Still, in spite of my own weariness I watched over him awhile as he slept, and my mind was a whirling blur of all the times I had watched thus; or those times I never knew of, when our places had been reversed and he the one who kept watch over me. Four decades and more had there been of such vigils: more than forty years of perfect loving trust. We had seen much together, Arthur and I, had known much and lost much; and now, gods willing, were in a fair way to win much, much more—and not for us alone—or else to lose all, forever.
I must have dozed off then, for all at once I jerked sharply awake. The air was colder, and the camp more silent; I had been asleep for some time, then. Arthur, who had been so reluctant to yield to unconsciousness, now slept the sleep of the utterly exhausted and the deeply happy. Even Cabal did not stir as I went quietly from the tent and along to my own a few yards down the line, where Morgan half-woke and sleepily made space for me in the warmth beside her before sinking back once more into her dreamlessness.
But for all my weary woe, it was yet some time before I managed to join her there.
The next morning was clear and cool and bright: blue skies, white puffs of cloud racing their shadows over the ground. I took a small breakfast with Morgan, speaking idly of what each of us must labor at that day; then with one last touch of mind on mind, I went outdoors, my steps turning, as some outside force did rule them, to take me to the Fianna jochan across the faha, where Owein Rheged was being held close under the most vigilant of guards.
It was a large, many-chambered structure, sturdier than the field tents most of the army employed. I nodded to the guards at the officers' entry, and was saluted and passed unchallenged. Within, Fians and Companions together turned to greet me, with small nods and quiet words and grins of relief and delight, and I saw friends I had not seen since battle's prelude the preceding day. Then a curtain parted in an inside wall, and Tarian put her head around it, to bid me come within.
I stepped through to join her and some others in the inner chamber, and stiffened at once like Cabal when quarry comes in sight.
Owein Rheged met my glance with a settled countenance and no sign of surprise. He looked rather the worse this morning, for Keils and Tari and Grehan had been less than gently patient in their questioning, and beyond the clochan walls the army was howling for his head on a pike without further delay. Not that that would have troubled him: Owein, whatever else he might have been, was no coward. Behind the weariness of defeat and the bitter gall of abandonment (for Edeyrn his master and adopted father had sent neither word nor help), the old malicious glint I knew so well was still alive and sparking, though I was less inclined than of old to respond to it.
He noticed that, too; he had ever been quick as a palugcat. "Ah. Then it is not my onetime bard, latterly known to us in Caer Dathyl as Mabon Dialedd, who comes to call this morning, but the Lord Taliesin Glyndour ap Gwyddno."
"Even he." I disengaged Tarian's cautioning hand from my shoulder and crossed the room.
Owein stretched his aching arms, where they were pinned by a tight-set restraint field to the back of the oak settle. "I did not know you rabble had such technological toys in your play-chest," he said with a rueful smile as he did so. "But this is a great advancement for you, not so—up from bardery to bed with a king's daughter?"
I had been expecting some remark of the sort, and had resolved beforetimes not to let it sting me. So now I merely returned the smile and said nothing; but Keils Rathen was not so restrained.
"The Princess Morguenna's name has no place upon your lips, maggot of Rheged!"
Owein raised his brows, and I rolled up my eyes, knowing what was coming.
"Nay? Then perhaps you, Rathen, would prefer I spoke of the Princess Gweniver, and what lord she spends her nights with…"
He got no farther than that, which was quite far enough: All three of us moved as one, but it was Tarian got there first. The sound of her hand meeting his scored face with force cracked through the tent, as the blow broke his cheekbone.
"Filth," she said pleasantly. "Speak so again and I rip your tongue out by the root." Ever the lady even in excess, Tarian fastidiously wiped Owein's blood from her fingers with his cloak and turned her back on him.
Silence awhile,—presently Owein looked up at me. "I know not what you delay in hopes of," he said quietly, "and care less. But I tell you plain that my life will buy you naught from the Lord Edeyrn; and will serve only to harden his resolve to crush all you under heel like casual adders. Where is that Fian honor I hear so much of, to kill quick and clean?"
"When it comes to that," I heard myself saying, and meaning, too, "my word on it that you will merit the same end as any other enemy. But when it shall come to it, any road—that will be for the Ard-righ and Ard-rian of Keltia to determine, not for me."
As I had intended, the use of the double title surprised him out of his composure.
''Ard-righ and Ard-rian'? But" who—"
The curtain parted again, with the timing of a perfect cue; and at once all in the room, save only Owein, rose in silence to their feet.
Arthur stood there, and just in front of him was Gweniver: both of them were in field armor, and neither of them looked overjoyed.
"Who?" repeated Arthur, smiling. "Why, Rheged, who think you it might be else?"
* * *
* * *
Chapter Four
IT SEEMED TO BE A SPATE of timely entrances: first me, in the King's tent the night past; then Gweniver; Marguessan to follow; now Arthur and Gweniver together—folk popping in and out like foxes from their holes.
But these were the first words that Arthur and Owein had spoken, to anyone's knowledge, since those two grudging sentences before the battle had been joined; and plainly they were no more pleasing to Owein than those other, earlier words had been.
He tried to put an optimistic face upon it all the same. "Does this unprecedented titling then mean the upstart Uthyr is no more? If so, I congratulate you both; but Edeyrn Archdruid may have other words, and more than words, the better suited to your new dignity."
Gweniver smiled and took the chair I offered her. "To your distaste, the Ard-righ Uthyr lives and thrives, and will for many months yet, gods willing. But in his wisdom and farsight he has so ordered it, that when the time comes he shall be succeeded by a double sovereignty: my cousin, Arthur Pendreic, Prince of the Name"—she used name and title deliberately, and Owein as well as I noted Arthur's faint fleeting flinch—"and I myself, Gweniver ferch Leowyn, as Ard-righ and Ard-rian together; to bring twice over the blood of Don against the Marbh-draoi."
"That will count for little in the end," said Owein in a voice of honest warning. "Edeyrn has defenses would make your blood turn to sand did you but know them; as doubtless you shall. As for your ragged claims to succession, know that on my death—which I have a tiny thought may be soon—my son and heir Malgan will be raised up in my place, to stand as Edeyrn's heir to Keltia."
Was it my imagination—and bards never seem to lack of that—or mere guilty knowledge, that made me think Owein as he spoke this bent a glance of mocking malice on Arthur? Did he know then, I wondered, about Gwenwynbar—Arthur's first wife, before she left him and ran off to win Owein to her bed; or worse still, did he suspect that Gwenwynbar's son, the boy Malgan of whom he spoke so proudly, was perhaps no son of his after all but rather Arthur's firstborn? Or, suspecting, even knowing, did he care? Or was he but pleased to have any heir at all, for his own purposes, and so cared not who might have sired the lad, himself or Arthur or any man else?
If Owein cared not, then Arthur surely did: He had flushed near as dark-red as his own hair in sunlight, though he met Owein's gaze full on. All at once he seemed to come to some decision, one he plainly knew would cause him grief in time to come, and in which he would stand alone, then as well as now. It seemed also to be a decision he had taken all on his own: Gweniver did not share it with him, nor Ygrawn, nor any other of those on whom he ordinarily could count to give him
aid—none save, as I later learned, Merlynn himself. But that was later, as I say, and Ailithir, our old teacher, the true Archdruid of Keltia, had as ever his own reasons… Just then I could think only of my dizzying fury, all the blood in my body rushing to my brain until I thought I would explode head first, as I heard Arthur my fostern pronouncing Owein's doom.
"I have no other messenger to send," Arthur was saying in cool everyday voice, as if he did naught of more consequence than order a new cloak or a change of supper plan. "Therefore I must make shift with what I have to hand: Go then, in freedom, and tell your master what has befallen here at Cadarachta. Tell him fairly and freely, what you have seen, and heard, and fought; what strength we have, and what spirit. I charge you deliver all this to Edeyrn, as I have spoken it and you have seen it."
Owein had been listening to Arthur closely, his expression growing gradually more and more astonished, though he struggled mightily to keep it otherwise; and when Arthur ceased to speak, before any of the rest of us could protest or forbid or deny, he spoke in his wonder.
"I wish to make no mistake here, Prince"—the first time he had ever given Arthur his rightful royal title, and there was respect in the word as he spoke it—"yet I cannot but think that I have heard in error, and would that no mistake be made by the others who serve your rule. Do you set me free?"
Arthur nodded, twice and tightly. "Utterly against my own heart, and utterly against advice, but solely for that I know you may be trusted in this if in naught else: to deliver my message to the Marbh-draoi."
"How shall this be done?" Owein's eyes were veiled, but I and the rest could sense his mind all but visibly running through possible shifts and dodges.
"You will be taken to Caer Dathyl with us—we advance on the city within the next day or so, and I doubt not but that we shall find it already ours—and there you will be given a ship in which you must find your own way to your master on Tara. No more than that will you be given, and thus far only, no farther, can I undertake to guarantee your safety. For you see I do all this in the face of my army's resolve that things should be very much otherwise."
"The army's resolve?" cried Gweniver, who seemed at last to have rediscovered her powers of speech. "Nay, my lord, that resolve begins here, now, with me! And with your commanders"—her hand swept round to include the rest of us, Tarian and Grehan and myself and the others there present—"and with your—our—kindred above all others! What think you your mother will say, when she hears you have let free the one who thought to slay her lord the King?"
Arthur did not reply to her just then, only repeated his orders to the Fian commanders who clustered round outside the chamber door, and left the tent, nodding to me to follow. With one backward glance at Gweniver, so I did.
He vouchsafed me no word as we walked through the campment, his ostensible purpose being to inspect our readiness to march next day, or perhaps the day following, and I knew him well enough to know that inquiry would not be welcomed. But I knew just as well that he would speak when he was ready, and that restraint ever gained more from him by way of response than all the questioning in the worlds.
And so it proved… "Well, Talyn?" he murmured after some ten minutes had passed. "Do you too think I do ill to let him go?"
"Artos, it is not mine to say aye or nay," I replied with careful calm; not for aught would I allow blame to creep into my voice, and yet—I could not help it—blame was no small part of what I did think. "I daresay you are right when you say you could have no messenger who would be the more believed by Edeyrn; that is it, is it not?"
"Mostly," he said. "There is more to it than that, though."
"With you, anama-chara," I muttered, "there ever is."
He laughed unwillingly. "That may be. Well, he will give good account of us to the Marbh-draoi, and that of course is my chiefest reason. As to the rest of it—I thought thereby to earn some stature, trust, maybe, even, in Gwenar's eyes."
For one bewildering instant I thought he had spoken his sister's name, and turned to face him with a puzzled frown. Then it dawned on me.
"Gwenwynbar! What—whyfor—" So many words came rding to my tongue that I could get not one of them out angled; but in truth I was dumb with astonishment. He had not spoken his onetime wife's name, so far as I knew, in all the years since she had fled his bed and his cause together, and gone to Caer Dathyl to become Owein Rheged’s mate mate,—that he should speak so now, I thought, could mean no good.
And as he had not spoken the name of his wife, how much the more had he not spoken the name of the one who might be his son: Malgan—called ap Owein, but who knew the truth of it? Save only Gwenwynbar, and she not telling…
For a bard, an ollave yet, there were times I could be duller than a slug; still, it did not need a house to fall on me…
"Malgan," I said with perfect certainty, and Arthur looked away. "Nay, come, none of that… You would know after all these many years if he is in truth your son, yours and Gwenwynbar's, and not hers and Owein's as all the worlds have thought."
"He would be near, what, twelve years by now?" He made a question of it, but he knew very well the correct number of years on the boy, and knew just as well I knew he knew it. "And if—I say 'if' only, Talyn—he is indeed mine, he may well be the only heir of the body I shall ever have,—and at the least he will be blood of the line of the Doniaid."
And as such, therefore, of the righ-domhna, eligible for the Ard-tiarnas, the rulership of Keltia… I pondered on it awhile as we walked. Though Uthyr had last night commanded what all of us closest to him had known for long must be—that Arthur his nephew and Gweniver his niece must wed (and in Keltia it is neither sin nor shame for first cousins to do so, though admittedly it is not often done)—not even Uthyr himself thought the union would prove to be aught but one of sheerest duty. For my part I could not by any reach of fancy see Gweniver so far bending to duty's dictates as to bear an heir of Arthur's siring; and yet the producing of such heir would be the chiefest point and foremost purpose of their union…
So then. If no child came of that, then it would be indeed as Arthur had said, and Malgan Pendreic ap Arthur would be heir of line to the Throne of Scone; and perhaps the certain knowledge of his parentage could only be surely purchased by sparing of Owein's life, and that was why Arthur did so.
All at once I was racked by pity and pain, for my fostern and his fears and quandaries, and the straits to which I saw him being forced. And though I still most violently did not agree with the liberation of Owein, at the least I could see Arthur's reasons plain at last, the great gamble he had made of it, and the greater hopes—and greatest good—he had of it.
But whether anyone else would see as much, that I could not see.
In the end all fell out as Arthur had willed; as it most always had done over the past two decades since our fight had begun in earnest. Though there was protest aplenty, even Gweniver came round to hold with him by the time he had done talking—and Arthur was one of the most persuasive folk that ever I have given ear to, so that privately to twit him I named him 'Honeymouth,' after a far-famed bard of old.
As for Ygrawn and Uthyr, they never needed any'suasion from the first: Whatever Arthur thought his right course to be, that was the course they held to; for all the worlds as if he were Ard-righ already. And indeed, on the eve of our departure for Caer Dathyl, Uthyr named him Rex Bellorum, before all the army and the folk alike, royal war-leader, to have supreme authority over the entire fabric of the fight; and now even Gweniver must bow to his word in war.
For war it now was, openly and no mistaking: Three mornings after that dawn over Cadarachta, we broke our camp and began the long march to Caer Dathyl in the far southeast, seat of the Princes of Gwynedd since Keltia'’s founding, and stronghold of Owein Rheged since first he rose to power.
Our way there was made considerably easier by the captured transports and other bits and bobs of hitherto unobtainable technology that Owein had reserved for his own use, though I
take pride to say that our scientists of the Counterinsurgency had wrought surpassing well for us over the years, indeed had in some inventings surpassed even Edeyrn's drones.
Though most of the heavy troops and enginery had been on ahead, there yet remained a formidable force of horse and foot; and these did Arthur choose to lead himself, riding to Caer Dathyl as he had done once so long since, though that time with but three companions only, and all of them set as iron against his riding. Now thousands rode at his back, and thousands more flocked to his standard as he rode. But we his Companions caught one another's eye and nodded, no words needed—Arthur, for all his satisfaction at how the fight had gone, held still just that last littlest cantlet of longing sorrow for the days that had been. Oh, he would never have traded this day of triumph for those of too-frequent defeat, he was desperately glad and proud of what we had won, and full 'ware of what we had all paid to win it. Still, he missed those times of sharing and caring; and though we would all do both unabated until the end of our days, we too knew it was never to be the same again, and we missed those times also.
Purest sentiment to dwell on that, though: We were taking our war to Tara now. It had long been determined that once we had won back Gwynedd from Owein—as it appeared we had now done, and with scarce a sword drawn save at Cadarachta and Ravens' Rift alone; villages, towns, whole lordships even, were sending their submissions to Arthur faster than Marigh Aberdaron could keep count of them—we would then use the planet as a base from which to launch our campaigns against the other worlds of Keltia.
But Tara was the Throneworld, and we had ever known that that must be our prime objective. Not only was the chiefest part of the Marbh-draoi's forces centered there but Edeyrn himself, in his tower of Ratherne, or in Turusachan even, and so there must the strongest blow be struck. Once we had Tara behind our shield, we had won three parts of our fight, so powerful a symbol was that planet, and so mighty a control did she wield over the hearts of Kelts.
The Oak above the Kings Page 4