by Whyte, Jack
"Eat," he said. "It's duck, basted with pig fat. You'll like it. There's some salt there, in the clay pot." He returned to his own fowl as I began to rip mine apart, heedless of the searing heat of it. I raised a dripping thigh and crunched my teeth into it, burning my lips with hot fat, yet utterly uncaring as the delicious flavour of the hot meat filled my mouth. For a while, there was no more talking around our fire, until I had stripped the bird's bones clean. As I finished it, throwing the last of the remnants into the fire, Llewellyn handed me a cloth to clean my hands.
"You were ready for that"
"Aye, it's the first real food I've eaten in the past two days. I didn't know how hungry I was until I came outside to look around and met you, with that leg in your fist."
"Here." He reached down and handed me a clay pot filled with ale, and I drank deeply. The taste of it was quite unlike anything I had ever tasted before. When I had slaked my thirst, I lowered the pot and looked at him.
'That, I believe, is the finest ale I've ever drunk. Where in the name of God did you get it?"
"You're the stranger here, Merlyn of Camulod. We live here. And that ale was made not five of your Roman miles from where we sit now." As Llewellyn spoke, Gwynn Blood-Eye and Daffyd both rose to their feet, nodded to me and left the fire, heading in different directions, Daffyd carrying the last remaining spitted bird.
I looked inquiringly at my host. "Where have they gone?"
"Who knows? They have things to do and they know we have matters to discuss. You were asking me about the boy, Arthur, before your hunger got the best of you. Had you finished with that?"
"No." I blinked at him, surprised at how he had redirected me to our former conversation. "You had just finished detailing his parentage, which I had thought to be a secret. Where did your information come from?"
"About Uther and his lady love? It's common knowledge."
"Is it, by the Christ? I was unaware of that."
"Well, it's a common rumour, let's say. Few, if any, know the truth of it. When our men returned from Cornwall, after Uther's death, they brought word of his exploits and of his love for the woman. She had a baby son, that much was known. As to whether the brat was Lot's or Uther's, that was anybody's guess. And as for what happened to him, that was totally unknown, to most folks. But then, a few years ago, the rumours sprang up again. Some said he was in Camulod, with you, all along. Others said that you had fled from Camulod and taken the boy with you, and that you were living among the Scots, across the water. Some said the boy was dead, killed in his infant years. I knew nothing and cared less, in those days, because I was too caught up in my own miseries to care about any other's.
"I took no part in Uther's wars because I thought his wars woe no concern of mine. My war was with the folk around me here, who lived in fear of me because of this face of mine. But then, nigh on eight years ago, I met my wife, Martha, and through her, I met her brother Huw, and we became good friends. Since then, I've come to see that not all I had believed was true—most of it was Horseshit, born of self pity. Now I look at life, by and large, through a different eye, you might say, and Huw respects my judgment in most things. So when he told me about you, and about the boy who is your charge, and about who he thought the boy might be, I did some thinking of my own. The lad is Uther's son. Am I right?" »
"What if you are?'
"Why then, the whole world changes, and this whoreson war has found a purpose and a champion. If I am right, then Arthur Pendragon is the rightful king, born to rule in his father's stead, and all this Horseshit over Carthac and that idiot Uderic is pointless. "
"Pointless? How so?'
"Because the real king is with you, in Camulod. All the others are mere posturers! So what we need to do is rid ourselves of all these false claimants—the whole rat's nest of them—and recognize our king, the son of Uther Pendragon. That's why you're here in Cambria, no? To safeguard the boy's interests. "
I cleared my throat. "Well, yes, and no. Arthur is yet too young." I had decided then, and only at that moment, to trust Llewellyn fully. "But there's more to it than that. As his mother's son, he holds a claim to Cornwall, as well. That, more than anything else, is why Ironhair wants him dead. And then, in addition to that, because his mother was the daughter of Athol Mac Iain, once king of the Scots people of Eire, young Arthur has blood claims to that kingship, too. And he is heir to Camulod—not king, mark you, for Camulod will never have a king. He is the great grandson of Publius Varrus of the bow, and great great-nephew to Caius Britannicus, the founders of Camulod."
When I had finished, Llewellyn shook his head slowly. "That is too much information, containing too much danger, Merlyn of Camulod. Why would you tell all that to me, a stranger whom you have never met until today?"
"Because Huw Strongarm trusts you, and I find I do, too, now that I've spoken with you and listened to you. You are strong in your belief in the lightness of the boy's claim to Pendragon Cambria. Would you support him?"
"Of course. I've said so, haven't I?"
"Will you support him now?"
Llewellyn frowned. "Now? How would I do that? He is not here, and you have said he is too young."
"Not too young, yet not quite old enough. He is sixteen, or will be on his next birthday. Right now he needs a teacher, and I think you could be the one to teach him what he needs to know. Would you be willing?"
He slumped back, evidently mystified. "A teacher? Me? The lad would run in fright at the sight of me. Besides, I know nothing worth teaching."
"You don't know the lad, Llewellyn. He would not flinch from the sight of you. And as for your having nothing to teach him, I take leave to doubt that. He is a Cambrian Pendragon, as you are, but he knows nothing of the land or its people. He speaks the tongue, but he does not know the folk. He'll be a warrior of note, I have no doubt of that, yet he knows only cavalry and horses, swords and spears and clubs. He is a big, strong lad, but he's no bowman yet, and he knows nothing of your mountain ways. I would like him to learn these things. No one knows Arthur in this land. That's why the Cave Man tried to kill Bedwyr. But if I bring him here, then everyone will know exactly who he is, because he is with me. Instead I would like you to ride back with me to Camulod, to meet the boy and bring him back here with you, so that he can live a year or so among your clan and learn to be the Pendragon he must become. Would you do that for me? For him?"
"For all of us." He sat silent then, for a long time, and when he spoke again it was with an emphatic nod. "Aye, I would and will. He'll be my prentice. I'll set him to the work of shaping metal, but I'll make him known among the people, too, and he'll be taught the skills he'll need to know—hunting and shooting and living quiet, off the land. When do we go?"
I laughed. "Not before we take care of Ironhair, Carthac and even Uderic. We can't walk away prematurely."
Llewellyn grunted, "Nah, that's already begun, simply thanks to your being here in Cambria. That horseshit with the ambush won't go unremarked or unrewarded. There was nothing there of honour or bravery, and it was clear proof that Uderic has begun to treat with the invaders. He has done little enough to endear him to Pendragon in the past, and any music in his song has become hard to hear, these past four months. This latest treachery will kill him—at the very least, it will kill his designs. You mark my words, Merlyn of Camulod—within the month, you'll have as many Pendragon bows at your command as you have troopers now, and that will bring an end to Carthac and the filth that follows him. With every new Pendragon in your camp you'll take a step closer to uniting all Pendragon under one head. That head won't be Pendragon, true enough, since you are nominally Outlander yourself, but we will at least follow a leader who has Pendragon's interests at heart. "
"What about Huw?"
Once again, the curious stillness I had noticed before descended upon Llewellyn. Now he moved his head minutely to look at me attentively. "What about him?"
I had no answer, yet I felt a lightness in me and so pressed ahead
.
"I don't know. I'm merely wondering aloud. I'm an Outlander, as you correctly said. I have no ambition to lead the. Pendragon anywhere in anything. And yet, for them to coalesce, to come together as you have said, they'll need a leader. It strikes me now that Huw Strongarm might be the one. Isn't he some kind of chief among you? I know his family held the land to the south of here, along the coast. It was he who rented holdings there to Liam Twistback, for the raising of his beasts, and I remember him saying his family had held those lands since long before the Romans came. "
Llewellyn sniffed, then nodded his head in a tiny gesture of acknowledgement. "That's true. Huw is a chief. One of our foremost, if you think in terms of claim to leadership. His forefathers have ranked among our best and most able chiefs since pre Roman times, as you have said. But Huw has no desire for kingship. All he wants is peace and the chance to lead his life at ease among his family. "
"But he has been at war for years. When did he last spend . any length of time at home?"
"Long years ago... " Now Llewellyn's face twisted again in what I was coming to recognize as his favourite kind of smile, a tiny dicker of wry amusement. "What are you saying, Merlyn of Camulod? Spit it right out. "
"I am saying, I suppose, that the quickest way for Huw Strongarm to win home in peace might be for him to take upon himself the burden of leadership, don't you agree? He's an honourable man—"
"Horseshit! You can't feed on honour. That's a Roman concept—we have no need of honour. But you're right if what you're saying is that Huw Strongarm is highly thought of among his people. That's a fact, and it's not an easy status to achieve. "
"Well then, we should convince him that he is responsible for helping bring this conflict to an end. Would the people follow him, were he to step forward?"
'They would. I'm sure of that. But would he be willing? That's what I don't know... " He paused, thinking, and then continued. "Let's go back a bit, to what we were talking about earlier—young Pendragon, your Arthur" "What about him?"
"About his father, first. Huw was Uther's closest friend among all our folk, did you know that?" I merely nodded, and he continued. "Aye, well it was more than that, too. Uther was Huw's king, you see. There was no slightest doubt of that in either of their minds. Huw was Uther's man, to the death, and had always been so. That's why he has never had the slightest wish to rule the Pendragon: when Uther fell, the kingship fell, and Huw never thought in terms of kingship for himself. He is, above all else, a king's man, not a king. If Uther ever set a task for him, that task became Huw's life till it was done. " Again he paused, and I waited. "So, it seems to me that Huw Strongarm might stand up and fight to champion the boy, the son of his true king. What think you about that?"
"I think we should ask him, now, while it is fresh in our minds. Where might he be?"
"Not far from here, wherever he is." Llewellyn stood up. "I'll find him and bring him back. Stay you here."
While the enigmatic one eyed man was gone, I sat alone, rethinking everything that had come to pass so surprisingly in the previous hour or so. It was growing dark rapidly now, so that I could barely see beyond the firelight, and I threw some new fuel on the embers that remained in the shallow pit in front of me. It had caught and been more than half consumed by the time Llewellyn returned, accompanied by Huw Strongarm.
I could see from the look on Huw's face that Llewellyn had said nothing about why he had brought him to me. It took almost an hour of talking, during which several of my men came looking for me and were all sent away again unheard, but by the end of the hour, Huw had agreed to my suggestion, backed as it was by Llewellyn's quiet, strong support. He would, he agreed, serve as a rallying point for those of his people who might come to him—his modesty was such that he had serious doubts that any would—and he would, furthermore, prepare the way, and the people of Cambria, for the coming of their true king, Uther's only son, Arthur Pendragon.
I had to bite hard on my lip, hearing those words, for memories of what my brother had told me of another, firstborn son reared up again to frighten me. I stifled the thought, nonetheless, and swore in return to Huw that, if he were as true to this as he had been to Uther, I would be no less true in supporting him, with all the strength of Camulod, in his endeavours to end this present war. And so we were agreed.
By midafternoon of the following day, not a single Pendragon Celt remained in camp. Llewellyn and Huw had begun their work almost immediately, and throughout the morning the Pendragon had been assembling in groups throughout the camp, only to break up again and circulate, spreading the word and then regathering in larger groups. By noon, close to three hundred men had assembled there, vociferous in their support of Huw Strongarm. Huw had addressed them briefly then, amid a crowd of my own troopers attracted by all the activity and excitement, and shortly after that the noisy, colourful Celtic crowd had begun drifting apart and scattering to the winds, to carry the word of Uderic's perfidy and Huw Strongarm's summons to arms to every village and hamlet in the Pendragon lands.
Small in number though their group had been, their passing nevertheless left a certain quiet hanging over our encampment. To keep my men occupied and to expend the useful energies stirred up in them by the morning's events, I set them to refurbishing and refortifying the ancient walls. We would be staying in this place for two full weeks and perhaps even longer, awaiting the return of Huw and Llewellyn, and there was much to do to set aright forty years of neglect and make the place acceptable again as a defensible stronghold.
I joined in the work, stripped to my tunic and glad of the hard exercise as I sweated among a chain of men, passing heavy building blocks from the man behind me to the one ahead, towards a group of our masons working industriously to repair a fallen section of wall. I had been hard at it for well over an hour by the time Derek and Benedict found me, and so I felt no pang of conscience as I walked away from the chain with them, wiping the sweat from my shoulders, neck and face with a rough cloth. A squad of messengers had arrived, Ben said, with word from Tertius Lucca, who was holding the harbours at Caerdyff and Caerwent on the south Cambrian coast, behind us and to the east. Lucca had. received word that a substantial train of supply wagons was on its way north from Camulod. It would proceed directly to him in Caerdyff, and he would redirect it to us.
In the past six weeks, Lucca's troops had found no enemy activity to report. Lucca suggested that Ironhair's shipmasters had finally accepted the loss of the south-eastern harbours and were making no effort of any kind nowadays to approach them. They had learned that lesson, Lucca stated, only after sustaining heavy damage in a succession of all out attacks involving abortive landings, to the east and west of our positions, in the vain hope of surrounding our garrisons. Perhaps, he suggested, some of his troops would now be better employed with us, rather than languishing and growing bored, pent up in garrisons that felt no threat. He could leave a holding force in place, he reported, perhaps one third of his current complement of three thousand, to occupy, patrol and defend the south-eastern coastal harbours. The remaining two thousand could then travel the short distance to us in company with the supply train. On my approval, he said, the reinforcements would be with us in a matter of days.
I thanked and dismissed the messengers before I conferred with my own people. All of them had reservations, as I had myself. The truth was that, in our current situation, where we had had no real contact with the enemy for months, other than the ambush set by our supposed ally Uderic, we had no need of the extra troops. Until we were ready to march again, they simply represented extra mouths to feed.
Benedict, taciturn, as usual, was the only one of my captains who sat silent throughout the discussion, forcing me to ask him bluntly for his thoughts. He then asked me what I had planned for Huw's return, and how many men I expected him and Llewellyn to bring back. He had, of course, laid his finger squarely on the root of our dilemma, and that now forced me to admit that I did not yet know the answer to either of his points,
since the first depended almost entirely upon the second. I was reluctant to commit myself to a course of action, I pointed out, since Huw himself had grave doubts that his people would follow him.
This evoked a buzz of comment among my listeners, but it was Benedict himself who silenced them by holding up his hand. This unaccustomed gesture brought him instant attention. He looked at me, eyes squinting against the sun, then looked around at everyone.
"Not worth considering," he said, raising his voice. "Not even tenable." He jutted his jaw pugnaciously, as though expecting to be challenged. "You all know me. I don't like conjecture and I don't make predictions. But I'll make one now, and if you'll think about it, you'll admit I'm right." He turned back to me again. "Huw Strongarm will rule Cambria within the year, free of opposition. He's the natural choice and the perfect man for the task. Ironhair's here with Carthac because there's no organized will right now to drive them out. We're organized, but we can't reach his people in the high hills, let alone fight them on their terms. Besides, we're as much Outlanders as they are, and so we're suspect in the eyes of the Pendragon kinglings. Too many little kinglings, with too many little bands that think themselves armies, and every one of them out for himself, for his own good, with his own little ambitions. Strongarm's no part of that, and had he stood up before now to be counted, he'd be in overall command already. Now he is ready. The Pendragon will follow him wherever he decides to take them, and he'll take them to victory far quicker than anyone else could. So he'll be coming back, and soon, and he'll bring thousands with him. We had better be prepared to move as soon as he arrives, and to serve as a solid platform for his catapult. That's all I have to say."
Derek almost interrupted him before he could finish, with a loud, woofing grunt of approval that grew into an appreciative roar of acclamation as the others joined in the applause. Benedict looked about him almost truculently, flushing with doubt filled pleasure.