The Winter King twc-1

by Bernard Cornwell

  “It isn't my tin,” Cadwy said forcefully.

  “Must be someone's,” Owain said. “You want me to ask Lwellwyn? He's a clever bastard when it comes to money and ownership.” His man slapped the girl's belly hard, splattering butter all over the low table and causing a gust of laughter. The girl complained, but the man told her to be quiet and started scooping butter and pork grease on to the rest of her body.

  “The fact of the matter is,” Cadwy said forcefully to get Owain's attention off the naked girl, 'that Uther let in a pack of men from Kernow. They came to work the old Roman mines, because none of our people had the skills. The bastards are supposed, mark that, supposed to send their rent to your treasury, but the buggers are sending tin back to Kernow. I know that for a fact.“ Owain's ears had pricked up now. ”Kernow?"

  “Making money off our land, they are. Our land!” Cadwy said indignantly. Kernow was a separate kingdom, a mysterious place at the very end of Dumnonia's western peninsula that had never been ruled by the Romans. Most of the time it lived in peace with us, but every now and then King Mark would stir himself from his latest wife's bed and send a raiding party over the River Tamar. “What are men of Kernow doing here?” Owain asked in a voice every bit as indignant as his host's.

  “I told you. Stealing our money. And not just that. I've been missing good cattle, sheep, even a few slaves. Those miners are getting above themselves, and they're not paying you like they should. But you'll never prove it. Never. Not even your clever fellow Lwellwyn can look at a hole in the moor and tell me how much tin is supposed to come out in a year.” Cadwy swiped at a moth, then shook his head moodily. “They think they're above the law. That's the problem. Just because Uther was their patron they think they're above the law.”

  Owain shrugged. His attention was back on the butter-smothered girl who was now being chased about the lower terrace by a half dozen drunken men. The grease on her body made her hard to catch and the grotesque hunt was making some of the watching men helpless with laughter. I was having a hard time stopping myself from giggling. Owain looked back to Cadwy. “So go up there and kill a few of the bastards, Lord Prince,” he said as though it was the easiest solution in the world.

  “I can't,” Cadwy said.

  “Why not?”

  “Uther gave them protection. If I attack them they'll complain to the council and to King Mark and I'll be forced to pay sarhaed.” Sarhaed was the blood price put on a man by law. A King's sarhaed was un payable a slave's was cheap, but a good miner probably had a high enough price to hurt even a wealthy prince like Cadwy.

  “So how will they know it's you who attacked them?” Owain asked scornfully. For answer Cadwy just tapped his cheek. The blue tattoos, he was suggesting, would betray his men. Owain nodded. The buttered girl had at last been pinned down and was now surrounded by her captors among some shrubs that grew on the lower terrace. Owain crumbled some bread, then looked up at Cadwy again. “So?”

  “So,” Cadwy said slyly, 'if I could find a bunch of men who could thin these bastards out a little, it would help. It'll make them look to me for protection, see? And my price will be the tin they're sending to King Mark. And your price…“ He paused to make sure Owain was not shocked by the implication, '.. will be half that tin's value.”

  “How much?” Owain asked quickly. The two men were speaking softly and I had to concentrate to hear their words over the warriors' laughter and cheers.

  “Fifty gold pieces a year? Like this,” said Cadwy and took a gold ingot the size of a sword handle from a pouch and slid it along the table.

  “That much?” Even Owain was surprised.

  “It's a rich place, the moor,” Cadwy said grimly. “Very rich.” Owain stared down Cadwy's valley to where the moon's reflection lay on the distant river as flat and silver as a sword blade. “How many of these miners are there?” he finally asked the Prince. The nearest settlement,“ Cadwy said, 'has got seventy or eighty men. And there are a deal of slaves and women, of course.”

  “How many settlements?”

  “Three, but the other two are a way off. I'm just worried about the one.”

  “Only twenty of us,” Owain said cautiously.

  “Night-time?” Cadwy suggested. “And they've not been attacked ever, so they won't be keeping watch.” Owain sipped wine from his horn. “Seventy gold pieces,” he said flatly, 'not fifty.“ Prince Cadwy thought for a second, then nodded his acceptance of the price. Owain grinned. ”Why not, eh?“ he said. He palmed the gold ingot, then turned fast as a snake to look up at me. I did not move, nor took my eyes from one of the girls who was wrapping her naked body round one of Cadwy's tattooed warriors. ”Are you awake, Derfel?“ Owain snapped. I jumped as though startled. ”Lord?" I said, pretending my mind had been wandering for the last few minutes.

  “Good lad,” Owain said, satisfied I had heard nothing. “Want one of those girls, do you?” I blushed. “No, Lord.”

  Owain laughed. “He's just got himself a pretty little Irish girl,” he told Cadwy, 'so he's staying true to her. But he'll learn. When you get to the Otherworld, boy' he had turned back to me 'you won't regret the men you never killed, but you will regret the women you passed up.“ He spoke gently. In my first days in his service I had been frightened of him, but for some reason Owain liked me and treated me well. Now he looked back at Cadwy. ”Tomorrow night,“ he said softly. ”Tomorrow night." I had gone from Merlin's Tor to Owain's band, and it was like leaping from this world to the next. I stared at the moon and thought of Gundleus's long-haired men massacring the guards on the Tor, and I thought of the people on the moor who would face the same savagery the very next night and I knew I could do nothing to stop it, even though I knew it should be stopped, but fate, as Merlin always taught us, is inexorable. Life is a jest of the Gods, Merlin liked to claim, and there is no justice. You must learn to laugh, he once told me, or else you'll just weep yourself to death. Our shields had been smeared with boat-builder's pitch so they would look like the black shields of Oengus Mac Airem's Irish raiders whose long, sharp-pr owed boats raided Dumnonia's northern coast. A local guide with tattooed cheeks led us all afternoon through deep, lush valleys that climbed slowly towards the great bleak loom of the moor that was occasionally visible through some break in the heavy trees. It was good woodland, full of deer and cut with fast, cold streams running seaward off the moor's high plateau.

  By nightfall we were on the moor's edge, and after dark we followed a goat track up to the heights. It was a mysterious place. The Old People had lived here and left their sacred stone circles in its valleys while the peaks were crowned with jumbled masses of grey rock and the low places were filled with treacherous swamps through which our guide led us unerringly.

  Owain had told us that the people of the moor were in rebellion against King Mordred, and that their religion had taught them to fear men with black shields. It was a good tale, and I might have believed it had I not eavesdropped on his conversation with Prince Cadwy the night before. Owain had also promised us gold if we did our task properly, then warned us that this night's killing would have to stay secret for we had no orders from the council to mete out this punishment. Deep in the thick woods on our way to the moor we had come to an old shrine built beneath a grove of oaks and Owain had made us each swear the death-oath of secrecy in front of the moss-grown skulls that were lodged in niches of the shrine's wall. Britain was full of such ancient, hidden shrines — evidence of how widespread the Druids had been before the Romans came where country folk still came to seek the Gods' help. And that afternoon, under the great lichen-hung oaks, we had knelt before the skulls and touched the hilt of Owain's sword and those men who were initiates in the secrets of Mithras had received Owain's kiss. Then, thus blessed by the Gods and sworn to the killing, we moved on towards the night. It was a filthy place we came to. Great smelting fires spewed sparks and smoke towards the heavens. A sprawl of huts lay between the fires and around the gaping black maws that showed where men d
elved into the earth. Huge mounds of charcoal looked like black tors, while the valley smelt like no other I had ever seen; indeed, to my heated imagination that upland mining village seemed more like Annawn's realm, the Otherworld, than any human settlement.

  Dogs barked as we approached, but no one in the settlement took any notice of their noise. There was no fence, not even an earth bank to protect the place. Ponies were picketed close to rows of carts and they began to whinny as we edged down the valley's side, but still no one came out of the low huts to find the cause of the unrest. The huts were circles made of stone and roofed with turf, but in the settlement's centre was a pair of old Roman buildings; square, tall and solid.

  “Two men apiece, if not more,” Owain hissed at us, reminding us how many men we were each expected to kill. “And I'm not counting slaves or women. Go fast, kill fast and always watch your backs. And stay together!”

  We divided into two groups. I was with Owain whose beard glinted from the fire that reflected off his iron warrior rings. The dogs barked, the ponies whinnied, then at last a cockerel crowed and a man crawled from a hut to discover what had disturbed the livestock, but it was already too late. The killing had begun.

  I saw many such killings. In Saxon villages we would have burned the huts before we began the slaughter, but these crude stone and turf circles would not take the fire and so we were forced to go inside with spears and swords. We snatched burning wood from a nearby fire and hurled it inside the huts before entering so that the interior would be light enough for the killing, and sometimes the flames were enough to drive the inhabitants out to where the waiting swords chopped down like butchers' axes. If the fire did not drive the family out then Owain would order two of us to go inside while the others stood guard outside. I dreaded my turn, but knew it would come and knew, too, that I dared not disobey the command. I was oath-bound to this bloody work and to refuse it would have been my death warrant. The screaming began. The first few huts were easy enough for the people were asleep or only just waking, but as we moved deeper into the settlement the resistance became fiercer. Two men attacked us with axes and were cut down with contemptuous ease by our spearmen. Women fled with children in their arms. A dog leaped at Owain and died whimpering with its spine broken. I watched a woman run with a baby in one arm and holding a bleeding child's hand with the other, and I suddenly remembered Tanaburs's parting shout that my mother still lived. I shuddered as I realized that the old Druid must have laid a curse on me when I had threatened his life, and though my good fortune was holding the curse at bay, I could feel its malevolence circling me like a hidden dark enemy. I touched the scar on my left hand and prayed to Bel that Tanaburs's curse would be defeated.

  “Derfel! Licat! That hut!” Owain shouted and, like a good soldier, I obeyed my orders. I dropped my shield, flung a firebrand through the door, then crouched double to get through the tiny entrance. Children screamed as I entered, and a half-naked man leaped at me with a knife that forced me to twist desperately aside. I fell on a child as I lunged at her father with my spear. The blade slid off the man's ribs and he would have landed on top of me and stabbed the knife down through my throat if Licat had not killed him. The man doubled over, clasping his belly, then he gasped as Licat wrenched the spearhead free and drew his own knife to begin killing the screaming children. I ducked back outside, blood on my spearhead, to tell Owain there had only been the one man inside.

  “Come on!” Owain shouted. “Demetia! Demetia!” That was our war cry of the night; the name of Oengus Mac Airem's Irish kingdom to the west of Siluria. The huts were all empty now and we began hunting miners down in the dark spaces of the settlement. Fugitives were running everywhere, but some men stayed behind and tried to fight us. One brave group even formed a crude battle line and attacked us with spears, picks and axes, but Owain's men met the crude charge with a terrible efficiency, letting their black shields soak up the impact, then using their spears and swords to cut down their attackers. I was one of those efficient men. May God forgive me, but I killed my second man that night, and perhaps a third too. The first I speared in the throat, the second in the groin. I did not use my sword, for I did not think Hywel's blade a fit instrument for that night's purpose.

  It ended quickly enough. The settlement was suddenly empty of all but the dead, the dying and a few men, women and children trying to hide. We killed all we found. We killed their animals, we burned the carts they used to fetch the charcoal up from the valleys, we stove in the turf roofs of their huts, we trampled their vegetable gardens, and then we ransacked the settlement for treasure. A few arrows flickered down from the skyline, but none of us was hit.

  There was a tub of Roman coins, gold ingots and silver bars in their chief's hut. It was the biggest hut, full twenty feet across, and inside the hut the light of our firebrands showed the dead chief sprawling with a yellowish face and a slit belly. One of his women and two of his children lay dead in his blood. A third child, a girl, lay under a blood-soaked pelt and I thought I saw her hand twitch when one of our men stumbled on her body, but I pretended she was dead and left her alone. Another child screamed in the night as her hiding place was found and a sword hacked down.

  God forgive me, God and his angels forgive me, but I only ever confessed that night's sin to one person, and she was not a priest and had no power to grant me Christ's absolution. In purgatory, or maybe hell, I know I will meet those dead children. Their fathers and mothers will be given my soul for their plaything, and I shall deserve the punishment.

  But what choice did I have? I was young; I wanted to live; I had taken the oath; I followed my leader. I killed no man who did not attack me, but what plea is that in the face of those sins? To my companions it seemed no sin at all: they were merely killing creatures of another tribe, another nation indeed, and that was justification enough for them; but I had been raised on the Tor where we came from all races and all tribes, and though Merlin was himself a tribal chief and fiercely protective of anyone who could boast the name of Briton, he did not teach a hatred of other tribes. His teaching made me unfit for the unthinking slaughter of strangers for no reason other than their strangeness.

  Yet, unfit or not, I killed, and may God forgive me that, and all the other sins too numerous to remember. We left before dawn. The valley was smoking, blood-sodden and horrid. The moor stank from the killing and was haunted with the wailing cries of widows and orphans. Owain gave me a gold ingot, two silver bars and a handful of coins and, God forgive me, I kept them.

  * * *

  Autum brings battle, for all through spring and summer the boats ferry new Saxons to our eastern shore, and the autumn is when those newcomers try to find their own land. It is war's last fling before winter locks the land.

  And it was in the autumn of the year of Uther's death that I first fought the Saxons, for no sooner had we come back from our tax collecting in the west than we heard of Saxon raiders in the east. Owain put us under the command of his captain, a man named Griffid ap Annan, and sent us to aid Melwas, King of the Belgae, a client monarch of Dumnonia. Melwas's responsibility was to defend our southern shore against the Sais invaders who, in that grim year of Uther's bale fire had found a new belligerence. Owain stayed at Caer Cadarn for there was a sharp squabble in the kingdom's council about who should be responsible for Mordred's upbringing. Bishop Bedwin wanted to raise the King in his household, but the non-Christians, who were the majority on the council, did not want Mordred raised as a Christian, just as Bedwin and his party objected to the child-King being raised as a pagan. Owain, who claimed to worship all Gods equally, proposed himself as a compromise. “Not that it matters what God a king believes in,” he told us before we marched, 'because a king should be taught how to fight, not how to pray.“ We left him arguing his case while we went to kill Saxons. Griffid ap Annan, our captain, was a lean, lugubrious man who reckoned that what Owain really wanted was to prevent Arthur from raising Mordred. ”It isn't that Owain doesn't like Arthur," he
hastened to add,

  'but if the King belongs to Arthur, then so does Dumnonia."

  “Is that so bad?” I asked.

  It's better for you and me, boy, if the land belongs to Owain." Griffid fingered one of the gold torques around his neck to show what he meant. They all called me boy or lad, but only because I was the youngest in the troop and still un blooded by proper battle against other warriors. They also believed that my presence in their ranks brought them good luck because I had once escaped from a Druid's death-pit. All Owain's men, like soldiers everywhere, were mightily superstitious. Every omen was considered and debated; every man carried a hare's foot or a lightning stone; and every action was ritualized, so that no man would pull on a right boot before a left or sharpen a spear in his own shadow. There were a handful of Christians in our ranks and I had thought they might show less fear of the Gods, spirits and ghosts, but they proved every bit as superstitious as the rest of us.

  King Melwas's capital, Venta, was a poor frontier town. Its workshops had long closed down and the walls of its large Roman buildings showed great scorch marks from the times when the town had been sacked by raiding Saxons. King Melwas was terrified that the town was about to be sacked again. The Saxons, he said, had a new leader who was hungry for land and dreadful in battle. “Why didn't Owain come?” he demanded petulantly, 'or Arthur? They want to destroy me, is that it?“ He was a fat and suspicious man with the foulest breath of anyone I ever met. He was the king of a tribe, rather than of a country, which made him of the second rank, though to look at him you would have thought Melwas was a serf and a querulous serf at that. ”There aren't many of you, are there?“ he complained to Griffid. ”It's a good thing I raised the levy."

  The levy was Melwas's citizen army and every able-bodied man in his Belgic tribe was supposed to serve, though a good few had made themselves scarce and most of the richer tribesmen had sent slaves as substitutes. Nevertheless Melwas had managed to assemble a force of more than three hundred men, each carrying his own food and bringing his own weapons. Some of the levy had once been warriors and came equipped with fine war spears and carefully preserved shields, but most had no armour and a few had nothing but single-sticks or sharpened mattocks for weapons. A lot of women and children accompanied the levy, unwilling to stay alone in their homes when the Saxons were threatening. Melwas insisted that he and his own warriors would stay to defend the crumbling ramparts of Venta, which meant that Griffid had to lead the levy against the enemy. Melwas had no idea where the Saxons were and so Griffid blundered helplessly into the deep woods east of Venta. We were more of a rabble than a war-band, and the sight of a deer would start a mad whooping pursuit that would have alerted any enemy within a dozen miles, and the pursuit would always finish with the levy scattered across a swathe of woodland. We lost nearly fifty men that way, either because their careless pursuit led them into Saxon hands, or else because they simply became lost and decided to go home. There were plenty of Saxons in those woods, though at first we saw none. Sometimes we found their campfires still warm and once we found a small Belgic settlement that had been raided and burned. The men and the old people were still there, all of them dead but the young and the women had been taken as slaves. The smell of the dead dampened the high spirits of the remaining levy and made them stay together as Griffid edged on eastwards.