Ciag wept. He had loved her. He clung to her in the sea. The roar filled his ears, the white spray breaking on the Teeth hit the wind and drenched him even here.

Something touched him, beneath the water. Not the current, but small tuggings at his clothes, nips at his ankles when he must catch his balance in the water. He refused to let her go, held to her, struggled waist-deep in the surge.

She turned in his arms; white arms reached and enfolded, vast eyes stared into his, sea-dark; lips touched his, chill, and teeth razory-fine— a taste of sun and sea . . . All the green depths—parted from him. The slim white body arched away, scattering drops of sea, a glimmering in the dark waters swifter than sight.

The voices laughed in the wind, and the taste lingered, blood and sea-wrack.

"Brother," one called.

He followed.

1982

WILLOW

Seven days he had been riding, up from the valley and the smoke of burned fields, and down again with the mountain wall at his back, a winding trail of barren crags and eagles' perches, gray sere brush and struggling juniper. The horse he rode plodded in sullen misery, gaunt and galled. His armor was scarred with use and wanted repair he neglected to give it; that was the way he traveled, outward from the war, from his youth which he had lost there and his service which he had left.

Dubhan was his name, and far across the land in front of him was his home, but the way looked different than it had looked ten years ago. He remembered fields and villages and the sun on the mountains when he rode up to them, when the horse was young, his colors bright and his armor gleaming as he rode up to the duke's service—but now when the winding trail afforded sometime glimpses of the plains, they seemed colorless. It was the season, perhaps; he had come in a springtime. He rode out in a summer's ending, and that might be the reason, or the color might have been in his eyes once, when he had been easily deceived, before the old duke had taught him the world, and the lord he served changed lords, and knights who had defended the land drifted into plunder of it, and the towns fell, and the smokes went up and the fields were sown with bones and iron, and the birds hunted carrion in roofless cottages. Maybe the war had spilled beyond the mountains; maybe it had covered all the world and stripped it bare. It had taken him this long to remember what sunlit green he had seen here once, but no longer seeing it did not surprise him, as worse sights had ceased to surprise him. There were scars on him which had not been there that springtime ten years gone. He ached where the mail bore down on old wounds; pains settled knife-pointed into joints in nighttime cold and made him know what pains years ahead held, lordless and landless and looking—late—for another lord, another place, and some more hopeful war while there was something left of vigor in his arm, some strength to trade on to put a roof over his head before he was too old, and too broken, and finally without hope. Bread to eat, a place to sleep, a little wine for the pains when it rained: that was what he rode out to find.

At one cut and another the nearer land lay spread below the rocks, dull tapestry of the tops of trees where the trail turned and some slide had taken away the curtaining scrub. The trees came nearer, and stretched farther as the trail wound down the mountainside, more of forest than he recalled. At such vantages he looked out and down, marking what he could of the road to come, all curtained below in trees and gray bush.

So he saw the birds start up, and drew in the horse so sharply that the old head came up and muscles tensed. A black beating of wings rose above the woods below, and hovered a time before settling back into that rough patterning of treetops elsewhere. He marked where, and moved the horse on, and got his battered shield out of its leather casing. He thought about his armor, regretting mending not done, and took his helmet from where it hung on his saddle, and kept toward the inside of the road whenever he came near some other open place, fearing some movement, some show of metal might betray him—prudence not of cowardice, but of cold purpose.

That was also the way of the war he had waged, that no one met friends on the road. He rode carefully, and thought about the sound of the horse's hooves and kept off bare stone where he could. He stalked that remembered location in the woods below with wolfish hope—of provisions, of which he was scant, and whatever else he could lay hand to. If they were many he would try to ride by; if one man—that was another matter.

The sun was sinking when he came to that lower ground. The woods held no color but a taint of bloody light beyond the dull leaves. The trees which had seemed small from above arched above the way, gnarled and dark and rustling with the wind. Something had disturbed the leaves and the brush which intruded onto the roadway: a broken branch gleamed white splinters in the twilight. He kept on the way, came on the fresh droppings of a horse, some beast better fed than his, from some other trail than he had followed.

A thin, high sound disturbed the air, a voice, a woman's—sudden silence. He reined close in, fixed the direction of the sound and rode farther. There was someone in the dark ahead who took no account of the noise she made; and someone there was who did. He drew his sword from its sheath with the softest whisper of metal, kneed the horse further, and it walked warily, ears pricked now, head thrust forward.

The trail forked sideways, and the leafy carpet was disturbed there, ruffled by some passage. He kneed the horse onto it, kept it walking. Fire gleamed, a bright point through the branches. Again the voice, female and distraught: a man's low laughter . . . and Dubhan's mouth stretched back from his teeth, a little harder breathing, a little grin which had something of humor and something of lust. His heart beat harder, drowning the soft whisper of the horse's moving through the brush—jolted at the sudden rise of a black figure before the light in front of him. Two of them, or more. He spurred the horse, broke through the brush into the light, swung the sword and hacked the standing figure, saw one more start up from the woman's white body and wheeled the horse on him, rode him down and reined the horse about the circuit of the camp as two horses broke their picket and crashed off through the brush. The first man, wounded, came at him with a sword; he rode on him again and this time his blade bit between neck and shoulder, tumbled the armorless man into the dead leaves.

The woman ran, white flashing of limbs in the firelight. He jerked the horse's head over and spurred after, grinning for breath and for anticipation, reined in when she darted into the brush and the rocks—he vaulted down from the saddle and labored after, armor-burdened, in and out among the brush and the branches, with one thought now—some woman of the towns, some prize worth the keeping while she lasted, or something they had gotten hereabouts from the farms. He saw her ahead of him, naked among the rocks, trying to climb the shoulder of the mountain where it thrust out into the forest, white flesh and cloud of shadow-hair, shifting from one to the other foothold and level among the black stones. "Come down," he mocked her.

"Come down."

She turned where she stood above him, and looked at him with her pale fingers clutching the rock on her right, her hair blowing about her body. Looked up again, where the rocks became an upward thrust, a wall, unclimbable. "Come down to me," he called again. "I'm all the choice you have."

She made a sign at him, an ancient one. The fingers let go the rock—a blur of white through shadow, a cry, a body striking the rocks. She sprawled broken and open-eyed close by him, and moisture was on his face and his hands. He wiped at his mouth and stood shuddering an instant, swore and stalked off, blood cooled, blood chilled, a sickness moiling at his gut. Waste. A sorry waste. No one to see it, no one to know, no one that cared for a trifle like that, to be dead over it, and useless. A little warmth, a little comfort; there was not even that. He found his horse, bewildered and lost in the brush, took its reins and led it back to the fire where he hoped for something of value, where two dead men lay in their blood; but the horses had run off in the dark and the woods.