Excalibur Page 4

  ‘Defeat the Saxons, of course.’ He grimaced, knowing that defeating the Saxons was no small thing. ‘They are refusing to talk to us. If I send any emissaries they will kill them. They told me so last week.’

  ‘They?’ I asked.

  ‘They,’ he confirmed grimly, meaning both Cerdic and Aelle. The two Saxon Kings were usually at each other’s throats, a condition we encouraged with massive bribery, but now, it seemed, they had learned the lesson that Arthur had taught the British kingdoms so well: that in unity alone lies victory. The two Saxon monarchs were joining forces to crush Dumnonia and their decision to receive no emissaries was a sign of their resolve, as well as a measure of self-protection. Arthur’s messengers could carry bribes that might weaken their chieftains, and all emissaries, however earnestly they seek peace, serve to spy on the enemy. Cerdic and Aelle were taking no chances. They meant to bury their differences and join forces to crush us.

  ‘I hoped the plague had weakened them,’ I said.

  ‘But new men have come, Derfel,’ Arthur said. ‘We hear their boats are landing every day, and every boat is filled with hungry souls. They know we are weak, so thousands of them will come next year, thousands upon thousands.’ Arthur seemed to revel in the dire prospect. ‘A horde! Maybe that is how we shall end, you and I? Two old friends, shield beside shield, cut down by barbarian axemen.’

  ‘There are worse ways to die, Lord.’

  ‘And better,’ he said curtly. He was gazing towards the Tor, indeed whenever he came to Dun Caric he would always sit on this western slope; never on the eastern side, nor on the south slope facing Caer Cadarn, but always here, looking across the vale. I knew what he was thinking and he knew that I knew, but he would not mention her name for he did not want me to know that he woke each morning with thoughts of her and prayed every night for dreams of her. Then he was suddenly aware of my gaze and he looked down into the fields where Issa was training boys to be warriors. The autumn air was filled with the harsh clatter of spear staves clashing and of Issa’s raw voice shouting to keep blades low and shields high. ‘How are they?’ Arthur asked, nodding at the recruits.

  ‘Like us twenty years ago,’ I said, ‘and back then our elders said we would never make warriors, and twenty years from now those boys will be saying the same about their sons. They’ll be good. One battle will season them, and after that they’ll be as useful as any warrior in Britain.’

  ‘One battle,’ Arthur said grimly, ‘we may only have one battle. When the Saxons come, Derfel, they will outnumber us. Even if Powys and Gwent send all their men, we shall be outnumbered.’ He spoke a bitter truth. ‘Merlin says I shouldn’t worry,’ Arthur added sarcastically, ‘he says his business on Mai Dun will make a war unnecessary. Have you visited the place?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Hundreds of fools dragging firewood to the summit. Madness.’ He spat down the slope. ‘I don’t put my trust in Treasures, Derfel, but in shield walls and sharp spears. And I have one other hope.’ He paused.

  ‘Which is?’ I prompted him.

  He turned to look at me. ‘If we can divide our enemies one more time,’ he said, ‘then we still have a chance. If Cerdic comes on his own we can defeat him, so long as Powys and Gwent help us, but I can’t defeat Cerdic and Aelle together. I might win if I had five years to rebuild our army, but I can’t do it next spring.Our only hope, Derfel, is for our enemies to fall out.’ It was our old way to make war. Bribe one Saxon King to fight the other, but from what Arthur had told me, the Saxons were taking good care to make sure it did not happen this winter. ‘I will offer Aelle a permanent peace,’ Arthur went on. ‘He may keep all his present lands, and all the land he can take from Cerdic, and he and his descendants may rule those lands for ever. You understand me? I yield him that land in perpetuity, if he will only side with us in the coming war.’

  I said nothing for a while. The old Arthur, the Arthur who had been my friend before that night in Isis’s temple, would never have spoken those words for they were not true. No man would cede British land to the Sais. Arthur was lying in the hope that Aelle would believe the lie, and in a few years Arthur would break the promise and attack Aelle. I knew that, but I knew better than to challenge the lie, for then I could not pretend to believe in it myself. Instead I reminded Arthur of an ancient oath that had been buried on a stone beside a far-off tree. ‘You’ve sworn to kill Aelle,’ I reminded him. ‘Is that oath forgotten?’

  ‘I care for no oaths now,’ he said coldly, then the temper broke through. ‘And why should I? Does anyone keep their oaths to me?’

  ‘I do, Lord.’

  ‘Then obey me, Derfel,’ he said curtly, ‘and go to Aelle.’

  I had known that demand was coming. I did not answer at first, but watched Issa shove his youngsters into a shaky-looking shield wall. Then I turned to Arthur. ‘I thought Aelle had promised death to your emissaries?’

  Arthur did not look at me. Instead he gazed at that far green mound. ‘The old men say it will be a hard winter this year,’ he said, ‘and I want Aelle’s answer before the snows come.’

  ‘Yes, Lord,’ I said.

  He must have heard the unhappiness in my voice for he turned on me again. ‘Aelle will not kill his own son.’

  ‘We must hope not, Lord,’ I said blandly.

  ‘So go to him, Derfel,’ Arthur said. For all he knew he had just condemned me to death, but he showed no regret. He stood and brushed the scraps of grass from his white cloak. ‘If we can just beat Cerdic next spring, Derfel, then we can remake Britain.’ ‘Yes, Lord,’ I said. He made it all sound so simple: just beat the Saxons, then remake Britain. I reflected that it had always been thus; one last great task, then joy would always follow. Somehow it never did, but now, in desperation and to give us one last chance, I must travel to see my father.

  I AM A SAXON. My Saxon mother, Erce, while she was still pregnant, was taken captive by Uther and made a slave and I was born soon after. I was taken from my mother as a small child, but not before I had learned the Saxon tongue. Later, much later, on the very eve of Lancelot’s rebellion, I found my mother and learned that my father was Aelle.

  My blood then is pure Saxon, and half royal at that, though because I was raised among the Britons I feel no kinship with the Sais. To me, as to Arthur or to any other free-born Briton, the Sais are a plague carried to us across the Eastern Sea.

  From whence they come, no one really knows. Sagramor, who has travelled more widely than any other of Arthur’s commanders, tells me the Saxon land is a distant, fog-shrouded place of bogs and woodland, though he admits he has never been there. He just knows it is somewhere across the sea and they are leaving it, he claims, because the land of Britain is better, though I have also heard that the Saxons’ homeland is under siege from other, even stranger, enemies who come from the world’s farthest edge. But for whatever reason, for a hundred years now the Saxons have been crossing the sea to take our land and now they hold all eastern Britain. We call that stolen territory Lloegyr, the Lost Lands, and there is not a soul in free Britain who does not dream of taking back the Lost Lands. Merlin and Nimue believe that the lands will only be recovered by the Gods, while Arthur wishes to do it with the sword. And my task was to divide our enemies to make the task easier for either the Gods or for Arthur.

  I travelled in the autumn when the oaks had turned to bronze, the beeches to red and the cold was misting the dawns white. I travelled alone, for if Aelle was to reward an emissary’s coming with death then it was better that only one man should die. Ceinwyn had begged me to take a warband, but to what purpose? One band could not hope to take on the power of Aelle’s whole army, and so, as the wind stripped the first yellow leaves from the elms, I rode eastwards. Ceinwyn had tried to persuade me to wait until after Samain, for if Merlin’s invocations worked at Mai Dun then there would surely be no need for any emissaries to visit the Saxons, but Arthur would not countenance any delay. He had put his faith in Aelle’s treachery and he w
anted an answer from the Saxon King, and so I rode, hoping only that I would survive and that I would be back in Dumnonia by Samain Eve. I wore my sword and I had a shield hung on my back, but I carried no other weapons or armour.

  I did not ride directly eastwards, for that route would have taken me dangerously close to Cerdic’s land, so instead I went north into Gwent and then eastwards, aiming for the Saxon frontier where Aelle ruled. For a day and a half I journeyed through the rich farmlands of Gwent, passing villas and homesteads where smoke blew from roof holes. The fields were churned muddy by the hoofs of beasts being penned for the winter slaughter, and their lowing added a melancholy to my journey. The air had that first hint of winter and in the mornings the swollen sun hung low and pale in the mist. Starlings flocked on fallow fields.

  The landscape changed as I rode eastwards. Gwent was a Christian country and at first I passed large, elaborate churches, but by the second day the churches were much smaller and the farms less prosperous until at last I reached the middle lands, the waste places where neither Saxon nor Briton ruled, but where both had their killing grounds. Here the meadows that had once fed whole families were thick with oak saplings, hawthorn, birch and ash, the villas were roofless ruins and the halls were stark burned skeletons. Yet some folk still lived here, and when I once heard footsteps running through a nearby wood I drew Hywelbane in fear of the masterless men who had their refuge in these wild valleys, but no one accosted me until that evening when a band of spearmen barred my path. They were men of Gwent and, like all King Meurig’s soldiers, they wore the vestiges of old Rome’s uniform; bronze breastplates, helmets crested with plumes of red-dyed horsehair, and rust-red cloaks. Their leader was a Christian named Carig and he invited me to their fortress that stood in a clearing on a high wooded ridge. Carig’s job was to guard the frontier and he brusquely demanded to know my business, but enquired no further when I gave him my name and said I rode for Arthur.

  Carig’s fortress was a simple wooden palisade inside which was built a pair of huts that were thick with smoke from their open fires. I warmed myself as Carig’s dozen men busied themselves with cooking a haunch of venison on a spit made from a captured Saxon spear. There were a dozen such fortresses within a day’s march, all watching eastwards to guard against Aelle’s raiders. Dumnonia had much the same precautions, though we kept an army permanently close to our border. The expense of such an army was exorbitant, and resented by those whose taxes of grain and leather and salt and fleeces paid for the troops. Arthur had always struggled to make the taxes fair and keep their burden light, though now, after the rebellion, he was ruthlessly levying a stiff penalty on all those wealthy men who had followed Lancelot. That levy fell disproportionately on Christians, and Meurig, the Christian King of Gwent, had sent a protest that Arthur had ignored. Carig, Meurig’s loyal follower, treated me with a certain reserve, though he did do his best to warn me of what waited across the border. ‘You do know, Lord,’ he said, ‘that the Sais are refusing to let men cross the frontier?’

  ‘I had heard, yes.’

  ‘Two merchants went by a week ago,’ Carig said. ‘They were carrying pottery and fleeces. I warned them, but,’ he paused and shrugged, ‘the Saxons kept the pots and the wool, but sent back two skulls.’

  ‘If my skull comes back,’ I told him, ‘send it to Arthur.’ I watched the venison fat drip and flare in the fire. ‘Do any travellers come out of Lloegyr?’

  ‘Not for weeks now,’ Carig said, ‘but next year, no doubt, you will see plenty of Saxon spearmen in Dumnonia.’

  ‘Not in Gwent?’ I challenged him.

  ‘Aelle has no quarrel with us,’ Carig said firmly. He was a nervous young man who did not much like his exposed position on Britain’s frontier, though he did his duty conscientiously enough and his men, I noted, were well disciplined.

  ‘You’re Britons,’ I told Carig, ‘and Aelle’s a Saxon, isn’t that quarrel enough?’

  Carig shrugged. ‘Dumnonia is weak, Lord, the Saxons know that. Gwent is strong. They will attack you, not us.’ He sounded horribly complacent.

  ‘But once they have beaten Dumnonia,’ I said, touching the iron in my sword hilt to avert the ill-luck implicit in my words, ‘how long before they come north into Gwent?’

  ‘Christ will protect us,’ Carig said piously, and made the sign of the cross. A crucifix hung on the hut wall and one of his men licked his fingers then touched the feet of the tortured Christ. I surreptitiously spat into the fire.

  I rode east next morning. Clouds had come in the night and the dawn greeted me with a thin cold rain that blew into my face. The Roman road, broken and weed-grown now, stretched into a dank wood and the further I rode the lower my spirits sank. Everything I had heard in Carig’s frontier fort suggested that Gwent would not fight for Arthur. Meurig, the young King of Gwent, had ever been a reluctant warrior. His father, Tewdric, had known that the Britons must unite against their common enemy, but Tewdric had resigned his throne and gone to live as a monk beside the River Wye and his son was no warlord. Without Gwent’s well-trained troops Dumnonia was surely doomed unless a glowing naked nymph presaged some miraculous intervention by the Gods. Or unless Aelle believed Arthur’s lie. And would Aelle even receive me? Would he even believe that I was his son? The Saxon King had been kind enough to me on the few occasions we had met, but that meant nothing for I was still his enemy, and the longer I rode through that bitter drizzle between the towering wet trees, the greater my despair. I was sure Arthur had sent me to my death, and worse, that he had done it with the callousness of a losing gambler risking everything on one final cast on the throwboard.

  At mid morning the trees ended and I rode into a wide clearing through which a stream flowed. The road forded the small water, but beside the crossing and stuck into a mound that stood as high as a man’s waist, there stood a dead fir tree that was hung with offerings. The magic was strange to me so I had no idea whether the bedecked tree guarded the road, placated the stream or was merely the work of children. I slid off my horse’s back and saw that the objects hung from the brittle branches were the small bones of a man’s spine. No child’s play, I reckoned, but what? I spat beside the mound to avert its evil, touched the iron of Hywelbane’s hilt, then led my horse through the ford.

  The woods began again thirty paces beyond the stream and I had not covered half that distance when an axe hurtled out of the shadows beneath the branches. It turned as it came towards me, the day’s grey light flickering from the spinning blade. The throw was bad, and the axe hissed past a good four paces away. No one challenged me, but nor did any other weapon come from the trees.

  ‘I am a Saxon!’ I shouted in that language. Still no one spoke, but I heard a mutter of low voices and the crackle of breaking twigs. ‘I am a Saxon!’ I called again, and wondered whether the hidden watchers were not Saxons but outlaw Britons, for I was still in the wasteland where the masterless men of every tribe and country hid from justice.

  I was about to call in the British tongue that I meant no harm when a voice shouted from the shadows in Saxon. ‘Throw your sword here!’ a man commanded me.

  ‘You may come and take the sword,’ I answered.

  There was a pause. ‘Your name?’ the voice demanded.

  ‘Derfel,’ I said, ‘son of Aelle.’

  I called my father’s name as a challenge, and it must have unsettled them because once again I heard the low murmur of voices, and then, a moment later, six men pushed through the brambles to come into the clearing. All were in the thick furs that Saxons favoured as armour and all carried spears. One of them wore a horned helmet and he, evidently the leader, walked down the edge of the road towards me. ‘Derfel,’ he said, stopping a half dozen paces from me. ‘Derfel,’ he said again. ‘I have heard that name, and it is no Saxon name.’

  ‘It is my name,’ I answered, ‘and I am a Saxon.’

  ‘A son of Aelle?’ He was suspicious.

  ‘Indeed.’

  He conside
red me for a moment. He was a tall man with a mass of brown hair crammed into his horned helmet. His beard reached almost to his waist and his moustaches hung to the top edge of the leather breastplate he wore beneath his fur cloak. I supposed he was a local chieftain, or maybe a warrior deputed to guard this part of the frontier. He twisted one of his moustaches in his free hand, then let the strands unwind. ‘Hrothgar, son of Aelle, I know,’ he said musingly, ‘and Cyrning, son of Aelle, I call a friend. Penda, Saebold and Yffe, sons of Aelle, I have seen in battle, but Derfel, son of Aelle?’ He shook his head.

  ‘You see him now,’ I said.

  He hefted his spear, noting that my shield was still hanging from my horse’s saddle. ‘Derfel, friend of Arthur, I have heard of,’ he said accusingly.

  ‘You see him also,’ I said, ‘and he has business with Aelle.’

  ‘No Briton has business with Aelle,’ he said, and his men growled their assent.

  ‘I am a Saxon,’ I retorted.

  ‘Then what is your business?’

  ‘That is for my father to hear and for me to speak. You are not part of it.’

  He turned and gestured towards his men. ‘We make it our business.’

  ‘Your name?’ I demanded.

  He hesitated, then decided that imparting his name would do no harm. ‘Ceolwulf,’ he said, ‘son of Eadbehrt.’

  ‘So, Ceolwulf,’ I said, ‘do you think my father will reward you when he hears that you delayed my journey? What will you expect of him? Gold? Or a grave?’

  It was a fine bluff, but it worked. I had no idea whether Aelle would embrace me or kill me, but Ceolwulf had sufficient fear of his King’s wrath to give me grudging passage and an escort of four spearmen who led me deeper and deeper into the Lost Lands.