Guy Kay - Ysabel

He knew how to fight, some of his seamen did. But they were traders, not truly soldiers. They had come in peace, in hope and greed, to begin a cycle: a rhythm of trade, seasonal, enduring.

To stay, if they could, eventually.

There was no language in common. Two of his men had been here before, farther east along the coast; they had twenty or thirty words between them in the barbaric tongue men spoke here. And it would have been laughable to imagine one of these giant savages speaking Greek. The tongue of the blessed Olympians.

Of civilized man.

They were far from civilization on that stony shoreline by the woods.

The Celts accepted gifts: cloth and wine, and cups for the wine, jewelled necklaces. They liked the wine.

And they made an overture, a promising one. From their gestures on the second encounter, two days after the first—motions of drinking, eating, pointing inland beyond the trees—he understood what they were conveying. He was being invited to a feast. No thought of not accepting.

You couldn’t allow fear to control you.

He left, with one companion, the next day when they came for him. They followed ten of the Celts into the trees, darkness dropping like a cloak, immediately, even on a sunny day, the sea disappearing behind them, then the sound of it gone.

He remembers, on this high, open, moonlit ground, how frightened he was as that day’s long walk went on. He had thought, for whatever reason, that this tribe lived by the water, but there was little reason for them to do so. These were not fisherfolk.

The woods seemed endless, enveloping, unchanging. A journey from his world into another one. A space out of time. Forests could be like that, in the stories, in life.

They heard animals as they went; never saw any. He was lost almost immediately as they twisted to follow a barely seen path, mostly heading north, he thought, but not invariably. He realized he was at their mercy; the two of them would never find their way back alone.

Your profits were in proportion to the risks you ran.

Towards sunset, end of a full day’s travelling, the trees began to grow thinner. The faint path widened. The sky could be seen. Then torches. They came out of the forest. He saw a village, lit with fires for a festival. He didn’t know, at that point, what the celebration was.

How could he have known?

They led him into that torchlight, across a defensive ditch, past bonfires, through an earthen wall, then a gauntlet of men—and women. Not hostile, more curious than anything.

They came into a circle, a wide space at the centre of small houses made of wood. A tall man, silver-haired, not young, stood up to greet them. They looked at each other and exchanged gestures.

He had liked the man from the first moment.

He was given a cup, one of their own. He lifted it in salute, drank. A harsh, burning liquor, unwatered. Fire down his throat. An effort (he remembers) not to shame himself, insult them, by coughing, or spitting it out. No civilized man would take liquor this way.

He was far from civilized men. He’d felt the drink affecting him almost immediately. A deep breath. A brief smile. He handed the cup back; a man of restraint, moderation. Chosen for these things as much as for courage and skill. A leader, responsible for his companion here and the others on the shore. The need to be diligent, careful.

He saw her then. First time.

The world changing, forever.

Really that, he thinks, on the plateau of Entremont, two thousand six hundred years after: as near to forever as a man might know.

For good or ill, joy or grief, love or hatred, death or life returning. All those things. As much as a man might know.

He hears a sound now, someone approaching, stopping. He turns this time. He knows the footfall as he knows his own, very nearly.

“Did you enjoy watching?” Cadell asks. “Hiding down below?” He smiles.

“The bull?” He shrugs. “I never enjoy it very much. You’ve improved. The kill was clean.”

The Celt continues to smile. “It always is. You know it.”

“Of course.”

They look steadily at each other. He wants to kill the other man. He needs to kill the other man.

The Beltaine spirits and the druid are a distance away, by the sanctuary and the still-burning torches. He and the other one might easily be alone here in the night. The wind had lessened earlier but has returned now. Clouds and stars overhead.

“I know where she is,” Cadell says.

“No you don’t,” he replies.

In the brightness of morning, driving west again with his father and Greg in highway traffic, Ned was fighting a heavy-eyed lack of sleep and the sense that he was a useless, irresponsible person.

He was trying to make himself concentrate on what they were doing, on all that had been discussed last night, but he kept thinking about Kate Wenger as she’d looked before going to bed.

Ned had been alone at the dining-room table leafing through a guidebook—the section on the history of Provence—amid the scattered notes and papers they’d put together earlier.

They wouldn’t have been scattered if Melanie had done them, he’d thought. She’d have stacked and sorted and filed the pages. With coloured tabs. Of course, if Melanie had been around they wouldn’t have needed those notes, would they? He’d just finished looking up something and was feeling even more depressed and confused.

“What’d you find?” Kate said, coming over.

230

He glanced up. She was barefoot, wearing only one of his own oversized T-shirts. He said, “I’ve been meaning to ask you about that bit up there, before, ‘God will know his own.’”

“Oh. Right.” She made a face. “Siege of Béziers? It’s west of here.”

“Yeah, I found it. In 1209. ‘Kill them all.’ Pretty unbelievable.”

In the muted light and the quiet, her body under the T-shirt and long legs below it were suddenly way too distracting. You weren’t supposed to be thinking about that at a time like this, were you?

Steve and Greg had been at the other end of the room, slumped on the big couch watching television—The Matrix, dubbed into French, which might have been pretty funny any other time. Ned’s father was on the computer upstairs, emailing, and Aunt Kim was showering. Kate was just out of the shower herself, her hair still wet.

“They were after heretics down here,” she said. “It was like a crusade. Those tended to be vicious.”

“Yeah, but from what Phelan was saying, the one who spoke those words—”

“Was with Cadell, I know. And our guy was inside.”

They looked at each other.

“Is he our guy?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“What does all this mean? Like, if they are supposed to battle each other for her, how do armies come into it?”

Kate looked away, out the window into darkness. “Maybe sometimes they fight and one gets killed, but sometimes she makes a choice, and they both live, then the other one goes to war?”

“You’re just guessing.”

She looked back at him. “Well, of course I’m just guessing.”

He sighed. “Sorry. Sit down, eh?”

“No way. This shirt’s too short. This is all the leg you get.”

He smiled. “Want my sweatpants?”

She shook her head. “I’m going to bed.”

“Uh-huh. I should make a bad joke now, right?”

“Probably. Wet T-shirt or something.”

“It isn’t wet.”

“I was careful. I’m a good girl. And you’re obviously the kind of guy who’ll do anything to get a woman to sleep over.”

“Oh, yeah. Druids and blood. My usual. Never fails. You call Marie-Chantal?”

She nodded. “She was shocked.”