“I know that. Forgive me. I had—something on my mind.”

“You can tell me, can’t you? I knew there’d been something biting you this last few days. What is it?”

“Nothing that I know of,” I said truthfully. “Nothing you can help with. Forget it. Look, did the kings say where they were going? They could have talked their fill at Segontium, surely, or on the ride here?”

“They’ve gone to the top of the crag. There’s a place up there at the end of the ridge where you can look right up and down the valley, all ways. There used to be an old tower there, they say. They call it Dinas Brenin.”

“King’s Fort? How big’s the tower?”

“There’s nothing there now but a tumble of stones. Why?”

“I—nothing. When do we ride home, I wonder?”

“Another hour, they said. Look, why don’t you come down, and I’ll cut you in on a dice game?”

I grinned. “Thanks for nothing. Have I kept you out of your game, too? I’m sorry.”

“Don’t mention it. I was losing anyway. All right, I’ll leave you alone, but you wouldn’t think of doing anything silly now, would you? No sense in sticking your neck out. Remember what I told you about the ring-dove?”

And at that exact moment, a ring-dove went by like an arrow, with a clap and whistle of wings that sent up a flurry of frost like a wake. Close behind her, a little above, ready to strike, went a merlin.

The dove rose a fraction as she met the slope, skimming up as a gull skims a rising wave, hurtling towards a thicket near the lip of the dell. She was barely a foot from the ground, and for the falcon to strike her was dangerous, but he must have been starving, for, just as she reached the edge of the thicket, he struck.

A scream, a fierce kwik-ik-ik from the falcon, a flurry of crashing twigs, then nothing. A few feathers drifted lazily down, like snow.

I started forward, and ran up the bank. “He got her!” It was obvious what had happened; both birds, locked together, had hurtled on into the thicket and crashed to the ground. From the silence, it was probable that they both now lay there, stunned.