"Gawse." The terminal discouragement was audible as Maigon sank down on the stone. "Was a boy when a cut it."

"Well, then. they've gone on."

"Where? Be nothing but sea and world-edge. World- ^ end." Maigon covered his face with dirty hands. "Where, Padrec? Did hear Bruidda. None would help them. Will thee byre horses? Be tired to death."

"Here's dried chips. Will make a fire." Padrec reached , out to scratch at Malgon's unkempt growth of beard. "And ^ must shave, brother. Will Guenloic kiss such a forest of a ^ face?" '';

The cheer feli flat on Maigon. While Padrec bustled with pretended energy over the Fire, Maigon just sank lower into his gloom.

"Have lost them. Have lost all."

"Ah. belt up," Padrec grumbled over the tinderbox.

"I'm going to make us a fire."

"Here to sea be nothing. Should never have taken Blackbar. Mother and Lugh turn from us."

"Such a worrier." When the chips caught from dried grass hoarded in the tinderbox, Padrec settled himself on a stone. "A man can wallow in guilt like uisge, Mai, and grow as sick from it. I could feel guilt: did thee not say as much in Eburacum? Was not Father-God but me. I brought thee to the iron and tojesu and asked thee to believe. Did nae come as well to fhain?" Padrec touched his scarred 311.

cheek. "Crulegh may be my son. My blood flows with fhain's. Was not easy to stand in two ways at once. Truly, with guilt for a knife, a man can cut out a's own heart."

Padrec spread his arms. "So, do think a man must reckon his guilt carefully and pay what's due when it's due, but no sooner and no more."

And that was the gospel according to Padrec on this particular bleak day. He felt at his own dirty beard; if nothing else, they'd both feel better for a clean face. Padrec took up their goatskin water bag, chuckling as an incon- gruous memory tickled his mind. Years ago it was, in Auxerre. He hadn't seen the humor of it then. He laughed aloud.

"I just remembered something. When a man takes his final vows as a priest, he puts on a white robe. The day in Gaul when I was ordained-oh, Maigon, I prayed all the night before, hoping God would find me worthy, piling objections on my hopes, seeing all my unworthiness like a great debt to be paid. Bishop Amathor was worried I'd make myself ill with fasting. When it was time, I was in such a state and haste to get to the church, I ran from my cell and went plurnpl in a mud puddle.

"Well, like the black fawn, I thought it an ill omen of the degree of sanctity I'd achieve as a priest, and no better than I deserved. Maigon, I didn't even have the resolution to get up. Just sat there in that puddle and started to cry."

One hand on the ladder in the brightening firelight, Padrec laughed again. "Then Amathor, God bless him, he was just on his way to the church-he came and offered me his hand up- He saw how miserable and foolish I was, and he just laughed and said, 'Succatus Patricius, God will accept you. Once you get mud on a white robe, what else can happen between here and your vows?' "

The laughter rolled out of Padrec again, a clear, healthy sound. "Look at the two of us, where we've been and what we've seen. Gods, gerns, or demons, what in hell can they do to us that's not already been done? So let's wash our faces and go home."

In the spreading light, Malgon's attention was caught by something else. "Padrec. Here."

In the loose dirt by the stone wall were the impres- sions of small, bare feet. Not old, not so much as a season.

312 Parks Godwin

Like Rot on a scent, Malgon traced about the wall. Noth- ing. Then he delved in the space between the firepit and the wall. the warmest spot in the crannog. The scrape marks were clear as a stag's in rutting season, and the tiny impression of an infant hand. A baby crawled here.

"They were here. We're close, Mal."

Next day, following the riverbank, they found the arrangement of smail stones: the water sign of Salmon, and an arrow pointing north to the sea. The discovery helped put heart into Maigon but posed a mystery as well.

They'd left the last crannog behind; there were no more between here and the sea. Land ended, world-sea rolled away to its edge, to nothing.

In this place a man could believe himself at the end of the world. The sea wind drove the rain like a whip into their faces. The few birds they sighted were feathered dull gray or black above. Fish-white below.

"Cannae be far to sea!" Malgon shouted against the wind. "See? World-edge comes to meet us!"

Ahead of them, the leading edge of the storm ob- scured everything; the land simply disappeared into it.

Padrec wondered where they'd shelter for the night. There was nothing in this place, not even the nomad Atecotti, whose land it was supposed to be. Only the storm and the harsh-voiced seabirds driven before it or huddled on the ground.

Plodding ahead, hunched against the rain, Maigon straightened, suddenly alert. He twisted about to Padrec.

"Guenloie!"

Not waiting for Padrec, he pushed the worn horse ahead into a stumbling trot, then a lurching run, squan- dering the last of the animal's stamina. She was near, unquestionable as the footprints in the crannog. Beyond this storm was nothing familiar, but if anything lived in it, Guenloie did. Malgon felt her like a heartbeat.

The pony could do no more, breaking gait and slow- ing to a walk. Well enough. Malgon wiped the rain from his cheeks and slipped to the ground. He hugged the pony's drooping, matted neck. Far enough.

He was gazing ahead at the dark shape looming up out of the storm when Padrec drew up and jumped to the 313.

ground, exasperated. "There's thick, Malgon. Poor beasts dead as it is. Will have to walk them now."

Malgon only pointed ahead. "Broch."

The tower reared up perhaps fifty feet from its foun- dation on the edge of the cliff that dropped off to the sea beyond, broad at the base but tapering as it neared the top; in this bleak place, perhaps the loneliest reminder of man that Padrec had ever seen.

"Did say was nothing atwixt crannog and sea, Mal?"

"Not that Prydn use."

"Then what's this?"

Malgon just dropped his reins and moved ahead on foot, leaving Padrec unanswered. Against the slate sky, a darker smudge rose on the wind over the tower: smoke.

Malgon began to run.

"Yahyahyah! Guentoie!"

Leading the spent horses, Padrec felt the urgency and need in that last headlong dash. There might be folk at least, even if not ours. Let them be kind. Give him a reason to go on.

A cloaked head appeared in the tower's single low entrance, peering out into the rain at Malgon. Then the woman forgot the rain and let the cloak go flapping down the wind as Guenloie shrieked and ran to meet her hus- band. They collided and tumbled in a heap, laughing, trying to kiss and talk all at once, nipping at each other like fierce, joyous puppies, rolling over and over in the wet, weeping.

And Padrec swooped down on the drenched pair to embrace them both. "Sister! Oh, sister. Did tell thee, Mal.

We're in the puddle all the way. What else-aye, kiss me, sister-what else can happen but joy? Ai, sister, and hast nae grown even more fair than before . . ."

Another smalt head appeared in the entrance, a face with the intense set of a cunous kitten, and behind her the other woman with a graver beauty and a small boy in her arms.

Padrec moved toward them like waking from a dream.

They passed the winter in the broch that was almost as old in Britain as Dorelei's folk. Not even the Atecotti remembered who built the towers that dotted the north-

314 ern shores from here to Catanesia, but it was long before the first word of Padrec's tongue was heard in the island.

The round broch-tower rose fifty feet from its base, built with a dry-stone technique cunning as Prydn cran- nogs. The single entrance led into a short passage that gave on the circular interior of the tower. There were no upper tiers; the open inner space reached from ground to the open tower rim, but the thick-based walls had separate chambers built into them. Open to the sky, the tower had been partially covered with Salmon's rath skins to protect the ponies and few remaining sheep. This done, peat could be cut from the heath and brought inside to be dried and burned for a fair degree of comfort.

A place of stone, as they were used to, but with subtle differences. The chambered tower afforded them a de- gree of privacy not available in a crannog. By common consent and with no argument, Padrec and Dorelei claimed one chamber for their own, Malgon and Guenloie an- other. Neniane slept in the chamber used for eating and meeting together. The new separation was less surprising than the ease with which they grew accustomed to it. Each of them had more reason for solitude now.

The infants tumbled about the chambers, crawled among the sheep, and made life busy but warm. Meal- times were sometimes chaotic as the children grew stronger and more rambunctious. Someone always had to leave off eating and tend or scoid them. Padrec and Malgon took vast delight in playing with the children and lavishing love on them, up to a point. The men were changed since spring; there was a detachment to them, an incoherent but catalytic male experience the women couldn't share.

There were times, like most men, when they didn't want to be bothered with children. They spoke of the vision at Camlann, sharing that with their wives, but never the war.

Now concerned them more than then. They could winter here and give the children strength. The broch-tower was an adequate truce, a stillness, not a future. The future must be thought on.