‘Then why does he need you? Or me?’ I asked.
‘He is in the south now, fighting the Alaric Goths. A Saxon people. The very people who sacked Rome itself in my grandfather’s time,’ he said. ‘Syagrius is fighting Alaric’s brother, King Euric.’ The heron was far away now, but still Arthur watched it. ‘Help Syagrius win his peace, Lancelot, and he will let you bring my remaining men back to Britain. I will have the king’s blessing and you shall have my gratitude. More important still, I will have my men and my horses.’ He turned to face me now and I saw the strain in his face. ‘I need those men,’ he said. ‘Honour my oath, Lancelot, and help Syagrius win. Then bring my soldiers back to Camelot and together we shall drive the Saxons into the sea.’
My head swam as though I had been drinking Arthur’s wine, and yet my stomach was heavy with a sense of trepidation.
‘We have barely begun here,’ I said, gesturing eastward. ‘The young spearmen are not ready. I would fight at your shoulder in the spring.’
‘You are the only one I can send,’ he said. ‘Syagrius must have my best.’ He looked into my eyes and must have seen the disappointment in them. ‘You are my best, Lancelot. The king will see that, for he knows fighting men. He will trust you to lead my men. Give them some victories and they will trust you too. Enough to follow you back across the sea once you’ve dealt with this Euric.’
‘Can Gawain not go?’ I asked. ‘Or Bedwyr?’
Arthur shook his head. ‘Gawain left a girl in Soissons. Not just any girl. Syagrius’s daughter, Aemiliana.’ He half smiled. ‘I fear my nephew would not be welcome at the king’s table. As for Bedwyr, I need him here to lead my cataphracts.’
That made sense, for though I could ride and fight well enough from the saddle, I preferred to fight on my own two feet. Certainly, I lacked Bedwyr’s long experience of leading Arthur’s cavalry.
But the real truth was that neither Gawain nor Bedwyr were in love with Arthur’s wife. That was why it had to be me. Arthur would not say it but I knew it to be so.
‘I’ll go, Arthur,’ I heard myself say.
Arthur sighed, as though releasing a breath that had been trapped inside him all the day. ‘Thank you, Lancelot,’ he said.
‘When?’ I asked.
‘The sooner you go, the sooner I’ll have you back,’ he said.
I nodded. What else could I do? I had sworn to serve Arthur. He needed me to make good his oath so that we would have more warriors in the coming war against the enemy. But more than this, he was my friend.
And so I would go to Gaul.
I rode out of Camelot three days later. Bors and five good men on big horses rode with me. We would not impress King Syagrius with our numbers, but Arthur could ill afford to lose seven men, let alone more. Yet we made a splendid sight in our polished mail and plumed helmets as we passed through the main gate on a crisp late winter morning, the sun pulling free of the eastern horizon to bathe Camelot in crimson. Three ponies followed with our provisions and war gear, including all the leather armour for our mounts as well as our own shields and spears.
I had told Bors he should stay. He and Emblyn planned to marry in the spring and I saw no reason why my cousin should leave his love behind and cross the Dividing Sea for a land he did not know, to fight for a king he was not sworn to, against men who had done him no harm.
‘You think I’d let you ride off and claim all the glory for yourself?’ he asked, his big eyes looking incredulous. ‘No, I think I’ll have one more adventure before I settle down beside the hearth to bounce squawking babes on my knee.’ He looked at me from beneath an arched brow. ‘Besides which, Lord Arthur told me I’d be going with you.’
He did not need to say more about how Arthur’s affection for him had cooled since learning of Bors’s and my shared past with Guinevere on Karrek, and nor did I try to persuade my cousin to stay. I believed that in truth Bors feared being married more than he feared battle itself, and for my part, I was glad to have him beside me that dawn as we rode through sunlit clouds of our own breath.
Arthur and I had said our goodbyes the previous night over the last summer’s mead. Even Mordred had wished me luck, though I could not believe he meant it, or that his smile was for any other reason than because he was glad to see the back of me. He and Melwas were already great friends, so I heard, and I shuddered to think of that.
‘Melwas will try to make himself Arthur’s champion,’ I had said to Bors, like a jealous lover.
‘And being not as good as he thinks he is, he’ll likely lose his balls to a Saxon spear,’ Bors replied with a wicked grin.
There was no feast to mark our leaving, no harp song, no bards telling tales of long-dead warriors and worthy quests. We simply rode out and took the south road towards the coast, where Arthur’s silver would buy us passage to a tidal island called Mont Tombe, named for the old Roman tombs which it resembled in shape. From that island, which I had heard bore a great resemblance to Karrek Loos yn Koos, we would ride south to Adecavus and King Syagrius’s stronghold on the banks of the Liger.
‘What have we here?’ Bors said, sitting tall in the saddle, his chin lifted towards the road ahead. We had passed the coppice but were not yet an arrow-shot into the ancient oak wood beyond it, and someone was waiting for us amongst the trees.
‘Merlin?’ Bors suggested, for the stranger was cowled and cloaked in shadow.
‘Not Merlin,’ I said, my stomach rolling over itself.
‘Ah,’ Bors said, understanding. ‘You’ll catch us up, then,’ he said, and he led the others on past the figure, which stood head bowed until they had gone.
Tormaigh snorted and tossed his head, frustrated that we had stopped while the others rode on.
‘You shouldn’t be out here alone,’ I said. There were plenty of landless, lordless men roaming the forests and hills of Dumnonia and while I held no fear of such men, my blood thrummed in my veins now. The muscles in my legs quivered as they did before a battle.
‘I am not unarmed,’ Guinevere said, pushing back her hood.
I filled my eyes with her.
‘What will your husband say?’ I asked. I had not spoken Arthur’s name. It did not feel right to, given what I felt looking at Guinevere then.
‘He thinks I am taking dried raspberry leaves to Ector’s daughter. She’s with child.’ She tilted her head on one side and narrowed her green eyes at me. ‘You would have left without saying goodbye,’ she said. Not a question, seeing as I was already on the road with Camelot at my back. ‘Am I so easy to leave, Lancelot? Is this your revenge?’
I almost kicked my heels into Tormaigh’s flanks then. Part of me wanted to canter off along that shady track and not look back. Another part of me wanted to dismount and pull Guinevere to me and let a hundred men try to part us.
‘I thought it best,’ I said. ‘We cannot be friends. Not now.’ I meant it, though the words sounded like they came from someone else’s mouth.
‘I know,’ she said, like a blade in my chest.
Tormaigh neighed and I growled to quiet him, letting my eyes explore every part of Guinevere’s face. I don’t think either of us had blinked since she pushed back her cowl.
‘I gave him my oath,’ I said.
‘As did I,’ she said, meaning the marriage oath of a wife to her husband.
‘I don’t know when I shall return,’ I said.
She nodded and it seemed her eyes were saying everything that her mouth could not. She bit her bottom lip and took a small step back. ‘Be safe, Lancelot.’
Tears then. In her eyes and mine.
I reached into the neck of my tunic, took hold of the rings I wore around my neck and pulled hard, breaking the leather thong.
For a moment I sat there, just looking at her, thinking how unfair it all was. Had I not been the one who found her in the beginning? Had we not found each other? Long before any of this.
‘Here,’ I said, leaning from the saddle to give her the smaller of the rings. It had b
een hers once. It would be hers again. ‘I cannot keep it,’ I said, unable to swallow.
I thought she might insist that I did keep that silver ring. Perhaps I hoped that she would, but she nodded and came forward, closing a pale fist around the ring, feeling the warmth of my body on it.
‘Look after him,’ I said, and I kicked my heels but now Tormaigh refused to move. I flicked the reins and clicked my tongue and at last to my relief, and to my anguish, he walked on along that woodland path.
I did not look back.
23
Lord of War
I BARREL THROUGH underbrush, through bramble and mire, feeling neither thorn nor insect bite. I feel my own strength, though, savage and raw and unstoppable. I am a bristling mass of muscle and fury, forcing my head like a plough amongst the forest litter, upturning soil and stones and whatever is in my way. I root up bulbs and plants, scavenge nuts, berries and seeds. Feast on worms and insects, rats, snakes and carrion. Nothing can stop me. All the world is a bounty for me to feast upon. It passes beneath my feet in a blur, yet I smell everything, taste everything, my own scent sharp in the air through which I move.
Only Man can harm me, yet I do not fear him. I have gored a man with these tusks. Ripped into his reeking bowels and charged on into the woods, leaving him shrieking.
When I possess some creature of the sky, then I am truly free. But when I journey with the boar, all bulk and rage, I fly across the earth, fleet and fearless, insatiable and rampant, the sound of snapping undergrowth announcing my passing.
Almost too wild, this creature, so that I can barely govern him. Barely command so much bulk or bring his great head up from the rich earth through which he delves.
I smell the taint of Man on the air, long before I see signs of him with these small, deep-set eyes. I smell fresh blood, too, and I haul this head up then. Swinging it this way and that. I sniff the air and grunt. I want to turn away. There is nothing for me that way, not even the sweet blood and open flesh. Not until the men have gone. But some other, stronger need compels me on, nosing towards the pungent scent.
I push through thick furze, across marsh and ancient, gleaming bones, and come to the place. It takes all my will to root these hooves to the ground. To stand stiff-legged, head up, my nose tasting the air. To watch.
He has changed. He is older, of course. He wears the years on him, heavy as that coat of bronze scales. He could almost be Arthur in that war finery, that silver-chased helmet hiding his face, all of it shining dully in the unnatural twilight of thick forest. For the way others look at him. The awe in their eyes. Their desire to prove themselves to him.
He bellows orders and men hurry from him, gory blades in their hands. Towards the clamour of iron and killing.
Blood sweet in my nose. I taste it and stand my ground.
Another man shouts and the lord of war looks up as a wild, half-naked figure flies at him, shrieking and flashing with steel. The lord of battle moves fast as thought, takes the shrieker by the neck, slams him against a pine trunk and thrusts a long blade through his neck, pinning him there.
The general turns back to the others, leaving his enemy to gurgle and hammer his heels against the spruce; the last thumping heartbeats of his life. I hear them.
Yes, older now. Fiercer. And yet it is not hard to see the boy he once was in the man he has become.
He points sharp steel into the dimness, towards the blood stench and noise. Others run that way. I feel their footfalls through the earth, up into my own stiff forelegs. I only have to turn my nose towards them to smell their fear, yet they run towards death. For him.
I smell no fear on the battle lord.
He turns and looks through the forest. He sees me and I see him, his eyes bright within that white-tailed helm. White and red. Bone and blood.
I have known him always.
A spearman had ridden ahead from Mont Tombe to tell me that she was coming. I sent my own man back with word that she must wait for me on the island. That I would come when I could.
She did not wait.
There was a summer storm on the day I saw her again. The forest canopy was as good as thatch for keeping the rain off, but it was dark enough amongst the trees that it felt like dusk though it was the middle of the day.
I had not thought to see her again, not in this life. How long had it been? Seven years? Eight? Years of bloodshed in a foreign land, in deep forests of pine and beech which smelled like my childhood. Years of war, at first for Arthur, paying his debts to King Syagrius, but then for myself. Revelling in my gods-given talent, as a hawk revels in the currents of the sky.
Trying to forget.
She came at the head of a column of spearmen. Not in their midst, but at their head, like a general herself, though armed only with her terrible beauty. And when she dismounted in that gloom, the rain hissing in the boughs above us, my heart hammered faster than a thousand screaming tribesmen had ever caused it to.
‘You have changed, Lancelot,’ she said.
‘You have not, lady,’ I said, my loins flooding with warmth as I stared, hoping my scowl hid my desire for her.
I had not expected to see her, yet she said nothing of the blood, of the filth and the stench which I had grown used to. Neither did she show any unease at the way my men looked at her, yet she must have felt their eyes like maggots on her skin. They were wild, those men. Made savage by war. I trusted them and they followed me, but I could no more command their eyes or tame their hunger for what the long years had denied them than could I tell myself that I did not want to take Guinevere to my bed there and then.
‘It is not safe here.’ I nodded to a part of the forest that had been thinned of trees to feed our fires and build our palisades. ‘Our camp is nearby. I will have a tent cleared for you.’
She nodded and we walked together through the unnatural gloaming, through the rain’s sibilance in the heavy boughs and the murmurs of spearmen, Guinevere’s charm being two-fold: for her own beguiling beauty, and for being Lord Arthur’s wife, that prince’s fame having flown far and wide in those years. Arthur, the curse of the Saxons. Arthur, the Bear of Britannia. Arthur, the king that shall be. And here was his woman. His Guinevere. The wife to whom he comes bloody and broken from the battle. The wife who knows his ambitions and his fears. The ointment for his flesh, the balm for his soul.
Guinevere and Bors embraced, as she and I had not, and jealousy stirred in my belly like a serpent waking after sleep. And yet I was not the man she had known. Not any more.
My tent was little more than a great canvas stretched between the trees. Large enough for my warlords to gather within on freezing winter days, but lacking any comforts beyond those which a warrior needs.
‘Why have you come?’ I asked her, when Bors had excused himself in order to show Arthur’s men where to pitch their own tents.
Not the words she had expected to hear once we were alone. Her eyes told me that. They did not seem to recognize me.
‘There was no one else,’ she said. ‘No one else whom Arthur trusted.’
I had offered her a seat, yet she stood, watching me as I removed my war gear, putting my helmet on the bed in case she did want the stool, and hanging my sword belt on the stub of a pine branch.
She filled two cups with wine which she had brought with her from Mont Tombe. It had been a long time since I had drunk anything so good.
‘I heard about your uncle,’ she said. She was searching my eyes, as if she alone knew that Balsant’s death had not pleased me, as others had thought it must.
‘A hunting accident,’ I said. ‘He took a wound from a boar. A small cut, so they said, but it turned bad.’ Just talking about my uncle brought the shame seeping back into me like pus into a bandage. I had sworn vengeance on him times beyond counting. As a boy I had looked south across the Dividing Sea and promised him such terrors, and Guinevere had been witness to my pledge. But in the event some nothing wound, or perhaps it was the gods, had made me false. Had proved me
an oath-breaker, for my uncle the traitor had died in his bed.
I had not avenged my father, nor my mother nor Hector. And in the years since, I had often felt their disappointment, their condemnation, even through the veil which separates our world from Annwn.
King Syagrius’s enemies had suffered for my shame.
‘At least he is dead,’ Guinevere said, still holding my eyes. I nodded, trying to rebury Balsant in the past and turning my thoughts back to Arthur.
‘Why has he sent you here?’ I asked.
‘He needs you, Lancelot,’ she said, offering me a cup.
I drank. ‘He still remembers me, then?’ I asked.
She frowned. ‘Of course he does,’ she said.
‘It’s not safe for you here,’ I said. ‘The enemy is close.’
‘But you are winning,’ she said.
I nodded. ‘And Arthur?’
Guinevere considered how to answer that, looking back out into the camp. The rain was lighter now but the forest was still dark. Water dripped on the canvas above our heads where trapped insects mustered.
‘He needs you,’ she said again. ‘The Picts have come south and King Einion of Ebrauc demands Arthur’s help in return for the spearmen from northern Britain who marched for High King Uther. The Saxons of Lindisware are raiding west into Elmet and south into Caer Lerion. Cerdic, the Saxon king in the north, is even more ambitious than Aella. King Meirchion Gul of Rheged is dead and the new king is no friend to Arthur. Spearmen from Rheged have moved on Powys, so that King Cyngen, who has been a strong ally these last years, must now look to his northern borders as well as west and to the Irish.’
‘And Constantine?’ I asked. ‘Where is he these days?’
Guinevere pressed a hand into the small of her back, easing some ache from the long ride. ‘He has bent the knee to Arthur,’ she said, ‘and Arthur has sent him to defend Venta Belgarum.’
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