The Winter King Part 20

Aelle spoke with his council while the two wizards gibbered at Nimue. One of them pointed a human thigh bone at her, but Nimue merely spat. That gesture seemed to conclude their war of sorcery for the two wizards shuffled backwards as Nimue stood up and brushed her hands. Aelle's council haggled with us. At one point they insisted that we yield all the big war horses to them, but Arthur demanded all their war dogs in return, and finally, in the afternoon, the Saxons accepted the offer of Ratae and Arthur's gold. It was maybe the greatest h.o.a.rd of gold ever paid from a Briton to a Saxon, but Aelle also insisted on taking two hostages who, he promised, would be released if the attack on Ratae did not prove to be a trap laid by Gorfyddyd and Arthur together. He chose at random, picking two of Arthur's warriors: Balin and Lanval.

That night we ate with the Saxons. I was curious to meet these men who were my birth-brothers and even feared I might feel some kinship with them, but in truth I found their company repellent. Their humour was coa.r.s.e, their manners loutish and the smell of their fur-wrapped flesh sickening. Some of them mocked me by saying I resembled their King Aelle, but I could see no likeness between his flat hard features and what I believed my own face to be. Aelle finally snarled at my mockers to be silent, then gave me a cold stare before bidding me to invite Arthur's men to share an evening meal of huge cuts of roasted meat which we ate with gloved hands, gnawing into the scalding flesh until the b.l.o.o.d.y juices dripped from our beards. We gave them mead, they gave us ale. A few drunken fights started, but no one was killed. Aelle, like Arthur, stayed sober, though the Bretwalda's two wizards became foully drunk and after they fell asleep beside their own vomit Aelle explained that they were madmen in touch with the G.o.ds. He possessed other priests, he said, who were sane, but the lunatics were thought to possess a special power that the Saxons might need. "We feared you would bring Merlin," he explained.

"Merlin is his own master," Arthur answered, 'but this is his priestess." He gestured at Nimue who stared one-eyed at the Saxon.

Aelle made a gesture that must have been his way of averting evil. He feared Nimue because of Merlin, and that was good to know. "But Merlin is in Britain?" Aelle asked fearfully.

"Some men say so," I answered for Arthur, 'and some say not. Who knows? Maybe he is out there in the dark." I jerked my head towards the blackness beyond the fire-lit stones. Aelle used a spear-shaft to prod one of his mad wizards awake. The man yowled piteously, and Aelle seemed content that the sound would avert any mischief. The Bretwalda had hung Sansum's cross about his neck, while others of his men wore Ynys Wydryn's heavy gold torques. Later in the night, when most of the Saxons were snoring, some of their slaves told us the tale of Durocobrivis's fall, and how Prince Gereint had been taken alive and then tortured to death. The tale made Arthur weep. None of us had known Gereint well, but he had been a modest, unambitious man who had tried his best to hold back the growing Saxon forces. Some of the slaves begged us to take them away with us, but we dared not offend our hosts by granting the request. "We shall come for you one day," Arthur promised the slaves. "We shall come."

The Saxons left next afternoon. Aelle insisted we wait another whole night before leaving the Stones to make certain we did not follow him, and he took Balin, Lanval and the man from Powys with his war-band. Nimue, consulted by Arthur on whether Aelle would keep his word, nodded and said she had dreamed of the Saxon's compliance and of the safe return of our hostages. "But Ratae's blood is on your hands," she said ominously.

We packed and made ready for our own journey, which would not begin until the next day's dawn. Arthur was never happy when forced to idleness and as evening came he asked that Sagramor and I walk with him to the southern woods. For a time it seemed that we wandered aimlessly, but at last Arthur stopped beneath a huge oak hung with long beards of grey lichen. "I feel dirty," he said. "I failed to keep my oath to Benoic, now I am buying the death of hundreds of Britons."

"You could not have saved Benoic," I insisted.

"A land that buys poets instead of spearmen does not deserve to survive," Sagramor added.

"Whether I could have saved it or not," Arthur said, 'does not matter. I took an oath to Ban and did not keep it."

"A man whose house is burning to the ground does not carry water to his neighbour's fire," Sagramor said. His black face, as impenetrably tough as Aelle's, had fascinated the Saxons. Many had fought against him in the last years and believed him to be some kind of demon summoned by Merlin, and Arthur had played on those fears by hinting that he would leave Sagramor to defend the new frontier. In truth Arthur would take Sagramor to Gwent, for he needed all his best men to fight Gorfyddyd. "You weren't able to keep your oath to Benoic," Sagramor went on, 'so the G.o.ds will forgive you." Sagramor had a robustly pragmatic view of G.o.ds and man; it was one of his strengths.

"The G.o.ds may forgive me," Arthur said, 'but I don't. And now I pay Saxons to kill Britons." He shuddered at the very thought. "I found myself wishing for Merlin last night," he said, 'to know that he would approve of what we are doing."

"He would," I said. Nimue might not have approved of sacrificing Ratae, but Nimue was always purer than Merlin. She understood the necessity of paying Saxons, but revolted at the thought of paying with British blood even if that blood did belong to our enemies.

"But it doesn't matter what Merlin thinks," Arthur said angrily. "It wouldn't matter if every priest, Druid and hard in Britain agreed with me. To ask another man's blessing is simply to avoid taking the responsibility. Nimue is right, I shall be responsible for all the deaths in Ratae."

"What else could you do?" I asked.

"You don't understand, Derfel," Arthur accused me bitterly, though in truth he was accusing himself. "I always knew Aelle would want something more than gold. They're Saxons! They don't want peace, they want land! I knew that, why else would I have brought that poor man from Ratae? Before Aelle ever asked I was ready to give, and how many men will die for that foresight? Three hundred? And how many women taken into slavery? Two hundred? How many children? How many families will be broken apart? And for what? To prove I'm a better leader than Gorfyddyd? Is my life worth so many souls?"

"Those souls," I said, 'will keep Mordred on his throne."

"Another oath!" Arthur said bitterly. "All these oaths that bind us! I am oath-bound to Uther to put his grandson on the throne, oath-bound to Leodegan to retake Henis Wyren." He stopped abruptly and Sagramor looked at me with an alarmed face for it was the first either of us had ever heard about an oath to fight Diwrnach, the dread Irish King of Lleyn who had taken Leodegan's land. "Yet of all men," Arthur said miserably, "I break oaths so easily. I broke the oath to Ban and I broke my oath to Ceinwyn. Poor Ceinwyn." It was the first time any of us had ever heard him so openly lament that broken promise. I had thought Guinevere was a sun so bright in Arthur's firmament that she had dimmed Ceinwyn's paler l.u.s.tre into invisibility, but it seemed the memory of Powys's Princess could still gall Arthur's conscience like a spur. Just as the thought of Ratae's doom galled him now. "Maybe I should send them a warning," he said.

"And lose the hostages?" Sagramor asked.

Arthur shook his head. "I'll exchange myself for Balin and Lanval." He was thinking of doing just that. I could tell. The agony of remorse was biting at him and he was seeking a way out of that tangle of conscience and duty, even at the price of his own life. "Merlin would laugh at me now," he said.

"Yes," I agreed, 'he would." Merlin's conscience, if he possessed one at all, was merely a guide to how lesser men thought, and thus served as a goad for Merlin to behave in the contrary manner. Merlin's conscience was a jest to amuse the G.o.ds. Arthur's was a burden.

Now he stared at the mossy ground beneath the oak's shadow. The day was settling into twilight as Arthur's mind sank into gloom. Was he truly tempted to abandon everything? To ride to Aelle's fastness and exchange his existence for the lives of Ratae's souls? I think he was, but then the insidious logic of his ambition rose to overcome his despair like a tide flooding Ynys Trebes's bleak sands. "A hundred years ago," he said slowly, 'this land had peace. It had justice. A man could clear land in the happy knowledge that his grandsons would live to till it. But those grandsons are dead, killed by Saxons or their own kind. If we do nothing then the chaos will spread until there's nothing left but prancing Saxons and their mad wizards. If Gorfyddyd wins he'll strip Dumnonia of its wealth, but if I win I shall embrace Powys like a brother. I hate what we are doing, but if we do it, then we can put things right." He looked up at us both.

"We are all of Mithras," he said, 'so you can witness this oath made to Him." He paused. He was learning to hate oaths and their duties, but such was his state after that meeting with Aelle that he was willing to burden himself with a new one. "Find me a stone, Derfel," he ordered. I kicked a stone out of the soil and brushed the earth from it, then, at Arthur's bidding, I scratched Aelle's name on the stone with the point of my knife. Arthur used his own knife to dig a deep hole at the foot of the oak, then stood. "My oath is this," he said, 'that if I survive this battle with Gorfyddyd then I shall avenge the innocent souls I have condemned at Ratae. I will kill Aelle. I shall destroy him and his men. I shall feed them to the ravens and give their wealth to the children of Ratae. You two are my witnesses, and if I fail in this oath you are both released from all the bonds you owe me." He dropped the stone into the hole and the three of us kicked earth over it. "May the G.o.ds forgive me," Arthur said, 'for the deaths I have just caused."

Then we went to cause some more.

We travelled to Gwent through Corinium. Ailleann still lived there and though Arthur saw his sons he did not receive their mother so that no word of any such meeting could hurt his Guinevere, though he did send me with a gift for Ailleann. She received me with kindness, but shrugged when she saw Arthur's present, a small brooch of enamelled silver depicting an animal very like a hare though with shorter legs and ears. It had come from the treasures of Sansum's shrine, though Arthur had punctiliously replaced the cost of the brooch with coins from his pouch. "He wishes he had something better to send you," I said, delivering Arthur's message, 'but alas, the Saxons must have our best jewels these days."

"There was a time," she said bitterly, 'when his gifts came from love, not guilt." Ailleann was still a striking woman, though her hair was now touched with grey and her eyes clouded with resignation. She was clothed in a long blue woollen dress and wore her hair in twin coils above her ears. She peered at the strange enamelled animal. "What do you think it is?" she asked me. "It's not a hare. Is it a cat?"

"Sagramor says it's called a rabbit. He's seen them in Cappadocia, wherever that is."

"You mustn't believe everything Sagramor tells you," Ailleann chided me as she pinned the small brooch to her gown. "I have jewellery enough for a queen," she added as she led me to the small courtyard of her Roman house, 'but I am still a slave."

"Arthur didn't free you?" I asked, shocked.

"He worries I would move back to Armorica. Or to Ireland, and so take the twins away from him." She shrugged. "On the day the boys are of age Arthur will give me my freedom and do you know what I shall do? I shall stay right here." She gestured me to a chair that stood in the shade of a vine. "You look older," she said as she poured a straw-coloured wine from a wicker-wrapped flask. "I hear Lunete has left you?" she added as she handed me a horn beaker.

"We left each other, I think."

"I hear she is now a Priestess of Isis," Ailleann said mockingly. "I hear a lot from Durnovaria and dare not believe the half of it."

"Such as what?" I asked.

"If you don't know, Derfel, then you're best left in ignorance." She sipped the wine and grimaced at its taste. "So is Arthur. He never wants to hear bad news, only good. He even believes there is goodness in the twins."

It shocked me to hear a mother speak of her sons in such a way. "I'm sure there is," I said. She gave me a level, amused look. "The boys are no better, Derfel, than they ever were, and they were never good. They resent their father. They think they should be princes and so behave like princes. There is no mischief in this town which they don't begin or encourage, and if I try to control them they call me a wh.o.r.e." She crumbled a fragment of cake and threw its sc.r.a.ps to some scavenging sparrows. A servant swept the courtyard's far side with a bundle of broom twigs until Ailleann ordered the man to leave us alone, then she asked me about the war and I tried to hide my pessimism about Gorfyddyd's huge army.

"Can't you take Amhar and Loholt with you?" Ailleann asked me after a while. "They might make good soldiers."

"I doubt their father thinks they're old enough," I said.

"If he thinks about them at all. He sends them money. I wish he didn't." She fingered her new brooch.

"The Christians in the town all say that Arthur is doomed."

"Not yet, Lady."

She smiled. "Not for a long time, Derfel. People underestimate Arthur. They see his goodness, hear his kindness, listen to his talk of justice, and none of them, not even you, knows what burns inside him."

"Which is?"

"Ambition," she said flatly, then thought for a second. "His soul," she went on, 'is a chariot drawn by two horses; ambition and conscience, but I tell you, Derfel, the horse of ambition is in the right-hand harness and it will always out pull the other. And he's able, so very able." She smiled sadly. "Just watch him, Derfel, when he seems doomed, when everything is at its darkest, and then he will astonish you. I've seen it before. He'll win, but then the horse of conscience will tug at its reins and Arthur will make his usual mistake of forgiving his enemies."

"Is that bad?"

"It isn't a question of bad or good, Derfel, but of practicality. We Irish know one thing above all others: an enemy forgiven is an enemy who will have to be fought over and over again. Arthur confuses morality with power, and he worsens the mix by always believing that people are inherently good, even the worst of them, and that is why, mark my words, he will never have peace. He longs for peace, he talks of peace, but his own trusting soul is the reason he will always have enemies. Unless Guinevere manages to put some flint into his soul? And she may. Do you know who she reminds me of?"

"I didn't think you'd met her," I said.

"I never met the person she reminds me of either, but I hear things, and I do know Arthur very well. She sounds like his mother; very striking and very strong, and I suspect he will do anything to please her."

"Even at the price of his conscience?"

Ailleann smiled at the question. "You should know, Derfel, that some women always want their men to pay an exorbitant price. The more the man pays, the greater the woman's worth, and I suspect Guinevere is a lady who values herself very highly. And so she should. So should we all." She said the last words sadly, then rose from her chair. "Give him my love," she told me as we walked back through the house, 'and tell him please to take his sons to war."

Arthur would not take them. "Give them another year," he told me as we marched away next morning. He had dined with the twins and given them small gifts, but all of us had noted the sullenness with which Amhar and Loholt had received their father's affection. Arthur had noticed it too, which was why he was unnaturally dour as we marched west. "Children born to unwed mothers," he said after a long silence, 'have parts of their souls missing."

"What about your soul, Lord?" I asked.

"I patch it every morning, Derfel, piece by piece." He sighed. "I shall have to give time to Amhar and Loholt, and the G.o.ds only know where I shall find it because in four or five months I shall be a father again. If I live," he added bleakly.

So Lunete had been right and Guinevere was pregnant. "I'm happy for you, Lord," I said, though I was thinking of Lunete's comment on how unhappy Guinevere was at her condition.

"I'm happy for me!" He laughed, his black mood abruptly vanquished. "And happy for Guinevere. It'll be good for her, and in ten years' time, Derfel, Mordred will be on the throne and Guinevere and I can find some happy place to rear our cattle, children and pigs! I shall be happy then. I shall train Llamrei to pull a cart and use Excalibur as a goad for my plough-oxen."

I tried to imagine Guinevere as a farm wife, even as a rich farm wife, and somehow I could not conjure the image, but I kept my peace.

From Corinium we went to Glevum, then crossed the Severn and marched through Gwent's heartland. We made a fine sight, for Arthur deliberately rode with banners flying and his hors.e.m.e.n armoured for combat. We marched in that high style for we wanted to give the local people a new confidence. They had none now. Everyone a.s.sumed that Gorfyddyd would be victorious and even though it was harvest-time the countryside was sullen. We pa.s.sed a threshing floor and the chanter was singing the Lament of Essylt instead of the usual cheerful song that gave rhythm to the flails. We also noted how every villa, house and cottage was strangely bare of anything valuable. Possessions were being hidden, buried probably, so that Gorfyddyd's invaders would not strip the populace bare. "The moles are getting rich again," Arthur said sourly.

Arthur alone did not ride in his best armour. "Morfans has the scale armour," he told me when I asked why he was wearing his spare coat of mail. Morfans was the ugly warrior who had befriended me at the feast that had followed Arthur's arrival at Caer Cadarn so many years before.

"Morfans?" I asked, astonished. "How did he earn such a gift?"

"It's not a gift, Derfel. Morfans is just borrowing it, and every day for the past week he has been riding close to Gorfyddyd's men. They think I'm already there, and maybe that has given them pause? So far, at least, we have no news of any attack."

I had to laugh at the thought of Morfans's ugly face being concealed behind the cheek pieces of Arthur's helmet, and maybe the deception worked for when we joined King Tewdric at the Roman fort of Magnis the enemy had still not sallied from their strongholds in Powys's hills. Tewdric, dressed in his fine Roman armour, looked almost an old man. His hair had gone grey and there was a stoop in his carriage that had not been there when I had last seen him. He greeted the news about Aelle with a grunt, then made an effort to be more complimentary. "Good news," he said curtly, then rubbed his eyes, 'though G.o.d knows Gorfyddyd never needed Saxon help to beat us. He has men to spare."

The Roman fort seethed. Armourers were making spearheads, and every pollard ash for miles had been stripped for shafts. Carts of newly harvested grain arrived hourly and the bakers' ovens burned as fierce as the blacksmiths' furnaces so that a constant pyre of smoke hung above the palisaded walls. Yet despite the new harvest the gathering army was hungry. Most of the spearmen were camped outside the walls, some were miles away, and there were constant arguments about the distribution of the hard-baked bread and dried beans. Other contingents complained of water fouled by the latrines of men camped upstream. There was disease, hunger and desertion; evidence that neither Tewdric nor Arthur had ever had to grapple with the problems of commanding an army so large. "But if we have difficulties," Arthur said optimistically, 'imagine Gorfyddyd's troubles."

"I would rather have his problems than mine," Tewdric said gloomily. My spearmen, still under Galahad's command, were camped eight miles to the north of Magnis where Agricola, Tewdric's commander, kept a close watch on the hills that marked the frontier between Gwent and Powys. I felt a pang of happiness at seeing their wolf-tail helmets again. After the defeatism of the countryside it was suddenly good to think that here, at least, were men who would never be beaten. Nimue came with me and my men cl.u.s.tered about her so she could touch their spearheads and sword blades to give them power. Even the Christians, I noted, wanted her pagan touch. She was doing Merlin's business, and because she was known to have come from the Isle of the Dead she was thought to be almost as powerful as her master.

Agricola received me inside a tent, the first I had ever seen. It was a wondrous affair with a tall central pole and four corner staffs holding up a linen canopy that filtered the sunlight so that Agricola's short grey hair looked oddly yellow. He was in his Roman armour and sitting at a table covered in sc.r.a.ps of parchment. He was a stern man and his greeting was perfunctory, though he did add a compliment about my men. "They're confident. But so are the enemy, and there are many more of them than there are of us." His tone was grim.

"How many?" I asked.

Agricola seemed offended by my bluntness, but I was no longer the boy I had been when I had first seen Gwent's warlord. I was a lord myself now, a commander of men, and I had a right to know what odds those men faced. Or maybe it was not my directness that irritated Agricola, but rather that he did not want to be reminded of the enemy's preponderance. Finally, however, he gave me the tally. "According to our spies," he said, "Powys has a.s.sembled six hundred spearmen from their own land. Gundleus has brought another two hundred and fifty from Siluria, maybe more. Ganval of Elmet has sent two hundred men, and the G.o.ds alone know how many master less men have gone to Gorfyddyd's banner for a share of the spoils." Masterless men were rogues, exiles, murderers and savages who were drawn to an army for the plunder they could gain in battle. Such men were feared for they had nothing to lose and everything to gain. I doubted we had many such on our side, not just because we were expected to lose, but because both Tewdric and Arthur were ill disposed towards such lord less creatures. Curiously, though, many of Arthur's best hors.e.m.e.n had once been just such men. Warriors like Sagramor had fought in the Roman armies that had been shattered by the heathen invaders of Italy and it had been Arthur's youthful genius to harness such lord less mercenaries into a war-band.

"There's more," Agricola went on ominously. "The kingdom of Cornovia has donated men and just yesterday we heard that Oengus Mac Airem of Demetia has come with a war-band of his Black-shields; maybe a hundred strong? And another report says the men of Gwynedd have joined Gorfyddyd."

"Levies?" I asked.

Agricola shrugged. "Five, six hundred? Maybe even a thousand. But they won't come until the harvest's finished."

I was beginning to wish I had not asked. "And our numbers, Lord?"

"Now that Arthur has arrived..." He paused. "Seven hundred spears." I said nothing. It was no wonder, I thought, that men in Gwent and Dumnonia buried their treasures and whispered that Arthur should leave Britain. We were faced by a horde.

"I would be grateful," Agricola said acidly, as though the thought of grat.i.tude was utterly alien to his thinking, 'if you did not bruit the numbers about? We've had desertions enough already. More, and we might as well dig our own graves."

"No deserters from my men," I insisted.

"No," he allowed, 'not yet." He stood and took his short Roman sword from where it hung on a tent pole, then paused in the doorway from where he cast a baleful eye towards the enemy hills. "Men say you're a friend of Merlin."

"Yes, Lord."

"Will he come?"

"I don't know, Lord."

Agricola grunted. "I pray he does. Someone needs to talk sense into this army. All commanders are summoned to Magnis tonight. A council of war." He said it bitterly, as though he knew that such councils produced more quarrels than comradeship. "Be there by sunset." Galahad came with me. Nimue stayed with my men for her presence gave them confidence and I was glad she did not come for the council was opened by a prayer from Bishop Conrad of Gwent who seemed imbued with defeatism as he begged his G.o.d to give us strength to face the over-mighty foe. Galahad, his arms spread in the Christian pose of prayer, murmured along with the Bishop while we pagans grumbled that we should not pray for strength, but victory. I wished we had some Druids among us, but Tewdric, a Christian, employed none, and Balise, the old man who had attended Mordred's acclamation, had died during the first winter I was in Benoic. Agricola was right to hope that Merlin would come, for an army without Druids was giving away an advantage to its enemy. There were some forty or fifty men at the council, all of us chieftains or leaders. We met in the bare stone hall of Magnis's bath house that reminded me of Ynys Wydryn's church. King Tewdric, Arthur, Agricola and Tewdric's son, the Edling Meurig, sat at a table on a stone dais. Meurig had grown into a pale thin creature who looked unhappy in his ill-fitting Roman armour. He was just old enough to fight, but with his nervous air he looked very unfit for battle. He blinked constantly, as if he had just come into sunlight from a very dark room, and he kept fidgeting with a heavy gold cross that hung around his neck. Arthur alone of the commanders was not in war gear, but looked relaxed in his countryman's clothes. The warriors cheered and stamped their spear-b.u.t.ts when King Tewdric announced that the Saxons were believed to have withdrawn from the eastern frontier, but that was the last cheering for a long while that night, because Agricola then stood and gave his blunt a.s.sessment of the two armies. He did not list all the enemy's smaller contingents, but even without those additions it was clear that Gorfyddyd's army would outnumber ours by two to one. "We'll just have to kill twice as fast!" Morfans shouted from the back. He had returned the scale armour to Arthur, swearing that only a hero could wear that amount of metal and still fight. Agricola ignored the interruption, adding instead that the harvest should be complete in a week and the levies of Gwent would then swell our numbers. No one seemed too cheered by that news.

King Tewdric proposed that we should fight Gorfyddyd under the walls of Magnis. "Give me a week," he said, 'and I will so fill this fortress with the new harvest that Gorfyddyd will never pitch us out. Fight here' he gestured towards the dark beyond the hall doors 'and if the battle goes ill we pull inside the gates and let them waste their spears on wooden palisades." It was the way of war Tewdric preferred and had long perfected: siege warfare, where he could use the work of long-dead Roman engineers to frustrate spears and swords. A murmur of agreement sounded in the room, and that murmur swelled when Tewdric told the council that Aelle might well be planning to attack Ratae.

"Hold Gorfyddyd here," one man said, 'and he'll run back north when he hears Aelle's coming through his back door."

"Aelle will not fight my battle." Arthur spoke for the first time, and the room became still. Arthur seemed embarra.s.sed at having spoken so firmly. He smiled apologetically at King Tewdric and asked exactly where the enemy forces were gathered. Arthur already knew, of course, but he was asking the question so that the rest of us would hear the answer.

Agricola answered for Tewdric. "Their forward men are strung between Coel's Hill and Caer Lud," he said, 'while the main army gathers at Branogenium. More men are marching from Caer Sws." The names meant little to us, but Arthur seemed to understand the geography. "So they guard the hills between us and Branogenium?"

"Every pa.s.s," Agricola confirmed, 'and every hilltop."

"How many at Lugg Vale?" Arthur asked.

"At least two hundred of their best spearmen. They're not fools, Lord," Agricola added sourly. Arthur stood. He was at his best at these councils, easily dominating crowds of fractious men. He smiled at us. "The Christians will understand this best," he said, subtly flattering the men most likely to oppose him. "Imagine a Christian cross. Here at Magnis we are at the foot of the cross. The cross's shaft is the Roman road that runs north from Magnis to Branogenium, and the crosspiece is made by the hills that bar that road. Coel's Hill is at the left of the crosspiece, Caer Lud at the right, and Lugg Vale is at the cross's centre. The vale is where the road and river pa.s.s through the hills." He walked out from behind the table and perched himself on its front so he was closer to his audience. "I want you to think about something," he said. The flame light from the becke ted torches cast shadows on his long cheeks, but his eyes were bright and his tone energetic. "Everyone knows we must lose this battle," he said. "We are outnumbered. We wait here for Gorfyddyd to attack us. We wait and some of us become dispirited and carry our spears home. Others fall ill. And all of us brood on that great army gathering in the bowl of the hills around Branogenium and we try not to imagine our shield-wall outflanked and the enemy coming at us from three sides at once. But think of the enemy! They wait too, but as they wait they get stronger! Men come from Cornovia, from Elmet, from Demetia, from Gwynedd. Landless men come to gain land and master less men to take plunder. They know they will win and they know we wait like mice trapped by a tribe of cats."

He smiled again and stood up. "But we're not mice. We have some of the greatest warriors ever to lift a spear. We have champions!" The cheering began. "We can kill cats! And we know to skin them too!

But." That last word stopped the next cheer just as it began. "But," Arthur went on, 'not if we wait here to be attacked. Wait here behind Magnis's walls and what happens? The enemy will march around us. Our homes, our wives, our children, our lands, our flocks and our new harvest become theirs, and all we become are mice in a trap. We must attack, and attack soon."

Agricola waited for the Dumnonian cheers to die. "Attack where?" he asked sourly.

"Where they least expect it, Lord, in their strongest place. Lugg Vale. Straight up the cross! Straight to the heart!" He held up a hand to stop any cheering. "The vale is a narrow place," he said, 'where no shield-line can be outflanked. The road fords the river north of the valley." He was frowning as he spoke, trying to remember a place he had seen only once in his life, but Arthur had a soldier's memory for terrain and only needed to see a place once. "We would need to put men on the western hill to stop their archers raining arrows down, but once in the vale I swear we cannot be moved." Agricola objected. "We can hold there," he agreed, 'but how do we fight our way in? They have two hundred spearmen there, maybe more, but even one hundred men can hold that valley all day. By the time we've fought to the vale's far end Gorfyddyd will have brought his horde down from Branogenium. Worse, the Blackshield Irish who garrison Coel's Hill can march south of the hills and take our rear. We might not be moved, Lord, but we'll be killed where we stand."

"The Irish on Coel's Hill don't matter," Arthur said carelessly. He was excited and could not stay still; he began pacing up and down the dais, explaining and cajoling. "Think, I beg you, Lord King' he spoke to Tewdric - 'what happens if we stay here. The enemy will come, we shall retreat behind impregnable walls and they will raid our lands. By midwinter we'll be alive, but will anyone else in Gwent or Dumnonia still live? No. Those hills south of Branogenium are Gorfyddyd's walls. If we breach those walls he has to fight us, and if he fights in Lugg Vale he is a defeated man."

"His two hundred men in Lugg Vale will stop us," Agricola insisted.

"They will vanish like the mist!" Arthur proclaimed confidently. "They are two hundred men who have never faced armoured horse in battle."

Agricola shook his head. "The vale is barred by a wall of felled trees. Armoured horse will be stopped'

he paused to ram his fist into an upraised palm 'dead." He said the word flatly and the finality of his tone made Arthur sit. There was the smell of defeat in the hall. From outside the baths, where the blacksmiths worked day and night, I heard the hiss of a newly forged blade being quenched in water.

"Perhaps I might be permitted to speak?" The speaker was Meurig, Tewdric's son. He had a strangely high voice, almost petulant in its tone, and he was evidently short-sighted for he screwed up his eyes and c.o.c.ked his head whenever he wanted to look at a man in the main part of the hall. "What I would like to ask," he said when his father had given him permission to address the council, 'is why we fight at all?" He blinked rapidly when the question was asked.

No one answered. Maybe we were all too astonished at the question.

"Let me, permit me, allow me to explain," Meurig said in a pedantic tone. He might have been young, but he possessed the confidence of a prince, though I found the false modesty with which he cloaked his p.r.o.nouncements irritating. "We fight Gorfyd-dyd correct me if I am wrong out of our long-standing alliance with Dumnonia. That alliance has served us well, I doubt not, but Gorfyddyd, as I understand it, has no designs upon the Dumnonian throne."

A growl came from we Dumnonians, but Arthur held up his hand for silence, then gestured for Meurig to continue. Meurig blinked and tugged at his cross. "I just wonder why we fight? What, if I might phrase it thus, is our casus belli?

"Cow's belly?" Culhwch shouted. Culhwch had seen me when I arrived and had crossed the hall to welcome me. Now he put his mouth close to my ear. "b.a.s.t.a.r.ds have got thin shields, Derfel," he said, 'and they're looking for a way out."