Guy Kay - The Last Light of the Sun

He found out, soon enough. Ap Hywll called out, the big voice carrying down the slope, "Hear me! You have made a mistake. You will not get home. Your ships will be taken before you return to them. We had warning of your coming." He was speaking in Anglcyn.

"That is a lie!" A one-eyed man, easily as big as Brynn, moved his horse forward. Battles began this way in the tales, Alun thought. Challenge, counter-challenge. Speeches for the harpers. This wasn't a tale. He was still scanning the Erlings for the man he needed to kill.

Brynn had the same thought, it seemed. "You know it is true, or we wouldn't be here with more men than you have. Surrender Ivarr Ragnarson and give hostages and you'll sail alive from these shores."

"I shit upon that!" the big man shouted. And then, "Ragnarson's dead, anyhow."

Alun blinked. He looked at Thorkell Einarson, beside him. The red-bearded Erling was staring at the opposing forces. His own people.

"How so?" Brynn cried. "How is he dead?"

"By my blade at sea, for deceiving us."

Amazingly, Brynn ap Hywll threw his head back and laughed. The sound was startling, utterly unexpected. No one spoke, or moved. Brynn controlled himself. "Then what in Jad's name are you doing here?"

"Come to kill you," the other man said. His face had reddened at the laughter. "Are you ready to find your god?"

A silence. Late afternoon, late summer. Late in life, really, for both of the men speaking now.

"I've been ready a long time," said Brynn, gravely. "I don't need a hundred men to go with me. Tell me your name." "Brand Leofson, of Jormsvik."

"You lead this company?"

"I do."

"They accept that?"

"What does that mean?"

"They will follow orders you give?"

"Kill any man who doesn't."

"Of course you will. Very well. You leave two ships to us, twenty hostages of our choosing, and all your weapons. The rest of you will be allowed to go. I will send a rider to Llywerth and another to Prince Owyn in Cadyr—they will let you leave. I cannot speak to what will happen when you sail past the Anglcyn coast."

"Two ships!" The Erling's voice was incredulous. "We never leave hostages, you shit-smeared fool! We never leave our ships!"

"Then the ships will be taken when you die in these lands. You will never leave, any of you. Decide. I am not of a mind to talk." His voice was cold now.

One of the Erlings came forward on foot, stood by the stirrup of the one-eyed man. They whispered together. Alun looked at Thorkell again. Saw that the other man was gazing over at Brynn.

"How do we know you aren't lying about Llywerth and Cadyr? How would they know about us?" It was the second Erling, standing by the one named Leofson.

A horseman twitched his reins and moved forward to sit his mount beside Brynn. "You know because I tell you it is true. We rode through the spirit wood, three of us, to bring warning of your coming here."

"Through the spirit—! That will be a lie! Who are…?"

The Erling fell silent. He'd sorted the answer to his own question. It was the accent, Alun realized. The flawless, courtly Anglcyn tones.

"My name is Athelbert, son of Aeldred," said the young man beside Brynn, who had ridden with them through the godwood to serve a cause that wasn't his own. "Our fyrd killed sixty of you. I will be unspeakably happy to add to that number here. My father has sent a ship from Drengest, right behind yours, with a warning for Cadyr. They will have had it days ago, while you were coming here. Ap Hywll speaks truth. If we do not send to stop them, the Cyngael will take your ships or drive them offshore, and you will have nowhere to go. You are dead men, where you stand. Jormsvik will never be the same. They will mock your names forever. You cannot possibly imagine the pleasure it gives me to say these words."

A murmuring among the Erling host below them. Alun heard anger but no fear. He hadn't expected to. He saw some of them begin to draw blades and axes. With a hard, fierce sense of need, he unsheathed his sword. It had come, it had finally come.

"Wait," said Thorkell quietly beside him.

"They're drawing weapons!" Alun rasped.

"I see it. Wait. They will win this fight."

"They will not!"

"Trust me. They will. Ap Hywll knows it too. Numbers are close, but they have horsemen and fighters. Brynn has his thirty men but the rest are farmers with scythes and sticks. Think!"

His voice carried towards the front. Later, Alun decided he had meant it to do so. Brynn turned his head slightly.

"They know they cannot leave these shores alive," he said, softly.

"I think they do," Thorkell Einarson said, still quietly, speaking Cyngael. "It won't matter. They cannot give you hostages or ships and go back to Jormsvik. They will die first."

"So we fight. Kill enough of them so that tomorrow or the next—"

"And what will your wives and mothers say, and the fathers of these two princes?" Thorkell never raised his voice.

Brynn turned around. Alun saw his eyes in the late-afternoon light. "They will say that the Erlings, accursed of Jad and the world, slew yet more good men before their time. They will say what they have always said."

"There is a way out."

Brynn stared at him. "I am listening," he said. Alun felt the breeze blowing, making their banners snap.

"We challenge him," Thorkell said. "He wins, they are allowed to leave. He loses, they yield the two ships and hostages." "You just said—"

"They cannot surrender ships. They can lose a fight. Honour requires they deal fairly then. They will. This is Jormsvik." "That difference matters enough?"

Thorkell nodded. "Always has."

"Good," said Brynn, after a moment, smiling. "Good. I fight him. If he will do it."

Looking back, Alun remembered that four people said No at the same moment, and he was one of them.

But the voice that continued, when the others stopped in surprise, was a woman's. "No!" she said again.

Alun turned, they all did. On the side slope, quite close in fact, on horseback, were the lady wife and the daughter of Brynn ap Hywll. He saw Rhiannon, saw her looking at him, and his heart thumped, a barrage of memories and images falling like arrows from the bright sky.

It was the mother who had spoken. Brynn was gazing at her. She shifted her mount to come forward among them.

"I told you to stay at home," he said, mildly enough.

"I know you did, my lord. Chastise me after. But hear me first. The challenge is proper. I heard what he said. But it is not yours this time."

"It has to be mine. Enid, they came to kill me."

"And must not be allowed the pleasure. My dear, you are the summit and glory of all men living."

"I like the sound of that," said Brynn ap Hywll.

"I imagine you do," said the lady Enid. "You are vain. It is a sin. You are also, I grieve to tell you, old and short-winded, and fat."

"I am not fat! I am—"

"You are, and your left knee is aching as we speak, and your back is stiff each day by this hour."

"He's old too! That one-eyed captain carries his years—"

"He's a raider, my lord." It was Thorkell. "I know the name. He is still a fighting man, my lord. What she says is truth."

"Are you here to shame me, wife? Are you saying I cannot defeat—?"

"My love. Three princes and their sons stood aside for you twenty-five years ago."

"I see no reason why—"

"Do not leave me," said Enid. "Not this way."

Alun heard birdsong. The doings of men here, the wrack and storm of them, hardly mattering at all. It was a summer's day. The birds would be here when this was over, one way or another. Brynn was gazing at his wife. She dismounted, without assistance, and knelt on the grass before her husband. Brynn cleared his throat.