Hood

pretending to be deep in conversation with one another whenever they saw anyone approaching, all the while remaining watchful and wary.

Beyond Hereford, the land sloped gently down toward the lowlands and the wide Lundein estuary still some way beyond the distant horizon of rumpled, cultivated hills. As daylight began to fail, they took refuge in a beech grove beside the road near the next ford; while Bran watered the horses, Ffreol prepared a meal from the provisions in their tuck bags. They ate in silence, and Bran listened to the rooks flocking to the woods for the night. The sound of their coarse calls renewed the horror of the day. He saw the broken bodies of his friends once more. With an effort, he concentrated on the fire, holding the hateful images at bay.

'It will take time,' Ffreol said, the sound of his voice a distant buzz in Bran's ears, 'but the memory will fade, believe me,' At the sound of his voice, Bran struggled back from the brink. 'The memory of this black day will fade,' Ffreol was saying as he broke twigs and fed them to the fire. 'It will vanish like a bad taste in your mouth. One day it will be gone, and you will be left with only the sweetness.'

'There was little sweetness,' sniffed Bran. 'My father, the king, was not an easy man.

'I was talking about the others-your friends in the warband.'

Bran acknowledged the remark with a grunt.

'But you are right,' Ffreol continued; he snapped another twig. 'Brychan was not an easy man. God be praised, you have the chance to do something about that. You can be a better king than your father.'

'No.' Bran picked up the dried husk of a beechnut and tossed it into the fire as if consigning his own fragile future to the flames. He cared little enough for the throne and all its attendant difficulties. What difference did it make who was king anyway? 'That's over now. Finished.'

'You will be king,' declared Iwan, stirring himself from his bleak reverie. 'The kingdom will be restored. Never doubt it.'

But Bran did doubt it. For most of his life he had maintained a keen disinterest in all things having to do with kingship. He had never imagined himself occupying his father's throne at Caer Cadarn or leading a host of men into battle. Those things, like the other chores of nobility, were the sole occupation of his father. Bran always had other pursuits. So far as Bran could tell, to reign was merely to invite a perpetual round of frustration and aggravation that lasted from the moment one took the crown until it was laid aside. Only a power-crazed thug like his father would solicit such travail. Any way he looked at it, sovreignty exacted a heavy price, which Bran had seen firsthand and which, now that it came to it, he found himself unwilling to pay.

'You will be king,' Iwan asserted again. 'On my life, you will.'

Bran, reluctant to disappoint the injured champion with a facile denial, held his tongue. The three were silent again for a time, watching the flames and listening to the sounds of the wood around them as its various denizens prepared for night. Finally, Bran asked, 'What if they will not see us in Lundein?'

'Oh, William the Red will see us, make no mistake.' Iwan raised his head and regarded Bran over the fluttering fire. 'You are a subject lord come to swear fealty. He will see you and be glad of it. He will welcome you as one king welcomes another.'

'I am not the king,' Bran pointed out.

'You are heir to the throne,' replied the champion. 'It is the same thing.'

Ffreol said, 'When we return to Elfael, we will observe the proper rites and ceremonies. But this will be the first duty of your reign-to place Elfael under the protection of the English throne and-'

'And all of us become boot-licking slaves of the stinking Ffreinc,' Bran said, his tone bitter and biting. 'What is the stupid bloody point?'

'We keep our land!' Iwan retorted. 'We keep our lives.'

'If God and King William allow!' sneered Bran.

'Nay, Bran,' said Ffreol. 'We will pay tribute, yes, and count it a price worth paying to live our lives as we choose.'

'Pay tribute to the very brutes that would plunder us if we didn't,' growled Bran. 'That stinks to high heaven.'

'Does it stink worse than death?' asked Iwan. Bran, shamed by the taunt, merely glared.

'It is unjust,' granted Ffreol, trying to soothe, 'but that is ever the way of things.'

'Did you think it would be different?' asked Iwan angrily. 'Saints and angels, Bran, it was never going to be easy.'

'It could at least be fair,' muttered Bran.

'Fair or not, you must do all you can to protect our lands and the lives of our people,' Ffreol told him. 'To protect those least able to protect themselves. That much, at least, has not changed. That was ever the sole purpose and duty of kingship. Since the beginning of time it has not changed.'

Bran accepted this observation without further comment. He stared gloomily into the fire, wishing he had followed his first impulse to leave Elfael and all its troubles as far behind as possible.

After a time, Iwan asked about Lundein. Ffreol had been to the city several times on church business in years past, and he described for Bran and Iwan what they might expect to find when they arrived. As he talked, night deepened around them, and they continued to feed the fire until they grew too tired to keep their eyes open. They then wrapped themselves in their cloaks and fell asleep in the quiet grove.

Rising again at dawn, the travellers shook the leaves and dew from their cloaks, watered the horses, and continued on. The day passed much like the one before, except that the settlements became more numerous and the English presence in the land became more marked, until Bran was convinced that they had left Britain far behind and entered an alien country, where the houses were small and dark and crabbed, where grim-faced people dressed in curious garb made up of coarse dun-coloured cloth stood and stared at passing travellers with suspicion in their dull peasant eyes. Despite the sunlight streaming down from a clear blue sky, the land seemed dismal and unhappy. Even the animals, in their woven willow enclosures, appeared bedraggled and morose.

Nor was the aspect to improve. The farther south they went, the more abject the countryside appeared. Settlements of all kinds became more numerous-how the English loved their villages-but these were not wholesome places. Clustered together in what Bran considered suffocating proximity anywhere the earth offered a flat space and a little running water, the close-set hovels sprouted like noxious mushrooms on earth stripped of all trees and greenery-which the muddwellers used to make humpbacked houses, barns, and byres for their livestock, which they kept in muck-filled pens beside their low, smoky dwellings.

Thus, a traveller could always smell an English town long before he reached it, and Bran could only shake his head in wonder at the thought of abiding in perpetual fug and stench. In his opinion, the people lived no better than the pigs they slopped, slaughtered, and fed upon.

As the sun began to lower, the three riders crested the top of a broad hill and looked down into the Vale of Hafren and the gleaming arc of the Hafren River. A smudgy brown haze in the valley betrayed their destination for the night: the town of Gleawancaester, which began life in ancient times as a simple outpost of the Roman Legio Augusta XX. Owing to its pride of place by the river and the proximity of iron mines, the town begun by legionary veterans had grown slowly over the centuries until the arrival of the English, who transformed it into a market centre for the region.

The road into the vale widened as it neared the city, which to Bran's eyes was worse than any he had seen so far-if only because it was larger than any other they had yet passed. Squatting hard by the river, with twisting, narrow streets of crowded hovels clustered around a huge central market square of beaten earth, Gleawancaester-Caer Gloiu of the Britons-had long ago outgrown the stout stone walls of the Roman garrison, which could still be seen in the lower courses of the city's recently refurbished fortress.

Like the town's other defences-a wall and gate, still unfinisheda new bridge of timber and stone bore testimony to Ffreinc occupation. Norman bridges were wide and strong, built to withstand heavy traffic and ensure that the steady stream of horses, cattle, and merchant wagons flowed unimpeded into and out of the markets.

Bran noticed the increase in activity as they approached the bridge. Here and there, tall, clean-shaven Ffreinc moved amongst the shorter, swarthier English residents. The sight of these horse-faced foreigners with their long, straight-cut hair and pale, sun-starved flesh walking about with such toplofty arrogance made the gorge rise in his throat. He forcibly turned his face away to keep from being sick.

Before crossing the bridge, they dismounted to stretch their legs and water the horses at a wooden trough set up next to a riverside well. As they were waiting, Bran noticed two barefoot, ragged little girls walking together,