The Pendragon's Challenge (The Last Pendragon Saga Book 7) (15 page)

Catrin was shaking from head to foot, but she pulled the halter from her pack and ran towards the horse. “What did he say to you?”

Goronwy had recovered enough to move to the chariot, grab the tracers, and haul it towards her. It was made of gold but was lighter than any mortal-made vehicle and moved with barely a whisper.

He set the yoke around the horse. “Just the name: Efnysien.”

“Manawydan’s half-brother?” Catrin gaped at him, horrified. “May the gods preserve us.”

“Why? Who are these people?” Goronwy looked contrite. “I endeavored to forget everything my mother taught me.”

“Manawydan is the son of Llyr, Lord of the Sea, and the grandson of Beli. Efnysien is his half-brother, and he makes every jealous and malicious younger brother—human or
sidhe
—appear benign by comparison.” Catrin felt a grimness settle on her shoulders. The glow of warmth of Goronwy’s attentions was long gone. “We need to go now!”

“How? Where?” Goronwy took the reins in one hand and helped Catrin into the chariot with the other.

“Just speak the place where you want to be or the name of the one you want to be with and the chariot will take you there.” Catrin gripped the bar in front of her as if they were already riding the winds.

Goronwy didn’t ask how Catrin knew that, which was a good thing since she wasn’t sure where the knowledge had come from. Only that she was right.

 He clicked his tongue at the horse and said simply: “Cade.”

Chapter Seventeen

Rhiann

R
hiann had been in this situation before, and she wasn’t any happier about it than she’d been the last time they’d faced unreasonable odds and had no choice but to stand and fight. Side-by-side with Hywel, she was loosing arrows into the mass of Northumbrians running towards them, though most of the arrows stuck harmlessly in the shields that the Northumbrians held in front of them.

They had no help from Penda’s men either. Between when the Northumbrians started towards them and now, all the rest of the archers had disappeared from the walls. In fact, a quick glance around showed Rhiann that the two of them were alone on the northern wall. They had intended to hold off Oswin’s men to give Penda’s army a chance to retreat, but Cade had never intended that the only ones left defending Chester were Welsh.

“It’s time to go, Rhiann.” Cade appeared between them, as if out of thin air. “I’ve ordered the rest of our men to the tunnel.”

Rhiann snorted her disgust in a very unqueenly fashion. “And leave you two to face death alone? I already agreed that I wouldn’t. Besides—” in between arrows, she jerked her head to indicate the street behind them, “—it’s too late.”

Hywel growled in his best imitation of Bedwyr. “Thanks, Penda, for your help.”

Cade swore, uncharacteristically loud and long. The city was lost before they’d begun to defend it. Northumbrians were already coming over the eastern wall. A horde of them raced for the inside of the gatehouse tunnel, prepared to open the gates to the army crossing the field to the north.

Rhiann returned her gaze to the men coming towards them. They had few bowmen, so she wasn’t worried about her exposure on the wall, but the situation was hopeless.

Then Cade swooped out his arms like a falcon in flight. In a moment, all three of them were sheltering beneath his enveloping mantle. “Move!” He held on to their arms and hustled them west along the wall-walk. Chester’s walls had been constructed such that a guardhouse lay every fifty yards along them, and the companions ran through two without stopping until they reached the northwestern, more isolated section of the city. In order to descend a ladder to the street, Rhiann and Hywel had to leave the protective covering of the cloak and become visible again, but once they were on the ground, Cade gathered them to him again.

“How are we going to escape this madness?” Hywel said.

“We’ll find a way—” Cade broke off as a company of twenty Saxons came loping down the street towards them. The small company included both Northumbrians and Mercians.

“What is going on?” Rhiann breathed out the words.

Hywel gaped at the soldiers. “In the name of—” he broke off, seemingly thinking better of invoking whatever god or saint had been in his mind. If they’d learned anything in the months with Cade, it was to be careful of calling upon the
sidhe
.

The Saxon leader had his hand above his head, emphasizing with finger pointing how he wanted the company to separate.

“They’re searching house-to-house,” Hywel said. “Are they looking for the dish?”

Cade’s laugh was heavy with irony. “No. They’re looking for me.”

Rhiann bent her head, an ache forming in her belly. “Penda’s invitation to Chester was a trap all along,”

“It was.” Now that the truth was out, Cade was matter-of-fact. He dragged them both around the corner of a street and across it to a ladder propped against the western wall of the city. “Quick—up to the wall-walk again before they see us.”

Hywel came out from underneath the cloak first, followed by Rhiann. Cade sprang up the ladder at her heels and reached the top only a moment after she did. A heartbeat later, they were all touching Cade again and invisible to the searching soldiers on the street.

They still needed a way out, however, sooner rather than later. Rhiann went to the nearest crenel and looked down through it. The wall was twenty feet above the ground, which was too far for Rhiann or Hywel to jump, though Cade had easily made jumps of similar height.

“They’ll give up looking eventually. We can simply wait until they’re drunk tonight,” Hywel said, “and leave by an unattended gate.”

Cade’s expression was fierce. “We would live, but our men would be dead by the time we escaped. They’ve gone through the tunnel with Peada. They may be fierce, but they’re too few and cannot withstand a hundred or more.”

At Cade’s frank assessment, the ache in Rhiann’s stomach worsened, and she felt tears pricking the corners of her eyes. She’d grown used to Cade’s ability to get them out of any situation, no matter how dire.

Then a crack of lightning split the night, and Rhiann reeled at the burst of energy expelled from it. Not even a heartbeat later, a golden chariot pulled by a coal-black horse rocketed through a rent in the sky and came to a halt in front of them, hovering thirty feet in the air, just outside Chester’s wall.

Goronwy grinned from the driver’s platform. “Seriously, do I have to do everything myself?”

The three companions gaped at him, and then Catrin leaned backwards from where she’d been hidden from their view by Goronwy’s bulk. “Hurry, get on! We have no idea how this thing really works!”

“How were you able even to see us?” Hywel climbed into the crenel in front of him, leapt across the six feet of space between the wall and the chariot, and landed with a thump on the back behind Goronwy.

Catrin caught his arm. “I’m guessing that it’s because the mantle is a Treasure, and so is the chariot.” Then she waved to Cade and Rhiann that they should jump too.

Cade held Rhiann’s waist in a tight grip, and they jumped together, landing hard on the platform, such that the chariot shuddered. It held, however, and Goronwy glanced back. “I’m not even going to ask what you were doing at Chester, so I’ll just ask where we should go now?”

“Bedwyr is at the western entrance to a tunnel that runs from the city, under the Dee, to an abandoned guard tower on the other side,” Cade said. “Penda lured me into a trap, and I’m afraid that Bedwyr has been caught in it even more than I.”

“Worse?” Goronwy laughed, and instead of mockery, his voice was full of joy—and a touch of glee. “Then I suppose we’d better hurry.”

Chapter Eighteen

Bedwyr

B
edwyr had long since begun to regret every moment of this day. Cade’s men had been interspersed among Peada’s as they’d traveled through the tunnel, but as each had appeared in the doorway, with a few terse words he’d directed them away from the exit and towards the right side of the small clearing, near the trees that grew beside the river.

While the Welsh were grossly outnumbered— once Dafydd and Angharad rode away, they’d been left with fewer than twenty men—Bedwyr wanted them to situate themselves in some kind of defensible formation. He’d never trusted Penda or Peada, and this moment didn’t seem to be a good time to start. More importantly, his warrior’s instincts told him that something wasn’t right about what was happening here—neither the numbers of Saxons coming through the tunnel nor the way they seemed to be in less of a hurry than they should have been. They were relaxed, as if they didn’t have an army of Oswin’s men breathing down their necks.

Then Penda himself appeared, not last as he’d promised, and not with Cade and Bedwyr’s other companions.

And he wasn’t taking no for an answer.

“Put down your weapons!” The King of Mercia wore a superior smile, and his eyes gleamed. Bedwyr’s men had their backs to the river. While some could swim, most could not, and Bedwyr wouldn’t leave any men behind. Fortunately, Penda’s lack of bowmen meant that if he was going to fight Bedwyr and his men, it was going to be sword on sword, so Penda was going to lose men in the process too.

Bedwyr gripped his sword tighter in his fist. His palms were sweaty, but he’d roughed up the leather grip so it didn’t slip in his hand. “No.” He could no more surrender to Penda than he could sprout wings and fly. He prayed that his wife would forgive him for dying so soon into their marriage—and that Hywel would forgive him for not seeing the danger sooner.

“We’re with you, Bedwyr.” The voice came softly from behind him—it was one of the younger men in Cade’s company, though since he’d lived through the battle at Caer Fawr, he was far older than his years.

Bedwyr crouched, his sword in his right hand and a knife in his left. He was sorry now that he hadn’t kept the dish with him. It was said to grant the bearer every wish—a double-edged blade for certain, and one to be used only at the last end of need. But that’s what this had become.

So instead of praying for deliverance, he did what every good soldier would do in his position: he endeavored to stall. “So this was a trap all along? You never meant to ally with King Cadwaladr?”

“Oswin gave me one chance to avert the assault: give him my nephew.” Penda scoffed. “I couldn’t believe my luck when I saw his banner this morning. He walked right into my hands.”

“But he had said he wasn’t coming.” Bedwyr was genuinely confused. “With Oswin on your doorstep, what was your plan?”

Penda shrugged. “Capturing Cade had been a long shot from the start. Without him, nothing changed, and I was forced to mount a defense.”

“But then you did have Cade, and Oswin still attacked.”

From over to the right, Peada sneered at Bedwyr. “That was for show, for your king’s benefit.”

“How did you let Oswin know that Cade was here?”

“As soon as you entered the city, I rode out to tell him.” Peada spoke as if nothing could be more obvious. Bedwyr recalled that Peada hadn’t been in the hall when they’d arrived, and it had been he who brought the news of Oswin’s imminent attack.

“You lost men!” Bedwyr was irate. “So did he!”

“I lost many fewer than I would have.” Penda said. “Last chance.”

Bedwyr was opening his mouth to deny Penda again when Hywel’s voice came low in his ear, speaking from underneath the mantle, since nobody else seemed to know he was there. “I always knew Penda was a snake, but I’m hurt that you almost started this feast without me.”

Bedwyr blinked and tried not let his surprise and relief show on his face. His eyes still fixed on Penda, he muttered out of the side of his mouth in Welsh. “Took you long enough. I found the Treasure.”

“Is it safe?”

“Yes, for now. I say we leave it where it is. Meanwhile, I’m hoping you have a plan.”

“Oh, yes.” Hywel gave a low laugh. “Cade is the plan.”

Then, as if responding to Hywel’s words, though he couldn’t have heard them at that distance, Cade strode out of the woods to the west. Sword unsheathed, he cut a path through Penda’s men without even bloodying its tip. Such was the power emanating from him that the Mercians fell back whether or not they wanted to. Peada stood his ground the longest, but even he retreated from Cade’s contained might.

Hywel remained an invisible presence at Bedwyr shoulder, ready to fight if needed, though Bedwyr was feeling much more cheerful all of a sudden about whether or not fighting would be necessary.

Cade halted five paces in front of Bedwyr, facing Penda. “My men and I are leaving now.”

Penda sneered. “How? You are outnumbered.”

Cade raised his sword such that it pointed upwards, kissed the hilt, and then dropped the tip so it pointed straight at Penda. “You said yourself that Caledfwlch and Dyrnwyn alone could hold Chester. While you see here only Caledfwlch, are you ready to put the issue to a test?”

Earlier, Penda’s face had been full of glee, but now he glowered at Cade, though he still didn’t give way. Then a flaming arrow landed a foot in front of him, causing him to step back involuntarily. The arrow blazed between him and Cade, despite the rain that continued to fall. Bedwyr looked upwards to his left to see Rhiann perched on the top of the mound upon which the guard tower had once stood.

Behind him, the rest of Cade’s men shifted into ready stances for fighting. They were an elite force, better trained than most of Penda’s men and seasoned by the battles they’d fought at Cade’s side. They’d lost friends at Caer Fawr, and to a man they would not go down now without taking many Mercians with them.

Penda knew it, but he was still warring with himself. His men grossly outnumbered Cade’s, and he longed for the kind of power Cade wielded just by existing. In that moment, Bedwyr experienced an uncomfortable flash of prescience, which told him that Penda had, in fact, dreamed of power, which was how Mabon had seduced him before Caer Fawr. Penda had hoped to take Caledfwlch and the mantle for himself—along with whatever other Treasures he could salvage from the fallen bodies of Cade’s men. But he truly didn’t want to put Caledfwlch or Cade to the test. Penda had seen the weapon in action at Caer Fawr, and time and distance had not dimmed the memory.