Brother Cadfael 18: The Summer of the Danes

alive, and muttering curses. And we'd best be aboard before they find he's missing and come looking for him."
    "And the other one?" Leif ventured to ask softly, as they wound their way back from cover to cover towards the beach and the saltings. "What have you done with him?"
    "Left him to his rest," said Turcaill.
    "You said no killing!"
    "And there's been none. Not a scratch on him, you can be easy. Owain has no cause for feud against us more than he had from the moment we set foot on his soil."
    "And we still don't know," marvelled Leif, padding steadily along beside him into the moist fringe left by the receding tide, "who the other one was, and what he was doing there. You may yet wish you'd secured him while you could."
    "We came for one, and we're taking back one. All we wanted and needed," said Turcaill.
    The crew left aboard reached to hoist Cadwaladr over into the well between the benches, and help their fellows after. The steersman leaned upon his heavy steer board, the inshore rowers thrust off with their oars, poling the little ship quite lightly and smoothly back along the furrow she had ploughed in the sand, until she rode clear and lifted joyously into the ebb of the tide.
    Before dawn they delivered their prize, with some pride, to an Otir who had just roused from sleep, but came bright-eyed and content to the encounter. Cadwaladr emerged from his stifling wrappings flushed and tousled and viciously enraged, but containing his bitter fury within an embattled silence.
    "Had you trouble by the way?" asked Otir, eyeing his prisoner with shrewd satisfaction. Unmarked, unblooded, extracted from among his followers without trampling his formidable brother's toes, or harming any other soul. A mission very neatly accomplished, and one that should be made to show a profit.
    "None," said Turcaill. "The man had prepared his own fall, withdrawing himself so to the very rim, and planting a man of his own on guard. Not for nothing! I fancy he has been looking for word from his old lands, and made shift to keep a door open. For I doubt he'll get any sympathy from Owain, or expects any."
    At that Cadwaladr did open his mouth, unlocking his set teeth with an effort, for it was doubtful if he himself quite believed what he was about to say. "You misread the strength of the Welsh blood-tie. Brother will hold by brother. You have brought Owain down on you with all his host, and so you will discover."
    "As brother held by brother when you came hiring Dublin men to threaten your brother with warfare," said Otir, and laughed briefly and harshly.
    "You will see," said Cadwaladr hotly, "what Owain will venture for my sake."
    "So we shall, and so will you. I doubt you'll find less comfort in it than we shall. He has given both you and me fair notice that your quarrel is not his quarrel, and you must pay your own score. And so you shall," said Otir with glossy satisfaction, "before you set foot again outside this camp. I have you, and I'll keep you until you pay me what you promised. Every coin, every calf, or the equal in goods we will have out of you. That done, you may go free, back to your lands or beggarly into the world again, as Owain pleases. And I warn you, never again look to Dublin for help, we know now the worth of your word. And that being so," he said, thoughtfully plying his massive jowls in a muscular fist, "we'll make sure of you, now that we have you!" He turned upon Turcaill, who stood by watching this encounter with detached interest, his own part already done. "Give him in charge to Torsten to keep, but see him tethered. We know all too well his word and oath are no bond to him, so we may rightly use other means. Put chains on him, and see him watched and kept close."
    "You dare not!" Cadwaladr spat on a hissing breath, and made a convulsive movement to launch himself against his judge, but ready hands plucked him back with insulting ease, and held him writhing and sweating between his grinning guards. In the face of such casual and indifferent usage his boiling rage seemed hardly more than a turbulent child's tantrum, and burned itself out inevitably into the cold realisation that he was helpless, and must resign himself to the reversion of his fortunes, for he could do nothing to change it.
    "Pay what you owe us, and go," said Otir with bleak simplicity. And to Torsten: "Take him away!"
    Chapter Eleven
    Two men of Cuhelyn's company, making the complete rounds of the southern rim of the encampment, found