by Jack Whyte
deserted, their massive booms angled at the tops of their masts and their sails furled and bound. Beside them, the score or so of fishing boats that shared the anchorage, at that main wharf and at the smaller pier built to the south, seemed tiny. I glanced back to Connor.
"Whose are they?"
His face betrayed nothing of what he thought, but his tone betrayed tension. "They are Liam's. The Sons of Condran."
"What will you do?"
"Nothing. Ignore them. Then leave before they do."
"That one is huge, larger than this."
"Aye, it ships forty-eight oars to our thirty-six. That's Liam's own galley."
"And? Will you fight them?"
His features creased in a wintry little smile. "Probably, but not here. Not in Ravenglass. This is neutral ground."
"Forgive me, I don't understand. What does that mean?"
He turned his head now to look at me. "Simply what it says. This is the only harbour in the entire north-west where ships can call and provision themselves in safety. It has always been that way, since the day the Romans built the fort. All warfare ceases once a ship enters this bay, otherwise it is denied entry. The fort, there, as you can see, is walled and occupied. It can't be taken from the sea, nor can it be surprised from overland, so it sits inviolate and inviolable, and all men use it as a base for gathering provender. We'll rub shoulders with Liam's men inside the town, but we'll ignore them, as they will ignore us. If any trouble does break out, the party causing it will be denied re-entry in the future. No trouble ever surfaces within the town." He smiled again. "Of course, when two groups such as ours meet here, it creates a certain tension when the time arrives to leave."
"How? You mean there's an advantage to being? the first to leave?"
"Aye, there is. The same advantage that the smith has over the iron he works. He may swing his hammer as hard as he wishes, and the iron is pressed flat against the anvil The coast becomes the anvil when you are the last ship out."
"But you have three ships to their two."
"I do, and that may make the difference. We'll see."
He turned his head now, his eye seeking Tearlach, and then he nodded and returned to the side rail, where he leaned forward, his attention focused closely on the spot we would occupy here in the harbour called Ravenglass. It was clear to me he had dismissed me from his mind for the time being, absorbed now in the berthing of his long, sleek craft, which had borne us swiftly and effortlessly northward. We had skimmed around the coast of Cambria from the estuary south of it by Glevum, skirting Anglesey, the sacred Isle of the Druids, to seaward before swooping back to the coastline, driving north-east again to where the rugged coast of the region known as Cumbria waited to receive us, across from the humped shape on the horizon that Connor called the Isle of Man.
Accepting that other priorities had claim on him, I turned away and looked towards the prow, where my own party stood gazing forward as raptly as Connor to the new land ahead of them. These were my friends, my family and all my world, now that we had left Camulod behind us in the distant south. Others there were who had set out with us, and those were split between the two galleys that rode as escorts at our rear, but these eleven were my special ones.
The youngest of the men, a giant who towered a hand's width over even me, was twenty-four years old and brother to the galley's captain, Connor, although no stranger would ever have taken them for such. Where Connor was black- haired, blue-eyed and dark of skin in the pure Celtic way, his younger brother Donuil was fair-skinned and light- haired. His face was clean-shaven in the Roman style, like my own, and his eyes seemed to change from brown to green, depending on the light.
Connor was no small man. He was above average height, huge in the shoulders and deep through the chest. Great, sweeping moustaches drooped below his chin, emphasizing the thickness of his neck, a solid pillar of muscle, and directing attention to the heavy tore, an ornate, intricately worked chieftain's collar of solid gold, that encircled it. Yet even Connor appeared small when seen beside his younger brother. Donuil's great height—he stood a full head taller than most full-grown men—combined with the graceful proportions of his physique to belie the true bulk of the man. His shoulders were broader than his brother Connor's, yet seemed slighter; his chest was larger, yet seemed not so deep; and he seemed slender where his brother appeared broad and bulky—all due to his height.
Looking at Donuil now, and seeing the ease with which he stood, one arm about the waist of his wife, Shelagh, as they gazed together at the scene ahead of them, I wondered again, as I had a hundred times, about the influence this clan of aliens, this single family of Scots, had exerted upon my life.
Athol Mac Iain had not lacked progeny. All of them had, however, been born in Eire, far from where I had grown up in Camulod, ignorant of their existence. One of them, his youngest daughter, Deirdre, had become my wife and had been killed while pregnant with my child. Long before her death, however, her brother Donuil had become my hostage, captured in war and held against his father's promise of non-intervention in our ongoing conflict with the warlord Gulrhys Lot of Cornwall. None of us knew of the link that bound us until I eventually brought my wife home to Camulod and Deirdre and Donuil were reunited, each stunned by the other's reappearance.
Another sister, Ygraine, had been wedded to my archenemy, Gulrhys Lot, to bind the early alliance between her father's people and Cornwall. Angry and disgruntled at the treatment she endured from her inhuman spouse, she willingly fled with my cousin Uther Pendragon during a long campaign, and the two became enamoured of each other, producing a bastard son. It was I who later found Ygraine on a lonely beach on the Cornish coast, being violated by a man who was wearing my cousin's armour, stripped from Uther's corpse. I held her as she died, and I barely managed to rescue her infant son, Uther's son. I leaped aboard the boat where he lay crying and drifted with it, helpless, out to sea, where we were found by yet another brother, Connor, dispatched by his father the king to meet Ygraine and bring her safely home to Eire. That same boy, Arthur Pendragon, my lifetime charge, now stood by his Uncle Donuil's side, peering towards the land.
Remembering, I shook my head again at such a host of wild improbabilities. But I no longer thought or sought to question them. I am a Christian, by birth and upbringing, but I am also a Druidic Celt, trained by my mother's people, the Pendragon of Cambria. The Celtic half of me has always believed in fate and the inevitability of things decreed by minds greater than human. The Christian,
Roman-British half of me, thanks to my great-aunt Luceiia Varrus, has come to believe the same: some things are meant to be and will come to pass, despite the blinking disbelief of humankind. That thought brought a smile and a stirring of goose-flesh as I stared forward now to the wooden wharf that drew closer with every gentle stroke of the oars, for there stood the crowning proof of what I had been thinking.
The man who slew Uther Pendragon and stripped him of his armour was a man I had met before—an enemy, but not a mortal foe. I believed him when he told me he had not known Uther's identity when he killed him. His surprise at learning he had slain Uther Pendragon was too genuine to doubt. And so, sickened by the carnage I had seen throughout the final battles of the campaign in Cornwall, I made no effort either to fight him or to detain him that day. I simply watched him ride away unscathed. His name was Derek, and he called himself the king of Ravenglass. Now, many years later, I recognized him easily among the crowd thronging the wharf.
The great galley slid smoothly to the side of the long, wooden pier, propelled by one last sweep of its thirty-six oars. The oarsmen brought their long sweeps up in unison, scattering drops of water inboard as they held the oars briefly at the vertical then brought them down, blades forward, lowering them hand over hand with the skill of long usage and dropping them in overlapping rows along the sides of the craft, atop the rows of benches. Two men crouched at prow and stern, poised to throw mooring ropes to eager hands waiting on the wharf. Four ot
hers hung far overboard, positioning great pads of hempen cushions to protect the vessel's side against damage from the barnacle- encrusted timbers of the pier. The galley slowed, its forward motion bleeding away with the dying impetus of that final thrust until it barely moved through the water, and a stillness fell as everyone waited. Then came a gentle nudge as ship met moorings. Ropes flew outwards and were seized by willing hands, and an involuntary roar of approval came from the watching crowd, which surged forward in welcome. Crewmen leaped down onto the dock to secure the heavy gangplank, which was already rearing high above the galley's side, hoisted by ropes and pulleys from the recessed well in the central causeway that housed it. Momentously, ponderously, one end swung outward over the rail and was lowered gently to the dock where, in moments, it was safely grounded and secured by the waiting crewmen.
Satisfied that his vessel was securely berthed, Connor turned away from the rail and moved towards me, walking effortlessly despite the carved and tapered wooden cylinder that had replaced his right leg from the knee down. He was smiling, taking no notice now of the crowd bustling on the wharf.
"Well, Yellow Head," he said to me, "I'm first ashore, by custom, so you have a few moments to collect your thoughts." His smile broadened. 'This is the worst part for me—the transition from ship to shore, from sea legs to land legs. It's bad enough on two feet." He stamped his peg leg against the decking. "I've ended up on my arse more than a few times. You'll notice that my men take care not to look at me until I call to them." He shook his head, his smile now one of self-deprecation. "I'll see you over there."
As he spoke, a rope came swinging, apparently out of nowhere, and he raised his hand to seize it, almost without looking. I spun to see whence it had come, and almost before I'd had time to realize that it dangled from the same pole that had hoisted the gangplank out from the ship, Connor had grasped the rope in both hands and quickly placed his foot in the loop at the end of it. Immediately, he was snatched upward, swinging smoothly out and over the side to be lowered gently to the dock. There he removed his foot from the loop and stood slightly spread-legged, retaining his hold on the rope, which remained taut, until he had achieved balance.
I glanced around me, and it was true: none of his fierce- looking crew was watching him. A moment longer he stood there, swaying slightly, and then he released the rope.
'Take it, Sean!" he roared, and it swung inboard again as the captain turned towards the onlookers On the shore, who had watched all of this with curiosity. He threw his arms wide in a gesture of triumph and greeting and was immediately engulfed in a crowd of welcomers.
Now the galley was suddenly filled with the moving bodies of the oarsmen, who normally sat in serried, disciplined ranks for hours on end, working or resting. Released from their oars, they appeared to fill the ship beyond its capacity as they crowded towards the gangplank in a noisy, undisciplined tide. I could see there was no point in attempting then to walk the length of the vessel to my own party on the foredeck, so I resolved to wait and go ashore with my people at the end of the exodus and with a modicum of dignity. As the thought occurred to me, I heard Tearlach, the boatmaster, call to me.
"Merlyn! Come you forward now and we'll clear a way for you."
I shook my head, smiling at him and holding up my hand. "No, Tearlach, not yet. Let the men go first. I have to talk with the boy before we leave the ship."
Tearlach shrugged and shook his head. "Please yourself," he muttered, and he swung away to start shouting more orders.
I turned my eyes back to the crowded wharf, seeking the man who called me "Yellow Head," but my view of him was obscured by the oarsmen filing down the gangplank, their brightly coloured Celtic clothing ablaze in the early-morning sunlight and their weapons and armour glittering and gleaming where they caught the light. These men were warriors, with a wildness in their looks and in their bearing that boded ill for any who might seek to bar their way. And yet it was evident from their demeanour that they were at ease, that this was not their first time here. None sought to flee their presence, and there were many, indeed, who greeted individuals by name and bade them welcome.
As the crowd swirled upon itself, Connor's head came into view again and I found him looking at me. He nodded, raising one hand to me casually, unseen by his companion, Derek of Ravenglass himself, who stood with his back to me. Another group moved down the gangplank and my view was obscured again. I glanced to my left, into the body of the ship, and saw that fully half the men had gone ashore and that I could now begin to make my way towards the prow. I set off, moving slowly along the central causeway, pausing occasionally to allow crewmen to pass in front of me from one side of the vessel to the other.
Ahead of me,, the oldest member of our group, my closest friend, Lucanus, watched me and nodded, one eyebrow raised sardonically in an amused half-smile as I approached.
"Well," he murmured as I reached him, "Derek of Ravenglass has weathered the years well since Verulamium. A bit stouter, much greyer, but I recognized him instantly. Has he seen you yet?"
"No. Connor has managed thus far to keep him from looking up here, but he will not be able to for much longer. I had best get down there."
"Hmm. Are you sure you would not like me to come with you?"
"Quite sure, but thank you. I must go alone. Whatever comes of this visit must take place between him and me. I want no other eyes or ears there in the first few moments."
"So be it, then." Luke's eyes were on the crowded scene below. "But bear in mind, my friend, that if he refuses it will be a setback we are already prepared to take in stride. The arrangements are in place for us to travel onward if we must."
"Aye, but let's hope we need not travel so far, Luke. Arthur!"
At my call, the boy stopped what he was doing and turned towards me instantly, his large, wide-set eyes reflecting golden in the low-angled, early-morning sun. I beckoned, and as he reached my side I nodded towards the wharf. "I'm going ashore to speak with the man talking to your Uncle Connor. He is the king I told you about, and he may wish to meet you, since he met your father once. In the meantime, whether he does or not, I want you to wait here patiently and behave like a grown man. Will you do that for me?"
The boy smiled at me, showing far more maturity than his eight years might indicate. He said nothing, merely nodding his head.
"Good lad!" I ruffled his hair and made my way directly to the gangplank, aware of all their eyes watching me. I was aware, too, of the spring of the down-sloping passageway beneath my feet, and of the fact that the press of bodies on the wharf had thinned out greatly. But with all of my being I was aware of the broad shoulders and imposing height of the man Derek, who stood with his back to me, waving an arm to emphasize what he was saying to Connor.
As I drew near them, Connor grinned at me over Derek's shoulder, then stretched out a hand to grasp the other's arm, silencing him.
"Your pardon, Derek," he said, smiling still. "I have brought a good friend with me, whom I believe you know already."
Arrested in mid-word, Derek of Ravenglass swung around to face me, and I watched as a series of expressions swept rapidly across his face: puzzlement, followed quickly by recognition, surprise and finally a close-guarded look I could not define. I saw suspicion there, and a hint of fear or defiance.
"The Dreamer," he said, frowning.
I nodded, "Merlyn Britannicus."
"Aye, I remember. Cornwall, by way of Camulod. The first time we met, you used another name."
"I did. Ambrose of Lindum."
"That was it. You're Roman."
"No," I shook my head. "No more than half, and that in name alone. I'm British."
"British, what's that?" The scorn in his question made it plain that Derek was far from intimidated by my sudden reappearance.
I shrugged. "The other half of me is Celt, like you. The combination makes me British, since I am neither one nor the other, yet was born here in Britain."
"You're a talker, I recal
l that from our first meeting, when we were on the road to join Lot's army."
"You were on the road for that purpose. We merely rode along with you."
"Aye, you did, then disappeared." He paused. "Your physician paid me gold to take your wounded through the meeting place that time, to safety beyond Lot's army."
That was true. He had taken the gold, but then had failed to fulfil his end of the bargain in entirety. That no ill had befallen our people had been due only to Lucanus's quick thinking on that occasion. I knew I would have to speak with care here if I were to avoid aggravating the situation by stirring up feelings of guilt on his part.
"What was his name, that physician of yours?"
"Lucanus."
"Aye, Lucanus. Did he survive?"
"He did, with all his men and wagons."
"Ah, he did. Good, that pleases me. I've often wondered about that."
This was not what I had expected. I had been attempting to analyse his tone, listening for signs of truculence or real hostility.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
He looked me straight in the eye, then sniffed, glancing sideways at Connor.
".It was a foul-up, all around." He cleared his throat. "We came to Lot's gathering place without problems, but instead of proceeding clear through, we had to stop when I was summoned to a meeting of commanders. Some fool had seen us coming and passed the word that I had arrived. We left your people on the outskirts of the encampment— couldn't very well take them with us, right into Lot's camp, could I? Anyway, the gathering was enormous, and I rode on in with my men to find the rest of our contingent, most of whom had come down the coast by water, ferried by Lot's galleys.
"As things turned out, Lot wasn't there and never did appear, and one thing led to another and I couldn't get back that night—held in a so-called planning session all night long. A dog-fight was what it was, more than anything else. With Lot away, everyone wanted to be a general, even though most of them couldn't find a latrine if they were standing in it. Later that evening, when I finally realized how things were going to be, I sent some of my people back to find yours and lead them on through, but by the time they reached the spot where we had left them, your people were all gone. No sign of them at all. My own men thought nothing more of it, and I didn't hear of it until the following day. Didn't know what to do then. I asked some questions but found no answers, and I didn't want to be too specific. I heard nothing about any disturbance or fighting or disagreements over wagons, and so I let it go. But I've often wondered what happened to them, how they got away."