War Duke of Britain

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  Idris patted Brennus’ shoulder, then bent to speak to Queen Morguase. “Shall I guide you to the location, my lady?”

  “Yes, do that,” she called over her shoulder as she followed her sister up the steps of the wagon. They closed the door behind them, and the guard hung the steps over the hook beside the door.

  Then the driver clicked the pair forward, glancing at Idris for direction.

  Idris wheeled Brennus about and moved around the clearing to the southern street. Nudd padded alongside Brennus, his tongue hanging. He knew food would come soon. He was a seasoned campaigner.

  The High King’s royal host was always laid out in quadrants, with clear “streets” running through them for easier access. Between those streets, the petty kings and lords who could get along with each other best were quartered together. As Lothian and Rheged were being sent to the south, then it was for sure that Cornwall and the Summer Country troops were camped to the north. Not that it was Idris’s concern where they were sent. He just followed orders.

  The bare ground assigned to Lothian was easy to spot. All around the open area were the campfires, lean-tos and tents of other northern lords and their armies.

  The sweet grass rippled as a breeze crossed over it.

  Idris moved Brennus to the center of the open area, then moved on another dozen paces and glanced behind him as the wagon creaked to a stop. The driver nodded at him and unhitched the horses. The door at the back of the wagon opened with a loud thud, as the guard attached the steps once more.

  The Rheged and Lothian people poured into the area, spreading out and selecting their places for the night. Soon, fires would be lit and cooking pots put over the flames, for they had broken their fast with only cold meat and cheese this morning.

  The warriors in the already established camps around them watched as Lothian sorted itself out. They watched Idris in particular. He was used to the monitoring. He moved over to the edge of the area, furthest from the command tent and from the Lothian wagon where Lot would spend his night in comfort. They would raise the Rheged tent beside the wagon, giving Lot’s cousin Urien and his Queen shelter for the night.

  Idris slid from Brennus’ back and unpacked the saddlebags and packs, while Nudd sat waiting, watching every move he made. When Idris found the dried meat, he handed Nudd a piece. He fed Brennus a handful of oats while his own belly rumbled.

  His movements after that were so habitual, he didn’t have to think about them. He glanced at Nudd. “Wood for the fire.”

  Nudd took off, a black streak of fur moving low over the ground, heading for the nearest trees.

  Brennus presented his back to have the saddle removed, which Idris laid out on the ground as a bed for the night. The packs served as pillows.

  While Nudd brought back wood for a fire, Idris prepared food and settled for the coming night, his mind idle. He glanced up when he heard a woman’s voice, for it was not the practiced cadences of Morguase or Morgan.

  Moving along the side of the High King’s pavilion was a small group of three people. They must have approached the pavilion from the north side of the camp.

  The girl was among them. He recognized her soot black, thick, straight hair and pale features. The clothes, too, were memorable. She wore a leather jerkin over a short blue tunic. The jerkin was carved with decorative flourishes. The patterns and flourishes served a good purpose in battle. They could catch the edge or point of a blade and hold it for a few vital seconds. Most men, if they did not have iron plates sewn to the leather, instead buffed it with stones, or chipped at it with their knife. She had chosen symmetrical decoration instead. Her leather armbands matched. The jerkin was shaped to fit properly against her figure. It was a telling detail. She had not acquired any jerkin fit for any man. This one was made for her.

  The woman spoke to the older couple she walked beside, as they moved around to the front of the tent to the entrance. The man carried a staff and for a moment, Idris frowned. Why did a man with a staff stir a memory? It was a dusty memory, for Idris knew the names, affiliations and fighting strength of every man who had fought with the High King. This man was not one, although he carried himself like a fighter.

  Then his foot tangled with one of the tent ropes and the woman who held his arm pushed at his leg, to guide his foot over the top of the rope.

  The man was blind.

  Ahh…. Idris nodded to himself. Steffan of Durnovaria. Uther’s favorite, who had been blinded by a Saxon war hammer.

  Who was the girl to him, then? Idris shifted his gaze back to the girl. She raised her hand to her head and combed her fingers through her hair, lifted it up and pushed it back over her shoulders in a river of shining ebony.

  Idris returned to the moment when he had first seen her, seated upon a war stallion beside the man everyone already whispered about, the one who might be Uther’s lost heir. The moment had impacted Idris, walking invisible fingers up his spine and making the hair on the back of his neck try to rise.

  She had been staring at him, as everyone did at first. When their gazes met, though, her chin had lifted. Defiance, or pride…it didn’t matter which. Her skin was clear and perfect and her features delicate, which was a surprise, for the woman was not short, as women with such fine features usually were. She was tall and lithe. Now she was standing, he could see her legs were long under the tunic, encased in dark brown trews and good stout boots.

  The cloak over her shoulders was a darker blue than her tunic and hung about the middle of her boots. It was made of good, strong cloth. The decorations on her jerkin also embellished the edges of the cloak, this time in golden thread.

  It was not the fighter’s clothing which sent silent shock along his sinews. It was not the well-founded quality of her clothing, or even spotting the hilt of a sword beneath her cloak. None of it touched him as much as the fur which adorned the neck of her cloak.

  It was the fur of a gray wolf taken at mid-winter. The fur was long and silver and rare, for the gray wolves did not come down from the mountains anymore—not unless they were hungry and desperate.

  Wolf skin. The recognition had shivered through him. Was the prize about her shoulders one she had claimed herself, or had she merely paid for the fur, finding it pretty and soft to the hand?

  Only she had carefully chosen her decorations for their symmetry and colors. The tunic was a lighter shade of blue which matched her cloak. Her leathers were the same color as her trews and boots. Even her sword belt had been tanned the same color and was almost invisible over the top of the jerkin.

  Then, the jarring touch of silver which competed with both the blue and the brown and was repeated nowhere else in her garments.

  A story was there. He could feel it.

  Nudd nudged Idris’ thigh with his snout, gaining his attention. Idris thrust his hand into his thick ruff and scratched behind Nudd’s ears, as he watched the girl and the older couple move into the King’s tent.

  Who was she?

  He looked down at Nudd. The wolf looked up at him, his colorless eyes trusting. “Shall we find out who she is?” Idris asked him.

  Nudd snapped his jaw together with a soft chomping sound, then let his tongue hang once more. Idris had learned it was Nudd’s way of showing amusement. Only, the wolf’s amusement would not extend too far, for he was owed a meal for his work.

  “Food first,” Idris agreed, heading back to the pile of wood Nudd had built up. “Then we will take a walk and see what we can learn.” There would be talk about the girl, for sure. She was in the company of the man who looked as Uther had when he was young. The speculation about the man and anyone in his company would be rife. Idris wouldn’t have to ask many questions to learn everything he needed to.

  Which was just as well, because he could not show any interest in her. Not that he was that interested.

  Was her hair really as smooth as it looked?

  THE HOT OATS AND DRIED fruit stewed in milk and honey. The hunks of dried meat, accompanied by a c
up of warmed wine, were ambrosial after days on the road eating nothing but cold rations and water. They warmed Rhiannon’s belly, just as the afternoon sun warmed her body.

  She laid with her back against her packs, her cloak wrapped around her, closed her eyes and lifted her face up to the sun. It would be easy to fall asleep. Most of the camp seemed to do just that. Snoring was the most common sound across the camp, in between the hammering from the smithies and engineering tents, and the shriek of iron upon stone as blades were sharpened.

  Only, she would not long remain asleep if she did, for Emrys and Cai laid beside her. Both were propped on their elbows and twisted about as they examined every inch of the camp. They were as excited as they had been when they had first gone fishing when they were six years old, when Cai had caught a wriggling, flopping pike in the river.

  “Look, that one over there, under the Corneus banner,” Emrys murmured, so his voice didn’t travel.

  “That’s Duke Bedrawd,” Cai replied, for he was better at shields and banners and family lineage than her or Emrys. Neither of them had considered memorizing shields and names worth the time. Cai had obeyed Steffen and painstakingly learned the devices and family of every single king and duke and count and lord who looked to Uther as High King.

  Now Rhiannon could appreciate why knowing such things might be useful. Cai was a font of information about the people all around them.

  “Not the old man,” Emrys said dismissively. “The other two.”

  “Bedivere and Lucan,” Cai said instantly. “I don’t know which is which, though. They both look the same age. Bedivere is the oldest of the two, by just over a year.”

  “And the girl with the white hair?” Emrys said, his tone interested.

  “Mair, their sister,” Cai supplied. “She’s a fighter, too,” he added.

  “The sword at her hip did not tell me that, of course.” Emrys chuckled.

  “You shouldn’t laugh. You know what they say about the house of Corneus.” Cai’s tone was pedantic.

  “What do they say?”

  “They are the house of perfect knights. They live and breathe discipline. It’s why their sister is a fighter, too. Poor thing probably had no choice but to become one.”

  Rhiannon eased open one eye to glance at the white-haired girl standing with the two brown-haired men. The men looked to be about her age. “She looks too young to fight.” She closed her eye.

  Emrys nudged Rhiannon’s boot. “So do you.”

  Rhiannon wrinkled her nose at him. It was too warm and pleasant in the sun to stir herself to answer.

  “Queen Igraine said she could,” Cai replied, rushing to her rescue as usual. “So did the Lady Isla, the commander of the Queen’s Cohort.”

  “Queen Isla,” Rhiannon corrected. “Although her son is the king now. Umm…Alun. They’re from Lesser Britain.”

  “From the Perilous Forest,” Cai added.

  “Brocéliande,” Rhiannon recalled, from the quick conversation she’d had with Queen Isla. She had been surprised to learn her mother and Isla were friends and had been exchanging letters for years. They had greeted each other with an enthusiasm belonging to younger and more energetic women, while talking over the top of each other.

  Isla had run her gaze over Rhiannon just once and nodded. “Of course you must fight in my cohort,” she said. “I will be pleased to have you. Come and find me after supper tonight, when you can meet the others. We will devise our strategies for tomorrow’s battle.” Then she had turned back to Anwen and the two of them discussed people whom Rhiannon had never heard of—Nimue and Elaine and Vivian and Maela, even Lynette-and-Lynette, as if the two were joined at the hip.

  Rhiannon left the tent not long after that, while her mother remained behind, locked in conversation, a smile playing on her lined face. Rhiannon had returned to the camp to see if she could find something to eat and arrived just in time to be handed the bowl of oatmeal.

  Now she felt and heard Emrys roll over on his saddle cloth and face the opposite direction. “Listenoise—look at them all! All family, by their clothing. That is quite the brood, Cai.”

  Cai snorted. “That’s Pellinore’s lot. Let’s see. The oldest one is Tor—he’s a bastard Pellinore fathered when he was barely nineteen. Pellinore acknowledged him as his heir, anyway. Then Dornar, who was another slip by another woman.”

  They contemplated the group in silence.

  “That one with the beard covering just his chin and the yellow stone around his neck—he looks to be the oldest. That would be Tor, then,” Emrys guessed. “He’s strong—look at the size of his sword. Good wrist strength.”

  “Then Dornar would be the one with the longer hair, clean shaved. That one, testing the bow,” Cai added.

  Rhiannon sighed and opened her eyes. She had been drawn into the discussion, anyway. She settled on one hip and studied the nearest camp. Tor and Dornar were easy to spot from the descriptions.

  “Who is the one watching them?” she asked Cai. “The one with the golden-brown hair and the tanned face?” The man merely watched and smiled as his brothers fussed with their weapons. The contained air about him spoke of control.

  “Don’t know,” Cai admitted. “I only know the names. No, wait, there was something… Yes. Percival is the oldest legitimate son, only he renounced his claim to the throne when he was twelve. Said Tor was worthier of the inheritance. His mother agreed, as did the rest of the family. They’re very close.”

  “The Queen is…?” Emrys asked.

  “I don’t know. The woman Pellinore wedded,” Cai said impatiently.

  “No, the name, Cai,” Emrys urged him. “Pellinore is King of Listenoise. He would not have married a woman without connections. Think. I want to know who is connected to who.”

  Cai scowled. “Alis,” he said, blowing out his breath.

  “Father?”

  Cai shook his head. “I don’t…no, wait…Cadfael. Yes, now I remember. Cadfael, the King’s War Duke.”

  “See?” Emrys replied. “There is the high connection. I told you there would be one.”

  “Cadfael was nobody—not a lord or a king.”

  “He was the King’s War Duke and served Ambrosius before him—I remember Cadfael clearly. He was from the mountains around Y Wyddfa, which isn’t too far south of Galleva,” Emrys said.

  “Why would you remember Cadfael out of all the kings and dukes you don’t remember?” Cai demanded.

  Emrys didn’t answer. He dropped his gaze to his saddle cloth and tugged at loose threads.

  “Because Cadfael did well for himself, despite having no family name or grand kingdom,” Rhiannon said.

  Cai dropped his gaze, abashed. “Damn, Emrys. I’m sorry.”

  Emrys shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. It hasn’t mattered for a long while. Not for years. There are so many people now without family or connections, thanks to the Saxons. When we fight tomorrow, no one will care that I’m a bastard with no name. They will only care how well I fight.”

  “You will fight magnificently,” Cai said stoutly. “You’re the best of all of us, the quickest on your feet, the fastest thinker.”

  “While you are the strongest of us,” Emrys told him fondly. “When I am drained and staggering in exhaustion, you will still be carving away at the bloody Saxons. The name of Galleva will stand proud because of it.”

  Rhiannon sat up. “Who are the women with Listenoise?” she asked, spotting a dark-haired woman wearing leather with plate metal and a girl with pale hair and a pretty blue gown.

  “Dindrane and Elaine,” Cai said. “Elaine is fifteen, so she would be the shorter of the two. After Percival, there is Aglovale, Dindrane, Lamorak and Elaine. Don’t ask me which is which because I don’t know that, either,” he added gruffly.

  Emrys shifted on the saddle cloth, happy to let the conversation move on, too. He raised his hand and shielded his eyes. “And over there, to the south, beyond the house of perfect knights?”

  “Ke
rnow,” Rhiannon and Cai said together, for it was a banner she knew.

  “Tristan, the King,” Cai added, with a flat tone which said he was reciting from memory. “His brother, Mark. Their cousin Brandegoris, who has just married the Roman woman, Julia, whom he rescued when Uther fought Claudas in Lesser Britain, ten years ago.”

  “There are lots of children with them,” Rhiannon said. “I didn’t think the kings brought their entire families like this.”

  Emrys looked uncomfortable.

  “Why did you look like that?” Rhiannon asked.

  “With the Saxons spreading out across the land, no one knows where they might strike next,” Emrys said, his tone apologetic.

  “They’re striking here. Aelle is two vales away, building his army for tomorrow.”

  “There are so many Saxons,” Emrys said in the same apologetic tone, as if she was being particularly stupid. “So many leaders and tribes. After decades of fighting, too few of our warriors remain. None can be spared to guard our homes and towns. The lords bring their families with them because it is the safest place for them.” Emrys grimaced. “If Britain falls tomorrow, then it will not matter where our families are, for they will fall with us, sooner or later.”

  Rhiannon brought her knees to her chest. “It really is that desperate, isn’t it?”

  Cai’s smile was as knowing as Emrys’. “Why do you think they agreed to let you…and me and Emrys…why do you think they’re letting us fight tomorrow? They need every man and woman who can hold a sword.”

  Rhiannon shivered. She pressed her lips together to hide their trembling.

  Emrys’s smile was warm and understanding. He rested his hand on her shoulder. “You’ve just realized this is to happen, haven’t you?”

  Rhiannon nodded. “It wasn’t real until now, looking at those children over there.” She swallowed. “Who are they, Cai?” she asked, shifting the subject.