Of Men and Dragons (The Lion of Wales Book 3)

by Sarah Woodbury

  “Get the horses, Huw. Get out of here.” Myrddin drew his sword to match Agravaine and pointed it at him.

  “But—”

  “Now!” Myrddin said. “Nell will explain.”

  “Yes, sir,” he said, and Myrddin was grateful that he didn’t say ‘father’ and reveal to Agravaine their connection.

  Huw walked quickly towards the stairs and disappeared down them.

  “You’ve seen me there?” Myrddin said to Agravaine, once they were alone.

  Agravaine brought up his chin, his eyes blazing. “You’ve died every night in my dreams since I was a boy.” And then amended, “until recently.”

  Dear God, to borrow Nell’s favorite phrase. Myrddin’s stomach curdled with a strange sort of sympathy for Agravaine, which he immediately gagged down.

  Agravaine didn’t share it. “You’re nothing but a trouble-maker. I should have known as my dreams became more confused these last weeks, and then ceased to come at all, that something was wrong.”

  “If you knew what was to come, why harm the woman at St. Asaph?” Myrddin said. “What did that gain you?”

  “Why not take her? I knew the future.”

  Myrddin took a step back, involuntarily distancing himself from Agravaine’s amorality. Agravaine had been haunted all his life, just as Myrddin and Nell had been. But in Agravaine’s case, the result had been a life without consequences.

  “You’re a child.” Agravaine’s sneer was affixed permanently to his lips. “There is so much you don’t know.”

  At that, Myrddin refocused on Agravaine’s words and stepped towards him again. “If that’s true, then we can help each other. We can pool our knowle—”

  Agravaine cut Myrddin off, shouting his disbelief. “I need nothing from you!” He brandished his sword at Myrddin, ready to fight even if Myrddin wasn’t.

  Realizing that Agravaine was in earnest, and that he couldn’t consider him an ally of any kind, Myrddin met Agravaine’s blade with his own. The swords rang out as they clashed, and then the men backed off from one another.

  “So how did you discover who I was?” Myrddin said. “Did Cai tell you?”

  Agravaine’s eyes glinted with amusement now instead of anger. “I have always known your name and your allegiance, of course. I just missed you at Rhuddlan. I shouldn’t have talked Cai out of running you through at the first opportunity.”

  Myrddin had heard enough. The dreams might have overtaken Agravaine’s reason, but he was still powerful. He still stood between Myrddin and the exit. “The king isn’t going to that church alone, you know.” Myrddin advanced on Agravaine.

  Agravaine laughed. “You think you can prevent his death?” His query echoed off the walls of the empty hall. “You can’t. I imagine he’s dead already!”

  At these final words, he attacked, driving at Myrddin with all his strength. Myrddin fell back, stepping away from him and allowing him to expend his energy unnecessarily. Every defense a swordsman made should have an attack associated with it, and as Myrddin parried his blow, he positioned himself more strongly.

  Then, when Myrddin caught Agravaine’s cross guard with the tip of his own weapon, the movement pulled the sword down and away from Myrddin, and he took the opportunity to close the distance between them. He wanted Agravaine on the ground and his sword in his throat.

  But Agravaine was too quick and spun away. The two men clashed swords again—four, five, six times—and with every movement, Myrddin allowed Agravaine to push him closer to the door of the hall. This couldn’t go on much longer before a member of the garrison—one of the few left in the castle—would hear, and then Myrddin would be outnumbered. Anxious to put an end to it, desiring Agravaine’s death, but not willing to die himself to achieve it, Myrddin contemplated making a run for it.

  At that moment, one of Agravaine’s boots slid on a piece of abandoned food that a diner had dropped on the floor. The rush mats provided a poor footing, almost as bad as muddy grass. It was ignoble of Myrddin, and he knew it, but as Agravaine went down on one knee, Myrddin moved in, batted Agravaine’s sword to one side with his gauntleted left hand, and drove his own sword through the man’s midsection.

  Agravaine fell backwards, his breath guttering as he lost air. Myrddin ripped his sword from Agravaine’s body and then kicked Agravaine’s fallen sword away. It went skidding underneath a nearby table. Without a second look, Myrddin turned to the door, wiping his sword on the edge of his cloak as he did so, and then sheathed it on the run. He didn’t want to reveal to all who might see him that he was fleeing from the aftermath of a fight, and that a Saxon lord lay dying in the muck of the hall.

  When Myrddin burst through the great doors and into the bailey, Edgar, Huw, and Nell were passing between the main gates out of the castle. Each sat astride their own horse, while Huw led Cadfarch.

  Myrddin called in Saxon, on the off-chance that avoiding Welsh might give him a few more seconds before the guards caught on that he was an enemy. “Wait!”

  Myrddin raced down the steps towards the gatehouse and across the courtyard. Nell had turned her head at Myrddin’s call but the others didn’t notice him until he threw himself onto Cadfarch’s back, delighted to have had such a close shave and survived again—and also knowing that the delight was a mirage, a false emotion that would fade as soon as the fire inside left him.

  As he’d hoped, the guards had seen him coming but hadn’t known if they should block his path. Usually their charge was to prevent people from entering the castle, not leaving it. Besides, no hue and cry rose from the hall, and Lord Edgar, whom the guards would expect to be able to come and go as he pleased, rode at Myrddin’s side.

  At a steady canter, they left the castle, moving into a gallop once they came down from the gatehouse. They traveled the mile between the gatehouse and the bridge across the Irfon River in short order. It was distressingly dark by the time they crossed it, at which point Edgar pulled up.

  “I cannot ride farther with you,” he said. “Tell King Arthur, if he lives, that I would talk with him, but not here. Not now. I must first speak to Lord Modred.”

  “What was that?” Myrddin’s heart was still beating hard since he hadn’t recovered fully from the fight or his flight from it. He forced himself to take a deep breath and encompass what Edgar was saying. “Do you think Modred doesn’t know of the letter you sent? I assure you he does! Agravaine suspected you of treason. You cannot doubt that Modred does too!”

  “Modred confirmed me in my lordship,” Edgar said. “He deserves to hear my concerns from me. He needs to know that Agravaine seeks only his own power.”

  “Not anymore,” Myrddin said. “To bring the news of Agravaine’s death will not make you welcome in Modred’s court.”

  “And yet I must go,” Edgar said, “and accept the consequences of doing what is right. I am my father’s son.”

  The man was too noble for his own good. Turning from Edgar, Myrddin and Nell faced off in the growing darkness. “What would you have me do?” Myrddin said.

  She shook her head, looking from him to Edgar and back again without an answer.

  Edgar stepped in. “I have a manor house not five miles from here. I will shelter Nell and Huw there until such a time as it is safe to send them to you.”

  Nell put out a hand to Myrddin. “We’ll be fine on the road—especially given my habit—while you, a Welsh knight, will not. Find King Arthur. He is alive. I know it. And then we’ll find you. Huw and I will come to the Abbey, as we agreed.”

  “I can’t leave you,” Myrddin said. “Agravaine’s men—”

  “Were met by ours, Myrddin,” she said, and then switched to Welsh. “The king is alive. Even if he went to the church, even if Agravaine has tricked him into going, Cedric’s men would have arrived in time to save him.”

  “All right.” Myrddin nodded, wanting her to be right, wanting to believe that the future they’d envisioned together would really come to pass.

  “Did you say Cedric?”
Edgar said, catching the reference. “What has he to do with this?”

  “We’re not yet sure.” Myrddin turned back to Nell. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

  “I wouldn’t,” she said.

  He reached for her, pulling Cadfarch close to her horse so he could kiss her.

  Edgar muttered under his breath. “Some nun.”

  “They’re married,” Huw said.

  “Of course they are,” Edgar said, deadpan.

  Myrddin released Nell who shot Edgar an amused look. Then Myrddin held out a hand to Huw, who grasped his forearm as one knight to another. “Take care of each other.” Myrddin wasn’t used to caring so much about the immediate prospects of survival for people other than Arthur, but fear for Huw and Nell roiled his gut.

  “I will, Father,” Huw said.

  Edgar threw up his hands in mock exasperation.

  “I love you, Myrddin,” Nell said.

  Myrddin nodded, unable to speak through the knot in his throat. All three turned away. Myrddin watched them until they disappeared around a bend in the road. The ache in his chest flamed higher until it burned him. And then it went out as cold certainty set in. Nell might hold hope in her heart still, but with her absence, Myrddin couldn’t share it.

  Turning Cadfarch’s head, he acknowledged that it was better that Huw and Nell were out of it. To the east was Mercia and, for all intents and purposes, peace. The danger was to the west. Alone, he could make better time and approach the church more circumspectly. If Agravaine’s men had attacked King Arthur’s, there was nothing Myrddin, as one man, could do to help them. At this point, he’d just be happy to find the king had stayed in bed, even if all his other plans had come to nothing.

  Then Myrddin cursed himself for the questions he had forgotten to ask Agravaine, not that he would have answered: first and foremost, how many of the dangers that faced the king were his doing? The attack on Garth Celyn? On Cedric? Ah well. Too late now. The man is dead.

  It was less than two miles from the Irfon Bridge to St. Cannen’s Church. The road kept close to the Cam River and Myrddin followed it. The river rushed by, not quite in flood, and the wind howled in the trees, blowing the snow directly into Myrddin’s face. The weather raged around him, but as he approached the churchyard, the strife of men drowned out all else. Up ahead, shouts came in Saxon and Welsh. As Myrddin got closer, a great column of smoke rose into the air. It flew above his head, a dark smudge blowing east. The smell of death and mortified flesh enveloped him.

  Retreating to the safety of the trees that lined the river, Myrddin bowed his head and closed his eyes, a sickening horror in his stomach. Sure enough, after a short wait, a troop of men—thirty at least—marched around the corner, coming from the church. They bore torches that lit up the night as their light was reflected off the snow on the ground and in the air and the white clouds above their heads.

  The trees and the darkness beyond the torchlight hid Myrddin. Even without the protective trees, the troop made so much noise they wouldn’t have noticed Myrddin if he’d shouted. Several of the men in the lead whooped and called their triumph.

  One call rose above every other, this one in Saxon: “He is dead at last!”

  Not all the men were so exuberant. Towards the tail end of the company, five or six men rode straight and solemn. Every so often, one of them glanced upwards and Myrddin gagged at what rose above their heads: A severed head bobbed on a pike, blood matting the dark hair, a grisly testament to their accomplished task.

  They passed Myrddin without a glance. He stayed in the trees, doing nothing, too late to save his king. When they’d gone, vanishing into the whirling snow, Myrddin directed Cadfarch towards the ruin of all his hopes. Men and horses had packed the snow in the clearing in front of the church so the blood stains showed clearly where they’d pooled on the icy ground. Here and there, grass poked through the snow where a heel had dug into the earth, evidence that men had dragged other men across it.

  It was the first time he’d ever seen the place while he was awake. Myrddin noted the differences and similarities to his dream—and knew they mattered not at all. He followed the signs to a spot to the northwest of the church. The Saxons had built a bonfire, their only tinder the bodies of the men they’d killed.

  Upwards of two dozen men burned in the pyre, most marred beyond recognition. The fire hadn’t yet consumed their gear but the torn clothes and disarrayed armor told Myrddin all he needed to know about how they died. His friends lay as they’d been thrown, haphazard and in every direction. Each man wore the dragon crest on his surcoat.

  Myrddin walked around the pile in a daze, the smoke stinging his eyes, although he would have been blind from tears regardless. At the far end, he spied the headless and mutilated body of his king, fallen off the edge of the pile and stripped of its fine armor. Choking on the horror of it, he dragged the remains to one side, unable to look more closely at the other bodies for fear he’d find the faces of his friends staring up at him, lifeless and empty.

  A lament rose unbidden in his ears. Its relentless rhythm drove Myrddin’s movements as he labored to put out the fire, to throw dirt on bodies, and to provide some semblance of a decent burial for his king, although all that was decent had disappeared from the earth:

  Can you not sense the turmoil amongst the oaks?

  Do you not see the path of wind and rain?

  And that the world is ending?

  Cold my heart in a fearful breast

  For the lion of Wales, that oaken door

  our warlord, our dragon-king

  Our Arthur … is dead.

  Exhausted and spent, knowing he’d done his best, and it hadn’t been enough, Myrddin wept over the fallen body of Arthur ap Uther, his lord, and the last hope of his people.

  Chapter Ten

  12 December 537 AD

  High in the mountains to the northwest of Buellt, with the snow up to Cadfarch’s knees, Myrddin stumbled towards the Welsh camp, drawn by the smoke and firelight. He’d buried King Arthur’s headless body as best he could—but with the dark and no tools, only his ragged and bleeding nails, and the clouds blotting out the stars and moon, the body was more under rock and brush than earth.

  It had taken far longer than Myrddin had wanted. Once he’d finished, he’d given Cadfarch his head, merely directing him west towards what he hoped were the remains of Arthur’s camp. Arthur’s men might face a battle tomorrow that they could easily lose, now that they had no king to lead them.

  And after that, if Myrddin survived the battle, he had to find Nell and Huw. They needed to decide what they were going to do next: if they were going to stay in Wales and live as best they could, or walk away. Or maybe die where they lay. The part of him that refused to surrender, that held onto hope amidst the desolation, died a little inside with every step that led him farther away from them. With so many dead, his family was the only thing that mattered anymore.

  Myrddin had just reached the first of the outer sentries, posted some two hundred yards from the camp, when a voice from behind hailed him. “My lord!”

  Wearily, Myrddin swung around, every muscle protesting even that slight movement. Cedric’s men, torches lighting up the forest, rode towards him. In response, the sentry beside Myrddin raised his pike. It was a brave stance, though what he thought two men could do against a company of soldiers Myrddin couldn’t guess.

  Myrddin raised a hand to Godric, the young captain, while reassuring the sentry. “They are friends.”

  Godric began speaking before he’d come to a halt. “We’ve just come from the church. I’m sorry. We were too late. We were lost for hours and ended up miles out of our way. The snow—” he broke off at Myrddin’s look, knowing as Myrddin did that excuses were merely that, when the price of failure was the loss of a king and a country. If the blizzard had not delayed them, these twenty men could have been enough to change the course of history.

  “Come,” Myrddin said. “I was too late as well.”

/>   Myrddin turned from Godric, gave the sentry a nod, and led the company the short distance through the woods to the camp. If he’d had the energy to think on it, the scene when they reached it was far calmer than he would have expected: men walked around the fires; they ate and drank, but their movements held no urgency. If anything, the emotion Myrddin felt from them was positive—even cheerful—without the expected drunken despair.

  And then it hit him. Could they not know?

  If it was possible for him to feel more despairing, the emotion would have overtaken him then. He faced the truth: the Saxons had killed everyone else who could have reported back, and it was he who would bring the news. Only he had survived and that by chance.

  Myrddin dismounted in front of the pickets. “My lord Myrddin,” the guard protecting the entrance said, “we’ve missed you.”

  It took a moment for Myrddin to recognize the man as one of Cai’s—and then his already cold heart collapsed in on itself. Of course. Cai had come. It would be just like him. Perhaps it was he who’d convinced Arthur to meet Edgar, setting up his brother to die as he’d plotted with Agravaine back in the belfry at Bangor, and now he would get to act the grieving brother and take up the mantle of Wales in his stead.

  Myrddin’s stomach churned in a foul pit, and he felt like puking. Instead, he looked for Deiniol among the men at the fire pits for he was sure to be here too, but he didn’t see him.

  Myrddin and Cedric’s soldiers left their horses with the boys whose job it was to tend them and trudged through the camp to what had been Arthur’s tent. When they reached it, voices inside rose and fell. Myrddin hesitated at the entrance, gripping the hilt of his sword. He speculated if it would be better to run the traitor through now, or see Nell and Huw safe first and then return to finish him. While he was deliberating, a man spoke from behind him: