SPEARS OF THE SEA-WOLVES
by Keith Taylor

* * * *

“Gwlythin! What is it?”

The girl’s voice trembled, and hearing it quiver she drew three careful breaths to bring it within her own command again. Standing upon the neglected battlements of a fortress high above the sea with the briny wind in her hair, she looked very much alone; a woman-child of fifteen with the puppy-softness of that age, skin fine as an infant’s, and eyes of surpassing clarity. Those grey orbs had already looked upon things few women ever saw, but they had the innocence of a new-born lamb’s to the eyes of the one she addressed as Gwlythin.

Her teacher never moved. Standing at the very edge of the rampart, she stared in a black trance at the waves below, marking their pattern as they crashed and withdrew. Once the sea had kept a respectful distance from the foundations of this fort, as the pirate Saxons and Jutes had shown a wary respect for the civilized fleet that patrolled the channel. Once. Now the surf boomed hollowly at the base of the very wall, hurling fans of spray so high that tiny droplets moistened Gwlythin’s snowy hair.

Although white at three-and-forty, she was not frail. The lines cut deeply into her face had been incised more by her own harsh character than by time. Gwlythin’s bones remained strong; not one tooth was missing from her head. The peasants whispered in malice and fear that she had been born with them all, the mark of a shape-changer. Gwlythin neither denied nor admitted such rumors.

Her dark eyes studied the sea from between narrowed lids as its waves gathered, crashed, and peeled back from the shore in foam. To her they conveyed messages in subtle writing. The girl behind her did not speak again, and in her own time Gwlythin turned around, her face bleak with despair. She had deciphered news in the breaking waves; tidings from across the sea and from inland Britain, carried down by rivers stained crimson.

“What has the wind told you?” she
demanded.

“Nothing.” The girl sounded defensive. “It blows from the east.”

Gwlythin snorted. “A paltry excuse! You haven’t yet learned to understand it well enough. Vivayn, it doesn’t help to be naturally gifted if you will not exercise your gifts, and certain it is you have none at all for water sorcery. I’d make you divine the news I have by your own powers, if I had time, but there is none.”

“Say it to me.” Vivayn had turned pale to the lips.

“Your sire received no help, from the Summer Country or the Atrebates. Instead of fleeing, he chose to meet Cerdic with the forces he could raise alone. That accursed sea-wolf broke them in an hour. It’s grief unto me that I say this, girl, but he has slain the king. Hamo is completely fallen now.”

Slain the king. Slain my sire. The words tolled and rang uselessly in Vivayn’s head, bearing a freight of meaning she was not yet ready to accept. Hamo fallen, taken by the heathen sea-wolves as Kent had been taken, like all the other lands of the Saxon Shore, whose name had become literal truth. Her father lay dead, dead, butchered by stinking savages with lice in their beards!

She could not believe it. No, not even though the devil called Cerdic had encamped on an island off her father’s coast for years, laughing at British attempts to dislodge him, growing ever richer and stronger, taking tribute even from Vivayn’s father in the final years. It had been inevitable that one day he would lead his monsters to the mainland and pillage Hamo on the estuary, yet foolishly they had all behaved as though that day would never come. Thus it had taken them by surprise, so that the smoke of the burning town still clung to Vivayn’s cloak and bronze-red hair. Like her father, she had escaped that first onslaught of Cerdic’s barbarians, and believed that with his neighbor kings’ help he would still throw them back into the sea they defiled. Now — it couldn’t be!

“It can be.” Gwlythin read her mind, or perhaps the movement of her pale lips. “It is. More than that, the ship which should have taken you all to safety in this misfortune will not come. It met some of Cerdic’s wolves, hastening late to the feast. Say a prayer for some brave men’s souls, Vivayn, then think of what you will do. Deeply as those Jutish hogs fear all Rome’s works, they will come searching this fort eventually, and you must not be here.”

A note of finality in the older woman’s voice reached Vivayn. She said, “I hear only you, and nothing of us. We’re all departing together, my teacher, aren’t we?”

Gwlythin smiled more gently than her custom was, which frightened Vivayn more in the circumstances than if she had snapped a rebuff. “No. Listen, child, who cannot be a child forever, I’m an aged woman. The sea-wolves will simply cut my throat if they catch me anyhow. You were born for a greater and better fate than that. Besides, you’re young. Life still holds things for you. I have seen those beasts conquer more and more of Britain while our own kings, your father among them, did nothing but bicker among themselves. He wasn’t altogether blameless that he found himself without friends at the last. Oh, keep his memory dear as a daughter should, but never lose sight of the truth as clearly as you can see it. That is all we have.”

“But what of you?” Vivayn burst out.

“I’m taking my own path,” Gwlythin answered, still with that gentleness which was so chillingly unlike her. “You must follow yours. If you are wise it will lead to the western mountains, or to the north where your ancestors dwelt and where no sea-wolves have yet landed — and it were best that you went quickly. Now farewell, Vivayn.”

Upon that word, and with a determined face, Gwlythin stepped backwards from the rampart. For an instant she seemed to hang poised in the air; then she was gone, hurtling towards the waves whose voices she understood so well, the wind howling about her. Striking the wall and rebounding outwards, Vivayn’s teacher was swallowed by the sea. A wild, choked scream marked her passing, not her own but Vivayn’s — and when the girl comprehended fully what had happened, she screamed again, more loudly, a long cry of anguish.

Gwlythin! How could you do that? How could you leave me?

Gone in an instant, gone, after telling her that her father, too, was dead and her home irretrievably lost! Gwlythin’s discipline, authority, realism had gone with her, the qualities a little band would need most if it was to reach any kind of safety through the plundered countryside. It seemed to Vivayn that those qualities must have been illusions of smoke if Gwlythin could plunge so indifferently to her death, leaving them all to cope without her. No girl of fifteen could lead people desperate for refuge in a world that offered none — save that she was King Natanleod’s daughter and they would expect it.

Oh, Gwlythin ...

Vivayn did not know how long she stood gazing at the wave-surge where her teacher in sorcery had vanished. It must have been longer than she supposed, because a sound of heavy footsteps and panting on the stair to the ramparts made her turn, and she knew how long it took to perform that climb.

“My lady, what happened? I heard that scream, and then naught!”

Vivayn faced the burly, black-haired warrior with the raven brand on his forehead, bracing herself to show no weakness before a man she had never fully liked or trusted. “It was Gwlythin, Junius. She — threw herself into the sea in despair.” The truth of that would strike home before long, Vivayn knew. Uttering the words brought it closer. “The sea-waves gave her tidings she could not bear. We had better go down to the others. Now. They must hear.”

“The old hag suicided? Blessed Bran! I’d as soon expect that of a crow!” Seeing Vivayn’s anger, he shrugged and said falsely, “Sorry, my lady. Sa! It was a long climb for this! We’ll go down, then, but I’d rest first.”

“No, Junius, this will not wait, alas. We can both rest in the parade yard.”

Vivayn moved towards the stair which led into a deep black well, her whole manner taking it for granted that the warrior would step aside for her, then follow to light her way with the crackling torch he carried. To her relief, he did. Something in his murky eyes made her think he had half-conceived the notion of seducing her there on the ramparts. If he found the resolution to attempt it, there was too real a chance that in resisting, Vivayn would go where Gwlythin had gone. She took care to hold her head royally high down all the flights of stone stairs descending the tower. Her father’s own man! Far from the best of them, true, or he would have been with him, fighting the invaders, but still — her father’s man. How would he be when he learned that King Natanleod lay dead? Safety, protection, privilege, obedience had all disappeared like dew in the morning.

Perhaps some would not understand it so quickly. Vivayn was the kingdom’s heiress, and whether or not that still meant anything she could use it to take command. Passing through a tiny, long disused guard-room at the base of the tower to emerge flushed and swift-breathing in the parade yard of the fortress, Vivayn saw the tiny band of refugees who were its sole inhabitants now. Four armed men and one woman rose to greet her, while Junius came lumbering after his king’s daughter to douse the half-burnt torch in a barrel and stand winded. He liked work too little and mead too much, else he would never have been shamed in his physical condition by Vivayn.

“My lady,” said one of the men. He paused then, struck by the princess’s look. Tall, fine-boned, her hair tumbling wild around a delicate oval of a face not yet mature or committed enough to show the kind of woman she would be, Vivayn yet looked sufficiently grave and sorrowful now for a matriarch of fratricidal sons. She walked slowly to the camp-fire they had built in that long-deserted yard where grass grew between the stones.

“I bring heavy news,” Vivayn said, her voice bloodless as crystal. “Gwlythin slew herself once she had told it to me, so I must think she knew it true . . . my father was abandoned to face Cerdic with only the few warriors he had. None helped him. Now they are all slain, and Cerdic holds the land as far as Venta uncontested.”

The other woman, a servant some ten years older than Vivayn, gave a long vibrating wail and drew a shawl over her head and face. Sinking to her haunches, she rocked back and forth, keening.

“Be silent, Enid!” Vivayn spoke sharply, as Gwlythin might have done, knowing that if she listened to another’s grief or envisioned her father’s face, she too would shatter in mourning, leaving the leadership to Junius. They could not afford that.

The woman Enid threw back her veil to goggle in outrage at Vivayn, seeing her tearless eyes and calm face as proof that she had no heart. Some of the men’s faces registered shock and dawning condemnation also, though one looked approving and the youngest merely crossed himself, then waited to hear more. His name was Cadaran; Vivayn knew him slightly.

“I’ve other bad news,” she said. “The ship which was to take us to Cornwall has been destroyed by sea-wolves — Jutes or another breed, it matters little. To reach safety we must go by boat through the marsh.”

“Our ship gone?” Junius bellowed. “No, by the nine waves of the sea! You lie — I mean the other witch lied! We can’t be trapped here! To dare the marsh is to give our heads to death! Are you all going to listen to —”

“To whom, Junius?” Vivayn asked. Now her voice carried a note like splintering ice in the depths of a glacier, fissured with crevasses to swallow the unwary. This was the magic of air for which she had a native talent, with controlling and throwing out tone as one of its earliest, simplest uses. Such razored iciness from her lips made the big man blink and consider.

“— to — a woman young — and without experience of war,” Junius said, retreating. “The whole land will be covered with stragglers or followers, hungry for loot. If they come upon us in numbers, they’ll slay us or take us for slaves — and what they’ll do to the women —”

“You’d know,” said the man who had looked approving when Vivayn silenced Enid’s wails. Dark, middle-sized and well-built, he had a thin nose and a suggestion of grim drollery in the shape of his mouth. “You’d know, indeed, and even the rest of us can guess. It’s a thing that does not need saying aloud. Lady, I wouldn’t appear to doubt, but are you certain of what you say?”

“She was certain,” Vivayn answered with a little shiver which made her cloak ripple in numerous shades of blue. “Plunging from the battlements would be a fearsome way to convince me of a lie.”

“Supposing she’s truly dead,” Junius said, a contentious twist to his mouth. “Witches can fool even the dark angel.”

Anger crackled along Vivayn’s overstretched nerves. How dared this oaf denigrate Gwlythin’s suicide, doubt that it was real? She concentrated, summoning the powers of illusion she had mastered, wishing she could raise a wind with it, to whip through the yard with a smell of briny dampness.

What she did create proved sufficient. A harsh voice rang off the stone walls, seeming to originate everywhere, a voice they all knew. Junius looked wildly around when he heard it, sudden ludicrous fear in his face.

“Death cannot be fooled, you poor lump of unleavened bread! Turn and look upon me!”

With a stiff face, he did so, and beheld a specter with sea-drenched white hair facing him in the gateway. Her gown dripped, one arm hung limp from the cruel impacts of her fall, and she stared at him with a face paler than her hair.

“You see that I am dead,” the illusion said in its chill voice. “Now I speak with sure knowledge and what I say is the truth. Lifeless equally are King Natanleod and all those who fought with him, save what few managed to flee. My lady’s life is in your hands and she shall lead you to safety; she alone. Else you shall die like the lustful pig you are. Listen well! A ghost has prophesied for you.”

The vision raised its sound arm to point a finger dramatically. Junius stepped back in terror; he had never been brave, despite his size and his gory boasts of all he achieved in battle. In the next moment the specter dissolved in a cloud of sea-mist, and when Junius walked hesitantly to examine the spot where it had addressed him, not a trace of water moistened the stones where its robe had spilled rivulets. Junius knelt before Vivayn with awe in his brutish face.

“Pardon me, lady! Pardon me! It wasn’t you I doubted, but Gwlythin! I’m your man now for any endeavor!”

“Then swear that to me upon your life,” Vivayn ordered, taking advantage of his fear-inspired fervor before it departed. Junius took her hand between his weapon-hardened palms and swore the oath in a moment. His alacrity was not the most comforting thing in the world; he might forget the oath with equal suddenness at some time in the future, but she had gained his untrustworthy support for the moment.

“Now, good folk, we had better plan our course,” Vivayn said.

While they looked at her with doubt, respect, and calculation, according to their natures, Vivayn felt an inner pang of remorse. She had used her teacher’s death to cement authority over this band through a cheap trick of illusion, and announced her father’s death as a fact through the illusion’s lips. She didn’t know it for certain. Oaf though he might be, Junius had been right in that at least. Even Vivayn’s grim instructress could have been mistaken. A little hope stirred in the girl. Perhaps, just perhaps, her father still lived.

They began to talk. Junius, though he blustered a good deal, showed hard survival sense, and the shortly-spoken man with the thin nose combined the same quality with wits. Enid had no idea of what to do, nor, really, had the admiring youngster who supported Vivayn. He’d be loyal, surely, but he would neither produce ideas nor take initiative.

It lies with me. I tricked my way to leadership, and now I am responsible for these six lives.

Having listened and weighed the information, Vivayn spoke in her natural clear voice, with no tricks of sorcery.

“We cannot leave this place by sea. We’ve only a little marsh-boat that barely holds us all, and none here is skilled at sailing anyhow. We’d blunder about, and be caught by some Jutish band. Therefore we must go through the marsh, and Hoi is the man to guide us.”

The smallest of her warriors, an oddly tattooed fellow with the face of a scrofulous gnome, winked confidently in response. They were listening to her, she saw with relief. But what now? All she knew of the countryside came from maps. Wait; there was something more.

“Once through the marsh we will be in a conquered land. Our best hope then is that, as Gwlythin said to me, the sea-wolves fear everything built by Rome. The great stones which walked into place at the bidding of Rome’s sorcerers prove that the Jutish gods are meaner than ours. Let us reach Venta, that great abandoned city, and we can hide safely within its walls, then travel north on the highway by night. No Jute would molest us there.”

“And how do we reach it unseen?” Junius asked, less belligerently than before. “From here to Venta is a long way.”

“I’ve hunted all across this land in better days,” the thin-nosed man said with a reminiscent smile. His name was Keir, and Vivayn knew less about him than about any of the others. “There are tricks I know, and the sea-wolves are blundering strangers. We have a chance. One can’t ask more of any god, ours or theirs.”

“I too have tricks,” Vivayn said. “If enemies come near us, my magic will confuse them, but since it is only powerful at night we had better hide and rest by day.”

“Not in the marsh,” Hoi said abruptly. “Too many evil things moving at night, worse than the Jutes. We find a safe place before sundown and stay there.”

From that position they could not budge him, and since Hoi was needed indispensably to guide them through the marsh, Vivayn agreed. They boarded the flat-bottomed craft which had brought them to the fort from the blazing town of Hamo, and were poling through the surrounding fen before the sun had moved a hand’s width more in the sky. Having little to do but sit in the rear of the punt and think, Vivayn was instantly haunted by visions of a reddened battle-field where savages in wolfskins laughed over their victory and a red-haired king lay grotesque in death with none to straighten his limbs or say a prayer above his bier. She had never been close to her father Natanleod; his main contribution to her upbringing had been to curse the fact that she had no brothers, and leave her alone to cultivate the friendship of the many fortune-tellers, wizards, and other charlatans who passed through his hall. That at least had taught Vivayn to recognize a faker at ten yards’ distance — but now the hall where they had congregated lay in burned ashes. Her father was almost surely dead and would never love her now.

Vivayn wanted to weep, yet her heart and eyes alike felt dry. Turning her head away lest tears should come unexpectedly and betray to her companions that she was, after all, only a girl, she watched the clouds reflected in clear water. That surface, sometimes clear, sometimes misted by the breath of the gods, had been the same before the Roman fort had been built, and would be the same still when not three joined stones of it remained.

Behind Vivayn, Enid whispered in outrage to one of the men, “How can she be so cold?”

Because, Vivayn thought, it is a way to stay untouched by this mad world where Britons fight Britons instead of their common enemy. I envy you, Enid. You can choke and wail a little over the king, and then with your duty done, your feelings relieved, you can bustle along with your life.

“There,” Keir said at last, ceasing to pole. “That island should do. We can rest there tonight and begin again before dawn. What do you say, Hoi? My lady? Is it a place of good or bad omen?”

You too? Vivayn thought, sadly amused. You seem a sensible man, Keir, yet you too believe in omens and luck, and prophecies which nine times in ten are wishful invention. Gwlythin told me that, yet even she could be gullible in that fashion. Yonder place is just an island, with sedges and willows growing green upon it, reflected in water which hasn’t a breath of wind to ruffle it. There is a place to hide, as sheltering as any other, and we had no sleep last night. It will do.

She had learned something, though, from the many fakers who had come to her father’s hall. Appearances were important. Having put on a show in the deserted fortress, she must keep it up now, since not only her position but the spirit of this little band could depend on it. Rising gracefully to her feet, she balanced in the rocking boat while gazing at the island, trusting that her manner was duly impressive.

“Yes,” she declared, giving her voice the ring of prophecy. “If we pause there we will not be discovered by any evil thing, and we can quit the marshes safely”

They went ashore on her word, and while Keir and Hoi hid the boat Enid prepared the last of the food they had brought with them. After they had eaten it, sunset had ended, wherefore Vivayn curled up to sleep on a bed of leaves with a cloak folded under her head. She who had lain on a bed of down nearly every night of her life adapted so well that she scarcely noticed the difference. The turmoil in her heart made a rougher bed than leaves on the ground.

At first Vivayn lay down only because she had to rest in order to stay strong, convinced that her eyes would never close, and for some time she did turn in fidgety torment, images of death in her mind. Finally, though, her body’s demands won over her sensitive brain, and she fell into a slumber which — for an hour or two — passed untroubled by dreams. Then they rose to the surface, bubbling and thick; her father, trampled and hacked apart by men with the faces of beasts; the town of Hamo turned into one screaming bonfire; Gwlythin plunging to her death; and ever recurring, the vision of her father dying on the battlefield, in a different hideous way each time. She moaned, reaching out blindly for comfort, but her fingers found only leaves.

Then it seemed to Vivayn that her teacher stood above her, not broken and drowned but whole, her look one of loving exasperation.

“Little fool,” her dream said. “Don’t you know that you did well? That lout Junius would have turned them all against you if you hadn’t used my ghost to daunt them. The dead deserve no more than tears and the kindest memories of them that we can hold. It’s the living who count, always. I abandoned you when I went to my death, and you did what was needful. Never lash yourself for that like some green nun who has had a carnal dream! You did well. Now awaken; there’s more to do.”

Upon that word, Vivayn blinked and sat up with a suddenness that drew the blood from her tousled head. White as a cloud, she looked into the faces of Enid and Junius, and it seemed to her that the form of her self-slain teacher faded from the air between them as she awoke.

The pair gaped at her. Enid blurted, “My lady! There were visions surrounding you — of the king your father, and Jutish demons, red weapons in a forest — and then it seemed that old Gwlythin came, driving them all away, and spoke to you, whereupon you grew peaceful —”

“It’s true,” Junius confirmed, with a soberness unlike him. “I’d call it fancy, but I saw it my own self. Aye, and heard.”

Those were my very dreams, Vivayn thought confusedly, and if they both saw it, then Gwlythin’s spirit did come! She watches over me!

 “We need your sorcery now,” Enid was saying desperately. “There’s a boat, a boat of Jutes coming yonder!”

Jutes! Vivayn’s skin grew icy cold. She followed the pair through the bushes, crouching low, until they reached Keir’s place of concealment. He greeted them with a terse, “Watch and be quiet,” paying no heed to Vivayn’s royal rank in that moment. Peering through the leaves of a green willow, Vivayn saw the craft Enid had moaned was coming; no lean, serpent-headed war-boat out of frightened legends, but a shabby brown thing holding no more than twenty men, and they scarcely the giants in horned helmets the stories described. As the boat drew nearer, Vivayn felt almost disappointed that they looked so ordinary.

Not even their leader wore the horned war-hat mandatory to every harper’s description. Most, in fact, rowed bareheaded, their grimy hair braided for convenience, though a few did protect their heads with hard leather caps. The only weapons in evidence were spears, stacked amidships in a careful sheaf. The Jutes didn’t even look particularly big. They rowed competently, laughed, boasted, and swapped foul jokes in their own language, of which Vivayn understood a good deal. She heard her own name bandied among them as they swept by, which made her furious.

Keir heard it, too. He was familiar with their northern dialect himself. Where and how he had learned it, Vivayn did not know, and this was not a time to ask.

“Sa-ha! No question but that they search for you, lady,” Keir said, rubbing his long moustache thoughtfully. “They go to the fortress on their chieftain’s orders, to find you; they were bragging of how they would tear it down stone by stone, denying thus their fear of the place. When they do not find you, they’ll be back, looking for traces.”

“Then let’s flee now!” Enid said, and for once, although she did not think of Enid as bright, Vivayn agreed with her. Keir shook his head.

“We have time. Those dogs must reach the fort, search it, and return. Suppose we panicked now, and ran straight into another boatload of savages following an hour behind them? Cerdic has given orders for your capture, lady, and I would guess he offers a reward. We cannot make mistakes.”

“It’ll be a mistake if we’re still here when they come back!” Junius interjected.

“Can your magic help us there, lady?” Keir asked.

“Yes, it can. This is night, and my sorcery is most potent then. Give me till morning, and I’ll make this islet invisible to searchers; I mean confuse their eyes with illusion so that they will not see it. That way seems best. It draws no attention.”

“You’re clever beyond your years,” Keir said. He meant it. Most girls of her age, and boys too, would have used such powers as Vivayn’s to exaggerated effect, seeking to frighten and impress her enemies — not to mention her friends. The Jutes weren’t cowards or fools. If they saw something out of the ordinary, they would investigate it, and they numbered a score.

For a while the fugitives waited in nerve-wracking silence lest another Jut-ish boat should appear, five men and two women on a piece of ground barely large enough to give them all space to move. No other Jutish craft appeared. Junius opined that it must have stretched even Cerdic’s credit as a leader to detach twenty useful men from the merry business of plundering and raping once the battle was over, to travel through a marsh on such a dubious errand.

“One day it’ll be their thorps that burn and Jutish women who shriek as strangers grab ‘em,” he boasted. “Yes, and I’ll be there for vengeance!”

“Good,” Keir said amiably.

“Yes, they’ll learn,” Junius repeated darkly. “When the Household of Britain rides under the dragon banner and the Count’s horsemen thunder down Tam-esa Valley to the very beaches of Kent, trampling Hengist’s brood into the sand, then there’ll be payment for all that these boarhogs have done. Natan-leod’s blood will be avenged like Cain’s, my lady — seventy times seven!”

“May we all see it,” Keir said, noting the flicker of pain which crossed Vivayn’s face, “but for now I’ll be content with seeing the other side of this marsh. Lady, I came here a stranger and was well received by your sire; I too will lend my sword to the work of avenging him when the time comes. And it’s in your service meanwhile.”

“My thanks . . . Keir.” Vivayn’s voice stumbled a little. The declaration sounded trustworthy, and it moved her, making her feel less terribly alone. “Now I must prepare that sorcery of mine. It’s to be cast from the highest place on this little hand-patch of ground, therefore stay at the margin, all of you.”

“It’s a matter of three yards’ distance at most, lady,” young Cadaran protested. “Why, if one of us sneezes he’ll disturb you.”

“That’s why we’re staying by the water’s edge, lad,” Keir said. “If you feel a sneeze or a cough impending, just duck your head quietly beneath the surface and drown. Begin when you wish, lady; we’ll grant you all the seclusion we may.”

Vivayn almost fled to the islet’s center, where a dry tussock gave her a place to sit and marshal her powers. At first it was difficult. The daydreams and longings of any girl whose world had been ruthlessly overturned filled her mind with yearnings to escape. If only she could change herself to a swan and fly away, taking her six followers with her, or cause the Jutish boat to break apart, drowning all its rowers, or do any of the things which the ignorant imagined sorcery made so easy. All she had mastered so far, all she truly had to use, were illusions as fragile as starlight and mist. Her teacher had known how to send the spirit from her body in a different form, to rove freely while the flesh lay inert in a coma, though that was highly perilous. Maybe it was why Gwlythin had not feared death. Conceivably she still lived and had indeed visited Vivayn in that dream....

But Natanleod’s daughter had something realistic in her, an invincible preference for what was so, not what she might wish. Her mind listed in a moment all the scores against that comforting supposition. Item: she, Vivayn, had the learned ability to project the visions of her mind. Item: she had done it in her sleep before now, and Gwlythin had cautioned her to learn control over that betraying weakness, lest it bring her shame or worse one day. Item: she had dreamed of the same things Enid and Junius witnessed. The vision of Gwlythin had come from Vivayn’s own spirit, giving comfort and advice in the way she could best accept, not from the Other-world of death. And Vivayn had only that spirit on which she could finally rely.

Tears might have flooded then, but they did not. Vivayn sat breathing slowly until her breath grew tranquil. Then, raising her slim arms, she began to weave magic from the insubstantial air about her, refracting and scattering moonlight across the clear marsh waters.

By morning her preparations were complete, as she had promised. As the first pink of sunrise touched the sky-rim, a strong sea-tide swept in from the direction of the fortress. Something else came across the water with it, a sad, moaning hoot with undertones of defiant hilarity, the cry of a barbarian Jute playing at ghosts to allay his own fears after visiting a place which he believed to be haunted. Raucous voices of his mates joining the game resounded through the dawn.

“Ha ha! They follow us, men — the ghosts of all the slaves whose blood the Roman wizards mixed with mortar to bind their stones together until the world’s end! Who will go meet them? You, Oswi?”

“Whooo!”

“We want your heart’s gore, Oswi!”

The childish, macabre chorus faded, and an individual voice (Oswi’s, no doubt) bellowed in mock wrath: “Let ‘em come to me! Let ‘em come with their dry veins and I’ll pull them out to thong my shoes! All the ghosts who ever died won’t stop us from dragging that British witch-girl before Cerdic with her head in a sack!”

Vivayn thought, That one would make a good companion for our fine Junius. The same empty boasting, and he’d run as far if he ever confronted what he now defies!

Closing her eyes, she envisioned the complex tapestry of illusion she had woven over the island through a long night. Her mind saw and tallied its every detail.

“Pavilion of air, cover us now until sunset, in the name of Gwydion, master of lore, king of illusion! Baffle the invaders!”

Something like a lace of spiderwebs broke loose from a point above Vivayn’s head, to roll downward like a domed tent unfolding over unseen, delicate ribs, spilling down to the shoreline, making a hemisphere of enchanted air about the islet. Vision and light slipped across it, were directed elsewhere, perplexed, mazed, distorted. From within the effect, the seven travellers saw all things as they genuinely were. The creak and splash of oars drew closer.

“Back, you blind worms!” came a yell of near-frenzy. “Back stroke or we’ll go aground! Back! Frigg! Could none of you see yonder island? Back!”
 
Vivayn had enough youth left to hug herself in delight. “They’ve seen an illusion!” she whispered. “A glamor of this isle, perceived where it is not! They could row straight through the mirage if they only knew, for it is a clear channel; but now they must push about looking for another. They will be too weary by nightfall to think of looking for us, or of anything but winning clear of this marsh and all they will suppose is that they missed their way. It’s easy to do.”

“You saved us!” Keir whispered back. “I’d never be amazed if they had with them a traitor boatman who does know the place, but small use he’d be to them now — and if he’s there, I hope they behead him in disgust!”

Tingling, alight with anticipation, the seven waited while the invaders’ boat headed back and forth, impelled by ash oars now employed as poles, to the noise of cursing, advice, and bewildered debate, each suggestion being loudly criticized and sometimes refuted with blows. Vivayn had never prepared so large or complex an illusion before, and took pride in having done it so well. The Jutes were rapidly growing so flustered with anger that they might even turn on each other, when someone shouted, “There! Clear water, dead ahead yonder!”

Catcalls and roars of disbelief welcomed the announcement. The first speaker cried his certainty that he could take their boat through the channel he had espied on any rainy midnight they liked to name, while his mates expressed doubts of it. Finally they agreed to try, on the condition that if he failed they would sacrifice him to their grim gods for a clear passage. He declined the honor and told them to either trust him or find their own way out. Vivayn caught the sense of the words if not their full meaning.

There followed more argument, and finally the boat began to move again, reeds brushing its sides with a rustling whisper as the Jutes thrust it onward. With sudden comprehending horror, Vivayn saw that they were making directly for the islet.

“They are coming here?” Keir asked, puzzled.

“They are!” Vivayn said, appalled. There is land in their way, but they do not see it and they will strike us!” She thought with desperate quickness. “Listen, we must be ready to launch our boat from the isle’s far side when they hit; then, perhaps, we can still get away unseen. Keir, do it now, there’s no time for talk!”

The warrior gave her one searching look, then nodded and went to do her bidding. The Jutish craft came on, its distinctive high stem-post carved with barbaric designs. Now Vivayn could spit at the bow and hit it, if she felt so inclined. She saw sweat gleaming on the crew’s bare arms.

With a glutinous impact, the oncoming vessel struck mud. Driven forward by its own slow momentum, it ran more solidly aground before stopping. Over the creaking and popping of timbers, the curses of frustrated men, and the sucking sounds of oars dragged up from the marsh, Vivayn heard a bear-like bawl issuing orders.

While the Jutes were still confused and noisy, Keir launched his own boat, aided by the other Britons. Poling from the far side of the islet, with all the leafy willows of the place between them and their enemies, they might have disappeared unseen had not Cadaran chosen to play the fool.

“Now, you sea-wolves!” he yelled exultantly. “Tell your master Cerdic the full score of you couldn’t catch a few Britons in a leaking punt! Tell him that!”

Keir dealt him a blow that made him stagger and rocked the punt dangerously. “Be quiet, you sheep’s-brain!” he barked. In a lower voice he added, “This is no game. If they find us and capture the lady now it will be your doing. Take your pole and push!”

“Do it if you love me,” Vivayn added quickly, as Cadaran looked like making a quarrel of it, his quick Celtic pride aflame after that blow. Hearing, he took his pole again without a word, thrusting in anger so that the punt sped forward over the sleek waters. From behind them came a promise, bawled by the Jutish leader.

“We will follow!”

“Well, there it is,” Keir said harshly. “Your joke found a listener, and may you think it worthwhile when one of those Jutish spears rips out your liver. They will follow, just as he said. Push! We have to go by night now, Hoi, whatever you say. We cannot stop until next morning, else they will have us.”

“With any luck the Jutes will get lost again,” Hoi grunted.

“With any luck!” Enid echoed bitterly. “We shouldn’t be needing more after all that the lady created for us and you threw away with your crowing!”

“It wasn’t my doing that the Jutes ran aground nigh on top of us!” Cadaran yelled.

“Quiet!” Keir said again. “They will track us with their ears at this rate! No more words!”

“Or I will strike silent the next one to speak when there is no need,” Vivayn promised.

Taut with unease and animosity, they poled through the morning while Hoi directed them with gestures, guiding them past mud-banks and snags which had the look of monsters waiting to rend. More than once they heard the distant rhythmic chanting of their hunters plying long oars in unison, but they were not acquainted with the marsh, and finding one tiny boat in that expanse of reed was a matter of luck. This time the luck rode with the fugitives whose land it was.

They kept moving for the entire day and night, until the following day they came to the soggy shore of the largest island they had seen yet. It was almost a third of a mile long. Reed huts upraised on poles allowed its people to sleep in relative dryness, while flat-bottomed craft like their own were moored beneath the floors. The island’s level had been raised with layers of brushwood and clay to provide a ground for meetings and ceremonies. Surprisingly, a yard-high stone cross with arms of equal length stood there. Vivayn would have expected a people so isolated and ancient to be heathen still.

Isolated since very ancient times they surely were. Many, including some women, had little hair save thin hanks dangling from the side of their skulls, while their skins were pigmented in variegated patterns which gave them a frog-like appearance. Vivayn realized suddenly that these were Hoi’s people, and that the patterns on his arms and legs were not peculiar tattoos, as she had always assumed. He’d been born with them. The sight of a naked baby waddling along with rosy markings on its spine and buttocks confirmed her deduction. No child could be tattooed so fully, so young.

“You were born here, Hoi!” she said.

“True. They’re my mother’s people, so I’m one of them by our law of descent. Maybe they’ll help us on that account, maybe not. I’ll ask, lady — and warn them that sea-wolves are about, too. Let none of you leave the boat until I gain the headman’s leave, for it’s touchy they are about visitors they never invited.”

With that he stepped ashore, displaying his marked limbs to identify himself, while Junius whistled in condescending interest.

“Sa! Now that’s about the most words I’ve heard from him at the one time since I got him to drink a skinful and taught him to sing ‘The Mole-Skinner’s Wife.’ All of it, beginning to end. So these are his people, eh? They have a scent of the Otherworld about ‘em to me.”
 
To Vivayn the area smelled of little save the marsh mud and indifferent sanitation, yet Junius could be right about the dwellers here. They might well have traces of extra-human blood in them. At any rate their squalor did nothing to lessen their health or active-ness.

The headman, small and rotund in a kilt which reached his ankles, with kingfisher feathers adorning his side-braids, came personally to meet Hoi. Their colloquy proved impassioned, yet brief, but after inspection of the newcomers as if they were a fisherman’s catch, the headman invited them ashore with an expansive gesture. The language he spoke to Hoi was completely unknown to Vivayn or any of her companions.

“These are not likely to help us much,” Keir said, looking about him. “There are no weapons in this place but bone fish-spears, unless I miss my guess, and twenty Jutes would eat them alive. All they are likely to do is tell our foes which way we have gone.”

“Not if they run away first,” Vivayn countered, “and they may give us food if we ask them in courtesy. They are not our people, Keir, yet I would not bring them trouble.”

Keir’s mouth twisted in bitterness. “I’m not so saintly kind! With our kingdom in smoking ruins and our best men slain, it’s little to me what may happen to these poor marsh-rats. Then-huts must have been burned many times before. They will never lack reeds to rebuild ‘em.”

“Right you are.” Junius leered at a diminutive girl on the shore. “Their women grow old quickly, but they are not bad young, d’you notice?”

“I’ll wait until I reach a town of human folk, I think. So should you, unless you want to awaken in the morning to find a hundred years gone by.”

Vivayn might have added a more ribald likelihood to Keir’s warning, but she felt assailed by grief after his comments concerning the fate of their kingdom. Somewhere to the north her father lay dead, and she was a fugitive among the reeds, helpless even to seek his body and give it proper burial before the carrion birds —

She slew that thought. Most of Vivayn’s life had been lived with the barbarian Cerdic for her neighbor across a narrow band of water, and she had seen his henchmen come to Hamo for their yearly tribute; she had known what could happen whenever Cerdic willed it. A bitter hatred had been growing in her heart for the Jutish marauder since the night she had fled her father’s town and seen its roofs burning. She hoped he would die miserably when his time came, and that she, Vivayn, would witness it.

That was for a hypothetical future, though. At present they were running from a band of Cerdic’s wild pirates and begging the aid of marsh-folk who did not even know the use of metal. She was supposed to be the leader here; in such a situation, what did a leader do? Vivayn supposed that he controlled his own people’s behaviour and conferred with the other leader. He showed as brave and prepossessing a face as he — or she — could.

The second part was easy for her. To improve her appearance unobtrusively, one aspect at a time, by the use of illusion, was something Vivayn could do in any spare moment. Thus she stepped ashore with her hair smoothly coiffed, her face immaculate, and a sheen of bluebells on her cloak, despite having fled through the marshes for two days. The tiny glamor lifted her spirits and certainly had its effect upon her followers. Keir commented wryly that the marsh-folk should take her for a goddess now. Enid stammered her admiration while Cadaran, in young bravado, whistled — but the eyes of Junius narrowed beneath the small puckered brand on his forehead, and he watched Vivayn with shifty calculation as she spoke to the headman with Hoi for an interpreter. Junius had seen these powers of illusion-casting at work once too often now, and familiarity was breeding contempt. He began to see the ghost which had terrified him as just another trick by a green girl, and resentment surged in his heart. For that he had vowed loyally to her?

Vivayn did not see the big man’s expression. Her concern was with the marsh headman, Prasutagh. Exchanging greetings with him through Hoi, Vivayn thought that he had the gentlest face she had ever seen, yet two of the shrewdest eyes. Originally prepared to he a little, she now decided against it.

“We are hunted,” she said simply. Hoi rendered her words into the ancient marsh language as she spoke. “Twenty men in a great boat follow us. They have iron spears and axes. If they find your village, even by chance, even if you are not here, they will burn it for no better reason than to pass the time, and any they find they will slay. You should prepare to hide.”

Prasutagh answered through Hoi, “It’s no new story. We’ve had to hide from you dryland lords many times. Now the Jutes come; a new name but the same old tale.”

“My father’s men never did you harm,” Vivayn declared. “My father’s law forbade them to molest you. These newcomers are not like that; the birds know it, so why should it be hidden from Prasutagh?”

The daughter of Natanleod need not be afraid for us,” came the answer. “We can hide in an hour so that no man can find us, not even a wizard. We knew you were coming, and we will know when the Jutes come. Now. What may we do to aid Vivayn?”

Vivayn’s knees began to quiver. She locked them stiff. “We are hungry, and have need of a place to hide if the strangers come.”
 
“That we can give you. What you say of your father is only the truth, and for his sake you shall eat with us, and share our places of refuge. Since these marshes were made we have lived in them, and fled for refuge each generation. We are never found, and nor will you be.”

The painful tightness came to Vivayn’s throat again. There was no treachery, no guile in the marsh-man’s offer. She had to believe; and belief hurt more than being mistrusted or hounded. Savages torched her home, her teacher announced that she was now a disinherited orphan, more savages pursued her night and day, and after all that a half-naked little man with skin patterned like a frog’s said, “Welcome. We will help you.”

And still she was not set free to weep.

Seated among the small people of the marsh, eating a stew of eels that would have revolted her three days before, Vivayn gave serious thought to the Jutes who hunted her. Their quarry was Vivayn in person; that they all knew beyond any false mercy of a doubt. Cerdic himself wanted her alive and unharmed. Those men would follow her through the rains of the Deluge and the battle-fields of Armageddon for the rewards they had been promised. Her own attempts to elude them had probably failed; if they arrived at Prasutagh’s village they would have to be stopped in a more direct way. How that could be done short of physical force, Vivayn did not know, and twenty picked Jutish spearmen possessed more brute force than she and Prasutagh between them could muster.

A little marsh-girl sat beside her, staring at the stranger with a solemn, bi-colored face and finally daring to touch her arm. None reproached her, for in this tribe tiny children were allowed to act much as they wished, short of drowning themselves. The girl seemed fascinated by the white smoothness of Vivayn’s skin, caressing it again and again with small fingers, and Vivayn did not mind. It was a pleasant sensation. Of course, beneath the illusion she had cast, that perfect complexion was at present insect-bitten and grimy, but she would restore her appearance to something more true when next she had time to breathe. Taking the child on her knee, Vivayn played with her while finishing the meal, and was rewarded with delighted giggles. The Jutes would amuse themselves by using this mite as a throwing-ball if they came here.

“We must do more than run from them,” Vivayn said with determination. “We must stop them! Listen to me, Hoi; without their boat they are helpless. Ask Prasutagh if he can destroy it. Then they would have to toil out of this marsh on foot!”

Hoi spoke to the Marsh-king in the strange, fluting vocables of their language, and relayed his answer. Vivayn listened with care, for much advice she heard then was outside the range of her short experience. Some, because of Gwlythin’s teaching, she would not have previously believed. The white-haired woman, though skilled in her own forms of sorcery, had been narrow-minded concerning all others.

“Prasutagh is willing to help us,” Vivayn told her companions. “These people know something of magic too, and between us we can make these swinish pirates cease breathing on our shoulders. I believe him, my friends. By tonight we should have cause to rejoice!”

“That’s good hearing, lady,” Junius said. His heavy face radiated sincerity.

Enid said querulously, “Rejoice? With all that has befallen? Lady, you would do better to pray for your sire’s soul at yonder cross than sit down to brew foul and useless magic with that goblin! What good did it do last time?”

“It kept us all alive and free,” Vivayn snapped. “It did more good than your complaints — or Keir’s sword, for that matter! If it hasn’t set the land free and rebuilt Hamo, that is only because I cannot work miracles!”

“Aye,” Keir said. “While I’d like to kill a few Jutes, we all know that if it comes to fighting — now — it will be our last fight. I say we defer that pleasure and trust the lady. Her quick wits got us away from the islet.”

Vivayn felt a rush of warmth at his support, but saw with contemporaneous sadness that even Keir was a warrior first. He wished that he had died in battle with his king and could not wait to rectify that lack. What kind of madness made men love the sheen of a polished weapon so well that they ran to war almost from their cradles? Savage and civilized, they all shared it. She liked Prasutagh’s ways better.

The meal finished, they climbed to one of the domed reed huts, where appurtenances of primitive magic hung on the walls. Vivayn recognized the cured skins of marsh rats, a fish’s skull, net bags holding bunches of herbs and several flint knives, as having purposes arcane rather than homely. Nor did it surprise her that all this existed in the same village as a public cross. Old things always mingled with new; it was the way of life.

They set to work. Prasutagh directed, his weathered, arthritic hands moving in gestures so expressive that Vivayn hardly needed a translation of his words. It reminded her of Hoi’s way of communicating, not astonishingly, since they belonged to the same people. For Vivayn’s part she used her young, nimble, pampered fingers to turn twine, flat reeds, and twigs into an object many a craftsman would have been proud to fashion, with Prasutagh singing over it as she worked. Although she did not understand one word of the song, if his sounds were even truly words, each separate one seemed to burrow and throb in her ears like a live creature.

When they had finished at last, Prasutagh closed his eyes with a sigh. Watching the shut, heavy lids in their bed of wrinkles, Vivayn wondered if he had fallen asleep from weariness as the aged will. Opening her mouth to question Hoi on the matter, she saw him make a gesture cautioning her not to speak. Then it was that Vivayn recognized a wizard’s trance, as with her training she should have done instantly, and colored like any other girl of her age.

At last Prasutagh inhaled a bubbling breath and raised his lids. “They come,” he said, and Hoi scarcely had to translate. “Now we must go.”

The entire village piled into the flat-bottomed boats in moments, taking whatever meager possessions they thought worth the trouble and blithely abandoning the rest. They brought their children and their old people aboard as her own folk too often cherished gold, Vivayn noticed, despite the crotchets and complaints of the lone old woman. Then they poled away from shore, to vanish among the rippling miles of rushes like smoke in a heat haze.

“None too soon,” Cadaran breathed. “The headman was right, for see! They are coming now.”

Out of the blue day appeared the Jutish prow, with overlapping planks sweeping backwards from the stem. When its crew sighted the village, a fierce shout rolled across the water and men rattled their spearheads loudly on shields. Vivayn’s mouth felt dry as she approached the shore, nastily aware of what those warriors might do to her if anger and lust proved stronger than memory of their chieftain’s orders. She raised the fragile object in her hands, remembering how she had made it with Prasutagh, forcing doubts of its efficacy from her mind.

Rushing from behind her, Junius struck it from her grasp with a force that left her arms numb. As it fell, he seized her with a roar and carried her into the water, splashing forward like a fat seal, laughing over her struggles.

“You can’t fool everybody, princess! Now I’ll share the reward for you! Ho, you heroes!” he roared to the oncoming Jutes. “Vivayn’s here! I have the lady Vivayn, and believe me, I’ll drown her if you don’t swear by your gods to split with me! What do you say? There must be one of you who speaks British!”

Vivayn bit him as savagely as she could. Junius dragged her head away, heedless of how his flesh tore between her teeth, and cuffed her semi-conscious. That motion turned him partly towards the shore, whereupon he saw Keir wading out towards him, sword lifted, murder in his eyes. Cadaran was not far behind.

“Oh, no!” Junius called. “Stop there, lads, or she dies and we’re all disappointed! I served Natanleod too long to give up my due reward just because the kingdom has changed hands!”

“You fool, no Jute keeps his word! They’ll kill you!”

“I’ll chance it. Go back!” Junius barked, too short of breath for his usual florid boasts.

The Jutish boat swept closer, and a thrown spear sailed past Keir’s dark head, causing him to lower his sword in perplexity. Junius grinned in triumph.

On the shore, Prasutagh bent laboriously down to retrieve what Vivayn had dropped, a reed model of the Jutish boat. Slowly he twisted it in his knuckly, deformed hands until it broke asunder, watching its larger counterpart all the while.

Strakes parted, splitting away from the vessel’s ribs, gaps wider than a hand opening in two dozen places. Brackish water poured in, gushing. Men howled in consternation before springing to bail with anything handy, but no efforts could stop their craft filling and settling like a shattered bowl.

Junius’s eyes bulged with disbelief as he saw it happen. Keir too was astounded, though in him it mixed with a great and terrible joy. Hurling himself through the water, he slashed at Junius’s side with his weapon. The traitor promptly held Vivayn between his own precious body and the blade. Keir, who had expected nothing else from such a dog, and accordingly fooled him with a feint-stroke, now aborted the feint and chopped ruthlessly into Junius’s exposed shoulder, giving Vivayn a chance to break free of his weakened grip. Still dazed, she slipped under the water while Junius maintained a frantic clutch on her hair, knowing his captive represented his last slim chance to survive. Keir, equally ruthless in desperation, brought down his blade on Junius’s exposed arm, cutting through the muscle. A moment later he was dragging his choking princess shoreward. By the time they reached land she had recovered sufficiently to walk unsupported, although still coughing. Prasutagh welcomed her, his feathers bristling proudly.

“We go now, quickly!” Hoi said. “Two boats left, and the Jutes must have none!”

They pushed away from the marge as Junius came staggering over the wet ground, streaming water and gore, clutching his wounded arm. “Lady!” he howled. “Let me go with you — I was possessed by a demon — the Jutes used sorcery on me —”

The Jutes too were floundering ashore by now. They might build a new boat or raft from bundles of reed, in time, but their chance of capturing Vivayn would not return. They would have to vent their frustrations on Junius.

Staring at his agonized face, Vivayn felt a stab of pity, which passed at once when she remembered his gloating laugh as he had offered her to these same Jutes.

“He betrayed you once,” Keir said harshly. “He’ll do it again.”

However, he didn’t say no. That decision he left to Vivayn, and he was the man who had risked his own head to rescue her. Keir deserved better than a back-stabbing traitor in the same small boat with him — and so, Vivayn thought proudly, did she.

“There are your friends whom you chose!” she cried. “Ask them for help! By God, it was the like of you who left my father to die without aid!”

Then the dam broke within her at last, and she burst into hurtful, tearing sobs as the boat moved through the water, crying out the last traces of girlhood while Cadaran knelt to ward her with a shield and Keir pushed their boat even faster. Junius yelled promises, threats, pleas, and curses after them in an indiscriminate mixture that made less and less sense the more desperate he became. The last thing they heard of him was a wild shriek of terror as the Jutes closed in, but none of them looked back to see his end.

And the reeds hid both boats from the sight of their baffled foes.