Soaked and stinking of Isen-marsh, Gryffudd climbed the high hill west of Tros Hynt. He paid his feet no heed except when he stumbled, which was often. Looking up, he watched the clouds as they grazed their gentle fingers across the moon. The crescent was a sliver in the sky—a wink. Swaying, the man pushed an upright pointer finger against his lips, shushed, and winked back.
He hummed as he followed a serpentine route along and off the path. Now and then he caught himself before his ankle gave out on a loose stone and sent him tumbling along the shortcut—straight to the bottom. When he reached the low stone wall and pushed open the gate, though, he was suddenly quiet. Hours before—it was approaching dawn—he’d been as stealthy creeping towards a farmstead across the river. Since then, he had moved past thoughts of the family they’d tied up in their own home, the door nailed shut from the outside. It was what had come after—the planting of the Wolf and Raven, a gleam of white on the black wool banner, like the glint of a cruel grin waiting for Fréasburg to awake.
Reaching the roundhouse, he coaxed the hazel door open, and shushed it when it creaked closed. He paused, but no one inside stirred.
Dollops of moonlight cast from where the thatch had worn thin sprinkled the one-room home. He knew his way, regardless of the ghostly candle-flame, and was careful to shed his boots in an unwanted corner in silence. He left his jerkin folded on top of them and crept until his knees bumped the bedframe. Fumbling, he found the layer where blankets met bed, peeled away the tiers of quilts and sheekspin, and slipped inside.
He hadn’t felt the ache in his arm until he’d rested it across her waist. Her winter shift was coarse, and her thick, waxy hair welcomed him with its warmth.
He fell asleep with a smile on his face.
He woke to a glint of silver and the cold press of metal to his throat. The moon had retreated behind the clouds’ embrace, its beams receding with it, but enough was left to point out the sheen of the dagger’s grin. He stared up at the backlit silhouette rising above him, thighs straddling his waist, the face blackened by shadow and hair.
“Out,” it hissed.
“Alright...” he said, watching where eyes should be. If he could not see the face he was sure it could see his, but to what extent? He painted patience across his features, but didn’t hide the recognition of danger. “First...you have to let me…”
The shadow didn’t move for a moment. Then, it slid off him. It kept the blade against his throat. He drew every moment out, keen on the cold that cusped his jawline. At last he edged to the side of the bed and slipped out from under the blankets and the knife.
He turned to fetch his pile of kit, but her silent scrambling beat him to it. His eyes adjusted to see the knife pointing at him now. He raised his hands and backed towards the door.
“Easy…” he coaxed.
“Out,” it hissed again.
He knew the roundhouse well enough to stop before he hit the door. He made a show of opening it, as much as he could in the dim light. Once he was out in the yard, she didn’t let up. She forced him to the very edge of the property. The moon had escaped the clouds’ clutches and cast her face in hard silver.
“Dilys…” He tried to keep the grumble out of his voice. She looked feral against the winter grey of the budding, colorless dawn. She was formidable. Not one shiver tempted her. She stood firm, barefoot in her night shift as the wind gusted up the sleeve of the arm that bore the blade.
“No,” she snapped. Her aim with the dagger was no longer on his neck but veering to other targets...left shoulder, heart, spleen...anything to keep from stationary trembling. In the light she looked on his muddied tunic, crumbled hair, and the still-hazy, but fading euphoria in his eye. “What...what are you, drunk?”
He had been. Drunk on victory. He’d supped on the sight of Wulf’s banner flapping like a gleeful tail in the midnight. He’d forgotten, in his stupor, that he was no longer welcome in Dilys’ bed.
“I didn’t mean…” he muttered, but he couldn’t wipe the luster off his eyes.
“Stop. No.” She dropped her arm and its blade-point. Exhaustion for a moment flashed through her fury. She never raised her voice past the creak of a pasture-fence. She hissed like wind through reeds. “How dare you come here? You could have woken her. Or worse. She could have found you in the morning. Is that what you wanted?”
That steeled him. He let the grit slide back into his voice.
“I forgot.” His tone was the creep of ice across a lake.
“You...you forgot?!” She stared at him. He thought she might yell, finally, for once, but then he saw a silent chuckle ripple through her. She didn’t let it out, lest it wake the child still asleep inside.
“Tonight…” he tried before she could plant this memory in her own brand of soil, but there was no explanation. She hadn’t been there—she couldn’t imagine what seeing the black banner like a plague-mark on the soil of Rohan had filled inside him. In that moment, across the Isen, there was only death or victory. There, he had no failures, even those from the past.
She stood, glaring him from her vantage up the hill, waiting for him to go on. He sighed instead, and turned to show himself out the gate.
“I’m sorry,” he said after he ensured the latch was secure. He wasn’t surprised when she looked shocked by the gesture. Tonight was a night for many firsts.
He watched her retreat, her shoulders unwilling to hunch, her chin high as if her own roundhouse itself demanded an explanation on her return. He turned before she made it through the door.
If his gaze made time for longing or regret, they were obscured by the clouds or the gloom creeping down his brow. He didn’t look again on the roundhouse as he took to the trail in socks. Later, in his own, wider roundhouse in the village, he tossed and turned during the hour until dawn. The blankets and furs couldn’t keep him warm, and his fingers kept searching along the pillow for a bushel of waxy hair.
