Artorius stepped hurriedly into the conversation before Morgana could devise a rejoinder chilly enough to suit. "A gesture we all appreciate, Covianna Nim, and it looks to be Caerleul, rather than the capital of Gododdin. Your family is well?"
"They are, and thank you for the asking." She glanced briefly at Morgana. "I offer regrets for your sorrow on behalf of my entire family, Morgana. You will ride to Council at Caerleul?"
Morgana inclined her head. "I will. My sons will join me there."
Covianna nodded, apparently satisfied with the jibes she'd already delivered. "I regret your sorrow as well, and I am only too glad of other healers to look after Ancelotis on the journey." She added with a flash of gleaming white teeth, "As it happens, I have been longing for another opportunity to study with Emrys Myrddin, if he will have time for teaching me."
Considering the fool Emrys Myrddin had made of himself the last time Morgana had seen him in Covianna Nim's company, Morgana had no doubt that the Druidic councillor would find the time for such lessons, even if he had to forgo sleep to do so. Indeed, sleep was doubtless the last thing on a man's mind, in close and private company with Covianna Nim.
"I have not seen your nephew, Morgana," Covianna added, glancing around the hall where deadly serious conversations still held sway in every corner. "Is he not with you?"
"Medraut? Indeed, he is."
Artorius put in, "I sent him with instructions to the officers of the cataphracti, to send for Morgana's sons."
"And is the son of Marguase as well as the last time I saw him?"
Morgana stiffened, so utterly infuriated she could not even draw breath to answer.
Artorius had gone white to the lips. "We will not speak of that poisoner in my presence!"
Covianna's eyes widened in shocked alarm.
Artorius struggled visibly to control himself. "She was executed for good reason—and I am not a man given to speaking ill of kinfolk! I will not have her name uttered within my hearing, is that understood, Covianna Nim?"
Covianna returned his blistering gaze with a demure glance that hid more than it revealed. "Forgive me, Artorius," she purred with all the sweet civility of a Highlands wildcat with claws extended, "I intended neither insult nor challenge to your decrees as Dux Bellorum. Marguase was many things to many people. I meant only to ask after her son's health. The boy was young, the last time I saw him."
"He is young still," Morgana said coldly. "But not so young as you might imagine, nor half so arrogant as his mother. I will thank you never to speak to him of my unlamented half sister."
Covianna's blue eyes smoldered. "Of course not, Queen Morgana." She finished off the plait of thick, honey-bright hair and rose with a swirl of white robes. "I will take leave of you for the night. It is a long ride from Caer-Iudeu to Caerleul and we have all lost sleep we can ill afford."
She inclined her head to Artorius first, slighting Morgana with the gesture, then gathered up her skirts and strolled languidly through the doorway, once again drawing appreciative stares in her wake. Morgana held back a hiss of displeasure. Spend the whole, long ride to Caerleul in Covianna Nim's poisonous company? She tossed back the last of the wine in her cup with angry impatience, then rose from her own chair. "As much as I despise finding myself in agreement with that creature, she is right about the need for sleep. There is little anyone can do for Ancelotis that I have not already done, so I will take my leave, stepbrother."
Artorius laid a hand on her shoulder. "Don't let her nettle you so, Morgana. She is envious—and has much to envy where you are concerned. Still and all... You know that I will allow no harm to befall you and yours?"
Quick tears prickled behind her eyelids. "Yes. And I thank you for it."
She hurried away before he—or anyone else—could see those unshed tears fall.
Chapter Five
Stirling came awake slowly. The final thought he'd taken down into darkness with him was still reverberating through his mind. Let it all have been some terrible nightmare...
Unhappily, the scents and sounds and unfamiliar sensations coming from his immediate surroundings bore nothing in common with anything in the twenty-first century.
No such luck, then. It was entirely too real.
Stirling opened his eyes, to find that he lay sprawled across a fur bag of straw, which he vaguely remembered from a weltering confusion of images connected more or less solidly with his abrupt arrival in the sixth century. Someone had draped another fur across his body as a blanket. His dreams had been a hellish mixture of scenes: horseback combat, men in rough woolen tunics and padded leather armor dying from swords thrust through their bellies and throats; Belfast in flames, Orange terror squads shooting down women and children; the flash of heavy spears, a horde of blue-tattooed men swarming across a fallen rider, the crimson splash of blood across a muddy field, across a battered desktop, across pavements in Clonard...
He blinked away the disturbing images and studied the room, instead. It was well constructed and larger than he'd expected, some three by four meters. The ceiling was whitewashed plaster, stained with smoke and soot from pottery oil lamps, several of which hung from hooks in the corners of the room. The wicks had been trimmed low, sending a soft golden light through the room. The floor was utilitarian, made of simple stone flagging, although the stones had been shaped with skill and well mortared. The walls were plaster over stone, with murals of hunting scenes painted on them.
The style reminded him of Roman wall paintings, which surprised him. There were no Roman remains of this type anywhere near the Scottish Lowlands, not that Stirling had ever heard of, anyway. Plenty of small forts and watchtowers, in a line roughly paralleling Antonine's Wall and the Gask Ridge, with another line of them down along Hadrian's Wall in the border counties, but nothing like a villa with murals of this quality. Where exactly was he, then?
He was still puzzling it over when Ancelotis' part of his dual awareness woke up and tried to come to terms with the invader inside his skull. After one reflexive attempt to shout for help, Ancelotis and Stirling reached honorable compromise: they declared a truce in the interest of learning how to walk again. Trying to walk, with two fiercely competitive minds in the driver's seat—each of them utterly and ruthlessly determined to take charge of their shared body—landed them flat on the floor within two steps. They landed hard, jarring every bone against a floor that was startlingly warm under their shared skin.
Both of them swore aloud and creatively, with the curses breaking out in a mixture of Brythonic Welsh and modern English. Stirling rigidly ordered himself to stop thinking in his own native language. He couldn't afford to lapse into English when anyone else was around. Cedric Banning would find him faster, true, bringing him an ally, but Brenna McEgan would hear, as well. He'd certainly change history if Ancelotis was, in fact, the person Stirling's gibbering terror thought he might be, and McEgan and her unknown host slid a dagger through his ribs because of Stirling's carelessness.
I am in over my head, Stirling realized despairingly.
Explain why, Ancelotis' voice demanded abruptly, shocking Stirling half witless with the first clearly articulated words Stirling had been able to understand. Why would this McEgan want to murder the brother of a dead king of Gododdin? McEgan, that's a foul, Irish clan name, is it not? Are you some Druid's soul from the Otherworld, sent to warn and guard me from the Irish threatening our western coast? You're too late for my brother's life, if you've come to warn of us against the Picts. They've had him under their knives and war clubs already, and nearly the Dux Bellorum and myself with him.
Uh... Sprawled on a sixth-century stone floor, it seemed as good an explanation as any he might offer. Close enough, he thought carefully back at his host. I'm afraid I don't know anything about Picts and I'm sorry about your brother. I've lost a great-uncle to war and most of my comrades-in-arms, as well. The pain of his lost command, blown apart in Clonard, was a sickness in his gut.
It was not, perhaps, any
thing like losing one's brother, evidently right in front of his host's eyes, given the memory images bursting into Stirling's awareness, but it was enough to convey understanding of the loss—and a deep understanding of battle, as well. The images in Stirling's memory, of the entire city block in Clonard, Belfast, erupting into flame with whole buildings falling into ruin, was enough to stun Ancelotis silent, awed and horrified.
And this is the manner of war you fight? Enough flame and brimstone to cause even the bishop of Rome to flinch in dismay? May Afallach and his nine daughters of the Underworld preserve us, then, if Christ cannot, for we've nothing to stop that sort of death in our midst.
Stirling wanted to reassure his host that such death could not be reproduced in the sixth century by one man, working alone, but he could produce no such reassurance. It was a simple enough fact that he himself could have produced a crude but perfectly serviceable black powder, difficult to do if one didn't know the proper proportions, relative child's play if one did—and Sterling most assuredly did. And he would have bet several cases of Bibles that Brenna McEgan did, as well. And all it needed for a bomb was a containment vessel to hold the black powder.
A wooden keg or common crockery wine jug would suffice, since one didn't need to worry about building up sufficient pressure to launch a projectile, as one would need for a gun or a far simpler mortar or cannon. And the earliest of those, after all, had been made from church bells. Stirling was fairly certain that even Britain, as cut off from Rome as it must have been for the past hundred or so years, could supply a good-sized bronze bell.
I won't lie to you, he admitted. There's a great deal of destruction she could wreak on you and yours. Brenna McEgan must be found and stopped. She's an Irish terrorist. That is, she murders for political gain. It's my job to find and stop her. I suspect, he added grimly, that it's the Dux Bellorum she'll try to kill. I can't think of another reason for her to have chosen this particular time and place.
After a long moment, during which Stirling could literally feel Ancelotis thinking rapidly, another carefully verbalized question came back. And how will you find her?
I don't know, Stirling was forced to admit. She'll be hiding in someone's mind, just as I am borrowing yours. Dreadfully sorry, but I couldn't think of any other way to stop her. After a moment's further consideration, he added, There's another man who's come, a learned man who will help us, if we can identify him without risking your life. Unfortunately, I could easily do just that by accidentally exposing my presence in McEgan's company. Banning is his name, Cedric Banning. My own is Trevor Stirling. I was born not far from here, he added hopefully. Close to the city we call Stirling, where my ancestors have lived for generations.
An unexpected chuckle startled him as Ancelotis took the memory images from Stirling's portion of their shared mind and recognized the landmarks. Stirling, is it? There is truth in your mind, Stirling of Stirling. Truth is a powerful force, great enough to overcome even the barriers between worlds. It's Caer-Iudeu, we call it. Artorius was raised on that mountain I see in your memory, with that remarkable fortress you've built atop the cliff. We Britons should build half so well. Alas, the Romans departed with our finest engineers nearly a century ago. Artorius was, thank whichever God you prefer to worship, brought north for fostering, out of the short-lived kingdoms at the heart of the dragon lands of the south.
Dragon lands of the south? Stirling echoed, confused. Do you mean, actual dragons? He had a brief, doubtless impossible vision of a surviving tyrannosaur or two stalking the southern coast of England, although come to think of it, weren't the tyrannosaurs American beasties?
Oh, aye, Ancelotis agreed. The dragon lands. Old places of power, that's what the Druids have always said, even the ones who kissed the ring of the Roman bishop and turned their oaken groves into oaken churches and chaste nunneries and kept up the old teachings in the dead of night under a darkened moon.
It's the dragon lines I mean, of course, that run from Cerniw—the name translated to Cornwall, in Stirling's mind—and St. Michael's Mount, they call it now, up through Hurlers and Trethevy Quoit, twining their way along the northern route up through Brigit's Tor and Silbury Hill, Avebury, and Barbury, and along the southern route of Cerne Abbas and Stonehenge, meeting the northern line at the great white horse of Uffington that gallops its way toward Bury St. Edmund and the Norfolk coast.
The sun sets the dragon lines afire each year at Lammas and at Beltane, rising poised atop the terminus at the coast northeast of Caer-Lundein, sets them ablaze with all its own wild energy that races from tor to mound to henge. The Druids say the fire runs along the old stone roads and the standing circles, that focus and feed the wild, splashing flood into the pools of rocky cairns and the wheels of the standing stones, to be stored up for the balance of the year.
Stirling blinked in surprise, superimposing a map of southern England over Ancelotis' description and coming up with a long, snaking line of prehistoric ruins under the national trust, a line that did, indeed, cut a path from Cornwall to Norfolk through some very interesting real estate, looking at it from the viewpoint of a sixth-century Druid.
Druid, I? Ancelotis chuckled. I'm no teacher nor poet nor yet a prophet, although I've served often enough as judge when the disputes arise in Caer-Iudeu, which is my charge.
All right, Stirling agreed, more than willing to accept his host's opinion on the matter. So Emrys Myrddin brought Artorius north for safety's sake while the southern kingdoms went to hell in their own merry way? Leaving Artorius to rise to power in Ambrosius Aurelianus' footsteps?
Aye, you've the right of it. It was Ambrosius Aurelianus, last of the Roman commanders in Britain, who taught even Uthyr Pendragon a thing or two about war. Had Artorius and Lot and I not learned the art of war from Aurelianus himself, chasing us up and down that mountain in your mind, there would be no Britain left for the Britons, save a shallow ditch to be buried in. How else think you we've held the Picts and Irish and Saxons at bay, along with the Jutland Danes and their Frisian Anglish cousins?
Even as Ancelotis spoke, a grim and empty hollowness opened up in his heart, as the man's grief and self-blame welled up. The memory image of a tall and heavy-muscled man being torn from a mortally wounded horse played out again and again behind Ancelotis' closed eyelids, along with the sudden, wounded scream of the horse, the long topple to the ground, the swarm of Picts like blue-painted carrion flies clubbing and stabbing until what remained little resembled a human form.
Ancelotis clenched his jaw so tightly, his molars ached. They cut him down before my very eyes, before anyone could reach him or drive them back. I've a wild debt of blood to pay, Stirling of Caer-Iudeu, but once I have avenged my brother and king, once I have assured a safe transition of power for Lot Luwddoc's throne, then will I help you. We will hunt your Irish murderess together—and stop her.
Stirling was so grateful for the unexpected offer of alliance, he didn't know what to say. Ancelotis merely chuckled and suggested they get on with the business at hand—reaching the privy pot against the far wall. Stirling grunted once, then dragged himself off the floor and learned how to walk again, mostly by letting Ancelotis take over the driving, so to speak. It got them to the pot, at any rate. And men of the sixth century a.d. pissed in a pot the same way men of the twenty-first century did, leaning with one hand against the wall and taking reasonable care to aim. It was vaguely reassuring that they could aim, under the circumstances.
He wondered who'd stripped off his clothing, since he was bare-arse naked, except for thick gold armbands which circled his wrists and the ornate ends of a thin gold torque, which rested in the hollow of his throat. The room was surprisingly warm, the flooring actually toasty beneath his feet. Ancelotis chuckled at his puzzlement.
Have you no central heating where you come from? The whole fortress is heated, of course, with steam pipes beneath the floors to carry the warmth from the firepits. There's not a fortress or villa from Gododdin to Strathclyde that ha
sn't a good central heating system. It's too cold here, of a winter, to build without one. That much, at least, the Romans left for us when they pulled out their legions and engineers.
The smaller camps and watchtowers aren't heated, of course, which is one reason we rotate duty frequently, particularly during bad weather. Wouldn't be fair to subject the border guards to a whole winter in unheated towers and fortlets. And those glen-blocking forts are just as cold and unpleasant a duty station, up in the passes through the Highlands.
It made good sense, although Stirling could foresee trouble, if the enemy across the invisible border with Pictland ever figured out the timing of the relief columns. That was not, however, his concern and he'd no business meddling in the internal military affairs of the Briton commanders. So he stumbled back to the bed, a wooden frame with ropes supporting the fur bag he'd spent the night on, and sat down to drag his clothes on. Stirling wanted a bath, but Ancelotis conveyed a sense of considerable urgency in the journey which Stirling's arrival had interrupted. Getting dressed involved learning what sixth-century garments consisted of, and in what order he was meant to don them.
He pulled on loose-fitting woolen trousers over a linen undergarment more like a union suit than any other modern equivalent. The trousers—secured at the waist with a narrow leather belt which sported a metalwork buckle of finely wrought silver in a looping, quintessentially Celtic style—were boldly woven in a red-and-blue checkered pattern. Short lengths of leather cordage puzzled him until Ancelotis explained that they were meant to cinch the loose trouser cuffs around his ankles, thus keeping anything unpleasant from crawling up one's legs.
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