David Coe: Bonds of Vengeance

Cresenne nodded, wiping tears from her cheeks with a snow-crusted glove.

The merchant muttered something under his breath and glanced at the geldings. Then he forced another smile and laid a hand gently on her shoulder.

“All right, child. Glyndwr i’ ‘tis.”

He started to walk back to the front of the cart, then stopped and bent close to her again. “Yer too young t’ be doin’ this alone. Where’s the father?”

“Glyndwr” she managed. “He’s in Glyndwr.”

The man nodded and returned to his seat atop the cart. In a moment they were on their way again, the jolt of the horses’ first steps knifing through her like a poorly honed blade. Her stomach heaved and she scrambled to the edge of the cart and vomited into the snow until her throat ached. She sensed the merchant eyeing her, but he had the good sense not to say anything.

When her retching ceased, she crawled back to her frigid bed of cloth and lay down once more, hoping that what she had told the old man would prove true.

After the murder of Lady Brienne in Kentigern, and Tavis of Curgh’s escape from the dungeon of the great castle, Kearney, then duke of Glyndwr, granted the young lord asylum. Kearney had since become king, and Tavis had traveled through Aneira with Grinsa, no doubt searching for the assassin responsible for Brienne’s death. But if Grinsa and the Curgh boy had returned to Eibithar-and Cresenne had good reason to believe that they had-they would have to stop first in Glyndwr and ask the king’s leave to venture farther into the realm. Getting word to the City of Kings and waiting for Kearney’s reply would take time, especially during the snows. Even with all the time it had taken her to find a merchant who was headed north from Kett, Cresenne thought there might be a chance they were still in Glyndwr Castle. And if they weren’t, at least she’d be able to find healers.

Gods, let her live .

The ocean of pain within her began to crest again, like a storm tide in the Aylsan Strait. There had been no jarring of the cart, no movement on her part. Her time was approaching. This baby was coming, whether or not they reached the castle. She let out a low cry, squeezing her eyes shut and gripping the cloth beneath her.

“Steady, child. We’ve still a ways t’ go.”

“Faster,” she gasped. “Can’t you go any fester?”

“I can, but it’ll be a rougher ride.”

“I don’t care!” She cried out again, feeling her stomach rise, though there was nothing left in it.

The merchant called to his beasts and snapped the reins. The cart leaped forward, jouncing her mercilessly. Cresenne clung to the cart, trying to keep herself still and whimpering with each breath. The tide had her now. Agony was all around her; she was drowning in it.

She heard the merchant speaking to her again, but she had no idea what he was saying. Snow and wind still stung her face and she fixed her mind on that, for cold and miserable as it was, it was better by far than the appalling pain in her back.

“It’s the promise of that baby that keeps you going,” someone had once told her, speaking of childbirth. Had it been her mother? “All the pain in the world can’t match the joy of that moment when your child is born.”

All the pain in the world. Yes.

Except that she still didn’t feel her daughter. Not at all. Bryntelle. Somewhere in this ocean she had to find Bryntelle. Before her babe was lost to the tide as well.

Grinsa stood at the open window, the biting wind off Lake Glyndwr making his white hair dance around his face like a frenzied child. Snow drifted into the chamber and a candle on the table near the window sputtered and was extinguished. It was a fine chamber, larger and more comfortable than one they might have expected had Kearney the Elder and his wife still lived in Glyndwr. But with the old duke now king, and so many of his advisors with him in Audun’s Castle, Glyndwr Castle had a preponderance of empty chambers. This one, they were told, had once belonged to Gershon Trasker and his wife. No doubt they would not have been pleased to see snow covering the woven mat on the stone floor.

“Close the shutters,” Tavis said, standing before the hearth. “The fire’s barely warming the room as it is.”

The gleaner watched the snow for another moment, then pulled the shutters in and locked them.

“I suppose we can wait another day,” he said, facing the young lord. “Though if you’re willing to brave the storm, I’m happy to go.”

A messenger from the City of Kings had arrived at last just after the ringing of the midday bells. They had leave from the king to journey north to Curgh, though Kearney had warned that they would be safer if they remained in Glyndwr. He even went so far as to recommend that, if they chose to leave the highlands despite his misgivings, they take a small contingent of guards. “I have sent separate word to my son, Kearney the Younger,” the king wrote, in a message addressed to Tavis, “instructing him to make available to you as many of his soldiers as you deem appropriate. I urge you to accept their protection.”

Kearney wrote nothing of recent events in his realm; he didn’t have to. His offer of an armed escort told Grinsa and Tavis all they needed to know about the state of the king’s relations with Aindreas of Kentigern.

Tavis rubbed his hands together. “Let’s wait another day. It’s late now to be setting out. We’ll make our preparations today and be ready to go with first light, regardless of the weather.”

“All right. And the king’s offer of guards?”

The young lord appeared to weigh this briefly. Then he shook his head. “We’ll draw more attention with an escort than we will alone. And I don’t want reach the gates of my father’s castle with Glyndwr’s men in tow.” He smiled sadly. To those who hadn’t grown used to the lattice of scars that covered his face, he might have looked bitter. “He’ll think I don’t trust him to protect me.”

Grinsa smiled as well and shook his head. “I doubt that. But I understand.”

The smile lingered on Tavis’s face, but he kept his dark eyes fixed on the flames crackling in the stone hearth. “Do you think we’re safe here for another night?”

There would have been no sense in lying to the boy. Ever since the day Kearney first granted Tavis asylum, when the armies of Kentigern, Glyndwr, and Curgh marched from the battle plain at the Heneagh River to Kentigern, where the duke of Mertesse had laid siege to Aindreas’s castle, it had been clear to all of them that Glyndwr’s men thought Tavis a butcher. Most of Eibithar believed that he had murdered Lady Brienne, and though it would have been an act of brazen defiance, many of Kearney’s men would have thought themselves justified in killing him. Grinsa had little doubt that if Tavis had chosen to remain here in exile, rather than journeying south into Aneira, the young lord would be dead by now.

“We’re safe here, yes,” he said.

“But only because you’re powerful enough to protect me.”

Grinsa shrugged. “I don’t think Glyndwr’s men would act against you in the castle. To be honest, the real danger lies in our departure, after we leave the castle and city, but before we’re out of the highlands.”

Taking a long breath, Tavis nodded.

“We’ll be all right,” the gleaner told him. “It shouldn’t be any worse than Aneira.”

“That’s a fine thing to say about my own kingdom.”

“Do you want me to tell the duke that we won’t need an escort?”

For a moment Tavis didn’t respond. Then he shook his head, like a dog rousing itself from slumber. “No,” he said, glancing at the gleaner. “I should speak with him, courtesy of the courts and all. There may come a day when we’re both dukes under his father, or when I have to pay tithe to his throne. My father would tell me that this is a friendship to be cultivated.”