God help me, I yielded; and next morning, with Guenhumara and old Blanid in a light mule cart, we started back for Trimontium.
We traveled slowly and reached Castra Cunetium without harm done. I breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that the journey was more than half over, and now at least Guenhumara could rest a few days. But at Castra Cunetium an ill wind blew up, for on the last day of our sojourn Blanid fell down the granary steps and hurt her back. There did not seem to be much amiss, but assuredly she could not go forward for the time being.
‘It seems that your journey ends here, at least for a while,’ I said.
But again Guenhumara put out her will against mine. ‘And yours?’
‘I ride on with the patrol tomorrow. I have been apart from the war host long enough.’
‘Then so do I also ride on with the patrol.’
‘That is foolishness,’ I said, ‘and you know it. What will you do without Blanid to care for you, if the bairn comes to be born, before she can follow after you?’
‘There are other women in the fort,’ she said tranquilly.
‘Yes, a score or more – the gay drabs of the baggage train.’
‘Firewater Chloe, who counts herself Queen among them, knows how to deliver a child, all the same.’
‘How can you know that?’ I was fighting a losing battle, and I knew it, but I fought on. ‘There has never been a child born at Trimontium in these years.’
‘You fool!’ she said, softly mocking. ‘Do you think that because you have not heard a child cry, none can have been born? Do you think that none of these women has ever miscounted her days? There have been three bairns born in Trimontium in the winters since I first came there. They smothered them at birth like unwanted kittens, and put them out on the hillside for the wolves. But it was Firewater Chloe who held their mothers in her knees when the birth time came upon them.’
‘Guenhumara, if you knew, could you not have done something?’
‘What?’ she said. ‘What do you think they would have had me do? A bairn clinging to the breast is a heavy burden to carry in the wake of a war host. Also it is bad for trade ... Even I, who am the wife of the Bear and have no trade to think for, I shall not find it a light thing to carry a bairn in the wake of the Bear’s war host. I have lived in the women’s quarters of my father’s hall. But if there were no other woman in Trimontium, I should not be the first of my kind to bring her own young to birth. I have seen too many of my father’s hunting bitches whelp, not to know how to bring out a child and sever its life from mine.’
And again I yielded. If only I had been stronger then, and weaker the next time she set her will against mine ...
It had been a long dry summer, as though to counterbalance what had gone before, and though the birch leaves were yellowing, there had been little rain, so that from the first the dust of the dry tracks rose in a dun cloud from under the horses’ hooves and almost blotted out the tail of our little band; and the burns ran low, and whenever we could we took to the long soft moorland grass, tawny now as a hound’s coat, until heather drove us back again to the track. The grass made gentler traveling for Guenhumara. On the second day (the usual two days’ march must be made into three by slowness of the mule cart) the little wind failed us so that the land was bathed in a still golden warmth that comes sometimes in early autumn, and the last of the ling blossom was loud with bees and smelled of honey, and the sky had paled from its autumn blue to the color of curdled milk. We flung off our cloaks and strapped them to the saddlebows along with the iron caps that clanged there already. Riada, the latest in my long line of armor-bearers, who besides being native to these hills like the rest of Pharic’s hundred, had a nose for weather that would have rivaled a stag’s, sniffed the air and foretold thunder and more than thunder.
The horses were restless that night, when we camped beside the high water of the Tweed, and I remember that when Guenhumara let down her hair and began to comb it, sitting by the low campfire, the sparks flew out of it as they do out of a cat’s fur when thunder is brewing. Once, in the darkest hour of the night, a little cold moaning wind blew up out of the heart of Cit Coit Caledon, and died down again, and left the world still and heavy as before.
When we yoked the cart mules and saddled up again next morning, it seemed to me that Guenhumara was quieter than usual, or rather that her normal quiet had densified into stillness, and that her stillness was like that of the world about us; a kind of long-drawn breath before the storm breaks. And she moved with a new heaviness when I helped her into the cart. I asked her if all was well with her, and she said yes, that all was very well. But I was thankful in my bones that it was the last day’s journey.
It must have been close on noon when thunder began to grumble among the hills southward; scarcely more at first than a quivering in the air that one felt in the back of the neck rather than the head; then drawing closer, a low, almost continuous muttering, then dying again to that deep distant quivering of the air. The storm was circling over the hills, but for a long time it never came near to us; even the sky swept clear to the southern rim of the Tweed Valley. And slowly, far ahead of us, Eildon, which had been no more than a shadow on the sky haze when we broke camp, was rising higher, gaining depth and substance, so that I could make out the three peaks marching one behind the other, and see where the hazel woods of the lower slopes gave place to the bare grasslands and scree above.
And then the thunder spoke again, deep and menacing, a snarl this time, nearer – much nearer – than it had been before; and from behind the hills south of Eildon, the clouds came banking up, higher and higher while we watched; a blue-black mass of cloud, teased into forward-creeping rags and ribbands at its upper edge, by a wind that we could not yet feel in the Tweed Valley. Pale wisps of vapor drifted against the darkness of it, and the heart of the mass seemed to churn and swirl as though someone, something, were stirring it over a fire; and out of the churning storm-heart leapt flashes of blue light, and the thunder came booming hollow toward us along the hills.
I was riding alongside the mule cart, and I looked anxiously at Guenhumara huddled behind the driver in the mouth of the tilt. She was sitting oddly braced, as though to resist every jolt of the wheels under her, instead of giving to the movement in the ordinary way, and her face was very white, but that might be only the strange and menacing light. ‘Best get back under the tilt,’ I said.
She shook her head. ‘It makes me sick if I cannot see where I am going. See – I will pull my cloak well over my head.’
And the anxiety in me quickened sharply, but there was nothing to be done save press forward while we could.
We were heading straight into the storm, but it seemed to me that the hideous swirling vortex at its heart was swinging to our right, and I began to hope that the worst of it might pass over the hills south of the Tweed. The fringes of the black cloud were above us now, swallowing up the sky, and we rode in an unnatural brown twilight, while southward of us the storm trailed its path across the hills, dragging with it out of the belly of the clouds, a black blurred curtain of rain that blotted out everything in its passing. ‘Christos! There’ll be homes washed out and drowned cattle and women weeping among the hills tonight,’ someone said.
Presently the storm had circled away behind us, but there was no returning light ahead; and suddenly, spinning in its path as such storms do among the hills, it was coming up on our tail – coming swiftly as a charge of cavalry! Already in the heat, the dank breath of it was parting the hair on our necks, and the long grass bowed and shivered away from the gust as though in fear ... ‘Up the side glen yonder,’ I called to the men behind me. ‘There’ll be better shelter among the scrub.’
It was a thin shelter enough, among the half-bare birch and rowan, but better than none, and we gained it, dismounting and manhandling the cart the last part of the way, just as a second, stronger puff of wind came over the shoulder of the glen; and a few heartbeats later the storm was upon us. Stab on ja
gged stab of blue-white light split the gloom, and the thunder crashed and boomed and beat about our heads like a great hammer. We got the mules unharnessed lest they bolt, and then turned to the horses. They, poor brutes, danced and snorted in terror, and it was all we could do to get them edged back into some kind of shelter and keep them together there. Guenhumara was crouching back under the tilt, and I bade Cabal stay with her and left them to do as best they could for the moment, while I gave all my attention to Signus who was flinging this way and that, squealing with mingled rage and panic. And save for a confused awareness of blinding white forked light that leapt crackling from black sky to black hillside, and the ceaseless crash and tumbling boom of the thunder that seemed as though it would pound the very hills asunder, that storm, for me, was one long struggle-royal with the whirling white stallion.
At last the lightning became less incessant, and the thunder trod less swift upon its heels, the whiplash crack of it that had all but split the eardrums dulled to the rolling of great drums that throbbed and reverberated among the dark glens. And I knew that for the time, at least, the crown of the storm was past – so far, that is, as the thunder was concerned; for after the thunder came the wind and rain. We got the horses quieted at last; wind and rain they understood, whereas thunder is a thing that no horse ever understands – nor any man either, which I suppose is why we have always given it to our highest and most angry gods.
Presently the tilt went, ripped away like a torn sail. I got Guenhumara under the cart, and in a while, with Signus’s bridle pitched over an alder branch nearby, I was crouching beside her, my arm around Cabal’s strong rain-cold neck, trying to shelter her with our bodies from the in-driving lances of rain; while the wind roared up the valley and the wet drove by in solid sheets, in gray trailing curtains that blotted even the far side of the narrow glen into nothingness, and beat and drenched through the thin moaning woods.
And as we crouched there, in the space of a hundred heartbeats, every summer-dry runnel in the heather became a rushing ale-colored water course that leapt over the stones and sprang out among the heather roots and went swirling down to join the little burn that was already swelling into spate; and under the chill of the storm, the smell of wet refreshed earth rose all about us, aromatic as the rising incense of bog myrtle in the sun, and was drowned by the gray deluge and washed back into the ground. It was well on toward evening when the rain began to slacken and the light to return, but we still had six or seven miles to go, and with the warning of the swollen burn in my ears I dared not wait any longer.
Guenhumara was whiter and more pinched than ever, her eyes enormous and nearly black, so that they seemed to shadow all her face. And when the driver had yoked up the mules, I had to all but lift her to her feet. ‘Guenhumara, is there anything amiss?’
She shook her head. ‘I hate thunder, I’ve always hated thunder. It is no more than that.’
Pharic, who was standing near with his arm across his horse’s neck, turned quickly to look at her, the straight black brows almost meeting above the bridge of his nose. ‘That is the first I’ve ever heard of it, then. You must have changed since the days when you used to stand on the bull shed roof to be nearer to the storm, while Blanid shrilled at you like a black hen from underneath.’
‘Yes, I’ve changed,’ Guenhumara said. ‘It is because I am growing old.’ She turned to me, gathering her drenched garments into bunched folds as though suddenly aware of how they clung to her swollen belly. ‘Artos, take me up before you on Signus. Not – not the cart any more.’
So I took her up before me, with a drenched sheepskin saddle rug flung across Signus’s withies to give her softer riding, and felt how tensely rigid she was in the hollow of my bridle arm. I gave the mule driver orders to follow after us, left two of the patrol with him, and again we rode on.
Below our left, the Tweed was roaring like a herd of bulls. The sky was clearing as the storm rolled away into the dark heart of Manann, and the evening blue was beginning to show through the rags of the fraying storm clouds, when we came around the flank of the high ground and dropped through hazel woods toward the burn that came down there from the high moors to join the river. But the roaring of the burn warned us what we should find, even before we came in sight of it. Farther south, the storm must have broken with a wilder fury even than we had suffered, and the burn was coming down in a roaring spate of white water. It was far out over the banks on either side, clutching at the roots of the hazels and swirling in yeasty turmoil about the red earth of the lower hillside, tearing away great lumps of turf and boulders. The ford was completely lost; it might even be carried away; bushes, tree roots and clods of earth were sweeping past, and even as we checked in consternation at the water’s edge, the body of a half-grown roe deer went by, rolled and tossed like a wineskin in the surf.
Pharic was the first to make a move, and as usual with him, it was a reckless one. ‘Well, it’s a cheerless prospect, biding here all night,’ he said, and urged his horse straight forward into the rush of water above the submerged bank.
I yelled him back. ‘Don’t be a fool, man. It’s death!’
And the horse neighed in sudden terror as the spate caught at its legs and all but swept it down into the full flood. There were a few hideous moments of struggle and then with a heavy crash of hoof-flailed water, and a slipping scramble, he was on solid ground again. I had opened my mouth to tell my marriage-brother a thing, but in that instant Guenhumara gave a tiny gasp, almost a moan, but checked before it broke surface, and I felt her make a convulsive movement as though she would have drawn up her knees against her belly as one does in cramp. And looking down, I saw her whole face clenched and twisted together, small in the shadow of her sodden cloak hood. Fear shot through me. ‘What is it? – Guenhumara. Is it the baby?’
Slowly and with care she unclenched her face as one unclenches a fist, and opened her eyes with a long sigh. ‘Yes, the baby. It is better now, until the next time. I am sorry, Artos.’
‘Oh God,’ I said, ‘what do we do now?’ And I know that I could have howled like a dog against the sense of utter helplessness that overwhelmed me. It might be many hours before the spate ran down; if we tried making any kind of footbridge by uprooting the hazel saplings and laying them across, that too would take time; and even when it was accomplished, our own Horse Burn would be in a like state, between us and Trimontium. And meanwhile, Guenhumara’s child was on the way.
‘How long do you think it will be?’ I asked her. The others, dismounted for the most part, were probing about the banks.
‘I do not know, I have never borne a child before – I think it may not be for a long while – oh, but it hurts me sore already, Artos – I didn’t know it hurt as much as this.’ She broke off in a little gasp, and again I felt that bracing of her body, the cramped convulsive drawing up of her knees, and held her close while the pang lasted. When it was over she began to speak again, hurriedly. ‘Artos, find me a sheltered spot – a hollow of some kind among the bushes, and spread me the driest saddle rug you can find, that the child does not lie like a lamb dropped into the wet—’
‘No,’ I began stupidly.
‘No, listen, for we have no choice. I have told you that I know what to do. Give me your knife to sever the child’s life from mine, and I shall do well enough, if you keep guard that nothing comes out of the woods upon me while I am – busy.’
But suddenly I also knew what to do, and while she was still speaking, I wheeled Signus toward the half-lost herding path that led up from the ford into the hills. ‘I’ve a better way than that. Hold out for a small while, Angharad, and you shall have surer shelter than a wet hollow in the ground, and another woman to help you.’
‘Artos, I can’t – I can’t bear the horse much longer.’
‘Only a short while,’ I said. ‘Bear it for a short while, Guenhumara.’ And I called to Pharic and the captain of the patrol. ‘Pharic, come, I am taking Guenhumara up to Druim Dhu’s village. Tw
o of you come with me, and the rest of you bide here and pick up the cart when it arrives, and get across when the spate goes down. Keep Cabal with you.’
‘But you’ve never been there.’ Pharic urged his horse up beside mine on the verge of the drowned droveway.
‘I have once – six or seven years ago. I’ve been close to it since, on the hunting trail.’
‘And you can find it again?’
‘Please God, I can find it again,’ I said.
In the last wild light of the fading day, with the cloud flitters flying low above the hills and the low shining of a sodden yellow sunset in my eyes, and Guenhumara hanging a dead weight on my bridle arm, I came over the last heather ridge, and checked for an instant, with an almost sick relief, looking down into the shallow upland valley that I had seen once before.
But the valley of Druim Dhu’s homestead was not the peaceful place that it had seemed that other time. Here also, the little burn that had come down shallow over its bed of trout-freckled stones had run mad and become a roaring torrent, bursting out of its old course to cut a new one for itself that deepened and broadened even as I urged Signus into the downhill track, rending away great chunks of the bank and spreading itself all abroad in a swirl and tumult of white water that swept perilously near to the little huddle of turf bothies within their hawthorn hedge. All across the shallow cup of the valley, men were struggling to get the lowing, terrified cattle up to higher ground, while others, women too, were struggling waist-deep in the water to shift the dam of torn-down bushes and debris that had built up across the true course of the burn. Above the roar of water their shouts and the barking of the cattle dogs came up to us, small and sharp and desperate, even reaching Guenhumara, so that she turned her head to look down into the valley ahead of us. ‘What – is this place?’ she demanded, and then with a sudden thrill of fear in her voice, ‘Artos, what is this place? Those little green howes? Artos, you’ll not be taking me into the Fairy Hills?’