When First I Met My King: Book One in the Arthur Trilogy

by Harper Fox

  And Cerniw’s heir lost his temper. He scrambled to his feet, evading the other boy’s grasp. His hair swung round his face like a wet lion’s mane, and he seemed from somewhere to gain a foot in height. “Peasant!” he snarled. “You have no idea who I am! How dare you block my way, here or anywhere in this land?”

  Ectorius frowned in an effort to keep his face straight. It felt like only yesterday he had watched the child being chased by its nurse around his courtyard for a change of undergarments, but he held his tongue: like the fighting, within certain bounds he must let the budding regality have sway. Lance only looked disgusted. What a change came over that handsome face, when his smile was replaced by disdain! He turned his back and began to walk away.

  A mistake. In this state of mind, Bear would not be ignored. And he was a good boy, Pendragon’s heir, but he had the hot blood of both his parents—the warrior king, and the bride he had stolen, starting a war in the process, and she just as much of a spitting wildcat as her new lord could handle—running through his veins. He could only take so much, Ectorius knew, for all the lessons in courteous defeat he had tried so patiently to learn. He might have been gracious, had Gaius not laughed. Instead, he grabbed Lance by the shoulder, spun him round and knocked him down with a flying punch.

  Ectorius jumped off his horse. “Arthur!” he barked. “Stop that at once. How dare you treat a brave warrior so shabbily?” He strode across the stream. A time would soon come when he would not be able to clout his ward over the head to restore his manners, but until then, Ectorius retained full parental privilege. Bear took the blow without flinching, as he had been taught, his eyes wide and fearless on his guardian’s.

  Then Ectorius glanced down. The lad lay motionless and pale on the turf. His eyes were closed. “By Our Lady, Art. What have you done?”

  Arthur’s mouth fell open. His face suffused with shame and horror. “He was defending his father’s land, as you would have done yours,” Ectorius said sternly. “And he has not the benefit of all your training, you spoiled child.”

  Arthur tore out of his grip. He crouched down beside Lance. He shook him, then collected himself and began to search for the injury. It didn’t take long: tenderly he raised his head, reached beneath it and sat back with bloodstained fingers. “He fell onto a rock. I have killed him. Oh, Father Ector—the shame to me, that I should have served a noble enemy thus!”

  Once more Ectorius repressed a smile. Round and rough-tongued enough in his daily speech, the boy did tend to poetry when he was upset. Somehow it sat well on him. Taking pity, Ectorius knelt down stiffly on the turf himself. He felt for Lance’s pulse beneath his jaw. “Well,” he said. “Perhaps we need not bury him just yet. Don’t sit there gawping, child! Fetch me some water from the stream.”

  Chapter Six

  Lance sat up gasping at the splash of ice-cold water into his face. He stared at the old man, then at the elder of his two companions, who was standing with his hands on his hips, clearly amused by this small drama. Then his attention was caught by his opponent, disarmed now and kneeling a few feet away, eyes fixed on the turf.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Lance asked mildly, dabbing at his split lip. “I’m all right.”

  Arthur jerked his head up. “Oh! Thanks be to Tamara, goddess of Cerniw’s river,” he said fervently. Then, when the old man cleared his throat: “To Iesus and his blessed mother, I mean. I ask your forgiveness, Lance of Vindolanda.”

  “Granted,” Lance said unsteadily. “Forgive my calling you a pig. I thought you were...” The elder knight had hoisted him effortlessly to his feet and was dusting him down: embarrassed, Lance stepped away and tugged his clothes straight for himself. He tried to remember what he had been thinking, while he ran down from the top of the ridge. Very little. His mind seemed to have been caught in one long dream, from the time of the hunt in the snow until this very moment. What had woken him? He frowned at the sight of the bright-haired boy still kneeling on the grass. “I thought you were invaders. Where did you say you came from?”

  “Cerniw—as far southwest as you can go without riding into the sea. Farmland, tin mines, not much else, but… it is very big, at least, the land I will inherit. Isn’t it, Father Ector?”

  “At present,” Ectorius responded with feigned gravity. “Whether it stays that way will be up to you.” He shook his head. “At the moment we seem set on tackling our enemies one by one. And you, young man—does all this territory belong to your father?”

  Heat touched Lance’s face. He’d made a large claim, hadn’t he, when he’d declared he was King Ban’s son? “No, sir,” he said honestly. He pointed to the patch of grey stone in the distance that marked Vindolanda. “Just that settlement there.”

  “Valuable to us, nonetheless. We’ve travelled a long way, and don’t want to risk the moors at night. Will your father make us welcome?”

  Lance hesitated. The cobwebs of the dream were still all about him. There had been a running hare, some paintings on the inside of a cave, a strange old woman. She had told him things—some marvellous, some almost impossible to bear. “My father is gone,” he said at last. He looked toward the village. “I will make you welcome.”

  “May heaven reward your hospitality,” Ector formally replied. “I must introduce myself. I am Ectorius, of Londinium and the Forest Wild. That tall, ill-favoured gentleman there is my son, Gaius, and the scapegrace child still rightly on his knees at your feet is Artorius. Arthur, in his own rude Kernowek tongue.”

  There was something infinitely distressing to Lance in the sight of the young man’s abasement. Nobody like that should ever have to kneel. “Please get up,” he said. “If there was ever cause of offence between us, it’s forgiven.”

  This time Arthur took the hand extended to him graciously. “That’s very noble of you, Prince of... What did you say it was called?”

  “Vindolanda. It means fair meadows. Nowhere.”

  Arthur’s grip tightened warmly. He surged to his feet like water-weighted barley after rain. “Then, as Father Ector says—heaven reward you, Prince of Nowhere. Oh, wait—I’m forgetting something.”

  Ector watched in satisfaction while his ward went to fetch the sword with his own hands. Having been pardoned for his crimes by his new friend, he was shining again, although Ector could see the experience had changed him: that, outside battle, he’d never attack an unready man again.

  He picked the weapon up in a casual soldier’s grip. Ector had taught him swordsmanship since he was tall enough to lift a wooden facsimile, on his feet and from horseback, carefully pitting him against the older, bigger Gaius, whose infuriating calm in victory and defeat had also taught him something. To the old man’s surprise, he suddenly let the blade drop from his grasp. “What ails you now?” Ector demanded, striding over to help him. “Don’t throw that about. It’s a good one.”

  “Yes, I... I know. Father Ector,” he whispered, going pale. “Do you hear that?”

  Ector could hear nothing but the purr of the wind. He shook his head. “What do you hear, boy?”

  “A kind of drumming, like the sound your heart makes in your ears at night. But deeper than that, slower...” Gently Art hefted the blade, turned it in the sunlight. “The hilt seems to warm in my hand. I don’t feel as if there’s any difference anymore, between...”

  “Between what?” Ector glanced apprehensively at Gaius, who was giving Lance a leg-up onto a lead-rein horse. Ever since Arthur had been placed into his care, the boy had been subject to headaches and visions, sometimes so extreme that he would fall into a kind of seizure, an empty-eyed waking dream. It definitely wasn’t convenient for him to start one now. Ector shook his shoulder. “Bear!”

  “Between my insides and my outsides. If I close my eyes, I could merge with the earth and the air and disappear.”

  “Keep them open, then,” Ector brusquely advised. “This young prince has offered us shelter. It’s for you to lead our party there and honour his trust.”

 
Arthur returned to himself with an effort. He stepped forward, reached up and placed the sword reverently back into Lance’s hands. “It’s a fine thing,” he said. “Did you have it from your father?”

  Lance drew a breath. Ector, after raising two sons, knew very well the look of a child considering a story, and a tall one, usually to cover a stranger truth. Then the boy’s expression cleared. “No,” he said frankly. “I found it in a lake.”

  Arthur smiled, as if this absurdity was just what he’d expected to hear. Now it was Ector’s turn to shiver in the wing-shadow of a vision, and he looked away, pretending to wonder at the beautiful sweep of the land, the ridge where the legendary Hadrian had built his wall.

  Gaius left Lance and came to stand beside him, concerned. “What’s wrong, Father?”

  “By God, Gaius! The sword from the lake!”

  Chapter Seven

  Arthur and Lance rode side by side down the track. Lance was speechless. He was twice as high off the ground as his old pony had ever carried him, and the beast beneath him now was a long-boned, fine-skinned chestnut dream by contrast. His knee bumped off the prince of Cerniw’s, and he gasped and flinched away, for all he’d willingly tried to kill him not half an hour before.

  Arthur shot him an amused glance. “All right, Your Majesty?”

  “Don’t call me that. My father ruled a village, not a nation. My boast was a vain one, made in anger—I’d be grateful if you would forget it.”

  “All right, then, Lance?”

  He swallowed hard. The sound of his name—the simple question—from this stranger’s mouth... His head was full of echoes from a past he’d never had. His bruised skull throbbed and his empty belly reminded him that half a fish in the wilderness, however magical, didn’t make up for months of starvation. “I am fine,” he said stoutly. “I’ve never ridden a horse like this, that’s all.”

  “Really? What do you ride at home?”

  “A pony. Or I did, at any rate. There was a famine, and...”

  Arthur’s jaw dropped. “You didn’t.”

  “Of course we did. There’s no room for petty affections when children are starving.”

  “I meant, did you personally...”

  Lance wanted to lie. But some mix of horror and sympathy in the grey gaze fixed on him drew the truth out of his mouth, like a thorn from a wound. “Actually I hid in a barn and wept. But I was just a boy then.”

  “I see.” Arthur rode on for a few paces. Once more his knee bumped against Lance’s, this time deliberate, companionable. “This horse belongs to my foster father. She’s served him well for ten years or so now, so he brings her as a spare, not his battle mount. Her name is Balana. Do you like her?”

  “More than I can possibly say.”

  Arthur broke into laughter. “Come for a gallop, then! She might be past her prime, but she’ll carry you like the wind.”

  “Won’t Sir Ectorius mind?”

  “Maybe. I’m expected to be young and foolish at present, though, and we can say I egged you on.” He put a hand back to clap the rump of his sturdy black stallion, which capered and snorted in response. “Hengroen wants a run, too. Hold on—you can ride, can’t you?”

  “Of course. What do you mean?”

  “Just that you don’t seem too steady in your seat. Ector will skin me if you fall off and get hurt again.”

  Lance did his best to find purchase on the slippery leather beneath him. He was used to a broad, hairy back, mud and burrs providing traction. Once again, honesty broke through his pride. “It’s this Roman saddle. I can’t get a grip.”

  “Ah. You have to ease down into it. Let the horns at the front hold you in, and lean back against the cantle. That’s it.” Arthur watched in approval while Lance did his best to obey. “Don’t be concerned. Father Ector says a man who learned to ride bareback will always be a better soldier than a spoiled brat like me. Saddles can get lost or stolen, but a horse will always have a spine. Are you settled?”

  Lance could hardly breathe for excitement. “Yes!”

  “Come along, then. Away!”

  Gaius watched his foster brother and the ragged prince tear off down the valley. “That lad’s giving ours a run for his money,” he observed.

  Ector grunted. “About time somebody did.”

  “Either that, or Bear will break his neck for him.”

  “Hah. Our moorland prince die happy, if so.”

  Gaius glanced at him in surprise. Ector was perceptive, but usually quite blind to this one trait in his ward. “Aye,” he said cautiously. “It’s a dangerous gift, though, isn’t it—to make men love you?”

  “What?”

  “Er... nothing. Only the wind.”

  “I’ll wager he’s never sat a horse like my Balana. Look at the two idiots go!”

  Well-hidden fear behind the smile in the old man’s voice. Gaius sought to reassure him. A prosaic soul, he had found his place in life as his father’s firm right hand, his practical support when the demands of caring for the prophesied king had worn him down. For himself, Gaius was still not convinced they were raising anything other than dangerous old Pendragon’s unwanted brat. He had married again since poor Ygraine, Gaius had heard, and had sons whose claims were based on something better than their mother’s abduction and rape. “I wouldn’t worry about this sword. He’s supposed to find it for himself, isn’t he? In a stone, too, if I remember aright.”

  Ectorius scratched his head, still habitually short-cropped from his years in the Roman army. “Well, he has. The sword from the lake, remember—not in it. In a stone, from a lake... The old sorcerer spoke in riddles. And look at the thing, Gaius! It has to be the one.”

  “But it belongs to this boy Lance,” Gaius said thoughtfully. “That’s an inconvenience, isn’t it? Unless…”

  He shot a sideways glance at his father, and saw that Ectorius was half amused, half appalled by what he read there. “No, son,” he said. “You’re my good lad always. But there’ll be no forcing of events, and we’re this boy’s guests now. Let’s watch and let things happen as they will.”

  Gaius followed on obediently. The sword from the lake—words heard so long ago that they had merged with the background of the firelit kitchen in which first he’d heard the story. He had been five, and still frightened by the old man who had emerged from the storm a few hours before. His father, too kindly a soul to turn away a wanderer on such a night, had bidden him welcome. Then the old man had stepped close, opened his robes and revealed a baby nestled in the crook of one skinny arm, and he’d spoken words to poor Ectorius that had made that worthy Roman noble pale to grey, and follow the old man down to the kitchen as if usurped in his own stronghold.

  Once there, installed by the fire, the visitor had refused all offers of food and drink, and had begun to tell a story of the dragon of the south, and a mighty king whose lust for a woman had started a war so terrible that the land was not safe for his heir. Gaius hadn’t understood the half of it. Surely a baby—beside all the annoyance his adoption would cause Gaius, his father’s only son—could not be the means of saving the whole realm of Britannia.

  Saving it from what, Gaius had failed to gather, watching jealously from beside Ector’s knee, aware that his father’s hand on his head was distracted, oblivious to whether he was petting his son or a dog. The child must be protected, and brought up to be a king. Certain things must happen. He must find something called a graal. He must discover a weapon that would be a sign of his reign’s beginning and its ending, his power and his death.

  Nonsense, perhaps. An old man’s ramblings, a baby stolen from some poor cottager’s cradle. Ector had never spoken of the strange visitation again, nor complained of the burden laid upon him. Gaius’s mother was dead, and Ector had simply stepped into the breach once again, clucking over the bundle in his arms as it began to wail from hunger. And the night had turned cold, in the swish of the departing sorcerer’s robes, and words had hung in the air like snowflakes to Gaius’s d
azzled vision: the sword from the lake...

  ***

  And so it was that Lance, Prince of Nowhere, returned to Vindolanda at the head of a troop of Roman dignitaries, mounted on a horse fit for a king. His pulse was still thumping from his race with Arthur across the flats: what a creature Balana was! He’d watched the cavalry beasts wheeling and stamping about when he’d been barely tall enough to touch their shining bellies, but never thought to ride one, let alone in the company of a future king, before whom it was somehow all right to let his joy at this new experience show.

  He’s generous, Lance thought suddenly, reining Balana back to a trot on the outskirts of the village. He likes to make people happy. This conviction too filled Lance with a depthless, incomprehensible joy, like seeing white swans take off from the surface of Broomlee Lough. It shouldn’t have mattered to him. Arthur would be here for one night only, gone in the morning, his kindness or otherwise no more to Lance than a passing gleam of the sun.

  But Arthur flashed him a conspiratorial grin as he drew level on the flagstone road outside the praetor’s house. Lance’s throat tightened in a mix of pleasure and pain. “Here we are,” he said, glad he had the excuse of their recent gallop for the unsteady rasp in his voice. “We don’t have much after this long winter, but my people will shelter and feed you.”

  “That’s nice.” Arthur trotted a few paces at his side, then to Lance’s surprise put out a hand and pulled Balana’s rein to draw her to a halt. The clatter of iron on stone died away to utter silence. “But where are these people of yours? This place is deserted.”

  Lance sprang to the ground. Riding proved to have been easier than standing and he staggered, clutching at Balana’s mane for support. “Oh, no. This can’t be. It was only two nights—just two nights.”

  “What was?”

  “That I was away. We were starving. I promised I’d hunt, and bring back something to eat.”

  “Things were as desperate as that?”