Under Camelot's Banner by Sarah Zettel

protect my sister from this man, and from the one using him as a shield.

Chapter Five
    Dawn spread out damp and grey, touching Colan Carnbrea with its unkind fingers. Shivering, he crawled out from the rude shelter of his little boat. He’d traded his arm ring to a fisherman for that boat, along with a satchel of ancient bread and fish smoked to leather. He’d softened each in sea water as he sailed the channel. Four days he’d been on the water. Four nights he’d hid in unfamiliar coves behind rocks and in frigid caves to try to snatch some sleep when he could no longer keep his eyes open. He might have moved faster, but he had no water with him, and his thirst drove him repeatedly to shore, searching for some stream or pool that would be his next salvation.
    Salvation. Colan’s mouth twisted into a grim smile. No. He was beyond that now.
    He rubbed his hands and blew on them, trying to breathe some warmth into his icy fingers. It seemed as if he had not been warm since he had fled Cambryn.
    Since he had killed his father.
    Time and again, he saw his hands reach for the dagger, felt the give of cloth and soft flesh, saw the startled look in his father’s eyes. Time and again, he wanted to cry out to his remembered-self to stop, to think, to drop the blade, and yet that other self never did. He never could. Colan had come to welcome the thirst and hunger that racked him, as he welcomed the rough seas that rocked and tossed his skin boat. The bone-bare drive of physical need kept all other thought from him. It was the only respite he had left.
    Hunched on his little beach, he finished his last piece of bread, licking the crumbs off the bottom of the satchel. The last scrap of fish he stowed away for later. He followed the little stream up into the scrub and bracken until he reached the place where the water flowed sweet. There he knelt in the mud and drank as much as he could hold. Then, abandoning the tiny boat that had brought him this far, he hoisted himself up the tumbled rocks and onto the cliffs, scrabbling to reach the level ground at the top. The rest of his journey he would make on foot and he was grateful for it. He could not lose the feeling that he was followed on the sea. That something far beneath the waters watched and whispered to him.
    It frightened him, and he could not make himself believe that he only imagined that unseen presence. As terrible as Lynet had been standing before him drenched in their father’s blood, far more terrible had been the merciless white fire in Laurel’s fae eyes.
    Haunt me over on the sea, sister. I will not blame you. But on land, you are no more than I.
    The clouds hung low and heavy above him. Colan felt the weight of them every step over the rough and open ground. He used the line of cliffs as his guide. Below, the sea roared and crashed, shaking the ground. Colan imagined it was Laurel’s frustration, and allowed himself a tiny, grim smile. The wind, though, lashed until it felt as if the air around him were ice. Father waited behind that wind, as his sister waited below in the sea. Lynet and her curses surely waited in the numb weariness that settled over his soul. If he stopped, if he faltered, together they would take him.
    Colan’s boot stubbed hard against a stone. He sprawled onto the heather and muddy grass, crying aloud as another stone banged his chin and scraped the skin he thought had gone numb. Father came closer. Colan shoved himself up onto hands and knees.
No. Not yet. You don’t get me yet.
    â€œWell, now, what’s this?”
    Above him, two dark blurs against the white-grey sky resolved into the shapes of men in leather jerkins and caps. One carried a spear. One carried a long-hafted axe.
    The axe man nudged Colan’s arm with a sandaled foot. His elbow buckled and he fell again.
    â€œCan’t say for sure,” said the spear man. “Is it a man or a fish, do ye think?”
    The first one stroked