The Forgotten Kingdom

by Signe Pike

  They were ready too soon. Torin and my guard stood watch beside Meldred’s Swineherds at the base of the outer rampart.

  Rhydderch turned, lifting a hand in good-bye.

  I bit my lip, battling tears. For within that farewell, I felt each man’s farewell. That of Maelgwn, Fendwin, Diarmid, my brother, that of every miller and boatman, every farmer and herdkeeper. It was the summoned sacrifice of so many of our people marching headlong into an unknown fate, their faces grim, mouths set, determined.

  Only when the last line of men disappeared from sight did I duck behind the hut and retch in the summer grass. I wiped a hand across my face, knuckles white.

  Now there was nothing to do but wait.

  CHAPTER 46

  Lailoken

  The Caledonian Wood

  Kingdom of the Selgovae

  30th of June, AD 580

  We go in the name of the Gods

  In likeness of deer, in likeness of horse,

  in likeness of serpent, in likeness of king.

  Stronger am I than all persons.

  The hands of the Gods keep me,

  The love of the Gods in my veins,

  The strong Spirit bathing me,

  The Three shielding and aiding me,

  The hand of Spirit bathing me,

  The Three each step, aiding me.

  Keep watch upon our hunt that we may return.

  I looked up from our prayer to the Morrigu, goddess of war. The Dragon Warriors’ heads were bowed beneath the forest as they whispered now their own words of protection. But this day we hunted no boar.

  It would soon be night, and this day, we hunted men.

  The sky through the canopy was fire and ocher smeared by gray cloud. I thought I caught the acrid smell of smoke on the wind from the huts I knew were burning as the Angles of Bernicia marched toward the Caledonian Wood.

  One thousand Selgovae waited throughout the great forest, hidden among the trees. We men of Pendragon were only eight in all. But another 160 in our retinue were Keepers fled from Scotia when Keepers were outlawed, men who’d settled in the forest. We Dragons had trained them, and together we made a new brotherhood: the Army of Stags. I had no word from Artùr, but I knew he would come. If he’d received my message and ridden like wind, he and his cavalry might join us within the day.

  We would strike like lightning and disappear into the forest. A force the size of the Angles clung together like a hive, but the workers on the outside were exposed. An army of ten thousand men possessed a long and vulnerable flank.

  I thanked the Gods at seeing Maelgwn as he appeared among the warriors in his battle armor, saving me from my thoughts.

  The men fell quiet, eyes on the Pendragon, hands upon their spears.

  Now it began—the pounding of our wooden spears against the soft earth.

  Huh. Huh. Huh-huh-huh. It was a guttural sound, our chant. A sound for a kill.

  Huh. Huh. Huh-huh-huh. It was a chant that recalled each battle we had fought. A chant that summoned our fury for every scout who’d ridden out and not returned, for every finger the Angles had sent when they captured our men, for every house we’d seen burned, for every woman who’d been raped, for every babe they had killed. The horrors, we had fought them—fought them for years, even while other countrymen turned away their gaze.

  It was right that it was us here now, in small number at the beginning of the great fray. For we had fought, and we had killed. And we were still here.

  Huh. Huh. Huh-huh-huh. We had chanted a thousand times on mornings we rode out to victory. On the morning of Arderydd when we witnessed a slaughter. Now our chant was both a summoning of our strength and a summoning of our dead.

  Huh. Huh. Huh-huh-huh.

  Maelgwn stood upon a boulder, lifting his voice. The warriors watched him, hawklike, never stopping, only softening their chant.

  “Seven winters ago, we came to this forest broken, bloodied, and in need of shelter,” he said. The warriors’ voices rose up in chorus.

  Long may we honor the courage of the dead.

  “But we did not merely subsist in anguish, forever mourning our brothers. We chose instead to honor them, here! In the trees of this very forest. We built instead a refuge for Song! A place to keep Wisdom. A place to tend the hunted and the wounded, where we may yet honor and give sacrifice to the Gods who sustain us while zealots burn the huts of the innocent even as they say amen!”

  The warriors roared and Pendragon nodded, meeting the eye of each and every man.

  “We carried the bloodied body of Uther from beneath the ramparts. I watched him choke and wheeze on his death. On this day, the very men who slaughtered our brothers beg for our aid. And I, Maelgwn Pendragon, will not turn them away. I will not say to the Christians that I refuse to fight. Because on this day we fight to protect the lives of every Briton! Here in our new land, where the Selgovae have sheltered us, the Angles are coming, and I will not let them take our lives. I will not see our people enslaved! On this day we hunt! On this day we punish! On this day we fight!”

  The cry from our men carried through the forest.

  “Yaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!” came the echo from the Selgovae, perched in the trees. My breath came fast. Every leaf and branch stood out in relief. I felt the thunder of the Morrigu chase through my veins. And then, far above the canopy, I heard a new cry.

  I looked up into twilight in search of the source. There, above the forest canopy, a golden eagle was circling.

  Gwenddolau’s bird.

  Uther, you are with us. Now we cannot lose.

  Night dropped its mantle. The Caledonian Deep was our tunnel to travel along the flank of the Bernician army unseen as they marched ever deeper into the wood. On soundless feet, we moved past oak and elm, burn and streamlet, slipping into overhangs and hollows. We had no need of light—we needed only our senses.

  We waited while they stopped, settling at last for the night. I heard thin voices speaking a thin tongue. Tonight we would strike and kill them in their sleep. Tomorrow we would strike while they were on the move.

  Quiet fell, and their men at watch paced with shoulders back, too proud in the dark.

  The snap of a twig. The nervous whinny of Angle horses.

  Could they not feel the whites of our eyes upon them in the dark? Did they not sense the danger?

  Soon you will be dead.

  Maelgwn lifted his hand. Do not strike yet.

  Closer.

  Steady.

  Strike now.

  That night we were the terrors of the Caledonian Wood. Over three hundred we must have killed, in five different raids. By dawn our bodies were but shells, but the blood on our armor was not our own.

  The Bernicians who had seen the dead would speak of it in their thin tongue with low voices.

  Sleep with open eyes.

  It is true what they say about the Caledonian Deep.

  But we needed more men. None of us had slept, up all night butchering Angles, scaling trees like squirrels or racing like stags through the great wood.

  Now we were isolated from our own hive, a horde of Angles between us and Rhydderch’s army, with no way of sending word. How far north did Hussa’s army stretch?

  Discouragement threatened. No matter how many we slayed, too many yet lived.

  And then, not long after we had returned to our camp, we were stirred from our rest by the rumbling sound of horses.

  “Weapons!” I called out.

  But these riders were not Angles. Cheers rose up as Artùr came speeding through the forest at the head of nearly two hundred cavalry. The men of Mannau.

  “Well met!” Maelgwn lifted an arm in greeting.

  “Our infantry follows,” Artùr said. “They will stand with Meldred. We will join them at Pebyll.”

  “We are grateful,” Pendragon said.

  “And you’ve come in good time,” I added. “It’s great fun. Like spearing fish in a pool.” I reached to grip his arm only to see blood on his armor. />
  “A wound, but nearly healed,” he explained. “Your niece Angharad was my healer. She trains to be a priestess at Woodwick Bay in the Orcades.”

  “Angharad?”

  Artùr was watching my face.

  “I…” Words left me. I covered my mouth with my hand. “She lives? And she is hale?”

  “Aye. She is hale. And she sends word of her love of you. She hopes to see you again. So do nothing foolish, for I would not see you break her heart.”

  I looked at him. Could it be? Angharad lived, and Artùr was taken with her. The Gods never ceased to surprise me.

  “Thank you,” I told Artùr. “And what of the blood soaking your sleeve?”

  “Ach, that’s Angle, of course.”

  “When? Riding south?”

  Artùr shook his curly head, his blue eyes lit with humor. “Did you not notice my late arrival? We rode first to Trimontium, in the east, to sever their supply line.”

  “Begging your pardon?”

  “Aye.” Artùr’s face split into a smile. “It only made sense. Well, lead on, then.” He drew up his reins with impatience. “We cannot have Dragons stealing all our sport.”

  CHAPTER 47

  Angharad

  Din Eidyn

  Northern Kingdom of Gododdin

  28th of June, AD 580

  The warriors of Din Eidyn could spare no provisions, for they were preparing for war. But they granted the Cruithni trespass through their lands, and they shared with the Picts a warning. “Travel the old Roman road a few leagues for speed, but then you’d do well to keep off it, lest you encounter the Bernician army. Tell any who question you our king has granted you passage.”

  Talorcan nodded at the Gododdin general, who then added, “You must hold us at no fault should the Bernicians set fire to your boats.”

  Talorcan turned to the quay, eyeing the boats with the look of a father leaving his child. Muirenn touched his arm. “Come, then, my love. There’s no help for it now.”

  Angharad, too, looked back at the boats. For that was where she’d left her feathered cloak. It was only going to hinder her, she reasoned. And it had been a rather silly thing, after all.

  As Muirenn and her retinue of nearly three hundred men took up their weapons and shields, the Britons who’d flocked to the fortress of Din Eidyn for safety emerged from behind its ramparts to watch them pass in awe.

  “Mother, look at the priestesses!” Angharad heard a little girl exclaim.

  “Hush! Don’t look them in the eye,” her mother commanded, burying the girl’s head in her skirts.

  Angharad’s own people did not know her for a princess of Strathclyde. How could they? That child was no more. Angharad had lived just as long as a Pict as she ever had as a Briton. But now, for the first time, she saw herself as she appeared to a Briton’s gaze: a northern priestess in a blue cloak with stern kohled eyes and coiled red hair, and when the sleeve of her cloak caught in the wind, the birds that had been needled up her arm seemed to nearly take flight.

  Ariane hummed a strange tune, gazing at the sky.

  As they left the Gododdin capital of Din Eidyn and began to follow the old Roman road, Angharad observed the state of her body.

  Fear. Her chest was tight with it, her belly weak. Its only desire was to convince her that she must fear for her life and the lives of the people who now walked beside her. But her mind searched and reclaimed something deeper.

  Trust.

  She had been taught by circumstance to rely on it. Now, again and again, she returned to it. The old road they marched had been built for war by Rome. It was straight and unbroken as far as her eyes could see, leading into the heart of an impossible battle. Angharad scarcely knew how best to hold a blade.

  Yet, looking at her boots, she reminded herself that the road she truly walked was the Crooked Path. It was a way of mystery and whispers, of twists and turnings that had delivered her here. It fed her, like a mother. When she saw and understood the workings that guided her from another world—the greater world—nothing felt so exhilarating.

  For in seeing and understanding, Angharad became free.

  The countryside was vacant as they continued south. Every tenant and villager had either been summoned to fight or hid within the safety of their nearest hillside fort. Some of the hut doors hung open, and Angharad saw tunics and cook pots strewn over bracken-covered floors. They had gathered their possessions and livestock in much haste.

  The Cruithni stopped to sleep, then took to the road again before dawn, rested enough with oats in their stomachs. Despite the warning, the Cruithni had been hesitant to leave the old Roman road before they must—they would have to rely on unknown paths in the forest and could not travel nearly as fast. But then, just after sunrise, a shape in the sky caught Angharad’s eye. Dark brown with white flashing and a wingspan greater than the height of most men. Ariane noticed it, too.

  “Look!” Angharad pointed. “A golden eagle.”

  She watched its path as it soared and dipped, tipping west over the woods. “Gwenddolau’s bird,” she whispered. She had nearly forgotten. Diarmid had kept them in the temple. “We must leave the old road now,” she told Muirenn.

  Muirenn had spoken little since their march, save to bolster her men, and Talorcan looked uneasy, traveling through a foreign land by foot rather than by sea.

  In a quiet moment, when they stopped at a burn, Angharad approached her. Muirenn looked up.

  “Do you regret that you’ve come?” Angharad asked.

  “No, Angharad. I do not regret it, whatever should lie ahead. I chose a life of listening. And though Bridei may think me a fool, I could not turn away.” Muirenn smiled a little, then bent to clean her hands. “It is only that, since we have left our boats, my ears have gone quiet without the sound of water, and the men are eager for a plan. They feel vulnerable in this land.”

  “Soon we will reach the Caledonian Wood,” Angharad said. “The Gods will be waiting. They will show us what to do.”

  “Let us hope you are right.” Muirenn stood and stretched, then called for the men to keep moving. “The Gods await in the Caledonian Wood,” she said. “Come, then, and follow me. We will meet our fates there.”

  CHAPTER 48

  Lailoken

  The Caledonian Wood

  Kingdom of the Selgovae

  1st of July, AD 580

  My body ran with sweat. I’d given my gray horse to one of my men. Not a breath of wind stirred the trees, and we had been running through the forest all morning. We’d had them. I’d felt their fear. We’d divided into packs that ran the length of their flank, nearly six leagues in all, striking out of the forest, leaving bodies behind. They did not know where we might next strike. And then, from across a great distance, came the blast of battle horns. The sound was hideous and discordant. The sound let loose a panic I had not known still lived in me.

  An echo of Arderydd.

  I stopped and bent over, breathing. Cursing. Seven winters gone by, yet the blare of the battle horns thrust me calf-deep in mud once more, slipping, hearing Dreon cry out in agony as a spear thrust between our shields, piercing his thigh.

  I beat at my head, trying in vain to summon my battle frenzy, but my fingers were trembling. Somewhere in the distance, a new war had begun.

  “Lailoken!” Artùr’s voice came, and I returned to myself to see him mounted, gripping the reins of a second horse. “For you,” he said.

  I blinked to clear my vision, for I was caught between worlds: the horror of what had been, and the impending horror of what had yet to become.

  We had painted the trees with their blood. Now we must ride to face them in an open field. Now the Angles of Bernicia would come at us in swarms.

  And yet here was Artùr, frowning as he looked down upon me, eager to ride. Even now Rhydderch’s sword was raised. Even now the men shouted. Even now the Angle archers let rain their arrows as the cavalry charged, shattering bones. This was not Artùr’s battle, though h
is mother was a Briton. And yet. Here Artùr sat upon his black horse.

  “Yes,” I said. Gripping the saddle, I yanked myself astride. I kicked the horse into a run and made three bellows of the horn at my belt. If this was the last battle I should ever fight, let it be with the last of the Dragon Warriors. Let it be with my Army of Stags. If this was the last time I would punish with my sword, let me say yes.

  Yes to freedom.

  Yes to honor.

  Yes to death.

  Theirs or my own.

  We hastened toward Pebyll, where Strathclyde and Rheged had already begun their fight. We had lost some warriors. Some ran on foot, those upon horseback charging ahead. But brush clogged the forest trails, and low-hanging branches seemed to appear out of the ether, flattening us to our horses’ backs or making us yank our mounts to a halt.

  “Enough,” Maelgwn called out. “We must take the Roman road.”

  It was foolhardy, pursuing an army of more than nine thousand men at a canter down the very road where they stood in pitched battle at some unknown distance ahead. The Bernician scouts would see us, no doubt. By the time we reached them, Hussa’s men would be turned back upon their body to form a new head like a hydra, ready to face us even as their pitched battle raged on at their northern reach.

  So be it. There was no more retreating into the safety of the wood.

  I crashed through the tree line at the edge of the forest. But the road was not empty. By instinct, I jerked back on my reins, preventing my mount from colliding with another man’s horse. Whinnies echoed as both our mounts reared, and I saw a blur of red and black as I swung my blade at the other rider’s neck. The rider blocked it, swinging his own sword. Our eyes met.