The Saxon Shore cc-4

by Jack Whyte

  "Well met, Brother," I said, and he nodded at me, holding me by the wrists and merely gazing mute and evidently pleased with what he beheld. I looked to where Donuil now stood watching us, his eyes wide with wonder as they moved from my face to Ambrose's and back, the expression on his face one of complete amazement.

  "Well?" I asked him. "How great is the resemblance?"

  Donuil shook his head. "It would be frightening, had I not seen it before and if I did not know the truth of it. You could be twins. You are identical. The only way to tell you apart is by your clothes."

  Ambrose laughed and spoke for the first time. "We may change those tomorrow and confound you." The words seemed to reverberate strangely in my ears and I looked back at him, impulsively voicing the thought that had sprung fully formed into my mind even though I shrouded it in a jest.

  "No, Brother, not Donuil, he is too easily confused at the best of times. Something to do with his great height, I think. But it might be interesting to confuse others . . . outsiders." I took the sting out of the first part of my words with a smile, and Donuil grinned again, flushing with pleasure and covering any response to the remainder of my statement with his rejoinder.

  "I can see you two will join forces to belittle me because of my superior Erse blood."

  "Aye," I agreed. "That, and your outlandish riding skills." Donuil had never mastered the art of riding, which made him noteworthy in Camulod. He had perched precariously on his mounts, rather than seated them, ever since the time of his first arrival, before which he had never approached a horse. Now he drew himself erect and spoke to me down the length of his nose.

  "You, Caius Merlyn, have not seen me ride for years."

  "Correction, Erseman." I winked at Ambrose. "I, Caius Merlyn, have never seen you ride. Wobble, perhaps; sway, certainly; teeter, frequently, but ride? Never."

  A sound behind me distracted me from my baiting and I saw Ambrose look over my shoulder and nod. I turned in time to see the rear view of one of the Saxons disappearing again around the bend in the gully. The sight brought my mind back to my earlier thoughts, before the apparition of my two companions, and my smile disappeared.

  "Saxons, Ambrose? Donuil? How could you bring Saxons to Camulod?"

  Ambrose answered me. "They are no more Saxon than you or I, Brother. They are Lindum men, one and all, my blood guards, merely wearing the Saxon garb."

  "Why?" I was not reassured.

  He shrugged. "Because we travelled through the Saxon Settlements to come here. Donuil told me your needs were urgent, and that was the shortest route."

  His words perplexed me. "What? I don't understand. Are you saying you came along the Saxon Shore?"

  "No, at least not all the way. Donuil found me in the far north, up by the Wall. We travelled southward in one of Hengist's longboats, landed on the Saxon Shore north of Colchester, and came straight inland, directly across the country."

  "Passing through the Saxon-settled lands."

  "Some of them, yes."

  "Hmm." I accepted that without further comment, aware of the many layers of significance the words held. "Well!" I looked from one to the other of them. "So what do you intend to do now?"

  They glanced at each other, smiling uncertainly, clearly wondering what I was raving about. Again it was Donuil who answered. "What should we do? We intended to find you as quickly as possible, probably in Camulod, but you came blundering along the pathway back there in a daydream and I recognized you miles away. Now we've found you. What do you suggest we do?"

  "Hmm." My mind was racing, cataloguing the possibilities and weighing the alternatives as I sought to clear my mind and see my way. "Well, we should return directly to Camulod, of course, and yet . . ." Immediate return to Camulod would create chaos, with all the introductions and explanations that would have to be gone through. I watched them watch me, waiting for me to complete my thought. "And yet," I continued, "it's in my mind, clear as mid-morning light, that taking you directly home, right at this moment, might not be the best idea that has ever occurred to me. We have much to discuss, the three of us, and it could take days, after we enter Camulod and stun everyone with the sight and existence of you, Ambrose, to find the time we need together, free of interruption, without being most discourteous to all our friends there."

  "Aye," Ambrose said. "That makes sense. It's more important that we talk together than that we talk to others. What do you suggest?"

  I was already looking around me, evaluating the spot in which we stood and rejecting it as a campsite. "Your camp of last night. It's less than two miles from here, and it's secluded; out of the way. Why don't we use it tonight again and ride into Camulod tomorrow morning? That should give us all the time we need."

  "Good idea. Let's go."

  For the remainder of that day I had the novel experience of observing a score of skin-clad, heavily armoured "Saxon" warriors as they bustled around me, setting up a camp, building cooking fires and attempting to provide privacy and comfort for their Lord and his two companions. There were deer in abundance all around us. Already two small roe had been brought in, dressed and butchered, and several men were busily involved in cooking them. From an oven of stones, prepared by some magic process unknown to and unnoticed by me, came the delicious smell of baking bread. It was still early evening, the sun yet two hours short of setting.

  "What are you grinning about, Caius?" Donuil asked me at one point.

  I turned to him, still smiling, shaking my head. "All of this. You travel in grand style, with everything considered and allowed for in advance, it seems. But I was thinking it's amazing how much these fellows look like Saxons . . . I'm finding it very difficult to relax with them all around me."

  Donuil sniffed. "You'd be even more amazed if you could see how much some of the Saxons look like us—or like your people, at least."

  "What d'you mean?"

  "Just what I say. The Saxons in the Settlements are little different from your own people. Oh, they talk differently, and they dress differently, I suppose, and all the gods know they fight differently, but they farm the same way and their women don't seem even slightly alien and their children are like children everywhere."

  "Farm the same way?" It was the one thing I had heard that struck me as ludicrous. "Come on, Donuil, these people are not farmers—they're marauders, seagoing savages. The only ploughing they do is with the keels of their ships on the belly of the sea. There's nothing of the farmer in their nature."

  Ambrose had been standing close by, leaning against a tree as he listened to us, saying nothing. Now Donuil glanced at him, a tiny tic of annoyance between his brows, before his eyes returned to me.

  "I see. And how many of these people do you know, Cay? How many have you met, or spoken with? How many have you fought, for that matter?" His voice was almost truculent and I realized, with some surprise, that in all the time I had known him, I had never seen or heard Donuil take serious issue with anything I had ever said. Now he seemed to be challenging me. I felt myself frowning, though more from perplexity than displeasure.

  "Is something biting you? I've never known you to sound like this before. I've fought a few of them, as you well know. You were there, and brought me my horse and helmet, the day we rescued Bishop Germanus and his party, near Londinium. How many of them do you know?"

  "None. But I've met far more of them than you have."

  "And?" I noticed that Ambrose had not moved and showed no sign of intervening.

  "And it occurs to me you might be wrong."

  You are always so correct, Cay. . . Have you any idea how annoying that can be to others? The words came flooding back into my head instantly, remembered from the only confrontation of this kind I'd ever had with Uther. I felt a surge of irritation.

  "Wrong about what, in God's name? Wrong about their strangeness? Their foreignness? They are Outlanders, Donuil. This is our land, not theirs! They have no place here."

  "I'm an Outlander, Cay. Have I no place here?"r />
  That startled me, bringing me up short like a haltered horse. "That is ridiculous! Of course you have a place here. You've earned your place here."

  He gazed at me levelly, no sign of anger anywhere about him, his eyes empty of expression. "So did your forefathers, Cay."

  "What?" I turned again to Ambrose, seeking his support against such obscure logic, but he was gazing at Donuil, his face unreadable.

  Donuil would have said more, was on the point of blurting something out, when a sudden clang of iron upon iron jerked all our heads round in concert towards a clear space beyond the camp, where two men, one of them the giant in the bright yellow tunic I had noticed first earlier that morning, crouched facing each other over the rims of their large, round shields, the bright blades of their swords raised high. Even as I saw them, my view was obscured by the bodies of others who came between us, moving forward to surround the pair.

  "Jenner and Marek," Ambrose said. "They're my two best, and worth watching, even in practice. Come."

  We moved to watch the two men in their mock combat, our own mild dispute left in abeyance, but even as I watched the skill and speed of the two antagonists, abstractedly admiring their ability, I continued to think about what Donuil had been saying, aware of how closely his sentiments, if not his words, had echoed the unwelcome information I had received not long before from Lars, the owner of the public hostelry I had visited on the road south to Isca.

  Now here was Donuil, my own trusted friend, implying in his turn that all was not evil in the people who had usurped our lands. I knew he and I would have to talk more about such outlandish ideas. Ambrose interrupted my thoughts.

  "When in Rome, Caius," he said, and I wondered what he meant until I heard his next words. "My men now fight like Saxons, with good reason. One of the first things that impressed me about Hengist's people was the way they fight. I've heard them speak of it as the weirding way, or something like that. Whatever it means, it's very strange and very different from the way I was taught. These people have an absolute lack of fear of death. To die in battle offers the greatest state of beatitude they can attain. It seemed to me we would be well advised to learn their methods, since we will surely have need of them some day—not necessarily against Hengist's own, but certainly against their countrymen and former allies."

  My attention had focused on the fight the moment he began to speak, and I was already taking note of what was truly happening here in front of me. It became obvious immediately, after the first analytical glance, why the Saxons, or Northmen, as Vortigern's own people called their mercenary warriors, favoured the heavy axe in their warfare. The weapon was awkward and cumbersome, requiring no apparent grace or skilled technique in its employment, both of these sacrificed to pure, brute strength and violence. That strength and violence were demanded, however, by the enemies against whom they fought, or, more accurately, by the shields those enemies carried. These were circular, and because of that, they appeared enormous, although they were no greater in actual extent, from top to bottom, than our rectangular shields, which covered the bearer from knee to chin. Their overall circumference, however, dictated a different style of attack from any would-be assailant, since the extent of the shielded area, laterally, eliminated the normal avenues of penetration that swordsmen, our swordsmen at least, were trained to exploit. There was simply no way to get around these things in a normal attack with a sword, and any effort to do so would expose the sword wielder's body, fatally, to the axe being swung from behind the shield.

  Even as I absorbed this, one of the two contestants—it turned out to be Jenner, the giant in the yellow tunic—smashed through his opponent's guard with a mighty, overhand swipe that cut deeply into the edge of Marek's shield, and in moments I received a chilling lesson in our own military shortcomings in the face of such weaponry. The blow landed, the sword's edge bit deep into the rim of the shield, and Marek flung his shield arm up, straight out and away from his body, his own body uncoiling in a surge of strength that locked the edge of Jenner's sword tightly and pulled him forward and off balance, leaving him open and vulnerable so that the only thing he could do was to sweep his own shield across in front of him, thrusting it between himself and his opponent, but unbalancing himself even further, so that all his body weight was pushed to the right. At that point Marek froze my blood by doing something for which I was completely unprepared. He followed the direction of Jenner's crosswise impetus with his own body, turning himself inward into Jenner's imbalance, spinning completely in a wrenching twist until his back was to Jenner, then slamming his left shoulder into the shield that separated them and kicking Jenner's feet from under him with his right heel. Jenner's sword hilt was torn from his grasp and he fell heavily, to what would have been death.

  The spectators broke into a chorus of cheers and jeers, but I stood gaping. Ambrose had been watching me and now he spoke again.

  "They look heavy, don't they? The shields." I merely nodded, looking at him. "Well they're not," he continued. "But they are very strong. Woven wickerwork wheels, feather light but immensely strong, at least two but sometimes three of them bound together, with an unwoven, handspanwide perimeter of straight canes around the outer edges; the whole covered in a double layer of heavy, hardened hide reinforced and thickened around the rim to catch and snare a sword blade. They're light, immensely strong and virtually impregnable. Arrows, even long arrows, are trapped by the woven layers of cane wickerwork before they can pass through. Same thing happens to spears. And swords, as you have just seen, can't get around them."

  "Only an axe," I said.

  "Yes, only an axe can give an opponent the chance of smashing one down."

  "An axe or a horse."

  "True. No man on foot can stand for long against a man on a horse." He signalled one of his men to come forward and asked him to show me his shield, and for the next while we examined the thing, although only I was unfamiliar with the device. I found it completely admirable, and far lighter, much less cumbersome, than I had expected. Somehow, in the course of our discussions, the sun sped across the sky and suddenly it was almost dark, the air around us filled with the smells of newly roasted venison and fresh-baked bread.

  When we had eaten and were sitting together by the fire outside our tents, I set out to bring my companions up to date on developments since Donuil and I had parted company, but I quickly found that I had far more to impart to them than I had thought to deal with. Donuil, for example, knew nothing of his sister Ygraine's death, or of her involvement with Other, and I knew that I would have to approach those topics with a degree of preparation, care and solicitude. Neither man had heard either of the death of Uther or Gulrhys Lot, and Ambrose's first interest was, naturally enough, in the nature of the emergency that had caused me to send Donuil in search of him. In order to explain that, I accepted that I would have to share the secret of Excalibur, and it seemed to me the only way to do that adequately was to tell the entire story of the great Dream of Caius Britannicus and Publius Varrus, and the Colony called Camulod they had founded between them.

  I talked for hours, starting from the first meeting between my grandfather and Publius Varrus, and as I spoke, they listened without interrupting and the camp gradually grew still around us until we three were the only ones left awake, and still I talked on. I told them of the foresight of my grandfather Caius, and how Publius Varrus had adopted his vision and helped make it the world we call Camulod, and I spoke of Varrus's own dream of finding a Skystone, and of how he had succeeded, and what he had done with what he found. I talked of the prescient wisdom of these men, combined with that of Ullic Pendragon, and how they had foreseen and set in motion the birthing of an entire new race of Britons, formed of the bonding of native Celts and Romano-British citizens. And I led them along the path towards the culmination of the Dream in the birth of the child Arthur. When I completed my tale with our meeting that day, my two listeners sat silent, each lost in his own world, and I knew better than to expect
either to respond immediately. I left them to their thoughts and moved to replenish the fire, which had almost died out.

  Donuil was the first to speak, and by the time he did the fire was high again.

  "It has been five years since I came here. I would not have believed it. . . would not have believed I could forget the end of that term." He was speaking to himself and sought no response from me, so I offered none.

  "Excalibur." This was Ambrose. "No one else knows of it?"

  "No one, except for my aunt. That frightened me when I came to realize the truth of it. I didn't know what to do, then. The best solution I could find seemed to be to explain it in a letter and send for you. Had you arrived and had I not returned within the year, the letter would have been given to you and you would have found the sword."

  He looked at me, his face twisted in what was not quite a smile. "What if I had merely kept it for myself?"

  "What of it? It would have been yours by then, to do with as you willed."

  "So you had no fears of that?"

  I smiled, shaking my head. "None, but now the matter is academic. We are both here, and now four of us know."

  "What of the boy, Arthur?" Donuil asked. "When will we go for him?"

  "As soon as possible. Within the month, if all goes well. It will take several weeks to see Ambrose welcomed and settled into place in Camulod, and then we can leave for your home." I paused, struck by a sudden thought, and looked to Ambrose. "Forgive me, Brother, I am assuming you can stay?"