by Jack Whyte
That might now be changing. According to Mairidh, Lot has visions of using the sea power of the Erse King Athol Mac lain, who apparently owns great fleets of galleys, and he has sent Balin into Eire to negotiate a renewal of the alliance, which is still nominally in place. Should he be successful, Lot could, at a blow, acquire vast resources of shipping and enable himself to move large numbers of men and weaponry along the coast, thereby threatening both Cambria and Camulod. I believe it is imperative that Uther know of this immediately. Please send word to him as quickly and directly as you can.
In another portion of her letter, Mairidh wrote of how Lot has set about systematically to vilify Uther in the eyes of the people of Cornwall by spreading monstrous lies and rumours about him. She knows, of course, that none of what is being said is true, but she wished me and Uther to be aware of what is being said of him. Rumours are being spread of atrocities and outrages being committed by Uther and his army. They speak of rapine and mass slaughters being carried out on ordinary villages and hamlets, with children and old men being hanged and killed out of hand, while women, young and old, are being violated, mutilated and debauched, most of them by Uther himself. So successfully has this campaign of lies been carried out, Mairidh told me, that women in Cornwall now threaten their errant children with the name of Uther Pendragon, frightening them into obedience.
Not all of this is new to me, for we heard rumours of it in the past from travellers. I even mentioned it to Uther half a year ago, but he merely laughed at my outrage and passed it off as some kind of tribute. Only people who inspire fear and constitute a real threat to the status quo at any time are ever honoured with such malignant attention, he told me. The fact that Lot of Cornwall goes to such lengths to denigrate the name of Uther is merely a testament to how greatly Lot fears Uther.
At the time, I was calmed by his amusement, despite my fears, but now I wonder again. The reputation that he now has in Cornwall might help his campaign there by spreading terror, hut I cannot see how such a thing can benefit his future memory.
Give Uther my love, if he is still with you in Camulod, and write back to me soon.
Your loving daughter, V.
Chapter TWENTY-TWO
Lagan Longhead spread his right hand and twisted it sideways to lay his rigid fingers delicately against the iron of his axehead, fanning the tips so that they lay almost exactly along the edge of the blade. The heavy iron head lay on his left hand, resting on an oily cloth, and its shaft lay beneath his right forearm, reaching right to the elbow. His fingers left clear impressions in the thin film of linseed oil he had just added to protect the metal against rusting. Shit! he thought, and reached to wipe the marks away with an end of the rag draped across his other hand. Then he laid the axe gently on the top of the low tree stump beside him. That done, he wiped his hands conscientiously with a clean rag, finishing the job by scrubbing his palms and fingers against the rough hide of the sheepskin leggings that enclosed his thighs, fleece inward. Only then did he take hold of the axe shaft, hefting it so that the clean-lined muscles of his forearm rippled and Hexed. He ignored the leather thong looped through a hole in the handle's end, allowing it to dangle. Only in battle would he loop the thong around his wrist.
The axe was magnificent, his favourite weapon and his dearest possession. Its broad, heavy head gleamed dully, surmounted by a wicked, tapering, thumb-thick spike, and the tempered edge of its chopping blade was keen enough to cleave cleanly through metal and bone. Its shaft was perfectly cylindrical, of thick, close-grained wood, and its entire surface was engraved with intricate designs of twining brambles, thick with thorns and delicately picked-out leaves, stained to a rich, dark brown and polished by decades of care and handling. Lagan had no idea how old the weapon was, but he knew it had belonged to his grandfather, who had taken it in a fight against some invading Outlanders.
He swung it up again and caught the shaft near the head in the cradle of his extended left hand, sighting along the line of the spike towards another, tall and much-scarred tree stump some fifteen paces from where he stood. As he did so, he heard the sound of his son's voice, shouting as he ran towards the house. Lagan cocked his head to listen, his arms still extended. Even though the house stood between him and Cardoc, he could gauge the boy's excitement by the tone of his voice and the speed with which it approached. He heard his wife, Lydda, call out then, telling their son his father was at the back, and then he returned to his sighting, His right arm flew out and back, and he hurled the axe just as his son rounded the end of the building behind him. The weapon flew end over end, its shape a whirling blur, then smacked against the tree and clattered to the ground. The boy almost skidded to a halt, his eyes wide. He seldom saw his father miss a throw.
Lagan turned his head and looked at his son, keeping his face expressionless. "Bring that thing over here."
The boy brought the fallen axe, and Lagan nodded. "Stand back."
As Cardoc obeyed. Lagan swung again, this time pivoting completely and throwing round-armed when all his weight had shifted to his left foot. The axe whirled again and thumped hard into the wood of the tree, its edge biting so deeply that Lagan had no thought of asking his son to retrieve it. He walked forward himself and levered strongly upward on the shaft, prising the deeply buried edge free before turning back to his son.
"You look guilty, lad. What have you been doing?"
Young Cardoc shook his head, his face flushed. "Nothing, but I distracted you when I ran around the corner."
His father shook his head, dropping the butt end of his axe handle into the metal loop on the belt at his waist so that the head rested against his left hip. "No, you did not. I heard you coming long before that. I misjudged my throw, that's all."
The boy was grave-faced. "You don't often miss."
"No, I don't, not when I have a stationary target. But even so, it's really a stupid thing to throw an axe. An axe is for swinging, not for throwing. As soon as it leaves your hand, you're weaponless, and a living target won't stand still waiting to be killed. If you can miss a dead tree, think how much easier it would be to miss a running man . . . And if he's running at you to kill you, you're dead." He wiped his hands again on his leggings, then rubbed the palms together briskly. "I heard you shouting as you came to the front of the house, but I couldn't hear what you were saying. What was it?"
"Uh, the King is looking for you, and no one knew where you were. Master Lestrun sent people to search for you. One of them saw me and sent me here to see if you were at home. Lestrun says you are to come immediately."
Lagan sighed and bent to pick up his rags and a pot of linseed oil, placing them on the small, roofed shelf against the back wall of the solid log-and-clay house that was his home. "Well, when the King commands, we must obey." He cocked his head at his son. "I don't suppose you could have any idea what this is about?"
The boy shook his head, wide-eyed and mute, and his father nodded and began to walk around to the front of the house, the boy trailing behind him.
Lydda was waiting by the open door, Lagan's long travelling cloak folded over her arm.
"You might need this."
Lagan eyed It distastefully, shrugging his shoulders beneath the thick, warm tunic of fleece that already encased him from neck to mid-thigh. "I doubt it. If I do, I'll come back for it. Lot may be the King and his affairs important, but I am not leaving on any journey in mid-morning without bidding a proper farewell to my family simply to keep him in a pleasant good humour at having his own way immediately."
Lydda smiled at her husband. "So you say, old Gruffy, but you know you do everything he asks you to, exactly when he wishes ii to be done."
Lydda was a tall and stately woman, but her husband placed his arm about her shoulders and drew her easily beneath his own. She fitted against his side with the ease and compliance of long custom, and he dipped his face to kiss the top of her head. "I had better see what he wants. It might be urgent. But let's hope it doesn't involve a journey.
If it does, I'll come back home before I leave." He squeezed her against him and she raised her mouth to his kiss. Then she leaned in the doorway, still clutching the spurned cloak, to watch him until he disappeared from sight.
Cardoc sat on the doorstep, watching his father and saying nothing.
Lydda reached down and tousled his hair. "What are you up to today?"
The boy turned to look up at her, teeth flashing in his shy smile. "Oh, nothing much. I was playing with Tomas and Ewan. I think I'll go back."
"Away you go, then." She watched him vanish, too, then moved back into the house, leaving the door ajar, wondering as she went what it was that had Gulrhys Lot so excited this time. She liked the King well enough, she supposed, having known him for many years, and his friendship with her husband had broadened to include her, too, but she would not have been prepared to take a blood oath that she trusted him entirely. Lagan, on the other hand, was utterly loyal to him. "The King's true man," she had heard others call him on several occasions, and the tone in which the words were said invariably left her wondering whether or not she had imagined resentment or sarcasm or even sneering condescension in the utterance.
The two men had been bosom companions since early boyhood, and their friendship had grown and strengthened. Since Cardoc's birth, however, Lot's visits had become far less frequent.
Lagan would hear no ill of "Gully," though the gods knew well that there was enough ill being spoken of the King to deafen all the underworld. The tales of atrocities committed by Gulrhys Lot and in his name by others—most particularly by those loathsome Outland creatures of his, Caspar and Memnon—were harrowing and plentiful. Lydda suppressed a shudder, remembering the King's hideous Egyptian sorcerers, long since vanished from Cornwall and unmourned by any. Rumour—violently and vehemently denied by Lot himself—had it that they had died in Camulod among the godless savages up there. If so, Lydda, thought, the world was a better place.
As for the tales and rumours of the horrors that went on in the King's name, Lagan had never seen the slightest evidence to support their truth, and so he gave them no credence. Lydda knew how much of Lagan's value to the King lay in his innocence and integrity. She suspected that Gully would go to great, even extreme lengths to hide his less pleasant doings from her husband's eyes and ears. And that suspicion troubled her deeply, for it suggested that her fine and noble husband could be gulled and thought a fool, and she knew he was no such thing. Innocent, honest, trusting, loyal and open-minded, yes, he was all of those, and prepared at all times to extend the benefit of doubt until faced with irrefutable evidence of fault or guilt. Once faced with such proof, however, her husband was implacable. That same sense of perfect probity which led him to expect the best and the finest, noblest behaviour also enabled him, when necessary, to be the harshest in securing justice and prosecuting the guilty.
She stopped by the window, arrested by that thought, and stood staring out into the bright morning light, seeing nothing.
Did Gully see Lagan as a fool—gullible, trusting and capable of being swayed? Could Gully be that evil, that manipulative? Lydda blinked and shook her head, thrusting the thought aside, assuring herself that she was being silly. She looked about her, trying to remember what she had been doing before, and then went back to her household work.
As Lagan crossed from the shade between the houses fronting the King's residence and stepped into the bright, morning sunlight, he sensed, rather than saw, the King's guards stiffening to attention at his approach. Lagan Longhead had never liked the guards, even before the death of old Duke Emrys, whose fear of being murdered had led to their posting. Emrys was long since dead, murdered by time and ill health, and his guards had been helpless to forestall either of those stealthy marauders. But the guards remained, their presence now surrounding and supposedly sustaining Emrys's son and heir, Gulrhys Lot, self-appointed King of Cornwall.
As he strode through the main portals into the elaborate compound, Lagan felt the eyes of the guards still upon him, and he kept his gaze fixed straight ahead. Three men stood on either side of the main gate, and he knew they had a superior nearby within the walls. They would not stop Lagan, for they knew him as the King's closest friend—some malicious whisperers said his only friend—and knew that Lagan Longhead's access to the King was unlimited, a fact that set him above and apart from all others.
Inside the portal lay a narrow yard, a catchment area some fifteen paces long and six wide, with a guard hut for the duly sergeant directly to the right of the entrance. At the far end, facing Lagan and bristling protectively at his approach, two more guards watched him, unsmiling, their eyes scanning him from head to toe until he had passed between them through a massive pair of hand-hewn, iron- studded doors and into the coolness of the large hall beyond.
Eight men, Lagan was thinking as he blinked in the sudden darkness of the hall. Eight armed Outlander mercenaries to guard the King in his own hall from the advances of his own people. There was something fundamentally wrong in that.
Pausing just inside the door. Lagan allowed his eyes to adjust. A heavy, sour stink of old woodsmoke hung in the air, and thin, eddying wisps of it drifted from the ashes in the massive fireplace in the single stone wall opposite the door. The King's hounds, eight huge, rough-haired beasts the size of small ponies, lay sprawled in the rushes that covered the earthen floor, and only one of them lifted its head to gaze, tongue lolling, at the newcomer. Apart from two more armed guards flanking another doorway in the wall to Lagan's left, the animals were the enormous room's only occupants.
Lagan coughed, his lungs protesting against the reek of the foul, smoky air, and made his way towards the guards as soon as he could see his way between the heavy tables and benches that strewed the floor. When he was within two paces, one of the guards swept his sword from its sheath with a slither and brought the point up threateningly, its tip angled at Lagan's throat. Lagan stopped dead, tilting his chin downward to stare at the sword's tip, then looked into the guard's eyes.
The man was a stranger. Keeping his face utterly expressionless, Lagan moved his eyes slowly to the other guard's face. This one he knew. No one spoke for a space of heartbeats, and then the second man brought up his hand and placed the back of his fingers against his companion's blade, growling something in their own tongue. The first man grunted and remained motionless for a count of four, then straightened slowly and put up his sword, sneering very slightly, his eyes warning Lagan wordlessly that this time he had been lucky, and that the guard would readily have spilled his blood. Lagan made no response. He simply stepped past the fellow as though nothing had happened and reached down for the iron handle to push the door open.
Lot was leaning through an open window, peering out into the yard beyond, and he turned when he heard Lagan enter.
"Ah, there you are," he roared.
Gulrhys Lot came bounding across the room and tried to catch Lagan in a headlock that quickly turned into a mighty hug. Lagan clasped his own arms about the King's shoulders, marvelling, as he did every time, that he had finally grown accustomed to this highly unusual form of greeting. The King was the only man Lagan knew who indulged in this very intimate, personal gesture, a mannerism he had picked up somewhere in Gaul in his boyhood, and the majority of his men, with the exception of his Gaulish mercenaries, were extremely uncomfortable in receiving, let alone returning, the affectionate embrace. To the dour, Celtic mind, such overt demonstrations of friendship smacked of emotional excess, and Lagan had seen many a fearless chieftain and warrior flush with the embarrassment of it.
Now Lot thrust him away and held him at arm's length, gripping his upper arms tightly and peering into Lagan's eyes. His own eyes narrowed. "You're angry about something. What is it?"
Lagan tossed his head, jerking his thumb back towards the doorway behind him. "I'm not angry, Gully, not really, simply annoyed. One of your tame killers out there drew a sword on me when I sought to come in here."
Lot's face darkened i
mmediately. "What? Against you? He threatened you? I'll have the whoreson's head!" He was already moving towards the door, but Lagan grasped him by the sleeve and turned him around.
"For what. Gully? He's new, and he didn't know me. The man on duty with him pulled him off. Besides, the fellow was only doing what he's supposed to do."
"And what's that? Threaten my friends?"
"No, protect your kingly arse against imaginary dangers. I'm dying of thirst. Have you anything to drink here?"
Lot barked a harsh, abrupt laugh and moved immediately towards a table that held several clay pitchers, each covered with a cloth and an array of cups. This room was his personal domain, and he permitted no servants to intrude upon his privacy. The Keeper of the Household had prescribed hours during which his staff could clean and maintain the room, but when the King was present, their absence was ordained.
The walls were of plain stone, but they were hung with weavings of undyed, thick, heavy wool, which Lot's father had believed helped to keep out the winter's chill. The eastern wall was pierced by a Roman-style window, with two arches separated by a central pillar, that opened upon the interior courtyard where the boys trained. Two sets of shutters, exterior and interior, enabled the King to shut out the cold and the outside world whenever he wished. Flanking the window and vented to the courtyard, an open fireplace held a brazier basket made of heavy iron strips, and the floor, save for the area closest to the brazier, was strewn with clean, dried rushes that were changed regularly and often.