Sword at Sunset by Rosemary Sutcliff;Jack Whyte

Author:Rosemary Sutcliff;Jack Whyte
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: 449-1066, Kings and Rulers, Aruthur, Historical, Folk Tales, Fantasy Fiction, Arthurian Romances, Fiction, Knights and Knighthood, Fantasy, Great Britain, Great Britain - History - Anglo-Saxon Period, Legends & Mythology, Historical Fiction, Britons, General, Fairy Tales
ISBN: 9781556527593
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Published: 1971-01-02T07:00:00+00:00

Through the rest of that summer I watched him anxiously. But there was little need. He proved, as I had believed he would, to be as fine a leader as Gault had been; and under his handling, the battered remnant gathered itself up and began to be a squadron again. He was careful of his men, but utterly careless of himself — so reckless that, though there was no more talk of falling on his sword, it was clear he hoped for death. And as so often happens when a man is in that state, death passed him by as if he had a charmed life.

We campaigned late into October that year. At most times in the North, one cannot hold to the war trail much beyond the end of September, but it was a soft autumn, and the last yellow leaves were still clinging to the birches when at last we rode into Trimontium to make our winter quarters again.

There were only a few days left, and many things to be seen to in them, before I must ride for Castra Cunetium to meet Guenhumara. But in the time that I had, I did what I could to make ready for her. I furbished up the much larger chamber next to the narrow one in the half-ruined officers’ block where I had slept since we first came to Trimontium. The commandant’s dining room, I think it must have been, to judge by the crudely painted trophies and goats’ masks that still showed here and there like shadows on the shreds of plaster that still clung to one wall. I bought a thick striped native blanket and a rug of soft beaver skins from Druim Dhu and his brothers, who bought and sold all things in common, to cover the piled fern of the bed place. I pegged up a fine embroidered hanging of some saint or other, all glimmering blues and russets, kingfisher colors, to cover the crumbling red sandstone of the most ruinous wall and give some richness to the chamber. It was part of the loot that we had taken from the Sea Wolves that summer, and they, I suppose, had reaved it from some rich religious house in the gentler Lowlands. Well, the Church could count it as part of the debt they owed me, there was a certain satisfaction in the thought.

All the while I was aware of my men watching me, with a kind of suspended judgment that might turn into anything. . . . The awareness did nothing to ease the waiting days. I half longed for her coming, as those days went by, half dreaded it, sometimes wondered whether she would come at all.

She came, and we swept her into Castra Cunetium by torchlight. It was a wild night, the feast of Samhain, and I remember how the torches flared in the wind, sending their tawny smoke billowing all across the forecourt, their light beating like bright wings in the darkness upon

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