by Whyte, Jack
"Dia!" Donuil leapt to his feet and stalked away, slamming one fist into his open hand, unable to endure such words without reaction. For my part, I grew cold, recalling another, similar account of death and rapine told to me by Shelagh in explanation of her skill with knives. I stared at her now, knowing what she had achieved, but at a loss over how she had been able to achieve it. She was looking at me directly, both of us aware that Donuil knew nothing of that first story or its consequences. She shrugged her shoulders.
"I killed all of them," she said, her voice expressionless.
Her words stopped Donuil in his agitated pacing. He turned to face her, his eyes wide with shock. "You killed them? Five men? All of them?"
Shelagh's eyes had not wavered from mine, and now I nodded.
"I know, but how?"
"With ease," she said, her face wooden. "I played the foolish, silly woman." She waited for me to respond, and when I said nothing she continued.
"My first concern was to ensure Ludmilla kept her mouth shut, for I knew what I must do and if she screamed, or panicked, we would both have been in the same cauldron with Julia. Fortunately, Ludmilla is nobody's fool. I told her what I meant to do—the only thing I could do—and sent her to hide and wait for whatever might pass. Then, as soon as she was on her way, I ran up the hill as far as I could without endangering my plan, for it had come into my mind full-born and I knew it would work.
"Once there, high above them, I threw off my clothes, then put my mantle on again, over my belt. I had to keep that hidden, so I tucked the fabric of the mantle up beneath the strap, concealing my knives and their scabbards but exposing myself. Then I began to scream and run downhill towards them, begging them to stop what they were doing and let the children go. They stopped, sure enough, thinking themselves attacked. Then, when they saw that I was all alone, and naked, they came after me, leaving poor Julia where she lay. She must have been already dead, for I saw no one stab her. . ."
Once again her voice died away and she sat silent for a time, before continuing in the same placid, unemphatic tone.
"I knew I had to make them run to me, and I knew they knew whoever caught me first would have me first, and so I ran to meet them, squealing in panic but swerving as I ran, keeping the distance I required from each of them. The fools saw only my skin beneath the mantle . . . white flesh and female hair. None of them thought to see a weapon, and they made a game of hunting me, forming a ring about me, just like sheep herding a dog, never seeing the foolishness of such a thing.
"At length, when they had me surrounded, closing in, I stopped and waited for them, whining and whimpering. Three of them wore nothing at all, and none of them had a weapon drawn. The two who carried knives sheathed them, to leave their hands free for the game to come. The fools were laughing, making great sport of it. When they came close enough, I killed all five of them. Even the last of them to die had not begun to understand what had happened by the time my knife took him beneath his ugly chin."
Donuil was staring at his wife in awe. I gazed at her in total admiration, envisioning the scene she had described and remembering the awe-inspiring speed with which she had planted her blades so close together in the block of wood that day in the Armoury.
"So," I said, eventually. "You finally took vengeance for your friend Rhona."
"Aye, I did, but it gave me little satisfaction." She sipped again now at her drink, draining the cup. "Ludmilla had been watching from the trees, and she came running, calling to the children. I went with her to check them, and as soon as I had seen that Arthur and the other boys were alive and all were well enough, I bade her look to Julia and then ran to summon help, in case there should be more of these people about. I thought I could make better time alone, rather than taking everyone with me, all of us virtually unarmed. I retrieved my knives, then caught my horse and left immediately. The rest you know."
I rose from the couch and crossed to fill her cup again with mead. Donuil moved, too, to sit on the arm of her chair, his hand touching her hair. He had barely spoken a word since my arrival, but I knew that he was fiercely proud of the tale his wife had told.
"Donuil," I said, raising my own cup in a salute to Shelagh, "I think your wife has earned a debt of gratitude today that all of Camulod will be forever helpless to repay." He nodded, still wordless, and I addressed myself to Shelagh.
"Shelagh," I said, "you are a warrior like no other I have known. Men flatter themselves, calling themselves warriors and boasting of their prowess under arms, and some have performed great feats. Few men, for all of that, have sought, or fought, such odds, five against one, naked and unafraid. And so I pay tribute, one soldier to another. Honour and fortitude and skills like those you showed today are truly rare, and I feel privileged to call you friend. There is none like you anywhere, I swear."
She gazed at me, half smiling, as I drank my mead, and when I had finished she spoke again.
"Fortitude, Merlyn? Naked and unafraid? I think not. Panic, certainly. I knew no other way to tempt those animals away from Julia. Had I known she was already dead, I never could have done it. Naked I was, of desperate necessity, but I was far from unafraid. I have never been more terrified in all my life."
I nodded and put down my cup. "I believe you. But fear is healthy and keeps warriors alive. The facing of it, however, and the conquest of it, is what men call courage. Now, if you will pardon me, I shall leave you two in peace. Good night."
XXXI
My definition of courage, intended as it was for Shelagh, became a goad for me, for I could not put it from my mind thereafter, and my mental anguish grew like a mushroom over the course of the days that followed, heightened by the terror writhing in my soul. I had no sound sleep during all that time, although I spent too much time lying in my bed, avoiding daylight and people. Cowardice was alien to me, and yet I knew myself to be a coward, not merely unwilling to face my fears and conquer them, but totally incapable of even contemplating the attempt.
On the morning of the fourth day following my meeting with Shelagh and Donuil, Lucanus entered my sleeping chamber uninvited and was pulling down the heavy curtains from the narrow window high up on the wall before I had time to absorb the fact that he was there. By the time I had risen to one elbow, squinting against the glare of the harsh morning light, he was standing above my cot, glowering down at me, ignoring my pathetic noises of complaint.
"Growing a beard, are you?" His voice was deep and angry. "And evidently making some attempt to discover just how badly one man can come to smell, to boot. . ."
I cringed beneath his merciless stare, only too well aware how poorly I must look. He spun away on one heel and walked out, leaving me alone to sit up and rub at my eyes. Moments later, I heard him return with someone else.
"Leave it there." I heard scuffling sounds beyond the curtain of my sleeping alcove, and then someone withdrew. I swung my legs over the side of the bed, feeling the floor tiles cold against my feet as the curtain was thrown open, admitting yet more light. Lucanus stepped inside the room and stopped.
"There's hot water here, and towels. I presume you have fresh clothes. You have an hour before the meeting I have urged Ambrose to call in your default. It will be a small gathering. Ambrose, myself and Dedalus, Rufio, Donuil and you. We need you there, so please be there. You might not suffer from a visit to the bath house between now and then. One hour."
The wind of his exit ruffled the curtain in the doorway and I quaked with shame, but then I bestirred myself and did as he suggested.
An hour later I walked into the Praesidium fully dressed, clean-shaven and armoured for the first time in almost a week. The guard on duty evidently expected me and told me that I was awaited in my own day room. As I entered, everyone stopped talking and looked at me, and I scanned their faces quickly, looking for scorn, or disdain, or anything from which I might infer a hint of disapproval. I saw nothing of the kind. Ambrose leapt to his feet and came to meet me with a smile of welcome, throwing
an arm about my shoulders and asking after my health. Lucanus had informed them I was sick of something, and they were all glad to see me up and about again.
I glanced towards Lucanus and his eyes met mine without the slightest sign of anything but pleasure. Unsure of what to say, I said nothing and merely greeted each of them in turn, after which I sat down in the place reserved for me, with my back to the door. Ambrose faced me at the other end of the rectangular table and he proceeded to the matters in hand immediately, addressing himself to me and bringing me up to date on all that had transpired since the day of the attack. I listened closely, the seriousness of this affair enabling me to forget my own problem for the first time in many days.
"I'm glad you're back, Merlyn," Ambrose began. "There's much to talk about. All the reports are in now, our troops are all back in garrison, and I think we have been able to reconstruct the why and all the wherefores of what happened. What I do not know is how much you recall of what had been discovered before you fell sick."
Faced with his openness, I spoke the truth. "I don't know anything, and if I did, I have forgotten. Start at the beginning."
"Right." Ambrose glanced around the table, his gaze settling on Dedalus. "Ded. Tell us about the hunt."
Dedalus cleared his throat. "The hunt, aye." He spoke to me directly. "We found the man you shot, still alive but out of his mind with pain. Sent him back here right away, for Lucanus to see what he could do with him before we began to question him."
"You were able to question him?" I had not expected the man to live.
"Oh, aye, we were able to question him, and he was able to answer, too, with a little persuasion." I merely nodded, unwilling to pursue that any further, and he went on. "What he had to tell us will come later. It was Rufio he spoke to. For now, there's this: we recovered Julia's body and those of the slain men, five in the river meadow and another on the hillside by the wounded fellow. You said one of them had used a Pendragon bow. They were all Pendragon. We found five more longbows, with arrows, where they had been left before the attack, on the other side of the river, and then we found another by the dead man on the hill—that was the one you saw—and after that we found another on the hilltop, where it had been dropped by your wounded man when he went running down the hill. Seven men, seven bows, seven Pendragon corpses, but none of our Pendragon people knew any of them."
"Six," I said. "Six corpses."
"Seven. The wounded man died, too."
I glanced around the table. No one betrayed any concern.
"I see. Go on."
"We had alerted all the outposts, as you know. No one passed by them, at least no one was seen. We turned the territories upside down, apart from that, and found a total of twenty-seven people unknown to us, mainly in the southern quadrant, where Rufio was in charge. They were all harmless enough, but they were trespassers. We questioned them and found the same thing in all cases: they knew they were there unlawfully, and all of them had crossed our boundaries at night, evading our patrols in the darkness. Some of them had been there for months. We have to do something about that— about our night defences. If ordinary folk can walk across our lines in the dark with ease, so can our enemies." He broke off for a moment, then resumed. "We now know that young Arthur was the target of the attack, and that there were twelve attackers. Seven died, so five escaped, most probably at night."
"Who were they, and how do you know that?"
Dedalus flicked a hand at me, in a clear, yet unconscious signal to me not to interrupt his train of thought. "The prisoner," was all he said. Then, taking up where he left off, he spoke again. "The most disturbing piece of information we received came from one of the boys, young Bedwyr. He heard one of the men who held the children mention Peter Ironhair—not the first name, just Ironhair. There's no possibility of error, for the boy had never heard the name before and didn't know who Ironhair was, but the name stuck in his mind and he remembered it when Donuil here was questioning him about what happened. He hadn't heard much, distracted by his mother's screaming, but it appears that early on in the proceedings, after Arthur had been laid low, the men were arguing over what they ought to do. They didn't know which boy was Arthur. "The Pendragon brat,' they called him. They asked the boys, but by then they were too late, and Bedwyr spat at them. One of them thought they should abduct all three of the oldest boys. Another was in favour of simply killing them all. A third remembered Ironhair had given exact instructions: 'Bring the Pendragon brat back if you can' had been his words, this fellow said. 'And if you can't bring him, then kill him. Just be sure you don't come back and leave the little swine alive.' "
My mind was seething now with a hundred questions, but I made myself sit still and listen. Dedalus had not finished.
"Anyway," he continued. "All of that arguing gave way to lust as soon as the others had started humping—" He broke off and glanced around guiltily. "I mean the business with the boy's mother, Julia. Young Arthur had been felled in the opening rush, struck down by a sword hilt. Now Bedwyr tried to help his mother, and broke free, but one of them caught him, backhanded, with his blade, below the elbow, and that put the boy out of things. A moment later, the other lad, Gwin, was knocked down, too, and the two remaining men left the other children there, the youngest ones, threatening to come back and kill them if they moved or tried to run away. They ran to join the others at their sport with Julia, but before they could get there they were interrupted by the sight of fresher game, when Shelagh arrived. All five then went for Shelagh, as you know. The last to leave poor Julia must have killed her, or perhaps they had killed her earlier. We'll never know." Dedalus looked from me to Ambrose then. "That's my end of it. Someone else can go on from there."
Ambrose looked at Rufio, who sat up straighter and took over immediately.
"I was responsible for questioning the prisoner, Commander," he told me. "And knowing what the boy had told us made the whole thing easier. The prisoner had been under the care of Master Lucanus for two whole days before we turned to him, and he was well enough to speak. He was. . ." Rufio paused, searching for a word. "He was surprised, to say the very least, when he discovered that we knew why he was there and who had sent him. That knowledge made him talkative . . .
"Ironhair, it appears, made his way to Cornwall after leaving Cambria ahead of Dergyll's vengeance."
I interrupted him. "What about Carthac, was he with Ironhair?"
Rufio shook his head. "I know nothing of that. No Carthac was mentioned."
"Very well, continue, please."
"Aye. Well, once in Cornwall, Ironhair made alliance with a fellow called Dumnoric, the war chief who came out on top of the dungheap of petty wars that sprang up after Lot was safely dead. This Dumnoric is now supreme in Cornwall, it seems, calling himself king there. Ironhair is no fool, we all know that, and he has no love in his heart for Camulod. He could not enlist support for his hatred of you, for your name means nothing in Cornwall, but he blamed all of the ills that had befallen Cornwall on Camulod and on Uther Pendragon, who waged war there and brought fire and sword to the whole region. 'Uther of Camulod' was the name he used most often, it appears, and he was successful. He forged some kind of treaty with this Dumnoric. In return for Cornish aid to conquer Cambria and 'win back' Ironhair's 'kingdom,' he would undertake to storm Camulod and kill the spawn of Uther, or of Lot, whichever Dumnoric preferred to think, thereby removing all threats, both to the Cornish king, since Arthur holds the seal of Gulrhys Lot, and to the Cambrian kingship he might seek to claim as Uther's alleged son.
"To hear this fellow tell it, it was very complicated, but the upshot was that Ironhair obtained a promise of this Dumnoric's support in Cambria, provided he could prove that 'the Pendragon brat' was dead. He returned to these parts, selected twelve specialists in murder, and promised them the world if they could do what he required of them. They failed, thanks to Julia and to Shelagh's knives. That's all."
For long moments, no one moved or spoke, and I gazed aro
und the table. Donuil and Lucanus had sat silent through all that had been said. Now Donuil spoke.
"Everything we have learned, Commander, boils down to three questions. How did the word get out about Arthur's identity? I thought that was a secret. Then how did Ironhair learn of it? And what steps must we now take to protect the boy?"
At that moment, overwhelmed as I was by all I had heard, I was unprepared to answer any of those questions. Not so Ambrose.
"Well," he asserted, speaking forcefully. "One thing is certain. The boy will have to be placed under close guard from this time on."
"Close guard?" Lucanus sounded outraged. "What kind of solution is that? The boy is eight years old, Ambrose. Would you make him a prisoner for life? He is a boy, not a criminal!"
Ambrose drew back as though he had been slapped. "I meant no such thing. I merely said—"
"I heard what you said. There has to be some other way."
Dedalus intervened, cutting both of them off. "This of the secret, your first question, Donuil. It's ridiculous. There is no secret. I myself heard Connor call the boy Pendragon openly, last summer, before a throng of people when he brought the lad the ponies. It surprised me at the time, because I hadn't known and hadn't thought about it, but when I looked, I saw it. The boy's the image of his father Uther. If I could see that, anyone could. What concerns me is, who told Ironhair?"
"Aye, Ded, and you should be concerned, although the answer's partly obvious." I had not spoken for some time, and all eyes moved to me again. "It was one of our own, someone in Camulod. But the worst part is that Ironhair, from this same source, knew of the seal of Gulrhys Lot being here. That is truly disturbing, for that is a secret known, I thought, to me alone. Only my aunt knew of it, next to me, and she would never have mentioned it." I glanced around the faces watching me. "Were any of you aware of it?" It was plain that no one was. I nodded. "That is as I expected. I have the seal in my own quarters, in a leather bag with Uther's seal. I have never shown it to anyone else since that first day."