For all that, though, we did not come to Tara for near a sixmonth… But let me tell the tale in right order.
It took us near a fortnight to reach Caer Dathyl—well, it was a progress, not a forcemarch—and the thing most to our wonderment was that we saw so little fighting along the way. This was all due to Keils Rathen's generalship: His plan had been that once we had won at Cadarachta and the Rift—and he never did tell us what his plan had been if we had lost those fights—our auxiliars, the irregular troops Arthur had been training up for years all across the planet, should move from every shieling on Gwynedd, to take strategic towns and hold them for us, until what time we came ourselves.
Keils's plan worked beyond all right expectation, as we now saw wherever we rode: people streaming out from liberated towns and townlands and walled cities—even Talgarth, of unnerving memory!—to kiss Arthur's hand, and Morgan's, and Gweniver's, and even mine,—any hand they could reach, any forearm they could clasp, anyone they could get near enough to embrace in their delirium of joy.
I made many songs on that march, songs that are sung even now, not perhaps for any artistic merit but for that they were composed when they were, and where, and for what reason; there is joy in them, and lamenting too, for Uthyr the wounded King was no better, and we were beginning to accept that word of Morgan's—though we liked it as little as when she had first pronounced it.
But in spite of our triumph over Owein, and the efforts of our auxiliars, we had still to smoke out nests of Ravens in odd corners of Gwynedd; and after that there were the other Kymric worlds of Dyved and Powys to be won. Though we as yet could not mount a real campaign for any world other than Tara, Gweniver even so sent Grehan to win Erinna—as the Prince of Thomond's heir, he could command such Erinnach loyalties to fight together as would not in other time be seen passing water on one another; and Tarian Douglas's brother Aluinn was sent to wrest back Caledon. They had little with which to work in the way of arms and ships and troops; but there had ever been especially virulent enmity against the Marbh-draoi on both those worlds, and neither was notably gloomy about the prospects.
It was about this time that the problem of hostages rose. Until now we had not been successful enough for the Marbh-draoi to take much note of us, save as annoying deggans that buzzed and bit and did but little more. But now, we grew a force to make a real threat, we found to our horror—that parents, sibs, wives, husbands, friends, children even, all being seized indiscriminately by Edeyrn to use as counters against our advances. It broke our hearts, and near bowed our spirits, to see those we loved taken so and treated so; but Gweniver and Arthur, with the full approval of Uthyr and Ygrawn, proclaimed early on in this siege of shamefulness that no matter the loss, we would never deal with demands that turned on the safety of hostage Kelts. We ourselves refused to do likewise, to take hostages of our own,—but if we had, Edeyrn would not have been swayed. Nor would he have been moved: But we loved, and love was the whip he thought to hold above our heads.
Yet however we loved those who had been taken—and many there were we loved most dear—sooner would we give them up to death at Edeyrn's hands than treat with shame for their release. And, when their messages could be contrived to reach us, not a one of them but urged us to stand firm in our resolve; with one voice, so brave a voice, they said to let them perish rather than cut cloaks to Edeyrn's pattern. And, with grief and pride, we did as they did bid us. But, Mighty Mother, it was hard.
"I had forgot it was so fair a place," whispered Morgan, gazing up wide-eyed as we rode under the landgate of Caer Dathyl and turned into the main castle approach.
I looked sidewise at her. She was so fair herself, clad that day in the blue and silver of her House, her hair burning gilt above the indigo tunic.
"When were you here to see it?" I murmured casually, and she fell right into it.
"Oh, one time, with Birogue, we rode down from—" She sighed, then laughed. "I never learn to look out for those little bardic deadfalls of yours, you do them so well they sound as proper questions."
"Aye, that is how they teach us in Tinnavardan," I said equably. "But I would hear more of this jaunt of yours. I knew not Birogue ever left her island."
"Well, she has done, and doubtless will again… But we had a fine time here," she added, eyes sparkling with the memory. "We stayed in that inn right over there, and bought cloth and leather and even some unset stones that were offered in trade."
"Oh aye? And did you pay for them in faery-gold, that turned to leaves in the merchants' mailins after you had gone?"
"Certainly not!" she said, indignant. "We paid honorably in silver, like anyone else: I had pouch-money from my parents every quarter-day, and when she had need, even Birogue seemed to have no lack of coin."
I grinned and stared straight ahead, and our banter carried us up into the castle precincts before either of us could give in to the feeling that had gripped us, a feeling even I, a bard, could put no name upon. It seemed to be a sadness that drifted over us like woodsmoke, like sea-mist, like cloud in the hollow of an autumn valley.
"Aye," said Arthur later, when I had gone to his chambers after settling into my own rooms. "I felt it myself as we rode up here."
"And? And?"
"And nothing. It was a feeling like any other, and now it is gone." He was unpacking his gear as he spoke—not overmuch, Arthur ever travelled light—and pacing between chest and press as he did so. He had commandeered for himself chambers not far from mine, and had ordered that Uthyr and Ygrawn be housed in Owein's splendid suite of rooms. The former occupant was himself securely held in a tower strongroom, until such time as Arthur should choose to keep his word and set him free.
"Did you see how they cheered the King and Queen, when we entered the city?" he added, himself looking more cheerful as he said so. "I knew the folk would turn their hearts openly to us, when once we might openly solicit them. Oh, what!" This last to me, when he turned to look at me at last. "You look as sour as a thistle."
I shook my head and shrugged. "As Gwennach did say that night in the King's tent—the other boot has yet to fall, and I mislike waiting to hear the thud."
He sat down, looking suddenly deflated, and I regretted words at once. "What think you, then?" he asked, in quite a different voice. "Some disaster apparent to your bardish instincts, that none of us grosser folk perceive just yet?"
"You know very well it: is not so at all,' I said roundly. "But since you speak of disasters, what of your sister?"
He stared at me as if I had taken leave of what few wits he deemed me still to possess. "My sister? Oh—Marguessan."
A good question: Since that night in Uthyr's tent, when the wounded King had prophesied treachery in his own daughter's heart—and in the babe she carried beneath it—few save her mother and ladies had even seen the Princess Marguessan. She had come with us to Caer Dathyl, riding in state in a horse-litter, the best conveyance we could contrive for the rougher parts of the way; then when better roads were reached she had taken to a carriage, one of the few we had—more a great enclosed chariot than a proper carriage, which was rare in a realm of riders.
Arthur's face had taken on a look I knew from of old: a kind of weighing look, as if he were judging just how much truth his listener could stand to hear, and how it might be taken.
"Do you know, Talyn," he said at length, "the King does not recall that prophecy he made concerning Marguessan. Recalls not one word of it… when my mother spoke of it to him, it was as if she told him a story of someone else entirely, and he was most—distressed."
"I will wager on it," I said grimly. "Before the battle, back at Llwynarth, he spoke privily to me of his misgivings concerning Marguessan and Irian, that he feared some mischief to you from them in time to come. I promised I would keep 'ware of them both, and he seemed content." I moved forward a little in my seat, for now I must ask the thing I had been dreading and fearing most to put to him. "But Artos—what of Gwenwynbar?"
Plainly h
e was prepared for me to ask, had been expecting it; for he looked straight at me and smiled.
"She is not here."
"Are you sure of it?"
He nodded. "Oh aye. The castle has been searched by our Companions—I had not allowed Uthyr brought into it else—and she was not found. Some of the servitors say she has fled, though I doubt she would have gone to her own place of Saltcoats, or any other place obvious to pursuit."
"And taken the boy with her?"
"Aye."
I could not determine from such brevity the true nature of his feelings—which was of course just as he did wish it. Even Druids need a little more to work on than five operative words—the rest were mere masking—and Arthur had ever been above the common run at concealing his state of mind or heart when he did wish to keep hidden either one. He but tried to put me off the trail, and hoped I would not press him.
Well, it takes more than that, braud… "What does Owein say?" I asked for a moment, all casual inquiry, then looked up sidewise and swiftly, just quick enough to see his face change before he could control it. Ah, that's a touch, now! …
"You and Guenna have no child as yet," he said then in apparent thus-not. "And it may be that I myself have none as yet, nor ever shall—but think how you must feel, Talyn, were it your son kept from you as maybe Malgan has been kept from me."
And all at once I felt sad and sorry, and shamed indeed that I had pricked him so, and I thought of Malgan as I had known him in Caer Dathyl, what time I had been bard to Owein and spy for Arthur all at once… True it was I had no way just yet of knowing what Arthur must feel—and, unnatural father that I must be, even when I did come to have a son of my own I never came to feel as Arthur seemed to be feeling now; yet I daresay I loved Geraint ap Taliesin as well as any father loves any son… But Arthur was made differently, and as I saw his grief for one who might or might not even be his child at all I repented me of my ploy.
"My sorrow, Artos," I said formally, and he heard the true-feeling in the words and nodded.
"Aye, and mine… But just now there is more for us to do than fret." And he turned his mind—gods, how I envied that ease of his; though it was not in the slightest easy but the exercise of a disciplined will—from what could not be helped what could no longer be halted: the disposition of Owein Rheged and the beginning of the campaign for Keltia. And never doubted for the smallest instant that the rest of us would turn as well.
* * *
* * *
Chapter Five
IF I HAVE SEEMED to scant our triumph, know that it is not for lack of material; I could 'broider on the theme from now till Nevermas, were it not that there is so large a tapestry yet to unroll. Too, I think we were all somewhat boggled, even Arthur, at the completeness—or at least what then seemed to be so—of our victory at Cadarachta. It was like a fidchell match: With one hand—Tarian's—we had played out a daring game of risk, while with the other—Keils's—we had dealt distraction, and so won twice over. Heady stuff, for poor rebels who had known naught but the pinprick triumphs of reivings and small skirmishes for so many years gone by.
But now all was changed, utterly and forever altered. No more the rash chief of a ragtag resistance, Arthur was now Rex Bellorum, supreme and uncontested commander: In the eyes of the army and the people, if perhaps not just yet in Edeyrn's reckoning, he was the sword that Uthyr wielded to win back Keltia for the folk; and as for Edeyrn's measuring, well, that too would change… But Arthur took over Caer Dathyl as if he had been heir to it from birth as a prince of Gwynedd; from that strong place he sent out his forces across the planet, like the narrow burning rivers that course down from the volcano's heart, and he himself that great blazing center.
By Lughnasa we had won the entire planet for our own; by Fionnasa we were ready to move, for the first time in two hundred years and more, off-planet: We were ready to take our war through the stars, to Tara.
But before we could begin to move so we began to hear that which we had long been dreading to hear: Edeyrn the Marbh-draoi had at last deigned to take note of us, and his noting took a most evil form indeed, from which all Keltia will be a thousand years and more in the mending…
"Gallain!" echoed Gweniver, staring at Arthur as if she deemed him to have lost what judgment she had reluctantly conceded him to possess.
She was not the only one who thought so; but all the rest of us, every scrap as surprised as she, did keep it a thought only. Still, we were all heard even so…
"Fomori and Fir Bolg," said Arthur evenly, and my glance met Daronwy's, as I remembered our converse by the bath-tent the night of Cadarachta. She raised her fine dark brows and nodded once, then we returned our attention to Arthur. But my mind was running on our foes… Fomori and Fir Bolg, we had called them, back in the days of Brendan; these enemies were not strangers. We had named them after our old Earth enemies; indeed, we had called them thus so long and so insistently that they came in time to call themselves as we did, their old names forgotten even among themselves, save for the loremasters. Human in form, both races; good fighters too, with even a smattering of honor.
All and all, though, they were mercenaries, bought and fought by Edeyrn, to help him defeat this son of Don that had come out of nowhere to destroy his reign.
"He must be fearing indeed," remarked Kei, "does he bring gallain to splint his arm."
Arthur shook his head. "Nay, I see how he does plan it: Throw the gallain against us first, as expendable levies, straw for swords to bite on; while all that time keeping his seasoned troops as far intact as he might, hoping to exhaust us before he must commit his own armies to battle."
"As loathsome a plan as we might have expected from him," said Morgan. "But, Arthur, no warrior of Keltia has had to face gallain for a thousand years and more; not since the very early years, and even then—
"And even then it was just these same Fomorians and Fir Bolg," said Arthur cheerfully. "Let us be thankful indeed that it is not the Coranians that have so taken the Marbh-draoi's coin."
At that a shiver ran round the room that none of us could hide,—I, who shuddered with the rest, thought even as I did so that no man who faced what Arthur now was facing had any right to jest as he jested now. For where the Fomorians have only been named after ancient Earth enemies, the Coranians are ancient Earth enemies: sprung from the Atlandean race of the Telchine folk, as the Kelts were come from the Danaans.
They are a fierce, cruel and hateful people, and were chiefly the cause of the Danaans leaving Atland, our first homeplace on Earth, to find refuge in other, happier lands; and in the end, of course, they were our near-destruction… But this is not the time for the history of the Atlandic Wars; perhaps I shall yet be spared to write them—In any case, the Coranians were not in this present coil of Edeyrn's—at least not that we knew of—and for that we were ever grateful.
Daronwy, never a one to avoid the obvious, asked the question we had all framed in our minds. "But, Artos, what will this mean for us?"
And strangely, it was not from Arthur that the answer came… From his place against the wall, flanked by Tarian and Betwyr, Owein Rheged spoke to answer Ronwyn's query.
"Naught, you may be sure, of good."
Arthur turned a thoughtful gaze his way, but his face was otherwise bare of expression and he said nothing in response.
Not so Kei… "This needs no dog of the Marbh-draoi, Artos, to tell us so… Have you nothing to say of more merit, Rheged, or is that the sum of your wisdom?"
Owein smiled; he was thinner than when I had known him at Caer Dathyl, and looked rather more haggard than he had a few months since at Cadarachta. Still, he was used in those days of captivity to wear a face more appropriate to a victor than one who had lost a planet—and who would soon be giving an accounting of that loss to an angry master.
"What would you have me say? That you will come to Tara on sails of silver and take the Throneworld with feathers not swords? Your master has the right of it: Edeyrn will be savin
g his best troops to meet you do you gain the planet; he will be spending his hired swords to see that you do not. Any idiot can see as much."
"Well, this idiot sees a lai or two more," said Arthur pleasantly. "I think, Rheged, the time has come for you to complete your purpose—or the purpose we have devised for you—and depart for Tara, to serve a herald's calling."
In spite of his best efforts to conceal it, Owein's face lighted with sudden doubting hope. "Then you will free me as you promised?"
"Did I not just now say so?" said Arthur with a rare snap of exasperation to his tone. "Aye, go, and go now. I ordered a ship to stand ready this morning; it will convey you to a place in the Throneworld system from which you may with reasonable care come to safety. How you come to it is your own concern, and how you deliver my charge to Edeyrn is your concern still more."
Owein rose while Arthur was still speaking, and Betwyr and Tarian with him,—at Arthur's glance I myself quietly moved round to join the escort party.
Then I take leave of you all," said Owein formally, "and in especial of you, Penarvon,—though I know well the leave is not the last."
"Indeed not," agreed Arthur, and at the other end of the table Gweniver stirred and glanced at him with puzzled sharpness.
Owein was more than usually quiet as we passed through corridors of Caer Dathyl, corridors that he knew well all his years here residing. Stealing a sidewise look at him, I wondered if he thought now of that time: those five that had been bard to him, those we had known. Wondered thought of Gwenwynbar, and the boy Malgan; if he knew to what hidden sanctuary they had fled…
The Oak above the Kings Page 5