The Beast of Caer Baddan

by Rebecca Vaughn

  “Can you marry?” Owain asked.

  “Ie,” the prince said, and looked embarrassed by this question.

  “Can you judge rightly, fairly, without thought to your own gain?” Owain asked.

  “Ie.”

  Owain came close to him and knelt down so that the boy could see him straight in the eye.

  “Then, Cousin,” Owain said, “I think you shall make an excellent king.”

  Prince Gadeon gazed back at Owain, as if searching for his heart in his eyes.

  “You truly believe so?” Prince Gadeon asked.

  “I do.”

  The prince leaned back in his chair and lifted his chin in confidence.

  “Then,” he said. “I shall be king.”

  Owain held out his hand to Prince Gadeon, who grasped it firmly in his own.

  Chapter Fifty Nine: Closure

  The long journey northwest back to Glouia afforded ample opportunity for Owain to converse with young Annon.

  “Why did you talk to them?” Annon asked. “I did not want to fight now, but I thought a war was necessary.”

  “Perhaps it would have been,” Owain replied. “But sometimes when we look for peace and harmony we actually find them. The Dumnonni will never try to hurt Leola or my children again, and in most likely, their rumors shall soon keep other villains from making that attempt as well. My family shall be safe, and that is worth far more than any victory.”

  Annon appeared to be deep in thought, and for a while they rode in silence.

  “Do you remember what you said about our spirits and the Pendragons of old?” Annon asked.

  “If we can touch their spirits within us we too shall be great,” Owain recalled. “It was something my grandmother, Ceindrech, would say.”

  “That was very wise of her,” Annon said.

  “It was,” Owain replied. “Those who walk before us are very wise, our parents, and grandparents, and foreparents.”

  “My parents are boring,” Annon whined.

  Owain laughed. “That is because you are sixteen,” he said.

  As they neared the fork in the road, Owain thought as to what their direction should be.

  “On to Caer Gloui, now?” Annon asked.

  “I have something I remembered I must see in Caer Corin,” Owain replied. “Then we shall go to Baddan.”

  He directed their party on by the northwestern road that led straight to that city.

  “But it is already Maius and your father might demand your presence,” Owain continued, thinking on the Roman months and the boy's long absence from his parents' kingdom, Pengwern.

  “I hope not,” Annon mumbled.

  “Do not grumble, Boy,” Owain said, amused. “Your parents are actually very brave, interesting, and insightful people. There are far worse where mothers and fathers are concerned.”

  They spoke of many things and Owain felt a great deal of relief that Annon was at last healing from his dreadful encounter with the Attacotti.

  Owain made a short stop on the way to the Capital of Glouia. He directed the party off of the main road and into the forest that he had traversed many months before. It did not take him long to find the hermit's secluded house.

  “My good man!” Owain called. “I have returned to see if you are well.”

  The hermit pulled the torn animal hide back from the entrance to his hut and peered out at Owain.

  “Ah!” the hermit cried, in horror. “Soldiers! Soldiers come to take me to the emperor! I think.”

  “No, ,man” Owain replied, a little perplexed by this revelation. “The emperor went to Gaul and is most likely dead. It is only the wounded stranger you saved a year ago.”

  “I do not want to go, I think,” the hermit replied.

  “As you please,” Owain said, cheerfully.

  He did not want to argue with the poor man.

  “Leir,” Owain said. “Give the man a sack of barley.”

  His servant undid one of the packs from the luggage and took it towards the hut.

  “Not another step you take! You take!” the hermit cried.

  Owain indicated to Leir to just leave the grain there, and his servant was soon mounted once more.

  “God keep you, Man,” Owain said.

  “Ie, Ie,” the hermit said, agitated. “God keep you, I think.”

  Owain resolved to visit the solitary man in another month and decided that he should go alone on that journey. He did not want the hermit upset again over seeing the knights.

  When they had neared Caer Corin, Owain sent the entire group on without him. He felt that some things he must do alone and this task before him was one such duty.

  His eyes scanned the lush grass, bushy shrubs, and blooming flowers, and he could not help but marvel at the sight.

  Owain had ridden passed that same field a hundred times yet had avoided looking on it, much less stopping to walk through its finery. It had been a field of blood to him for nearly eighteen years, and only now that his heart was healed could he step into it.

  He could see why his mother would sit in the grass and sew as he practiced, for it was truly a glorious land.

  Owain closed his eyes and listen to the wind.

  “Oin! Dou! Tris! Petwar! Pimpe!” came the merciless voice of Owain's aged teacher, Prince Arvel.

  After each number, Owain performed a movement, whether a strike, stab, block, or slice with his sword or a strike or block with his half-sized shield.

  “Swexs! Sextam! Oxtu! Nawam! Decam!” Prince Arvel cried.

  Owain cut through imaginary opponents in a large uninterrupted circle.

  “Oindecam! Deudecam! Tridecam! Petwardecam! Penpedecam!” Prince Arvel cried.

  Owain's broadsword was not a proper weapon, rather it was a practice sword, purposely made to be heavy and rather blunt compared to a standard blade. He had spent four years using a wooden piece and was now required to do those same movements with an instrument many times its weight.

  Both the practice sword and the oblong shield with it's massive bronze boss leaden Owain so that his feet dragged in grass.

  “Get your ankles up, Boy!” Prince Arvel cried. “We Andoco move forward! We do not fall back! Swedecam! Sextandecam! Oxtudecam! Nawandecam! Ucinti!”

  Coming to the last motion was not the end of the exercise, for all things must go in a cycle.

  “Oin! Dou! Tris! Petwar! Pimpe!” Prince Arvel cried.

  Owain started afresh with the first strike without any pause between “ucinti” and “oin.” He knew that he must perfect his blocks and attacks if he was to graduate to a real weapon in the obligatory three years.

  When Owain had completed ten circles, his teacher told him to rest a moment.

  “Go on to your mother, Boy,” Prince Arvel said. “Take some water.”

  Owain scurried off to his mother who was with her servant women. He sat down on the grass just before the blanket where she sat and laid his weapon and shield at his sides.

  “Good practice, Owain?” his mother asked, smiling at him.

  She took a pit of cloth and gently wiped the perspiration from his forehead.

  “I shall be the greatest ever, Mam,” he said, proudly.

  “You already are the greatest, my precious one,” she replied.

  Owain laughed.

  “Here,” his mother said.

  She lifted a leather bottle filled with water to his lips so he could drink.

  “More?” she asked.

  Owain nodded in affirmation, for the summer's sun had made him quite thirsty.

  She gave him as much as he wanted.

  Owain marveled at her hands. Although he was just nine years old, four long years of exercises had given him broad, muscular hands. His mother had never been trained as a warrioress and being a queen, had never actually performed any hard work of the hands. Reflecting this, her palms were small and slender, free from the callouses that covered his own grips.

  When he had had enough water, his mother kisse
d his cheeks and sent him back to his teacher.

  “Win me a war, my precious one,” she said.

  “I shall!” he replied.

  He picked up his sword and shield and ran back to a stoic Prince Arvel.

  “I am ready for-”

  “Shh!” came a cautious hiss from his teacher.

  Prince Arvel's eyes searched the distant woodland.

  “There is some monster afoot,” he whispered.

  “A bear?” Owain asked, excited, for there had not been bears sighted in Glouia for over a year.

  “No,” his teacher replied. “A man, I believe.”

  The bushes parted a warrior came running out towards them, his sword and long knife both out and ready to battle.

  “Lord Cidwm!” Prince Arvel cried.

  He strode forward and drew his own weapon in preparation, but Lord Cidwm was on him in an instant. Owain knew that Prince Arvel had been the most skilled man of arms of his time, yet age can slow even the greatest of warriors. Although he defended himself and struck back at the attacking lord, Prince Arvel soon dropped to the ground and lay still.

  Owain was dazed, unable to comprehend what had happened. His eyes traveled to the heap that had but a moment before been his teacher. He felt his jaw treble and his breath grow short, but could control neither.

  He thought he heard his own voice talking, or whining, or screaming but did not understand what he said.

  “Owain!” came his mother's wild cry. “Go!”

  Owain's eyes were locked on his teacher and although he could hear his mother's voice, he could not move his feet to obey.

  “You want a real war, Prince of Glouia?” Lord Cidwm asked. “Well here it is.”

  Owain's eyes lifted up to see the lord's gleaming eyes staring down at him, robbing him further of his breath. With every advancing step, the lord seemed to suck thought and reason from Owain's young head.

  “King Irael took everything from me,” Lord Cidwm said. “But I shall take everything from him.”

  “Owain!” his mother cried. “Go!”

  Yet Owain could not will himself to run.

  Lord Cidwm came towards Owain and seemed to tower over him like a giant of the ancient myths.

  “Prepare to die!” the lord cried.

  Then Owain's mother stepped between them, like some white phantom.

  “Run!” she cried.

  She drove the slender knife in her grasp into the lord’s arm.

  “Meddling Silurae fool!” Lord Cidwm bellowed, pain and anger filling his enormous face.

  His broadsword cut into her body and brought her down.

  Owain's tongue found new voice, but when it cried out, it seemed to come from some strange, unworldly being.

  “Mam! Mam! No!”

  She did not rise or even move her head. The blood spilling from her stomach and the absence in her brown eyes swore assurance to Owain's worst fear. She was dead.

  The little hand of the queen's servant woman took the boy by the arm.

  “Come, Prince! Come!” she cried.

  His ears swelled with the sound. They seemed to him a call to fight and woke his body to the challenge.

  “Ugh!” Owain cried.

  Anger, rage, fury, and vengeance foamed up within his tender heart, until they filled his being like some boiling liquid. He could feel the heat in his ears and the tips of his calloused fingers. His eyes hazed over with a strange red hue.

  “Ugh!” he cried.

  Owain rend his arm from the woman's grip and flew at the lord's giant head. Lord Cidwm had pulled up his weapon in defense, but Owain knocked this aside with the boss of his shield.

  The whole world was blacken around Owain, and all he could see was the lord's revolting face hazed in gleaming red.

  “Die!” Owain screamed.

  The blunt weapon came down hard on the lord's face, splitting it open.

  Lord Cidwm fell backwards, screaming aloud, but Owain would not give him a moment to recover. As the lord's heavy body slammed into the earth, Owain landed on top of him, his practice sword ready to strike again. Owain beat the hard pommel of his weapon into the lord's broken face, crushing his nose, cheek, and jaw.

  Owain's brow was hot, and his pulse slapped him on his sensitive temples, but he would not relent.

  “Ugh!” he cried. “Die! Die! Die!”

  He pulled the broad blade up high above his own head and brought it down on the lord's forehead.

  He heard the low crack of the scull and saw the blood spill from the wound. He knew that Lord Cidwm was dead, but he could not stop himself.

  “Die! Die! Die!” he screamed.

  Owain was certain he must go on fighting until he himself had expired.

  Owain breathed in the cool wind.

  He was alive, just as his mother wished him to be.

  Alive and at peace.

  “Thank you, Mam,” he whispered.

  Chapter Sixty: The Return

  As Owain strode through the front gates of the castle, Annon came running out to meet him.

  “Your father is here,” he said. “He is concerned for you.”

  Owain smiled on this, for he knew that his father always worried about him ever since that fateful day that claimed his mother's life. Owain was certain that the king invented excuses to be anxious about his only child.

  “He is on the patio in the back,” the boy said.

  “I shall join him then,” Owain replied. “And you! I have been walking for over an hour and you have not yet washed your dirty little self!”

  “I was hungry!” Annon protested. “I had to eat, and King Irael had food for me!”

  Owain laughed.

  “And who were you to refuse your host?” he teased. “Well, go now, for it is already evening. Go on.”

  As Annon went out to the bath house, Owain followed at a slower pace until he reached King Irael on the back patio.

  “My son!” the king cried.

  He put two hands on Owain's firm face and stared into his eyes. Owain could feel his father searching his face as if he could read his heart and mind in a gaze.

  “I have returned at last, Da,” Owain said.

  “I see that, my boy,” King Irael replied, still searching his face.

  “Annon told you that I was walking in the field,” Owain said.

  “He told me,” the king said. “How could he not, when your whole party, and luggage, and war pony arrive in Caer Corin and not your own precious person!”

  They laughed together, but although Owain could find much amusement in his father's words, he could see the concern in his eyes.

  “Sit down, Owain,” the king said. “Tell me what has happened.”

  “Da,” Owain said, hesitating.

  He was unsure how to explain everything to his father.

  “You shall think me insane,” he said at last. “I saw the phantom queen once more.”

  “What!” the king cried.

  “She was watching the battle, watching me fight the Angle,” Owain explained. “She was not predicting my death, but my life. A life free from the guilt. The life Mam wanted me to have.”

  The king's deep green eyes filled with tears.

  “And that is why you walk in the fields,” he said.

  “I had to,” Owain replied. “I needed to remember.”

  His father continued to search his face, as if uncertain of such an outcome.

  “Mam has released me from the debt I owed her for giving up her life for me,” Owain continued. “She wishes for me to live and that is exactly what I shall do.”

  “Then I am glad indeed,” the king said, at last satisfied.

  When dinner was served, Owain found that he could consume the fowl without choking and enjoyed meat for the first time in over a year.

  “You must tell me what has happened in Dumnonnia,” King Irael said. “I hear you caused quite a commotion.”

  “Prince Owain put a curse on King Cadfan's head,” said Annon, hi
s voice cautious and filled with awe.

  “Really!” the king cried. “That is why there are all these hushed voices about, and the people quake in their shoes!”

  Owain laughed at his father's teasing.

  “You knew,” Annon said, annoyed. “Well the Lords of the Dumnonni are now convinced that Prince Gadeon should be king.”

  “Now that is good,” King Irael replied. “It bothered me when I heard that the boy was being passed over in favor of Prince Cadfan. Is he a good-hearted person?”

  Annon indicated that he had no idea.

  “I believe he is, Da,” Owain replied.

  After Annon went to bed, Owain was again alone with his father, and glad for the oportunity to talk. He wanted answers about the assassin attempt.

  “It seems Prince Cadfan, or King Cadfan I suppose, slipped passed the guards as they were changing for the third watch,” the king said. “He must have hidden in the garden for over an hour, waiting until the guards were less alert, and then sneaked into Leola's outer room, by the open window.”

  “Perhaps they should be moved upstairs,” Owain mused.

  “Leola likes her rooms and does not want to the climb stairs,” King Irael said. “And I am certain that your little performance in the Dumnonni circle as eliminated any threat to their lives.”

  “True,” Owain replied, with a smile. “I believe it has. But I still wish for more fortification.”

  “Well the Captain of the Guard is reorganizing the watch so that the men are not changed all at once. That shall make it harder for expert murderers to get in unseen. It was very fortunate that Leola had a knife on her, for I am certain that she stabbed him three times.”

  Owain raised his eyebrows at these words, for his thoughts rushed to the conversation he had with her in the sitting room. She had asked him how to kill a prince, and he had obligingly taught her.

  “Where was he stabbed?” Owain asked.

  “In the stomach and abdomen I believe,” King Irael replied. “Very deep, nasty wounds. She is a strong woman, but I think fury made her stronger still.”

  Owain laughed.

  Leola had taken his words to heart, but something told him that she had already killed before.