Silence Deep as the Snow » Sihtric || The Last Kingdom

Escape

We fled at moonrise. Glancing over my trembling shoulder, I gave the hill fortress one last look. I had been born in those ancient halls and spent my childhood among the rocky crags of earth and the forests that thickly carpeted my father's lands. The fairy hills and little rivers were my home. But now, this place was poison to me.

"My lady," Glynnis, the woman who had been nursemaid, coaxed in the darkness. "Please." 

The moon hung full and milky over her white head. She dipped her cloak over her intricately woven braids and held her hand to me. She had already risked so much to get me out of the castle.

"Yes, we must go," I whispered harshly, cutting off the wave of grief before it could rise up in me.

I had lost so much in the last year. A mother, a baby brother, and then finally my father when he rejected me at the behest of his new wife. But my stepmother could not stop at that. Not when she was carrying his child in her swelling belly.

Queen Morgann, my father's bride, was bent on eliminating any possible threat to her seed's claim to the throne. And I was the last thing standing in the way of that goal. But after tonight, she wouldn't be able to see her plans to the end.

"We will make the coast by the turn of the tide," Glynnis spoke as we dashed away from the well worn road and took to the wild. "The boat is waiting for you there. It will take you across the bay to Saxon lands. She won't dare to follow you there."

I wasn't too sure about that, but held fast to hope. Hope was all that I had left to me. That and the precious jewels from my mother's crown sewn into my underskirts. I had a little bag of gold to help with the passage over the sea and the seal of the king to get me to one of the Saxon kingdoms. The Saxons called us Welas, but that was foreign to our tongue. We were Cymru in our own language.

A violent wind whipped out of the west as we crested the sheer cliffs that jutted down to an angry ocean. A little boat was moored below at the village on the shoreline. With the gold that I carried, despite the bad weather, no poor fisherman would turn me down tonight.

"It's all been arranged," Glynnis said, taking my hands in her leathery fingers and clutching them. "Speak my dead husband's name to the boatman and he will see you safely across. He is my daughter's brother-in-law. They know loyalty. And none hold a great love for the new queen."

I swallowed the knot in my throat. Glynnis had raised me as she had raised my mother. With Morgann out for blood, there was no knowing when I would see her again. Or if ever. 

At that moment, I realized the horrible truth. I was to be exiled. Banished. For no fault of my own. Grief and anger rose up in my chest like the storm in the sky overhead.

None of it was fair. None of this could possibly be my destiny.

"Go, child!" She pressed a swift kiss to my forehead. "Go!"

Amid a tempest of sorrow and rage, I tore away from her with a gasp and hurtled down the hillside to the beach. When I reached the docks, I turned to see a lone figure standing against the full moon on the cliffs. Glynnis raised a hand, either in farewell or in prayer. 

I threw my hood over my tightly bound braid and strode down the swaying dock to the boat.

"Glanmor sent me," I declared with my head held high.

The bent man, with only a torch to light his weathered features, stuck out his hand without a word. I handed over the little pouch of gold, but it felt more like handing over my life to a complete stranger.

"Get in then, lass," he directed gruffly as he loosed a single sail. "We'll be sailing right into it, I fear."