The Mark of the Horse Lord by Rosemary Sutcliff Read Free Book Online Page B

spoken. ‘But it is in my mind that you would have me play this lost prince for you.’
    ‘We need Midir.’
    Phaedrus flung back his head and laughed. ‘Fiends and Furies! You’re more of a fool than you look, if you think I could be doing
that
.’
    The tawny eyes never swerved. ‘You can if you will.’
    ‘If I will? I have the choice then?’
    ‘It is a thing that can only be done of the free choice.’
    ‘Are you asking me to believe that if I refuse, you will let me go free, loaded with all this that you have told me? Tell that to the green plover.’
    ‘
Na
, we will not be troubling the green plover. Refuse, and bide captive in our hands until all is over, then go free and shout your story where you will. I will swear that, if you like, on all our hopes of victory.’
    Phaedrus said, ‘But if he is dead, she will know – all the tribe will know it for a trick.’ It seemed to him as he spoke, that the rug that hung across that inner doorway stirred, but when his gaze whipped in that direction, the heavy folds were hanging straight and still. It must have been only a trick of the lamplight.
    ‘The tale runs that the boy was drowned bathing in the loch, and his body never washed ashore. Only the Queen, and those who did her will, can know it for a trick, and for good reasons they will not be seeking to prove it.’
    ‘A pity, for her, that she did not have the body washed ashore, for all men to see.’
    ‘That would have been beyond even her powers,’ Gault said. ‘He was not dead.’
    The words seemed to hang echoing among the bales and boxes, until Phaedrus said at last, ‘Not dead?’
    ‘Even Liadhan would not quite dare the slaying of the King. She – made sure of him.’
    ‘Then what if he comes back to claim his own?’
    ‘He will not come back to claim his own.’
    ‘How can you know? If he is lost—’
    ‘He is not lost.’ Gault’s finger had returned to its half-unconscious pattern tracing in the spilled wine. ‘He works for a leather merchant in Eburacum. We sought him from the first, and found him three years and more ago.’
    Phaedrus was beginning to feel that he was caught up in some fantastic dream. ‘Then if you have your own prince to your hand, why me?
Why me?
There is something here that smells strange to me, and I do not think that I like the smell!’
    ‘There is a price offered.’
    ‘This time, I am not for sale.’
    ‘For gold, maybe no. There are other kinds of price.’
    ‘A kingdom? How much of a king should I be when all is done?’
    ‘As much of a king as you would be showing yourself strong for. That I promise you, I who am not without power in the tribe . . .The price I had in mind was no more than the balance of a sword in your hand, a few risks to be run, maybe a lost flavour to be caught back into life.’
    ‘You choose the price you offer well,’ Phaedrus said after a moment.
    ‘And your answer?’
    ‘Give me a sword, and I’ll use it well for you. I’ll not meddle with a kingship that isn’t mine; ill luck comes that kind of way.’
    Silence lay flat and heavy in the room, a silence that seemed as tangible as the air one breathed. And in the silence, Sinnoch the Merchant looked on as though at some scene that interested him but was no concern of his; and the two pairs of eyes, slate-grey and tawny, held each other across the table.
    Then Gault turned on the bench, and shouted into the gloom behind him: ‘Midir!’
    And even as Phaedrus’s gaze whipped towards that inner doorway, the hanging rug was dragged aside, and a man stood on the threshold. A young man in the rough tunic of a craftsman, who checked on the farthermost edge of the lamplight, his head alertly raised like a hound’s when it scents the wind. Phaedrus caught the glint of red hair, and something in the shadowed face and the line of throat and shoulders and long flank that made the hair lift a little on the back of his neck. He might have been looking at his own fetch.
    ‘Did