And may his bowels rot slowly in him before he quit this life and take his place in Hell, where the clawed demons will gnaw at his entrails, his rotted entrails, as the Devil himself feasts on the black heart of Morency til it make him sick, would make the Fiend himself sick, the rotted entrails whoreson.

Gwenllian crashed through puddles and around brambles, caring little for silence as she cursed him roundly and wildly. It was ceaseless, this summer’s rain, and she matched her brooding curses to the steady pounding of drops against her mail armour.

Her men had been anxious to join her, none more so than Davydd. He thought it his duty, a necessary task for a squire and even more necessary to prove his courage against Morency. She refused him, hotly denying him any right to accompany her. Morency had not had to exert himself much to escape. He had only pulled the knife easily from Davydd’s hand, told the boy to be silent, not to cry out. That was all it took.

Before the others, her squire would say only that Morency had escaped, ‘twas his own fault, and he would take punishment as fit the crime. But the shameful truth came when she bade the other men retreat, and she questioned Davydd alone.

“He did say that if I called for you, Pennaeth Du, and were he close enough to hear but not escape...then he said he would abandon flight and return to slice my throat.” Davydd had confessed.

Curse the words of a murderer, so sure to frighten the boy into a coward’s silence. When she made to leave and the others were so quick to accompany her, it was not because they loved her. She had looked at them and known that they did not trust her alone to find him, to bring him back. For the first time in years, she looked into the eyes of the men around her and saw real doubts that she could not do the task she set herself. For the first time, they thought her more like to fail than to succeed.

And his flesh fall from his bones and be eaten by vermin as he watches in the deepest pit of Hell, she cursed with renewed energy, his blood sucked from him in the night and his bones burned to ashes, yet may he live in a misery of pain.

Even Madog had protested her going after him alone. She had left him in command of the men, refusing to hear his warning that Morency might well attack her in the wilds, and wound her, and not be as kind as she had been to him.

“He would leave you, Pennaeth Du,” Madog had said simply, “to die. The advantage is all his. Do you take Thomas and Tegwarad, lest he overcome you.”