Shadow Lands Trilogy

by Simon Lister

  ‘I wager your lands that I win,’ Arthur said conversationally.

  Ablach beamed up at him and barked out his distinctive laugh. He climbed the steps to the dais and the wooden planks of the floor creaked under his massive frame. He stood before Arthur and held out a spade-like hand. Arthur took the hand and looked up into the dark eyes made smaller by the heavy jowls and fat-layered cheekbones of the Uathach chieftain. Ablach was one of the few men in Middangeard who stood taller than Arthur did and he was heavier too but neither doubted who would be the quicker in single combat.

  ‘And I would probably lose my lands too but you can’t blame me for considering the temptation, son.’

  Arthur resisted the urge to recoil from being called ‘son’ by the monster before him. Ablach was monstrous, both in his physical size and in how he ruled his lands to the North of Anglia. Two other chieftains ruled the rest of the northern lands. Hund ruled the land to the North of Mercia and Benoc held the power in the far north. Unlike the southern tribes the Uathach had no rule of law and no war bands to enforce the laws of the land if necessary. There was relative wealth for the strongest and it was bought at the expense of everyone else who were consigned to lives of subsistent survival and to die deaths of lingering hunger or sudden violence. They were hard lands and hard lives and they were led by vicious men who knew nothing of restraint and who cared only for their own appetites and ambitions.

  Ablach had offered this marriage for several reasons. He wanted land in the South, good land that he could farm and that would increase his wealth. He wanted passage on the ships from the Haven, not because this would help his people whom he saw as little more than tools to increase his power, but because it would offer him new lands and new opportunities to fortify his rule. He realised the Adren would attempt to invade Britain and he needed the southern tribes to help protect his own land. For all these reasons he had proposed the marriage of Gwyna to Arthur but what he really desired was to find a way by which he could rule the rich southern lands and this offered a route to that goal.

  Arthur publicly claimed that the marriage would ensure that the Uathach stood alongside the southern warriors in the war against the Adren but he held a greater design too. Once they had defeated the Adren he would turn his attention to the North. He planned to use his marriage to Gwyna to justify taking complete control of the northern tribes and uniting Britain under one rule.

  As they faced each other on the dais in Caer Sulis they both knew that whatever aims or plans the other had they would be in direct contradiction to each other. In a way they both understood, this marriage would mark the start of each of their plans to destroy the other. For his part, Arthur fully intended to offer land in the South and passage to the Western Lands for the northern tribes. Once the peoples of the North had seen how life can be different and how the rule of law can improve their lives then it will leave only the warriors of the North to deal with but for now he needed those warriors to help repel the Adren. Ablach had no such intention of honouring anything unless it best served his immediate personal ambitions.

  The Uathach guard waited at the foot of the raised area while Arthur and Ablach sat down and settled the details for the wedding. It would take place in ten hours’ time once the Uathach had rested after their long journey. Ablach wanted his men to be able to carry their weapons into the hall and Arthur had no objection. He would make it clear that anyone who drew a weapon in the Great Hall, Uathach or southern, would answer immediately to his own sword. He told Ablach to keep his men in check and any of them that insulted or attacked any of the people of Caer Sulis would also answer to his sword. With that, Ablach and his guard retired to the quarters set aside for them and where Gwyna and the others were already preparing for the wedding.

  Arthur sought out Ceinwen and told her to find Elwyn and Gereint and to make sure that all the warriors in Caer Sulis were ready to ride to the Causeway soon after the wedding feast. He had questioned Ablach why he had only brought fifty of his men with him and Ablach had replied that all the northern warriors were gathering at Dalchiaran, his own fortified village, and that he would return there to collect them after the wedding before heading to the Causeway.

  Once the Uathach had retired Arthur walked down to the river that ran along the southern edge of the town. The scattered grey clouds to the West were under-painted in shades of red and pink and stood against a starless horizon. Arthur looked to the East where the last of the winter stars stubbornly shone from darker skies and he wondered about the fate of Cei, Trevenna and Merdynn. He had no way of knowing if their quest had failed or succeeded, if they were alive or lying dead in the Shadow Lands of the East. He could only trust in his feeling that they were still alive. He breathed deeply in the cold air. Their fate was out of his hands and all he could do now was defend the Causeway with as many warriors as he could gather together.

  The sound of hammering rang across the fields from the town and echoed around the wide valley. Soon the whole town and surrounding area would be busy with the people coming from the Haven and these fields would ring to the sound of weapons training as Mar’h sought to turn people who had previously led rustic lives into an army capable of facing the Adren. Along with the warriors too old or maimed to stand at the Causeway, Arthur had decided to assign Mar’h ten others from the combined war bands of the South to help him turn men, women, youths, fishers and farmers, into disciplined fighters with the skill and courage to stand when the Adren charged. It would be a difficult and unenviable task but a crucial one and he wondered if he should undertake the training himself. Arthur knew he would be able to do it better than any other would and he was still far from sure whether Mar’h was up to the task.

  He walked on along the riverbank, past the royal houses and with his back to the sunrise. He knew his place was on the Causeway and despite wishing to take the moulding of a new army upon himself he felt a deep unease that he was not already at the Gates. He turned away from the river and made his way back to his quarters to prepare himself for the ceremony. In the lightening skies to the West the first of the long diagonal lines of migrating birds were returning to inland Britain.

  Caer Sulis would normally have been teeming with the returning people from the Western Lands at this time of year. This year’s Imbolc festival for the Wakening of the Sun would be held earlier than usual to coincide with Arthur’s marriage to Gwyna and most of the people from the southern tribes were still at the Haven. Arthur had determined that Caer Sulis would mark the furthest point east that the people could return to, which meant that the Anglians, among others, would have to find temporary homes in Wessex, Mercia and Caer Sulis itself. The town was designed as the gathering place for the journey across the Western Seas and was easily large enough to accommodate the Anglians who wished to remain there. It was Arthur’s plan that many of the Wessex and Mercians would stay there too, at least until Mar’h had selected those whom he wished to form into an army.

  If the town was unusually quiet for the time of year, the Great Hall was as full as it could be. The counsellors and chieftains of the three tribes were spread throughout the tables on the raised dais, while the forty warriors who had accompanied Arthur through the Shadow Lands were seated just below the raised area at the top of the hall. Ablach and ten of his men were also on the dais while the rest of the Uathach were in the main part of the hall with Gereint and his two hundred warriors. There were over four hundred people in the hall, three hundred of them were warriors and each of them carried their weapons.

  Arthur stood outside in the square before the hall with Ceinwen by his side. They had changed from their heavy winter clothing for the ceremony and both felt the cold of the spring dawn as they patiently waited for Gwyna. She had chosen Ruraidh, the leader of the ill-fated Uathach raiding party that Arthur had saved in the Shadow Lands, to stand beside her at the wedding. Arthur had chosen Ceinwen. Like many of his warriors, Arthur had shaved off his winter beard and he felt the cold wind on his face all t
he more keenly for it. Ceinwen’s light cloak rippled about her as she stood with arms folded, her weight on one leg. She caught Arthur’s eye and nodded to the edges of the square. The people who had wintered in the town were beginning to line up against the buildings that faced the open space outside the hall. Arthur spotted one of the elders of the town and strolled across to her. After exchanging a few words he rejoined Ceinwen at the steps to the hall.

  ‘What did you say?’ Ceinwen asked shifting her weight onto her other leg and glancing back at the woman Arthur had spoken to.

  ‘I told them they could all enter the hall after we go in.’

  ‘And join the feast?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There won’t be much room,’ she pointed out.

  ‘Then it will be crowded.’

  Ceinwen frowned, ‘Why tell them to come in then?’

  ‘I want those inside to remember why we have to hold the Adren at the Causeway.’

  Ceinwen paused again before she voiced her fears, ‘Do you think the Uathach will come to the Causeway?’

  Before Arthur could answer there was a commotion at one end of the square. Ruraidh was leading a large bay horse towards them. Gwyna sat upright on the horse as it plodded slowly across the mud of the courtyard.

  Ruraidh helped her off the horse, gently lifting her down onto the steps. She stood there and looked up at Arthur. Ceinwen stared at her as she tried to equate the venomous warrior she had met in the Shadow Lands with the pretty young girl before her now. She found it hard to believe they were the same person. Arthur was having the same difficulty.

  Gwyna wore a close-fitting, finely tailored dark blue dress. Ceinwen could still see the bandaging around her injured shoulder despite the long sleeves that covered her arms. It was a plain full-length dress, unadorned by frills or lace and its colour traditionally represented the purity of the bride. Ceinwen would later turn to Morveren and scoff at that idea but as she stood in front of the young woman the dark blue seemed fitting and appropriate to her. The dress flowed to her ankles that were adorned with gold rings and her small feet were bare. Her unruly tangle of dark red hair had been wrestled and tamed into one long braid that reached down her back to the single white cord that was tied about her narrow waist.

  Ivy, signifying fidelity, was entwined around the cord that held a sheaf of wheat and a few sprigs of sage against her side as blessing for fertility and wisdom. A delicate gold torque encircled her throat with the open ends crafted into the shapes of two snakeheads. Ceinwen could not stop herself from thinking that the torque said more about Gwyna than anything else she was wearing.

  Gwyna smiled as Arthur looked at her. The hard lines of winter had left her face and her lips were no longer blistered and cracked. Even her hazel eyes that had held such hardness before seemed softened and only the small creases around the corners of her eyes and to either side of her smiling lips belied her young age. Arthur had seen that look before and knew there was nothing innocent about the girl standing before him; nothing innocent at all. He returned the smile.

  Taking his eyes from Gwyna he turned his attention to Ruraidh and held out his hand.

  ‘We’re a long way from the Adren and the Shadow Lands,’ Ruraidh said as he clasped Arthur’s extended hand.

  ‘The Adren are looking to shorten that distance,’ Arthur replied.

  Gwyna stepped between them, ‘Time for war later.’

  They agreed and taking Gwyna’s hand in his, Arthur climbed the steps to the Great Hall. Drawing his sword he banged the hilt on the door three times. The double doors swung open and the noise of the gathering inside stilled to silence within a few seconds.

  Arthur and Gwyna stood side by side within the doorway with the other two just behind them and to one side. As the people of Caer Sulis filled the square a steady drumming of fists and dagger hilts began to spread throughout the hall. The shutters over the windows were closed and the noise increased as the hall gradually fell into darkness as the tallow candles were extinguished along the length of the tables until the only light was from the small fire that burned in a bowl by the doorway.

  Elwyn and Gereint, as leaders of the Anglian and Mercian war bands, lit rush candles from the small fire and led the way up the centre of the hall. This was a Wessex custom and it signified the new light of a new union. It was a peculiarly evocative scene. The hall was echoing to the noise and in utter darkness save for the rush candles, held aloft and leading the procession to the head of the hall.

  When they reached the dais the flame from the procession candles was passed from table to table until the soft blush of candlelight once again lit the whole hall. The townsfolk of Caer Sulis shuffled into the hall and along the shadows of the walls as they sought to make room for those filing in behind them.

  Arthur and Gwyna stood at the front of the dais before all the gathered warriors and people as Ceinwen and Ruraidh bound the Uathach girl’s right hand to the warlord’s left in the Triquetra, a three-looped knot that symbolised the three layers of life – the body, the mind and the spirit. This too was a Wessex custom and once the knot was complete the bonded couple raised their arms to show the unification to all those before them. A great roar filled the hall and immediately the fire pits were re-lit and food and drink started to arrive along the tables.

  Although the formal part of the ceremony was over, it would not be considered complete until the newlywed couple had received all who wished to present themselves after which they would leave the hall together and retire to their prepared quarters.

  Arthur and Gwyna sat at the foremost table on the raised area of the hall with Ceinwen and Ruraidh by their side as the first of many supplicants, well-wishers and the simply curious lined up to speak to them. The Triquetra had been taken from their joined wrists and lay to one side of the table along with the herbs and flowers that had adorned Gwyna’s waist. On the tables around them sat the counsellors and chieftains of the three southern tribes with Ablach and ten of the Uathach warriors.

  This feast was serving as both the marriage celebration and the Imbolc festival and everyone in the hall seemed intent on doing justice to both. The wine and beer flowed freely and roasted carcass followed roasted carcass as every person put the fears and darkness of winter behind them. It seemed to them that Ablach was prepared to honour the treaty and stand with the southern warriors at the Causeway and they believed this signalled the end of the ceaseless raids and damaging border wars between the North and South. It was a time to celebrate and the fears of the forthcoming Adren war were washed aside in concerted drinking and drowned out by a carefree raucousness that some of the more experienced warriors recognised as little more than forced bravado.

  Arthur felt it too. As he talked to the various warriors and villagers before him he sensed an underlying desperation to the frenetic feasting in the hall. He thought it felt like people were indulging themselves one last time in something soon to be denied to them. Perhaps it was because he was preoccupied by these thoughts that he did not notice two separate things in the hall below him; the Uathach warrior growing ever more impatient in the line before him and the two hooded figures who entered the hall unannounced and unnoticed. He would never know that the two uninvited guests had been at his marriage feast.

  *

  As Arthur was standing on the steps to the hall looking at the girl he was about to marry, Terrill had arrived in Caer Sulis with the first of the supply wains carrying food and the new weapons. He also brought Fin Seren. When he had given her Arthur’s cryptic message she had insisted on accompanying him to Caer Sulis. Lord Venning would never have allowed his daughter to travel beyond the Winter Wood so she had not asked his permission. She had left her maids armed only with the poor cover story that she was walking the woods in the last of the winter starlight.

  The first that Captain Terrill heard of the great wedding was when he left the wains with those still working in the storage barns. His suspicions that Arthur and Seren were closer than
it seemed were partially confirmed when she had insisted on travelling with him but his deeper fears were not realised until those at the barn told them whose wedding it was. He had seen the first assault of bemused shock on Seren’s face as she heard the news. When they were alone he had questioned her and her expressionless face and absolute denial had been betrayed by her trembling hands. She had refused to answer any of his questions and insisted instead on going straight to the Great Hall. He in turn was shocked that she could feel this way about someone from outside the Veiled City. The Cithol privately regarded those living above ground and beyond the borders of the Winter Wood as simple barbarians at their best and as dangerous animals at their worst. That Fin Seren, Lord Venning’s daughter, could be attracted to one of them was just astonishing to him. That someone as gentle as Seren could be attracted to Arthur, whose very nature seemed to seethe violence, was almost beyond his belief.

  As he reluctantly led her towards the hall he cursed himself for not realising the significance of Seren’s previous meetings with Arthur. He had been suspicious too that Seren had stopped wearing her Elk Stone pendant at about the same time as one of Arthur’s visits. Only now was he certain that Seren had given it to Arthur as a token of her love. He still had no idea how far that love had gone; that Seren carried Arthur’s child.

  They stood close together in a shadowed recess between two burning brands near the entrance to the hall. No one noticed or paid them any attention and they kept the hoods of their cloaks pulled over their heads. Terrill was watching the drunken antics of those nearest to them with an increasing sense of distaste. The music he could hear from further up the hall sounded crude and rudimentary. There did not seem to be any kind of order to the proceedings at all and people were eating, swilling drink, shouting and falling over each other in a chaos that horrified him. The Cithol rarely hunted animals for food and the sight of so many half-torn and half-eaten haunches, ribs and legs of various animals made him feel distinctly unwell.