Brother Cadfael 18: The Summer of the Danes

the saltings there would, if luck held, be scrub growth that would give cover to a few skilled and silent men moving inland. Nor would they have far to go. Owain's encampment must span the waist of the peninsula. Even at its narrowest point it might be as much as a mile across, but he would have pickets on either shore. Fewer and less watchful, perhaps, on the bay shore, since attack by ship was unlikely that way. Otir's larger vessels would not attempt to thread the shoals. The Welsh would be concentrating their watch on the sea to westward.
    Turcaill was whistling to himself, very softly and contentedly, as he scanned a sky just deepening into dusk. Two hours yet before they could set out, and with the evening clouds had gathered lightly over the heavens, a grey veil, not threatening rain, but promising cover against too bright a night. From his outer anchorage he would have to make a detour round the bar of shingle to the mouth of the river to reach the clear channel, but that would add only some quarter of an hour to the journey. Well before midnight, he decided blithely, we can embark.
    He was still happily whistling when he turned back to return to the heart of the camp and consider on the details of his expedition. And there confronting him was Heledd, coming down from the ridge with her long, springy stride, the dark mane of her hair swaying about her shoulders in the breeze that had quickened with evening, bringing the covering of cloud. Every encounter between them was in some sense a confrontation, bringing with it a racing of the blood on both sides, curiously pleasurable.
    "What are you doing here?" he asked, the whistle breaking off short. "Were you thinking of escaping across the sands?" He was mocking her, as always.
    "I followed you," she said simply. "Straight from Otir's tent, and off with you this way, and eyeing the sky and the tide and that snake-ship of yours. I was curious."
    "The first time ever you were curious about me or anything I did," he said cheerfully. "Why now?"
    "Because suddenly I see you head-down on a hunt, and I cannot but wonder what mischief you're about this time."
    "No mischief," said Turcaill. "Why should there be?" He was regarding her, as they walked back slowly together, with somewhat narrower attention than he gave to their usual easy skirmishing, for it seemed to him that she was at least half serious in her probing, even in some way anxious. Here in her captivity, between two armed camps, a solitary woman might well scent mischief, the killing kind, in every move, and fear for her own people.
    "I am not a fool," said Heledd impatiently. "I know as well as you do that Otir is not going to let Cadwaladr's treason go unavenged, nor let his fee slip through his fingers. He's no such man! All this day he and all his chiefs have had their heads together over the next move, and now suddenly you come bursting out shining with the awful delight you fool men feel in plunging headfirst into a fight, and you try to tell me there's nothing in the wind. No mischief!"
    "None that need trouble you," he assured her. "Otir has no quarrel with Owain or any of Owain's host, they have cast off Cadwaladr to untie his own knots and pay his own debts, why should we want to provoke worse? If the promised price is paid, we shall be off to sea and trouble you no more."
    "A good riddance that will be," said Heledd sharply. "But why should I trust you and your fellows to manage things so well? It needs only one chance wounding or killing, and there'll be blazing warfare, and a great slaughter."
    "And since you are so sure I'm deep in this mischief you foresee..."
    "The very instrument of it," she said vehemently.
    "Then can you not trust me to bring it to a good end?" He was laughing at her again, but with a degree of almost apprehensive delicacy.
    "You least of all," she said with vicious certainty. "I know you, you have a lust after danger, there's nothing so foolhardy but you would dare it, and bring down everything in a bloody battle on all of us."
    "And you, being a good Welshwoman," said Turcaill, wryly smiling, "fear for your Gwynedd, and all those men of Owain's host camped there barely a mile from us."
    "I have a bridegroom among them," she reminded him smartly, and set her teeth with a snap.
    "So you have. I will not forget your bridegroom," Turcaill promised, grinning. "At every step I take, I will think on your Ieuan ab Ifor, and draw in my hand from any stroke that may bring him into