head bowed into his arms. He was the only one.

In her upstairs chamber Meara sat with her arm about her small son and the boy leaning his dark head against her skirts—not asleep, but drowsing sometimes in his weariness and his fright Meara sat still and silent, so that the maid, the only servant left her, dared not move or question anything.

“They brought neither home,” Meara said at last when the boy had drifted off. She looked toward the tall slit window, toward the night and still-brooding storm. “And they do not come upstairs. So they are not yet sure that he is dead.” She stroked her son’s drowsing head, looked toward young Cadhla the maid, who had pretended to be at sewing and left it now in her lap. There was stark, constant fear in Cadhla’s eyes. There was no law in Caer Wiell this night but fear. The thunder that had rumbled all the day, unnatural, cracked and shook the ancient stones. Then the rain began, at long last, a natural, driving rain. Cadhla looked toward the ceiling, a great and shaken sigh as if some long-held breath had passed her lips as if all nature had been holding its breath. The boy lifted his head. “Hush,” said Meara, “it’s only rain.”

“Does he come?” the boy asked.

“Hush, no, be still. Shall I hold you?”

He reached. Meara took him up. He was a lad of five and mostly too proud to be held, but she took him into her lap and rocked him now.

“Lady,” said Cadhla, “let me.”

“No,” said Meara, just that: “No.” So Cadhla stayed, and, looking down, pricked at ill-made stitches, flinching from the thunderclaps. The rain sluiced down the walls, a constant spatter and whisper, and the trees sighed down by the Caerbourne’s flood. Ever and again a gust whipped at the curtains and sent the lamps and candles flickering, but the child slept on. From the hall came a clattering of metal, but quiet fell again below, leaving only the rain.

“They do not come,” the lady Meara said again in the softest of voices, only for Cadhla’s ears. “But tomorrow if he has not come home again, then they will come upstairs.”

“Lady,” whispered Cadhla, “what shall we do?”

“Why, I go to the strongest,” the lady Meara said, “as I did before.” She looked down at her sleeping son. Her hand smoothed his dark cap of ham His small fist clenched the tighter on her sleeve. He was never a hearty child, Evald’s son, but small and quick to understand too much. “Hush, what can we do? What could we ever do? But if you can you must be away with him, you understand?”

“Aye,” said Cadhla softly, her blue eyes round. “I will.” But both of them understood the chances of it, Meara most of all. Gently she caressed her sleeping son, well knowing the men downstairs, that one of them would soon take ambition; and then there was no chance for the boy, no chance at all for any bearer of Evald’s blood to survive—perhaps not even past the dawn. There were Beorhthramm and the others, fell and bloody men, wild and bloody as her lord . . . and growing more drunken with every passing hour. The cups were filled again and again downstairs; and cowards gathered the courage they had lost in the woods.

But distant, from outside the window in the dark, from beneath the walls, came the hoofbeats of a running horse.

Meara lifted her head and listened through the thunder and the rush of wind and rain.

“Off the road,” whispered Cadhla. “It comes from under the walls, not the gate.”

It grew nearer still, seemed to rush beneath the window, and echoed off the stone, distinct in spite of the water’s rushing and the blowing of the leaves. A moment it lingered below, then seemed to move on again, and the thunder muttered.

“O lady,” Cadhla breathed, clutching the luckpiece at her throat, “it be faery, that”

“It would be my husband’s horse come home,” said Meara, and her eyes were far and cold. “But it could circle the hold all night and they will not unbar the gates to see, no, they are haunted men. Hush,” she said, for the boy stirred in his sleep, and she rocked him, hugged him. The hoofbeats came back again and lingered.