Sword at Sunset by Rosemary Sutcliff

sure I should have to do, with the life of a man or another
horse.’
    He was silent a moment, and then he said in a curiously level tone, ‘Then I ask another thing. Take me, my Lord the Bear.’
    ‘What as?’ I asked, without surprise, for it was as though I had known what was coming.
    ‘As a harper or a horse holder or a fighting man – I have my dagger, and you can give me a sword. Or’ – his strange lopsided face flashed into a grin, his one reckless
eyebrow flying like a banner – ‘or as a laughingstock when you feel the need for laughter.’
    But though I had known, in a way, what was coming, I was not sure of my reply. Usually I can judge a man well enough at first meeting, but this one I knew that I could not judge. He was dark
water that I could not look into. His reserves were as deep in their way as Aquila’s but whereas Aquila, whose past was bitter, had grown them through the years as the hard protective skin
grows over an old wound, this man’s were a part of himself, born into the world with him as a man’s shadow.
    ‘What of Constantinople and the Emperor’s bodyguard?’ I said, a little, I think, to gain time.
    ‘What of them?’
    ‘And the splendor that does not lie in ruins, and the bright adventure and the service to take?’
    ‘Could you not give me a service to take? Oh, make no mistake, my Lord Artos, it was the other I wanted. That was why I got drunk yesterday; it was no use though. I am your man if you will
take me.’
    ‘We have need of every sword hand,’ I said at last, ‘and it is a good thing to laugh sometimes – and to have the heart sung out of the breast. But ... ’
    ‘But?’ he said.
    ‘But I do not take a hawk without having made trial of him. Nor do I take an untried man into the circle of the Companions.’
    He was silent for a good while, after that. The sun was behind the mountains now, and the evening sounds of the olive grove were waking, the creatures that they call cicadas creaking in the
branches, and the voices of the fisherfolk coming up faintly on the wind. Once he made a small swift movement, and I thought he was going to get up and walk away, but he stilled again. ‘You
choose more delicately than they say the Eastern Emperor does,’ he said at last.
    ‘Maybe I have more need.’ I leaned down and touched his shoulder, scarcely meaning to. ‘When you are captain of the Emperor’s bodyguard, you’ll look back on this
evening and thank whatever god you pray to, that the thing turned out as it did.’
    ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘When that day comes, I shall thank – whatever god I pray to, that it was not given to me to throw all that away, and go crawling back over those
five hundred miles or so that I was already on my way, to die at last in a northern mist with the Sea Wolf’s fangs in my throat.’
    I said nothing, for it seemed to me that there was no other word to say. And then he turned to me again, his eyes full of a cool dancing light that was nearer to battle than to laughter.
‘If I get the Black One back to Britain for you, without its causing the death of himself or any other horse or any man, will that seem trial enough? Will you take me then, and give me my
sword in recompense?’
    I was more surprised at that than I had been at his first asking to join us, and for a moment the surprise struck me silent. Then I said, ‘And what if you fail?’
    ‘If I have not died in the failing, I will give you my life to add to that of the man or the other horse. Is not that a fair bargain, my Lord the Bear?’
    Before I knew that my mind was made up, I heard my own voice saying, ‘We will go now and look into the Black One’s mouth and feel him over, for I have not even touched him as yet.
And if the horse be all that he seems, then it is a fair bargain, Bedwyr.’
    And I remember that we spat in our hands and struck palms like men sealing a bargain in the marketplace.
    On a wild night of late September, with the first of