For King and Country

by Robert Asprin

  Artorius put them at their ease with few enough words, outlining the entire series of disasters in a handful of terse, to-the-point sentences, making it quite clear that he supported Clinoch ap Dumgual Hen. Morgana added her support, as did Ancelotis. Within a quarter of an hour, the decision was made and Clinoch was officially King of Strathclyde. His younger brothers and sisters looked on in confused awe as he was invested with the full power of the crown by the church, in a ceremony only slightly more formal and ornate that Ancelotis' own.

  It was, however, just as brief.

  The new king's first order was to see to his father's funeral arrangements in his absence, "for the Saxons are massing to the south," he explained to his councillors, "and maneuvering in the midlands, and if successful in both places, they could punch through to demolish the northern kingdoms within the year."

  Braithna kissed her son's cheeks and murmured, "We will see to all proper ceremony. Ride like a sudden summer gale and do your part to keep the Saxons guessing and off guard."

  They waited only long enough to shovel down hot stew and bread and stow more trail rations in their kit bags, then they were under way again, amidst a great flurry of trumpet calls. The brassy voices of the signal trumpets pursued them down the twisting, muddy road from the fortified heights down to the Clyde estuary. Narrow, cobbled streets echoed with the sound of unshod hooves on uneven stone. Then they were through the town's southern gate, clattering onto a well-paved stretch of Roman road leading south. Once past the cat's-claw hook of water that formed the very tip of the Firth of Clyde, they drove straight down through the Southern Uplands and the Tweedsmuir Hills toward the distant and meaningless—to anyone from the sixth century—border between modern Scotland and modern England.

  After a grueling day Stirling hoped never to repeat in his life, the rain clouds finally broke up and let the sky show through, pale as ice and just as cold. The chilly sun dropped gradually behind the hills and left them riding into the faces of long, purple shadows. The sky blazed with the colors of blood and flame and faerie gold. Night slipped over them on silent cat's feet once more, toying with the vanishing sun until the fiery plaything fell over the edge of the world and left them riding by starlight. The heavens were far from dark, however. Stirling's first glance up left his mouth hanging open in astonishment. Stars blazed in such brilliant profusion, scattered like a carelessly overturned saltshaker on a velvet tablecloth, Stirling's breath caught.

  He had never, not even during desert training, seen a night sky to equal it. The heavens were so thickly populated, it took him long moments just to spot familiar constellations and several moments more to understand why they were slightly skewed from true in their not-quite-changeless march across the night skies. Gooseflesh prickled beneath armor and sodden wool. Little wonder the ancients had revered the night sky as sacred, filled with the shining souls of departed heroes. Every man, woman, and child on Earth ought to see a sky like this at least once. The experience might instill perspective on the insignificance of squabbles like Belfast's, when weighed against the infinite reaches of the heavens.

  Stirling held back a tired sigh.

  The column entered the upper reaches of a land Stirling heard referred to as Caer-Guendoleu, passing a stone post which marked the border. Ganhumara, having ridden in silence for hours, beckoned to the nearest of Artorius' cataphracti, an officer if Stirling judged correctly the quality of his arms and the deference of the men who rode with him. The man reined closer to the queen's lighter mount.

  "My lady?"

  "Bear a message to my legate at fortress Caer-Guendoleu. Bid him sharpen my late father's sword."

  The ominous words chilled Stirling, heavy reminder of the dead they'd already left behind, who were themselves mere tokens—or so Ancelotis feared—compared with those slated to die if this challenge weren't stopped in some bloodless and apparently impossible fashion. The officer bowed stiffly at the waist and reined around—but not to depart, as Stirling expected. He requested permission to leave the column from his commanding officer. A moment later, he vanished into the darkness with a muted drumming of hooves against wet earth.

  Stirling watched him go, brows twitching in impressed surprise. Clearly, not even a royal command superseded military discipline. Artorius commanded well. Of course, he must command well, given the odds he fought against and his track record of victories. It occurred to Stirling for the first time that he could learn a thing or two about soldiering from the Dux Bellorum. The observation wrung another derisive snort from Ancelotis. Stirling sighed. He was not making a particularly good impression on his host.

  It was well past midnight, with the constellations wheeling silently overhead in a bitterly cold sky and Stirling reeling in the saddle, when the bulky shadow of the Sixth Legion's stronghold appeared at last. An immense fortress of classic Roman design, it towered above the final stretch of road. The grey shadow of Hadrian's Wall, shocking Stirling with its height—a good five meters of it, when the only surviving remnants in the twenty-first century stood barely a meter high—vanished into the darkness on either side of the fortress, marching toward the sea in both directions. The moonlit waters of Solway Firth glittered in the distance, silver where an onshore wind pushed ripples across the black stretch of water. The estuary's farthest reaches vanished into the blackness of sky at the horizon line.

  Torches burned at the entrance to the great Roman fortification. A sizable civilian settlement—which Ancelotis referred to by its Latin military term, the canabae of Caerleul fortress—had grown up around the Legion's winter camp. Houses and shops were an odd mixture of wattle-and-daub hovels, stave houses built of planked timber with twig-thatched roofs, and stone structures resembling miniature Roman villas, many of the latter in poor repair. No lights showed in the few windows Stirling could see, although a glance over his shoulder revealed sleepy inhabitants peering nervously from darkened doorways, roused by the thunder of Artorius' return to Carlisle.

  The fortress, in sharp contrast to the canabae, had been maintained in excellent repair. Or, at least, had been repaired excellently. The circumvallation's outer layer consisted of a latticework of pits and potholes and trenches into which sharpened stakes had been sunk, pointed outward, with raised berms on either side of the trenches. Inside this defensive ring lay a series of five narrow trenches like the rings of a bull's-eye, filled with the bristling nastiness of thorny shrubbery, hawthorn boughs, from the looks of it. A good twenty-seven feet wide, when measured together as one massive unit, each of the five rings boasted a ramped earthen face, up which an attacker would have to toil before attempting to cross the thorns.

  Inside the prickly circles lay two ditches, both of them nine feet wide and seven feet deep. And finally, the immense stretch of the fortress wall itself, made of blood-red sandstone which rose twelve feet above the bottom of the innermost ditch. More thorny branches had been embedded in the wall, which was topped by a tall stone palisade with twenty-foot stone towers every few yards. Each tower stood three stories high and provided three fighting platforms. The place had been built to last, since this fortress had been designed to serve as winter camp to the entire Sixth Legion.

  Tired as he was and dark as the night was, Stirling still pinpointed the locations of a full guard contingent along those palisades. If he'd been an invader, he'd have thought twice—three times—before putting this fortress' defenses to the test. Maybe the Saxons counted on drawing Artorius' army into the open by laying waste to the dozens of little villages scattered throughout the region? It was the only sane tactic Stirling could see, without access to black powder and cannons, at the very least. Doubtless, the Saxons had already thought of it—or would very soon after Cutha's arrival. Artorius would have considered that, as well, if he was half the commander Stirling already suspected he was.

  What Stirling hadn't expected was the prickle of awe which ran up his spine as they slowed to a walk and filed through the narrow, guarded entrance of Artorius' mil
itary stronghold. Stirling was, after all, accustomed to living and even shopping in buildings hundreds of years old. And he'd seen Stonehenge, which was considerably older than these fortifications—by several millennia, in fact. But he couldn't help feeling the strange, hushed wonderment that comes from entering a place of great antiquity, any more than he could help searching out what details he could see.

  They entered by way of a traverse outside the fortress gate, a short arc of wall surmounted by an armed guard, which forced them to ride parallel to the fortress wall for a long way before entering the actual gate—then they had to ride back along the return of the long, S-shaped curve past an inner arc of traverse wall, doubling the distance and time a defender could shoot at them. It was nearly as effective as a medieval castle's murder room, which served the same purpose, come to think of it, allowing archers, javelin—or, in the Romans' case, pilum—throwers, or pikemen ample opportunity to wreak their lethal havoc.

  Once through the convolutions of the gate, Stirling's gaze came to rest on a veritable small town of red sandstone barracks, stables, buildings for which he couldn't even hazard a guess as to their functions, tired as he was. A broad avenue at least a hundred and twenty feet wide ran along the inside perimeter, with stair-stepped terraces making access to the palisades and towers quick and easy. They followed this road to the left, riding nearly four hundred yards before reaching the corner—whereupon Stirling discovered that they'd entered through the narrow end of the fortress. The length of wall stretching out before Stirling's bleary eyes was half again longer than the length of the wall behind them.

  They passed torches at regular intervals, their ruddy light flickering across neat lettering on the walls of buildings at the corners of the perimeter road and interior cross streets. Only half the width of the outer road, the street Artorius led them down was still a good sixty feet from side to side, with the intersection neatly labeled Via Quintana in Roman lettering. Clearly, someone had been renewing the paint during the past century. The Britons were clinging to their Romanized roots with a typically Celtic passion.

  Stirling was more than happy to turn his horse over to the boys assigned duty in the stables, which bordered the Via Quintana for many yards. He slid out of the saddle and had to grip the nearest saddle horns tightly to prevent himself sliding all the way to the ground. Horses whickered greetings, tired newcomers welcoming sleepy stablemates. One of the stable boys carried a water pail and dipper, which he gave first to Artorius, who passed it to Morgana, Ganhumara, and Covianna in turn before drinking his fill. Stirling got next crack at the water, which he needed rather desperately. He passed the dipper on to Medraut and the king of Strathclyde.

  Stirling was pleased, at least, that he hadn't fallen down, although he had to speak sternly to Ancelotis' legs before they consented to carry him across the open courtyard. Artorius led them through the doorway of Caerleul's principium, clearly the largest building inside the fort, a long stone rectangle with its short end opening onto the Via Quintana. The men of Artorius' escort and the cataphracti of Gododdin and Strathclyde tended their horses before heading for other structures, presumably barracks, laid out with all the formal precision typical of a Roman encampment.

  A young girl, a child no more than twelve or thirteen, with dark hair in braids and dark eyes too mature for her years, held the door as they passed the threshold. How much war had this child witnessed firsthand? Eleven victories Artorius had already won, driving back invaders from every direction. And how many children just like this girl had already died? Not as many as would die, if Brenna McEgan weren't stopped.

  He saw the room through a haze of bleary-eyed exhaustion and the reddish gold, smoky light of torches flickering across the red sandstone of the walls. Torchlight was augmented by Roman-style oil lamps in both pottery and stone varieties. Sullen coals lay heaped in an immense hearth which sprawled across the very center of the room like a child's playbox full of sand, with marble border stones enclosing a space a good twelve inches deep and at least four feet on each side, sixteen square feet given over to the coals. The hearth had clearly been designed to augment the central heating beneath the floors, a double effort to keep out the chill of a Scottish border town's winter. The huge hearth simultaneously allowed a small army of women to prepare a wide variety of foodstuffs over a blazing sea of embers. A small forest of iron pothooks, support tripods, and roasting spits jutted up like stiff snakes. The huge firepit vented through a smoke hole in the ceiling, an opening that reminded Stirling of the atrium in Roman villas, only smaller and covered with some type of protective hood on the roof to keep rain from falling directly into the firepit during bad weather. Tables and benches surrounded the central hearth, forming a shape that was more a twelve-sided polygon than circular. Weary travelers collapsed onto the benches closest to the fire, huddling beside the coals for warmth.

  Servants moved in shadowy anonymity, shapeless in woolen tunics and drab woolen dresses. Flames leaped higher in the huge firepit. Someone had added kindling to the coals. As firelight flared up, Stirling caught more details of the room. Most of the furniture had been crudely constructed from rough planking, underscoring the utilitarian, military function of the place, although he saw a group of massive wooden chairs along one wall, nearly hidden in shadow, which appeared to be more finely wrought. If this was supposed to be Camelot, it was a big disappointment in the aesthetic department.

  Still, there was an indefinable air of mystery about the place, a sense that Stirling had stepped into a museum peopled with ghosts who'd forgotten they were dead. He rubbed his eyes and tried to clear his head, senses swimming. Thus distracted, he failed to notice the woman's appearance. At the sound of her voice, Ancelotis jerked his gaze up. Thaney, Ancelotis' niece and queen of Rheged, was not a beautiful girl, but there was a compelling intensity in the clear green eyes and if that mouth had ever uttered a cruel word, Stirling was no judge of human nature.

  "Artorius!" she cried with glad welcome, while quietly gesturing for a servant who brought a pitcher of something that tasted strongly of alcohol and washed the fuzz out of Stirling's mouth when his turn came at the cups circulating round the tables. "We feared you would return too late. The Saxon emissaries are no more than a few hours' ride to the south. They will be here by dawn." Her gaze found Ancelotis and her eyes widened in considerable surprise. "Ancelotis? It's good to have you here, Uncle, but I don't understand why you've come."

  Ancelotis moved quickly to take her hands in his much larger, calloused ones. "Your father is dead, child," he said softly. "Killed by Picts at the border, north of Caer-Iudeu. The council has given me the kingship until Gwalchmai is of age."

  Thaney paled and her eyes widened, but she made no sound, although her fingers tightened almost convulsively around his. After several swallows, she finally whispered, "I will mourn him more than you know."

  Stirling understood, even though Ancelotis was puzzled. She had desperately wanted her father's love and approval and had nearly been murdered by him instead, and now she had lost all hope of ever gaining what she had so understandably wanted and needed. As Stirling's insight burst through Ancelotis' awareness, he folded his niece into his arms and just held her while she trembled.

  "What's wrong?" a man Ancelotis recognized as Thaney's husband asked urgently, having come into the room still buckling on his sword. Meirchion Gul was a tall and exceedingly lean man, with the incongruous look of an over-muscled scarecrow, too tall for grace, too physically fit for any real sense of awkwardness. Despite the lateness of the hour—it was the middle of the night, after all, and bad news had not traveled any faster than they had, bearing it—there was an alertness to his eyes that told Stirling this man missed very little, indeed. He moved swiftly to his wife, stroking her hair with a protective gesture. "What is it? What's happened?"

  Ancelotis gave them the disastrous double dose of bad news quickly, neatly, and quietly. Meirchion Gul scowled like thunder and struck one fist against his other
hand repeatedly. When the telling was done, King Meirchion greeted Morgana and young Clinoch in turn, murmuring the inadequacies one is reduced to mouthing when nothing can be said that will lessen the pain and shock of loss. "We will, of course, honor Lot Luwddoc and Dumgual Hen with all appropriate funerary rituals, given the short shrift you have each been forced to give your honored dead."

  "My thought exactly," Artorius nodded, "and the very complexity of the rituals will buy us time with the Saxons."

  Before Meirchion could respond, another voice interrupted, rising in irritation like a waterspout out of a storm-slashed sea. "The devil take you hindmost, imbecile! May Hades, Lord of Darkness, eat your ill-mannered cockles and spit out your soul for Manannan to bait his fishhook! Out of my way!"

  The man who swept into the room was taller than anyone Stirling had yet seen, taller even than Meirchion Gul, certainly a distinction in a land peopled with compactly built Brythonic Celts. He was powerfully made, moving with the speed and single-minded purposefulness of a bull charging into a wolf pack. His chilly blue eyes missed nothing—and the moment Stirling looked into those eyes, he was utterly and irrevocably convinced that a great deal of what those eyes saw was invisible to mere mortals.

  Whoever he was, he'd twisted iron-grey hair into long and intricate braids, reminding Stirling more of Vikings than Dark Age Britons. The man had counted at least fifty years, at a guess, and the robes he wore would have been monkish had they not been bleached the same snowy white as Covianna's and cut in exactly the same style, with the same long hood folded back over the shoulders. He wore no ornamentation, not even a cross, which Stirling certainly would have expected of a Christian priest.