After only a little way I had to stop and rest in exhaustion. I cannot do this, I thought despairingly, it is like trying to carry a young buck in my arms. Idiot, I cursed myself then; you who call yourself a huntsman, would you carry a buck in your arms? After that I slung him over my shoulders. He hardly noticed. He slept as deeply as if he had been drugged.
Not long before dark I was arrested by the sound of a horse behind us, out of sight among the trees but coming closer at a gallop. I had no time to prepare myself against this unknown rider, no time to wake Lleu enough that he could be set on his feet. I turned to face whatever was coming, standing with straight defiance, for all that I bore Lleu on my back. I would not let myself consider how spent I was. I stood waiting, watching the rider arrive in a storm of flying hooves and snow.
It was Goewin. She must have known she was coming upon me even before she had seen me; she sat her horse with a spear balanced under one arm, as if she were leading an army into battle. She pulled her horse to a sudden and startling halt, sending up another burst of flying snow. Clumps of it settled in my hair, and in the folds of the cloak wrapped about Lleu.
“We saw your smoke,” she said. “The blankets youe b and left smoldering there made a cloud black as a tunnel. Did you think no one would notice? What a place to light a fire, if you were trying to go unseen! Another half mile and you’d have been at the summit of Shining Ridge, where the beacons are lit.” She spoke in hard, clean anger, controlled.
“What makes you sure I meant to go unseen?” I said faintly.
“Agravain said you planned to kill the prince yourself,” Goewin said, with no trace of fear in her voice, though Lleu hung still and pale over my shoulders. “I do not trust Agravain so far as I can push him, but you have betrayed my trust as well. You could—you could have at any time—arranged Lleu’s death so that it looked like accident, or someone else’s fault.” Still she covered her fear. “Have you?”
“No,” I said. “He sleeps only.” I said then, “Agravain? Agravain returned to Camlan?”
“He arrived early this morning,” Goewin answered. “He feared his mother’s wrath more than the king’s. And he told us all.” Her hard, clear voice never faltered or changed pitch. She gazed down at me with imperious cold dark eyes. “We went out searching when he arrived, I and my father and Caius. We were going to make Agravain take us back to the place where he left you, but we saw your smoke and found your camp. You tell me, my lord brother, what we were to think: shreds of Lleu’s cloak crumbling to ashes in that stinking, smoking pile of debris, blood in the snow, our satchels and bags abandoned there.”
“The blood was mine,” I said, shifting Lleu’s weight. “You see.” I held my bandaged hand away from his body.
The air rang with hoofbeats as Goewin’s companions caught up with her. “Hai!” she called to them, raising her spear as a standard. “They are here.” Artos and Caius rode into our company, with Agra vain between them. “Lleu!” Artos cried, swinging down from his horse, and Caius leveled a spear at me.
“He’s alive,” Goewin said coldly. “Stand back.” Not one of them, not the high king himself, stepped forward to disobey her command.
“Well, Medraut, there were two sets of footprints,” Goewin said. “We knew you had not killed him. We followed to where the snow was marked as though someone had lain there, and after that there were only your prints. I could not think what you had done to Lleu, though I knew you must be carrying him—there was no blood, no body.”
She had led them here. She was still their leader.
Her voice was calm, but she spoke through clenched teeth. “What have you done to him?”
It was I who faltered. I opened my mouth to speak, hesitated, and managed at last to whisper hoarsely, “I won’t say. I can’t tell you.”
She slid from her horse, her spear tilted at me. “You can’t tell me—can he? Will he? Dear God! I should—” Of a sudden she hit me furiously across my shins with the butt of her spear. I staggered abruptly to my knees.
Artos stepped forward and put a cautionary hand on Goewin’s shoulder, but gave no word of reprimand. I clung to Lleu, who raised his head wearily, awakened by the sudden jolt.
“Put him down,” Goewin said. Lleu stared at her and at his father, unbelieving, used to being tricked by what he saw. “Put him down!” Goewi&#xx201D; Gon cried again, her spear threatening. I gently set Lleu on his feet. He stood next to me a moment, balancing himself with one unsteady hand lightly resting on my shoulder; then he carefully crossed to stand beside his father. I faced Goewin, on my knees in the snow before her.
“You—you don’t even obey your precious mother!” Goewin said. “Whom do you serve—yourself? Some forgotten god of darkness?” And then with the staff of her spear she struck a tremendous blow to the side of my head. I reeled, falling sideways into the snow with all my weight against my wounded hand, and could not stifle a sharp cry of real pain. I said nothing, only raised my head a little to watch for the next attack; neither defiant nor afraid, resigned, fully aware of what she meant to do. But when Goewin drew back for another blow Lleu said suddenly, “Don’t.”
I turned my gaze on Lleu, wondering.
“He hasn’t hurt me,” Lleu said.
“He might yet,” Goewin said coldly.
“He won’t,” Lleu said. “You will kill him if you go on. There will be nothing won, nothing gained. You’ll break yourself, you’ll break us all, just as Morgause would have it. Oh, don’t be an idiot, Goewin, he is no traitor.”
“Oh, is he not!”
Lleu said calmly, “I am safe, I am whole: Don’t destroy me now.”
“Are you so bound to him?” Goewin sneered. “As he is to his mother?”
“I am not bound to anyone,” Lleu said readily. “But he is, after all, our brother.”
“Ai, Bright One,” Artos said. He took the boy by the shoulders so that they could see each other and then embraced him: they stood trembling in each other’s arms, both of them close to tears. Artos said, “He has changed you. He has done it.”