by Jack Whyte
"What is there to tell? You knew him, as a boy. He is demented."
"Demented? I did not know that, or I don't remember. I never knew him well. I knew he was misshapen but can remember no more of him, other than that he was generally disliked. Uther, I recall, could not abide him."
"No one could. We were all first cousins. Carthac's mother, my father and Uther's father were siblings. And we were all much of an age, too, less than two years between Uther, who was oldest, and Carthac, the youngest of us. I fell in the middle." He reached for the flask and took another deep drink. "Carthac was always . . . troublesome, even as a child. His mother died birthing him and his skull was crushed out of shape in the delivery. But then he was kicked in the head by a horse, when he was eight."
"I met him after that," I told him. "Two years after he had been kicked. I thought it was the horse's kick that had deformed him."
Dergyll shook his head. "No. That happened at birth. The kick merely completed his undoing, it seems. He was never well liked. Even you remember that, after meeting him only long years ago. He was a treacherous little whoreson even then. Would he had stayed that way. In his fourteenth year, Carthac began to grow prodigiously, and it seemed he might never stop. But as his body grew, and his strength multiplied, his mind degenerated. He was ungovernable—still is . . . He would fly into fantastic rages, often for no reason that anyone could see or understand, and in such rages he would kill anything or anyone that crossed his path. Killed several people before he attained manhood."
I shook my head. "Couldn't anyone restrain him?"
Dergyll pursed his lips and shook his head. "Nah. Finally they banished him, drove him out altogether. But he kept coming back, and because his father was who he was, Carthac was permitted to commit atrocities no one else would ever have dreamed of. Then he turned to violating women, and several of us, myself and a few others, decided to teach him a real lesson. We beat him badly; broke a few bones, then dragged him, tied and kicking in a cart, up to a cave in the hills, miles from the village. We left him there and told him that if he ever came back, we would kill him. We should have killed him there and then.
"Anyway." He heaved a great sigh and looked around him before continuing. "It seemed we had made the correct impression on him. He stayed away for years, and we forgot he was even there. But he was there, and over those years he attracted some followers, the gods alone know how. Then Uther went to war with you against the Cornishman and died there, and all a sudden we had wars of our own. Uther had been king but had no son, and there was never any settlement of the succession, although it should have come to me on Uther's death. But even before then that fire was beyond control. We had problems with invaders, people from the north of us, who thought they could take our lands because the major part of our manpower was away from home. And then Carthac emerged from hiding, backed by a rabble of landless filth and worse, far worse than he had ever been. But he fought craftily and well. We fought a pitched battle against him, and he almost beat us. He's crazed, of course, but he fights like a devil. . . Anyway, Ironhair had arrived in our lands just before that. I disliked him from the outset, but many others didn't particularly since he mantained he had been a friend to both you and Uther. . .
"He was there the day we fought against Carthac and he found out that Carthac had a claim to being king. Shortly after that he disappeared and now he is Carthac's closest friend and trusted adviser. It must be sorcery of some kind, but he seems to be able to control the animal sufficiently to make him do whatever Ironhair wishes to have done, and what Ironhair wishes to have done has caused me endless grief for months now. The end is coming, for all that. We almost had them, day before yesterday, but caught only their rearguard. Carthac and Ironhair evaded us by hours. We questioned the few people left alive after our fight and one of them told us about this camp, with its stolen horses. We were close by, so we came down, and then you came."
"But you knew we were coming. How?"
He dipped his head. "You were seen."
"Not so! We took great pains to remain unseen."
"Aye, but insufficient, nonetheless. You passed a solitary shepherd, lying hid on a hill slope. He saw a thousand horsemen led by one whose standard was a silver-metal bear, on black. That night, he told the Druid Daffyd what he'd seen, and Daffyd made his way direct to me—or would have, had he not unexpectedly encountered Carthac and his band. Brought face to face with Ironhair, Daffyd confronted him and denounced him, knowing the truth of his perfidy, Mod says, accusing him of having tried to murder you. Carthac cut Daffyd down and threw him on a fire for his daring. Mod tried to pull the old man from the fire, and Carthac skewered him with a hunting spear. They left him lying there, thinking him dead, when they rode on, and as I told you, two of my men found him when they passed by the same way that afternoon."
I sat and stared into the fire, losing myself in the leaping transparency of the daylight-dimmed flames. Dergyll left me to my thoughts, content to dwell upon his own for the time being. Eventually, he leaned in front of me and thrust a horn cup full of mead into my grasp. I took it with a nod, and sipped at it, lost in thoughts that no longer primarily concerned Mod and Daffyd or even Carthac and Peter Ironhair. My thoughts at that point, in the main, had to do with Dergyll himself, and with the underlying reasons for my presence here in Cambria.
After my return from Cornwall, late the previous summer, I had been concerned about the attitude I might have provoked among the Pendragon by my own apparent lack of gratitude for the sacrifices made on my behalf by Uther's people, who were half my own people, too, through my mother's blood. As recently as my return from Eire, when I had been concerned about Liam's liberty to raise his breeding stock in safety on Pendragon land, these thoughts had plagued me, and then the raid on our outpost had almost crystallized the belief in my mind that we had forsworn the alliance between Camulod and Pendragon. Now, it appeared, an opportunity had come to hand to reassess the situation. Dergyll seemed to bear us no resentment over the matter of Lot's wars or the losses his people had sustained because of them. I knew, however, that I might be indulging in wishful thinking there. For all I knew, he might be deeply angered over the whole affair and merely be holding his peace for reasons of his own, as important to him as mine were to me.
I snapped back to attention when I heard my name being called from across the fire, and I looked up to see Dergyll approaching me from that direction. I had been unaware of his having moved from beside me, and now I made to rise to my feet, but he waved me back and came to join me, seating himself on the log beside me and resuming his attack upon the flask of mead.
"Your men are settled in," he grunted eventually, offering me the flask again. Seeing my headshake, he dropped it to the ground beside his foot. "Dedalus, your man in charge, says there is nothing for you to concern yourself over, and bids you take your ease."
I smiled. "Thank you for that," I said. "But take my ease?" I considered that, then laughed aloud. "Why not, indeed? There's little else for me to do right now. Ded's a good man. He really has no need of me at all, since it was he who taught me the knowledge of command."
"You say so? He doesn't look that old."
"Nor is he . . . perhaps four or five years my senior. . . but Ded is old in soldiering. He was a centurion when I was a raw recruit and my father named him shepherd to me on my first command patrol."
"What will you do now, Merlyn? Now that you have your horses back?"
I looked at him squarely. "Go home, I suppose. But one thing troubles me."
"Name it."
"My men, the ones killed in the raid last year. They were killed by Pendragon arrows, not by landless renegades like those you hanged back there among the oaks. From all I know of Pendragon, you guard your longbows closely."
"Hmm. That is true, we hold our bows close. True, too, that some of your men might have died that way, but not all of them. That's not possible. Others have bows, even these renegades we hanged." He turned away and sho
uted to one of his lieutenants close by, and when the fellow came over, sent him off to bring the bows they had confiscated from the renegades. The man returned a short time later, followed by another. The first carried an armload of bow staves, all shorter by an arm's length than the great Pendragon longbows, and the other bore several quivers of arrows, similarly short by the full span of a hand. Together they dropped the weapons by the fire with a clatter. Dergyll eyed them and then spoke to me. "There were two of our bows there as well. Two of our men took those. The arrows are useless to us." He leaned forward and picked up one of the quivers, containing a dozen arrows or more, and tossed it onto the fire.
I shook my head, unconvinced. "The arrows that we found were all Pendragon arrows. We had to cut them out of our men's flesh."
"Aye, you would have. And were all the dead men full of arrows?"
"No, but they all bore arrow wounds."
"There you are then! Only our arrows hit heavily enough to pierce and lodge and defy recovery. They'll cut right into bone, if they're launched hard enough or close enough. These things—" He waved a hand in disgust at the remaining, shorter arrows. "These things are useless. They'll kill you, but so will a pebble if it's thrown properly and you're unlucky." He paused, then continued. "You can thank your friend Ironhair for the deaths of your men. I told you he disappeared from our camp and went to join Carthac. He took two score bows with him, and arrows for them, pulling them in a hand cart. Walked right through the line of my guards and not a man questioned him."
I smiled, slightly incredulous. "What did you do to the guards?"
"Hanged one of them. He was drunk and probably asleep. Didn't see a thing. The tracks of the cart passed by within paces of him. Anyway, since that time, we have been trying to win back those bows. They have a value far beyond any other thing to us."
"And how many have you recovered?"
"Seventeen, of two score, including the two we took back last night."
I stooped now and picked up one of the lesser bow staves, examining it. It was rectangular in section, unlike the round longbow, and made of ash, I guessed, undoubtedly less than one tenth as powerful as my own compound bow. "So you are telling me that my men were probably killed by bows like this, in the hands of renegades assisted by a few Pendragon from Carthac's following?"
"No, I am not, for any who follow Carthac have forfeited their claims to be Pendragon, but you are something right. The matter of the horses should confirm it. Horses like yours are of no use to us, high in our hills. Our own are more sure-footed, bred to the mountainsides. Only Carthac, influenced by such as Ironhair, would be fool enough to see it otherwise."
"Hmm. To lose one's name, especially the right to call oneself Pendragon, would be a potent punishment, I think. Not to be entered into lightly . . . Unless Carthac emerges victor in your war," I suggested, one eyebrow raised. Dergyll saw no humour in my suggestion.
"Hah!" Dergyll scoffed at the mere idea. "He might win a few fights, but Carthac will never be the victor here, for victory will mean that all the true Pendragon have been slain."
"I would like the opportunity to take Ironhair," I mused. I had completely accepted his explanation of the raid upon our outpost.
"Forget Ironhair, Merlyn. Leave him to Pendragon. He has much to answer for and I will see to his answering." He stopped, gazing into the fire and evidently thinking deeply, then turned his face to me again, his mind made up.
"Are we still allies, Merlyn?"
I was unable to mask my sudden gladness and relief.
"Still allies? Pendragon and Camulod? You doubt that? It had never crossed my mind that it might not be so." I felt like a hypocrite, mouthing the lie, yet was deeply grateful for the great draughts of mead that had lowered his guard and permitted me to overreact so shamelessly.
He frowned at that, however, betraying that he was not yet far gone in drink. "You say so here, with all your thousand troops?"
"Of course," I assured him. "Think of it, Dergyll, the sense of it! What kind of fool would I be to ride against all Pendragon with a thousand men? And if Pendragon were at war with us, would they have stopped short at one petty raid against one outpost? No, my friend, I rode against one band of murderers and thieves, and brought a thousand men to teach a lesson. That lesson, undelivered now and unrequired, is yet swiftly stated: war among yourselves if you must, but remain clear of Camulod."
He was still gazing at me. "You marched against but a band, then, unaware of who commanded it?"
"Aye. A band, not a people. We knew your people are at war among themselves. We also knew the waging of that war is no concern of ours, although the preservation of our alliance did concern us. Not knowing whose claim stood against whose, we had no other choice but to remain apart, unless sought out, and let you solve your problems by yourselves. But sought out we were. We were attacked, by people who, unchecked and unreproved, might return to do the same again."
"Aye." Deep in thought again, Dergyll leaned forward and threw several more of the short bow staves on the fire. Then he coughed, deep in his throat, and when he spoke again his voice was clear-edged and full of resolve. "You and I had better talk more then, of alliance."
Within half an hour, we had resolved that I would leave four squadrons behind when I returned to Camulod, under the overall command of Dedalus, with Philip as his deputy. Four mounted squadrons amounted to one hundred and twenty-eight men, plus half as many extra mounts. These forces would police the lower parts of Dergyll's territories, under the titular command of Camulod. Dergyll had convinced me that only he and Carthac remained active in the kingship dispute, all other claims having fallen under his own by various treaties. The campaign against Carthac was destined to be short-lived, he swore, and conducted mainly in the high hills of the northernmost Pendragon territories. The presence on the lower hills of a band of swift-moving cavalry would aid in this, keeping the hunted renegades penned up in the highlands, where Dergyll's bowmen could deal with them effectively.
For their side of the bargain, six score Pendragon bowmen would return with us to Camulod, under the command of Huw Strongarm, who was a kinsman to Dergyll and whom Dergyll trusted more than some of his own subordinates, to train with Ambrose in conjunction with the armies of Camulod. Dergyll would fight his war and win in his own way. Camulodian horsemen would protect his flanks within his own boundaries, and Camulod itself would guard the outer zone. It was more than I would have dared hope for days earlier, and the thought of facing the Council and explaining my precipitate decision to leave my men here held no terrors for me. I was returning with six score of Pendragon bows.
Most satisfying of all, however, was the thought of the smile that would appear on Shelagh's face when I told her the news that Dergyll, soon to be King of the Pendragon, had ratified Huw's gift of residence and safekeeping to her father and herself within Pendragon lands.
XXVII
The quiet, undemonstrative joy that marked my reunion with Donuil and Shelagh and the peaceful establishment of Liam Twist- back's farm close by the western sea to the south of Glevum, after our safe return to Camulod, accompanied by the Pendragon bowmen, was crowned by the tidings of the renewed alliance with our friends in Cambria. So began a blessed, five-year period of peace within and without our Colony, a time of prosperity and renewal and rebuilding, of gathering and accumulating strength, aided by gentle winters followed by glorious summers and swelling, bountiful harvests.
It was a time of many events that enriched all our lives and only a few that impoverished any of us. My brother Ambrose wed his love Ludmilla on the Celtic feast of Beltane, amid the rites of Spring that first year, and Donuil and Shelagh joined with them to make a double celebration and to bind themselves more closely and more publicly to their new lives in Camulod. Within the ensuing ninety days, both wives grew quick with child, and their husbands walked with greater pride and more awareness in their gait. That awareness, in the case of Ambrose, brought him to a decision regarding his perceiv
ed duty to Vortigern in his northeastern kingdom, and his desire to return in person was supplanted by a more sedate determination to inform the king of his new life and marriage. Accordingly, he penned a lengthy letter, and dispatched it to Northumbria with several of his men who had expressed a desire to return to their families in Lindum. Thereafter, he made no more mention of riding eastward. Towards the year's end, however, in November, Ludmilla fell sick of a short-lived but virulent illness that was rife among our people for a spell. Thanks to the skills and ministrations of Lucanus, she survived the sickness, but her unborn child did not and Ludmilla miscarried. The entire Colony grieved with the young couple, for thanks to her healing skills and Lucanus's teaching, Ludmilla had become almost as beloved by the ordinary folk of Camulod as Ambrose was by his soldiers.
They bore their grief stoically, consoling each other privately and throwing themselves into their work thereafter, Ludmilla in the Infirmary with Luke and Ambrose in his self-appointed task of training a new army, cavalry, infantry and bowmen, to fight together as a whole in defence of our Colony. And their grief passed, so that by the time Shelagh birthed her first-born in late spring the following year, Ludmilla was with child again, three months into her term and blooming like a flower. Shelagh's baby was a lusty, strapping boy whom she named Gwin, first of her promised pair of sons.
Early that second summer, too, Connor of Eire came to Camulod to visit his brother and his nephew Arthur, now in his third year of rude and robust infancy, a bustling badger of a child incapable of walking, it appeared, since he must needs run everywhere, his densely muscled, solid little bulk rendering him an uncontrollable terror to his nurse Turga, who continued to regard him and to treat him as her own child. He was beautiful, as few male children can be beautiful. His hair had darkened since his birth, its yellow highlights muted to mere hints among the rich, brown chestnut of his curling locks. His eyes were lambent, startling in their tawny, yellowish golden irises, and when he laughed, which was most of the time, his laughter was a crowing gurgle of delight with overtones of the depth and sonority that were to come from his strong, broad chest in years ahead. Arthur, the child of Uther Pendragon, was a complete delight to all around him.