Redemption, page 14
“How original,” Lygnel muttered. “Your training master had similar ideas. He and his await you, in one of the castle drainage holes. What if I burn you like a human torch? Would that suit your fancy?”
“If you could have burned me, you’d’a done it by now. And yer friends,” the man glanced upward, “well, now, they be too busy to help the likes of you.”
Something in the soldier’s crazed eyes told Lygnel her sword would be of no benefit to her. This blackheart was well aware that the other boats, and most of his fellow fighters, were naught but cinders now. He had the look of a beast too wounded to think, and left with nothing to lose. Beyond reason.
Trouble.
As if in agreement, the man stopped shifting his sword. His rage-maddened eyes narrowed like a wild cat, readying for pounce.
Lygnel calmed herself, centering, reaching for the energies of the world. Air, earth, water, fire—all things natural, all things pure. If Merlyn had restored her connections to Avalon, refreshed her memories—ah, yes. The flow of power seemed immediate and strong. The metal of the sword suddenly offended her hands, and she threw down the blade as if it had burned her.
At this, the soldier twitched, then snarled. “I won’t be givin’ you mercy. Pick it up and do yer worst.”
“My worst is far beyond the wielding of crude weapons,” Lygnel warned as she lifted her hands. The resonance in her voice was too great, amplified by magik. The sound startled even her, but the stubborn lout in front of her only bowed up all the more.
“Sorcery and smoke—no match for real strength. All my life, I’ve been trained to that standard.”
“If you lay hand or blade on me, you’ll learn a new standard.” Lygnel spread her arms, casting a spell of protection. She wasn’t at all certain what would happen when the soldier attacked her, as that would depend on his heart and intent. Old training made her mind sing, reminding her that she must trust she wouldn’t be harmed, that the Goddess and the benevolence of Avalon would protect her.
The man snorted his disgust, but hesitated. It was always the same. No matter how they spoke against the old magik, Briton’s soldiers yet feared such powers.
And yet, Lygnel hesitated as well. Trusting her flesh, soul, and spirit to Avalon again—to anything or anyone—it was almost beyond her to consider, much less accomplish. And yet if she doubted, she would surely die for her disrespect.
In a contest such as this, only the true believer would prevail.
Grinding his teeth, the soldier tensed. Lygnel tensed with him. She sensed her spell dissipating like smoke in a fierce sea breeze.
“I do believe,” she whispered, but without conviction. Once more the thick air choked her, and her hands started to shake. The power she had felt receded, and the emptiness of abandonment overtook her. Who was she kidding? She would never go home again to Avalon, never see her child, perhaps not even Davyd…
Davyd.
The shaking in her hands steadied. The spell—was it forming itself anew?
My love. My redemption.
An image of Davyd, naked and magnificent, flooded her senses, chasing back the darkness in her spirit.
The soldier chose that moment to charge, shouting like a speared boar. His sword flashed through streaks of light as he raised it above Lygnel’s head and brought it down hard.
Lygnel barely saw the blade coming closer, closer, as she wrapped herself in the thought of Davyd’s love. Ysbet’s young face, just as she had seen it in the vision bowl, passed before her eyes, as did the gleaming white and gold of Avalon’s temples. She even heard the distant, gentle laugh of Merlyn unbound, freed once more to roam the heavens and earth.
Mere inches from contact, Grakor’s man struck an invisible barrier. He jerked backward and slammed against the hold wall at the same moment his sword transformed into a single white heron. The rare bird, Avalon’s friend and emblem, rose with a great flapping toward the hatch, almost blinding Lygnel as sun played off its alabaster plumage. Its chittering cry stabbed and thrilled her ears, driving her adversary to a paroxysm of terror. Then, in a mighty burst of feathers and wind, the heron gained open air and swept out onto the main deck.
Heart and mind tied to the bird, Lygnel felt her senses and emotions lift into the light above. She heard shouts of surprise and the clatter of dropped weapons. For one moment, she saw the world as the heron must see it—stretching out to endless horizons, reaching forever in all directions, utterly free and clean and open. In that one moment, she knew an innocent, total joy she hadn’t felt since running along Avalon’s wind-kissed beaches. She felt whole again, and new, and strong.
Breaking away from the bird’s consciousness, she turned to the fallen soldier, intending to offer him conciliation. Before she could speak, however, he struggled to his feet and staggered away from her. Shouting incoherently, he threw himself up to the lip of the hatch. Like some tropical monkey, he swung his legs upward and scrabbled out of the hold.
“Sorceress!” he finally managed, thundering across the deck. “Avalon is on this ship! Flee! Flee!”
A pronounced splash told Lygnel he had thrown himself overboard. Several other splashes echoed in short order, followed by the cheering of tired children and exhausted women.
Bertram’s fair face appeared in the frame of the hatch. “Did you make a bird, Lady? Because we saw a fine bird come up through here—”
“Later, my sweet boy.” Lygnel’s heart was beating harder and faster with each passing second. Goddess, but her life was back in her own hands! She couldn’t lose it, not even the slightest piece of it. She wanted everything, now and always, forever—and by her own blood and the blood of everyone who had suffered or died for Avalon’s dreams, she would have it.
“Put us to sea and sail us to Davyd’s ship, as I mapped for you. We must get it aflame, then get to shore. Something’s happened to those we left behind.”
Showing his great respect and deference, Bertram neither questioned her nor wasted a moment in heeding her command. By the time Lygnel replaced the hold’s fallen ladder and made her way to the deck, they were underway.
Anxious, but quelled by a determination she never thought she would feel again, Lygnel scanned the rocky and tree-lined shore.
“Take heart,” she whispered, willing her words to carry over the waves, straight to Davyd’s waiting ears. “Hold tight to all that we mean to each other. I’m coming, love. I’m coming.”
* * * * *
I’m coming…
Davyd heard the wind murmur in the voice of his beloved, even as he crawled through the dirt and debris of the forest floor. He tried to stand again, stumbled, then lurched forward, bleeding from too many punctures to count.
Around him, men shouted. Horses bellowed. Arrows flew. The copper reek of blood, fear, and rage made his blood simmer. Battle fever powered his limbs, his mind. The bastard Grakor had tried to have him killed, but he had leapt to safety. Merlyn’s cloak had taken the worst of those first shots.
“Where are you, you diseased spawn of a dog?” Davyd barely heard his own unsteady roar as he struggled toward the ocean side of the trail. Here and there, he lifted a prone defender of Dore to see if it was Grakor.
No luck. The devil-taken ass must have retreated or taken cover.
Davyd’s hands, his arms, his blade—near every inch of him bore the spatters of his wound-drunk charge and challenges. Many had fought him. None were still standing.
Arthur’s Men seemed like green and brown ants, swarming, then disappearing to regroup, and swarming again over the heap of fallen trees, downed horses, and flailing soldiers.
The trap had worked as perfectly as it could. At Davyd’s whistle, ropes all along the trail had been cut. Towering trees had crashed to earth. Much of Grakor’s army had been pinned, crushed, or at least unseated. War stallions thrashed about in branches, and Arthur’s Men were doing what they could to free them, all the while engaging soldiers who managed to fight clear.
“Leave the rest,” Davyd ordered, directing his command at the nearest of his fellows. “To the beach. Hurry!”
It was slow, bloody going in the mayhem. Surprise, their greatest weapon, had played itself out. They had won the moment, but new moments were at hand. Davyd knew it was time to cut losses, pull their dead from the fray, and run for their lives. A handful against hundreds—those odds wouldn’t be friendly twice.
“Abandon the horses,” he instructed a youth of no more than fifteen, though he hated to say the words. “Grakor’s bastards will see to them as much as can be done.”
To another boy, sobbing over a dead mount even as he locked swords with its rider, Davyd said, “The horse died as he lived—a warrior. There now, leave the man be. His legs are pinned, and he won’t be giving you trouble.”
One man at a time, one step at a time, Davyd urged himself and his meager followers through the chaos. The treeline—almost within reach, and beyond that, the woods, and north to the beach, where Lygnel and her charges were to meet them. His chest clenched at the thought of his love and all the many things that might have gone wrong.
Please, by all the Gods and Goddesses ever praised, let her be well and waiting.
“Faith has no place and every place on the battlefield,” he muttered, then grunted as he stumbled over yet another toppled horse and crushed rider. From the corner of his eye, he saw Arthur’s Men beside him, hacking at branches and Grakor’s mercenaries. Some carried fallen comrades. Others did well to carry themselves and splintered swords.
A horn blew from behind them, seemingly at a distance but in truth close. The hairs on Davyd’s neck prickled, and he cursed for a full breath without stopping.
“Haste—” he began, but one of Alla’s sons, redheaded and younger in years, raised the alarm.
“The Home Guard has been roused! Grakor has reached the castle!”
At this news, many of the fallen soldiers shouted or laughed. Arthur’s Men grew twice as grim and three times as determined to gain the woods between the onrushing reinforcements and the beach.
Almost as one, Davyd and his followers fell into the underbrush, first wading and hacking—then simply running.
“Fly!” Davyd urged, his head spinning and light from loss of blood, the nearness of catastrophe, and the risk to mere boys under his command. They had to move faster! “Fly! Fly!”
In only a handful of minutes, hooves thundered anew behind them. No one looked back, but Davyd knew their thoughts as well as his own. Each envisioned the fresh-legged mounts of the Home Guard, bedecked in armor and bearing doom in the form of seasoned soldiers armed with lances and longswords.
Sweat stung Davyd’s eyes as he chanced a glance farther forward than his own stumbling feet. The woods seemed endless, and yet he caught great glares of light between branches. Surely the sea could not be too far ahead.
The thundering of hooves drew nearer.
Like a moving wall of flesh, Arthur’s Men plunged through the last stand of trees and brush. They broke into the clear, half-blinded by the gleam of light on waves, just as Davyd sensed a lance bearing down on his back.
Acting on instinct, he whirled and grabbed—the oldest defensive move he knew. His eyes saw but a blur. The shock of moving wood in his hands almost toppled him, but he dropped hard to his knees, directing the lance between his arm and torso, straight into the rocky beach. It split with a loud crack, and a rider shouted in surprise, airborne over Davyd’s head.
The rider’s horse passed so close that foam splattered Davyd’s cheek and the beast’s tail lashed his cheek. Almost at the same moment came the heavy thump of body hitting earth—and more swearing.
As if some command had been shouted, the other riders pulled up sharply. A horse near Davyd narrowly averted impalement on the half of the broken lance he still held.
“Get to your feet, you dreg of a whore!” Grakor’s wounded bellow could scarcely be mistaken, and even in his dizzy state, Davyd took some satisfaction in knowing who he had unseated.
Grinning, spilling blood and sweat like water from a bucket, he struggled up, using the piece of a lance to support some of his weight. A little at a time, his awareness returned. As he turned to face his challenger, he could see mounted, armed soldiers lining the beach between the rocks and the trees. Arthur’s Men had only one choice now—the sea or certain death.
More swearing from Grakor, and Davyd managed to raise his head enough to look at his foe. The man, not ten feet from him, looked almost as bloody as he imagined himself to be. The bastard had drawn his sword—and in the distance, beyond the surf break, the ship Davyd had sailed to Briton was burning brighter than a Bealtuinn bonfire.
Beside her sailed a much larger vessel, clearly peopled with women and children. A lone blond male, larger and broader than the rest, stood at bow’s head, shading his eyes.
Bertram! My son. Davyd’s grin widened as his followers stumbled and crawled into the waves. Grakor paid them no heed, nor did he seem to notice the lone figure standing behind him. She wore grime-streaked blue robes, and her own blonde hair was barely visible beneath soot, grime, and spatters of blood from untold battles.
Her bright eyes—narrowed.
Her jessed arms—raised.
Her salt-stiffened expression—unreadable.
Davyd didn’t know whether to cheer or shout with rage and worry. He wanted to cry out to Lygnel, order her into the sea and away, safe for now at least, to Prator Castle. And yet, he didn’t dare alert Grakor to her presence.
A quick glance left and right told Davyd that indeed, none of Grakor’s men seemed to see the strange vision of an Avalon Adept so besmirched and furious.
They cannot see me, whispered Lygnel’s voice from some deep cavern in his mind. They cannot see the ships. They think our men cowardly, to walk into the sea rather than face the blades at their backs.
Davyd silently thanked the Goddess for years of contending with Merlyn, for he did not startle. He did not so much as twitch, and neither did he betray his love by staring.
Walk into the water with them, my love. Her words sounded strong and certain.
Tensing, Davyd refused. I will not leave you.
Then you will die here, and me along with you. Now Lygnel sounded weary and irritable. You are one man against fifty or more. Walk, or I shall scream like Nimue’s Furies!
It seemed to Davyd that Lygnel spoke with two tones: that of a woman and his lover, and that of someone…other. Older, wiser, and infinitely more powerful.
Still, he hesitated. Walking away from combat, allowing a woman to fight his battle—trusting anyone to fight for him—it felt impossible. Yet, his men had done so without question. Even now, they were swimming for the waiting ship beyond.
And so, there stood Lygnel, the embodiment of impossibility. An Adept who left Avalon, now clearly returned to the magik fold. A woman who should have been dead, scarred, or broken, now clearly whole and vibrant. A love lost, now clearly regained, and offering him one more chance at redemption.
The spinning in his head eased, and now Davyd wanted only to go to Lygnel, take her into his arms, and carry her into the waiting sea.
My love…
His mind reached out to hers, and like enchanted threads spun into the strongest rope, their thoughts intertwined.
“So, will you be joining your merry fools, Jack in the Green?” Grakor’s derisive laughter punctuated his question, startling Davyd back to his immediate peril. “Seems your fey friends have abandoned you!”
“Now, there you’d be wrong.” Davyd felt his grin turn into an easy, relaxed smile. He managed a step toward his enemy, and then another.
Grakor menaced him, swinging his sword to and fro. “Stay back!” he commanded a few of his advancing soldiers. “This jackal is mine.”
Half-walking, half-dragging himself on the ruined point of Grakor’s lance, Davyd hurled himself forward. Instead of falling toward his foe, however, he leaned to the left, so that he crashed to the rocky beach beside Lygnel.
She stepped forward, cloaking him with her, and Grakor shouted in surprise. “Where did the bastard go? Oy, there! Do you see him?”
Whispers broke out in the ranks at the forest line.
“It’s sorcery…”
“Old magik…”
“Avalon. Could it be…?”
“Avalon? Do not mention that blighted myth within my hearing!” Grakor’s wrathful curses rained like arrows, but Davyd ignored him. He forced himself to crawl. If he could just reach the water, his remaining strength might take him to the waiting ship.
It is not wise to cast aspersions upon that which you do not understand. Lygnel’s mind-voice rang like bells, blotting out Grakor’s foul spouting.
At first, Davyd thought she was speaking in only his mind again, but then he realized the soldiers had gone silent. Rustles and scrapes told him a few were backing their horses into tree cover.
They heard her, too. She was speaking to everyone!
A moment passed, during which Davyd managed to drag himself into tidal pools, and then farther, into the sea itself. Salt stung his wounds. He ground his teeth until his jaws locked.
“Where are you, you evil, ruined bitch?” Grakor’s hoarse noise was almost a whine now. “Show yourself!”
Lygnel laughed, and Davyd felt a chill. He hoped she never laughed at him in such a fashion. By all the Gods, he had a powerful urge to swim as far away from that sound as he could get. Obviously, a number of Grakor’s faithful felt the same, because as he turned over to float on his back, Davyd saw them wheel their mounts and bolt into the forest.
“Show yourself,” Grakor demanded again. “Lygnel of Dore, naught but a conjurer, mistress of smoke and nothing. Do not run from the likes of her, you useless fools!”
Your father was a wiser man than you, Grakor. Lygnel’s words were positively scathing, as if years of rage underscored each sound she uttered. Even Mordred had more sense, for he recognized the old powers even as he tried to twist them to his own dark purpose. He paid for his disrespect. Now you will pay for yours.
