The Winter Prince Read online

  “Let go!” Lleu cried in a high voice, and when Agravain did not, Lleu suddenly and unexpectedly tumbled to the ground and rolled out of his reach.

  “Get out of there,” Goewin shouted. “He’s beaten you.”

  Agravain tossed his long, burnished braid pridefully over his shoulder and came away, to slump in silent anger next to his brothers against the stone wall.

  Then it was Lleu and I, alone, locked together in silent, furious intensity. The old bitter resentment raged through me: I was stronger and taller and more experienced than Lleu, and I knew I could not win. He must defeat me before you and all your young sons. I fought with passionate disregard for our difference in size, knowing he was my better, and that my strength was my only advantage. But Lleu slipped out of my range, dodged my blows and parried with a ferocity and determination fully equal to my attack. When Lleu at last twisted in underneath my guard and pressed the wooden blade agains K bl with t my throat, I could not bear to prolong this competition. I knelt before him in formal surrender, as before a judge or an executioner, with head bowed and neck bared.

  “Oh, well done!” Gareth breathed.

  “Well done,” you echoed.

  Lleu let fall his sword. He offered me his hand to help me rise;

  I took it and got slowly to my feet. Such a performance, both of us so calm and polite! But his hands trembled, the black hair he pushed back from his forehead was damp, and his face was wan. It had been something more than a game.

  VI

  The Running of the Deer

  I DO NOT LIKE the sword. It is clumsy and imprecise, designed for haphazard damage, for total and purposeless destruction. With bow and arrow the kill is clean and swift: That is the weapon of the hunter, not the warrior, the one who kills beast, not man, who kills for survival, not power. Try bringing down a hart, or a hare, or a swan, with a sword.

  I tell this over to myself as a litany, so to excuse the delight I draw from the chase, the exhilaration and abandon that Lleu calls bloodthirst. After you came to Camlan, to hunt was all my solace or pleasure. I most often went alone, at my ease in the deep, green forest south of Camlan, not even expected to return at night those times I was not needed in the mines. On days when I must work I could at least stalk rabbit and partridge through the twisted trees clinging to the red sandstone of the Edge. I carried a bow with me always, those days.

  So it was one morning when Goewin came to my room early and asked, “Will you be hunting on the Edge today?” She knew, as all Camlan knew, how I passed my spare hours.

  “I had not meant to,” I answered briefly, my hands busy with knife and horn and bowstring. “Why?”

  “Lleu and the cousins are planning to play some kind of game there,” she said, sitting at my desk and watching me stock my quiver. “They’ll be all over chasing and hiding from each other. I think they’re a lot of idiots, but I wouldn’t want you to mistake one of them for a wild pig and stick an arrow through somebody’s throat.”

  That made me laugh. “What are they doing that you aren’t with them?”

  “They’re playing out a hunt. Not a real one. They’ll take some hounds, but no bows or spears.”

  She was still frowning. I asked, “What are they hunting, then, that you so fiercely disapprove?”

  With the tip of a finger the gentle princess crushed a small and shining insect that was moving across my desk, and flicked it through the open window. “Lleu.”

  “I hope he proves a better quarry than he is a hunter,” I said.

  She gave a short, explosive gasp of laughter. “Ih! Well, he knows the Edge better than the cousins do. He can hide from them even if he can’t outrun them. That’s why they need the hounds.” She stood up to leave, and finished, “I just wanted to warn you.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  But she waited at the door and did not go. “If Lleu escapes them and returns to the Queen’s Garden by sunset without being caught, he wins. I won’t join in something so childish. The prince of Britain!” She paused. “ N be;Oh, well.”

  “Childish, no,” I said. “Not the Wild Hunt.”

  Goewin laughed. “Gwyn-ap-Nudd hounding the souls of the dead across the sky? Morgause’s children aren’t that bad.”

  “No.” I laughed with her. “But in the south they used to play out the Wild Hunt in earnest, ending with the chosen victim ritually slaughtered on his own threshold. They still do it in some places, only now the killing is mimicked.”

  “God help us,” Goewin said grimly. “I hope our fair cousins don’t know about that.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “It’s as well you’re not playing,” she said as she turned to go. I stood looking after her with bow in hand, thinking that to follow Lleu would be sport indeed. And then the thought, Why should I not? I would not interrupt his game; but I would watch.

  I challenged myself to guess what Lleu would do. His cousins must let him start first, so that he might have an initial hope of eluding them; I thought he might head south on the track through the beech woods that leads to the fisheries. The forest there was heavy with the heat of August, sunlight filtering green and gold through the thick leaves. I tethered my horse well off the track where it was screened by half grown birch, and then I hid among the ferns to watch for Lleu. To lie there was pleasant, knowing that I waited only for my brother, and that I need not be alert for a chase. The loam forest floor was cool against my chest and palms, piebald with spots of sunlight that were hot on my back. And as I lay half dreaming so, a doe stepped from the tall undergrowth across the path, and presently another joined it. I lay breathing the warm scent of fern, my mind empty of anything but the grazing deer, for what seemed a measureless space of time.

  Lleu appeared at last, moving easily and almost noiselessly along the path, listening and careful. He wore short leather trousers and a linen shirt, and seemed somehow to be only another kind of wild forest creature. He did not even carry a hunting knife. He stopped when he saw the deer, as still as I, and watched. They might have even been aware of him, but did not run. My left hand lay across the shaft of my bow, but still; I closed the fingers of my right hand upon a small twig, and threw it gently past the head of the closer deer. Both their heads went up; they eyed Lleu a brief moment in recognition of his unwanted presence, and then bolted back into the forest. Lleu called softly after them: “Run swiftly, sisters.”

  I watched him pass and let him go. Then I got to my feet, bound my hair out of my face, and went back to the horse. I waited long enough to give Lleu a fair edge, then followed after him. Oh, he moves lightly enough, but at first it was not difficult to track him; he could not help but leave an occasional sandal print in the soft earth, or at least broken branches and trampled ferns. Yet I lost him. He passed the fisheries and came back indirectly, familiar and more at ease on his own ground than I had expected. The southern end of the lake is grown over with spindly trees and dense reeds; the land there becomes marshy and uncertain. By moving quickly from clump of grass to hummock of turf it is possible to make one’s way to the island in the center of the lake, though it appears unattainable from the shore. Cautiously and quietly, Lleu must have picked his way through the bog until he reached the firm ground of the island. Once there, he could lie flat underneath the thorny blackberry canes and wait till sunset, gazing at the sky through the tangle of briars and green leaves, listening to the marsh birds callin S biandg and insects humming. I thought with scorn, Easy enough to outwit his cousins if he chooses to hide on Glass Island all day. So I turned my attention back to the forest and to my own hunting, and left Lleu to his vigil.

  I had an easy day. I rode slowly, lulled by solitude and the stillness of the forest. I saw no more deer, and though I caught two small partridges, the day seemed to be passing without incident. I struck back toward Elder Field and was nearing the foot of the bare stone cliff that is the highest point of the Edge when I heard Agravain’s voice raised in a shout of discovery, followed by the unm
istakable pandemonium of dogs chasing through thick woodland. I rode toward the noise, drawn. When I came nearer, I found Lleu engaged in a heated confrontation at the bottom of the cliff: Agravain and Gaheris had caught him, and Agravain was holding him pinned against the red stone, though as I watched Lleu managed to wrench himself out of his cousin’s grip. But he was cornered. Unable to go anywhere else, surely without thinking, he began to climb the cliffside.

  Agravain half tore one of the sleeves from Lleu’s shirt in his effort to pull him back; but Lleu kicked downward at him sharply, striking him on the chin and then the shoulder. Agravain fell backward and slid, but Lleu still climbed, finding footholds and handholds instinctively. He must be tearing his palms to shreds, but he was startlingly secure on the cliff face. And Agravain, sportsman that he is, snatched up a stone the size of an egg and hurled it at Lleu. He missed, but came deadly close, and the rock wall next to one of Lleu’s feet crumbled away in sharp spalls and shards of stone. Lleu yelled, “Don’t—no!” He shouted a name at random.

  His cousin let fly another missile and roared, “Agravain! Learn it, you pompous imbecile!”

  Rock slammed into the cliffside inches from one of Lleu’s hands. He clung to cracks in the sheer sandstone, thirty feet above the ground, and cried, “Agravain, stop it!”

  Gaheris made a feeble attempt to restrain his brother, but Agravain shook him off. I swung down from my horse and caught hold of Agravain’s arm even as he drew it back for a third shot. He turned in fury, but went scarlet and shamefaced when he saw who halted him. Lleu, above us, could do nothing but continue climbing. He gained a narrow ledge halfway up the cliff, barely as wide as his body, and hauled himself along it till he lay with his face turned to the rock wall.

  “What should I do?” Agravain stammered in dismay, searching my face for guidance.

  “Think,” I said, and let go of his wrist. He and Gaheris stood silent for a moment or two, flushed with embarrassment. At last Agravain called to Lleu, “My lord, you’re not hurt?”

  Lleu looked down. Agravain stuttered on, “My lord, I’m sorry—I didn’t think. You’d kicked me—I was too angry to think. You’re not hurt, are you?” I managed not to laugh at his clumsy apology.

  “I’m fine,” Lleu said slowly. “No, I’m not hurt. Well met, Medraut.”

  “The pleasure is mine,” I answered spontaneously.

  “Prince—,” Gaheris began uncertainly, and Agravain said again, “My lord—”

  Their formal humility seemed to steady Lleu. “It’s all right,” he said; and paused for a moment, then added sharply, “But, Gaheris, you might act with a little more speed and assurance next time. And you, Agravain: Stop Sgrad for a m to think.” His mastery of their names was suddenly flawless.

  “Yes, my lord,” Gaheris said in a low voice. Agravain said nothing. He winced as though he had been struck.

  “Never mind now,” Lleu said. “Begin again.” He lowered himself off the ledge and spidered sideways until he reached more level ground. I made certain that Agravain and Gaheris gave their cousin a period of grace in which to get clear of them, their forfeit for such stupidity. Lleu ran east, toward home; we waited till the leaves quivering behind him were still, then left each other.

  It was hot. After I was alone once more the afternoon was silent, the gold-gilt air heavy and humming with insects. I too rode eastward, but this time without any real aim. I let the horse pick its own way along the sandstone screes. The rowan was ripening in handfuls of flaming orange, and early blackberries were beginning to cluster among the white flowers. In the shade of dark holly leaves I came upon the stone trough of the Holy Well and stopped to drink and dash spring water over my face and hair. Then, as I stood and let the cold run down my back, on the hillside below I caught the unmistakable flash of tall red flank and broad spreading antler. Stillness and drowsiness fell away, and I turned with all my being to the hunt, and a quarry equal to my pursuit.

  Plunging heedless through briar and sharp, rattling holly, I set my horse racing down the hillside after the stag. It could not shake me; I had done so little all day that the horse was still fresh. Low on the Edge, where the underbrush goes from scrub trees to dense fern, I began to close in. Then, unexpectedly, the stag veered to avoid a slight, dark figure that appeared without warning ahead of it. Now, of all moments, Lleu crossed my path: he stumbled to his feet from the ferns where he had thrown himself to avoid being trampled by the stag pursued, then crashed back down on one knee as I followed hard upon the stag. And this time he would have been crushed but for my own desperate and lightning drag on the reins, which nearly threw me as the horse abruptly turned from the track and stopped short.

  Blind anger coursed through me for a moment. We were both suddenly frustrated—I had lost my prey, Lleu had his path blocked. He knelt frozen on one knee, ragged, unaccountably barefoot, filthy and torn; I sat my dancing, snorting horse with bow in hand. Lleu’s eyes had the mute and desperate look of a hunted creature in flight. Of course: I remembered the game. And so I shaped my vengeance for the loss of a deer, and for Lleu’s wooden sword held at my throat. I said hoarsely, “You’re quarry still?”

  He nodded, speechless.

  “Then I’ve lost none,” I said, and let fly an arrow to tear through a dangling shred of his sleeve. It caught there, and hung.

  He stared at it in astonishment, then reached one hand to pull it free and put the other hand down to push himself upright. And straight I set another arrow quivering in the ground in the inch of space between his fingers and his bare foot.

  This was an even better challenge than the stag, and more dangerous. I concentrated my entire being on my hands, aware that I must strike with perfect and absolute precision.

  “Don’t move,” I said.

  Lleu did not move. He crouched there, almost under the hooves of my horse, and I sent another arrow skimming over his hair. Wild-eyed, he cried in a whisper, “If you should miss!”

  “I don’t!” I cried back at him, and shot another arrow past his head that went so close the f So custletching grazed his ear. “I never miss!”

  “Stop shooting at me!” Lleu screamed. He watched me fit another arrow to my bow and sobbed, “You’re wasting arrows!”

  I shot into the arch his forefinger and thumb made where they rested against the ground. “It’s worth it,” I said fervently, and pulled another arrow from my quiver. Still and white as a statue of alabaster, Lleu hissed wordlessly at me through clenched teeth, like a cat.

  It made me drop the arrow with a shout of laughter. “Hunter turns quarry,” I gasped, unable to stop laughing, “man turns beast. Get up, you idiot.”

  Lleu rose slowly. Two arrows stood in the earth between his bare, dusty, scratched feet, and a third hung from his torn sleeve. “I won’t run from you,” he said in a low voice. “I don’t care if they do catch me. But I won’t let you think you frighten me.”

  “If you could see how white you are,” I said weakly, wiping my eyes with the back of one hand.

  “It’s not so funny,” he said through his teeth. “It’s not funny at all.”

  “I apologize for laughing then,” I said. “I haven’t laughed as much in years.”

  “If ever,” Lleu said stonily. His color was returning, and anger replacing fear.

  “Why did you leave Glass Island?” I asked.

  “I was bored, and it seemed like cheating—no one had any idea where I was.” He stared at me. “You tracked me there? Then you have been—” He stopped, and repeated fiercely, “I won’t run from you.”

  I said, “Little lord, I won’t make you run from me. You can run from your cousins.” Then I raised my hunting horn and sounded a long call. “Are you fit enough to outrun them all the way to Camlan?”

  “Damn you!” Lleu cried. “Damn you, Medraut! I’ve been running all afternoon!” He pushed past my horse, but after going several paces turned back to look at me. I laughed and blew another horn call. He tore down the slope away from
me.

  I followed in his wake at a leisurely pace, triumphant and exhausted by the terrible hairline precision of those five wasted arrows. What did it matter to me if Lleu managed to reach the Queen’s Garden ahead of his cousins? He did outrun them, after all: he must. He was fully aware that he had lost to me and was determined not to lose to them.

  The game should have ended there.

  But during the course of the day Lleu had left his youngest cousin bound hand and foot somewhere on the Edge, and, thoughtless idiot that he was, he had forgotten. Gareth is best natured of any of your boys, and when we found him he considered himself to have been fairly beaten; this despite having been trussed up all afternoon with Lleu’s sandal straps.

  You were not so forgiving.

  That evening at supper all four of your boys were still talking of the day’s game, and you listened to them with amused and indulgent laughter. But as we were rising to leave the meal you drew Lleu aside and said to him softly, “But, my prince, you won’t be so neglectful of my youngest child again, will you?”

  “Of course not, my lady,” Lleu said readily. “Gareth wasn’t ever in any danger, th Sny >

  And you to him: “Perhaps you ought to be punished.”

  “That is for my father to decide,” Lleu answered, purposefully regal, “not you, Aunt.”

  “I will suggest it to your father,” you said directly to Lleu, though Artos himself sat by, watching your performance with silent contempt.