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By Root 510 0

and came to the door and shouted for his captains. They came running. He shouted it at them, the same. Just those orders, every young baby in the town...I don't remember what was said. I thought I would faint, and fall, and they would see me. But I did hear the queen call out something in a weeping voice, something about orders from the High King, and how King Arthur would not brook the talk there had been since Luguvallium. Then the soldiers went. And the queen was not weeping at all, my lord, but laughing again, and she had her arms around King Lot. From the way she talked to him then, you would have thought he had done some noble deed. He began to laugh, too. He said: 'Yes, let them say it of Arthur, not of me. It will blacken his name more surely than anything I could ever do.' They went into her bedchamber then, and shut the door. I heard her call me, but I left her, and ran. She is evil, evil! I always hated her, but she is a witch, and she put me in fear."

"Nobody will hold you to blame for what your mistress did," I told her. "And now you can redeem it. Take me to where the High King's son is hidden."

She shrank and stared at that, with a wild look over her shoulder, as if she would run again.

"Come, Lind. If you feared Morgause, how much more should you fear me? You ran this way to protect him, did you not? You cannot do so alone. You cannot even protect yourself. But if you help me now, I shall protect you. You will need it. Listen."

Above us, the main gates of the castle opened with a crash. Through the thick boughs could be seen the movement of torches, bobbing down toward the main bridge. With the torches came the beat and clatter of hoofs and the shouting of orders.

Ulfin said sharply: "They're out. It's too late."

"No!" cried the girl. "Macha's cottage is the other way. They will come there last! I will show you, lord. This way."

Without another word she made for the door, with myself and Ulfin hard behind her.

Up the way we had come, across an open space, down another steep lane that twisted back toward the river, then along a river path deep in nettles where nothing moved but the rats a-scurry from the middens. It was very dark here, and we could not hurry, though the night breathed horror on the nape like a coursing hound. Behind us, away on the far side of the town, the sounds began. The barking of dogs first, the shouting of soldiers, the tramp of hoofs. Then doors slamming, women screaming, men shouting; and now and again the sharp clash of weapons. I have been in sacked cities, but this was different.

"Here!" gasped Lind, and turned into another twisting lane that led away from the river. From beyond the houses the dreadful sounds still made the night foul. We ran along the slippery mud of the lane, then up a flight of broken steps and out again into a narrow street. Here, all was quiet still, though I saw the glimmer of a light where some scared householder had waked to wonder at the sounds. We ran out from the end of the street into the grass of a field where a donkey was tethered, past an orchard of tended trees and the gaping door of a smithy, and reached a decent cottage that stood away from the rest behind a quickthorn hedge, with a strip of garden in front, and a dovecote, and a kennel beside the door.

The cottage door was wide open and swinging. The dog, at the end of his chain, raved and leaped like a mad thing. The doves were out of the cote and winnowing the dim air. There was no light in the cottage, no sound at all.

Lind ran through the garden and stopped in the black doorway, peering in.

"Macha? Macha?"

A lantern stood on a ledge beside the door. No time to search for flint and tinder. I put the girl gently aside. "Take her outside," I said to Ulfin, and, as he obeyed me, picked up the lantern and swung it high. The flame tore up hissing from the wick, vivid and alive. I heard Lind gasp, then the sound caught in her throat. The brilliant light showed every corner of the cottage: the bed against the wall, the heavy table and bench; the crocks for food and oil; the stool, with