A Long Cloud (The Lion of Wales Book 4)

by Sarah Woodbury

  The archbishop gaped at Gareth, not understanding—or maybe even not hearing—his meaning, and then he gasped as the sound of men shouting and the clashing of swords reached them through the open doorway. Godric’s men were already engaged with Modred’s.

  Gareth still held the archbishop’s arm in a tight grip. “Is there any way out of this church other than through the front door?”

  “I-I—”

  “Is there?”

  More shouts and clashes came from the front of the church. Edgar drew his sword and ran forward to help Godric and his men, followed by Gareth, who, after a disgusted snort, gave up on the archbishop. Through all this, Dafydd hadn’t moved, and therefore King Arthur hadn’t either.

  Myrddin faced the archbishop. “Please allow me at least to see to the welfare of my wife and son.”

  Archbishop Dafydd looked Myrddin up and down. “Are you truly Ambrosius’s son?”

  “Yes.” King Arthur answered for him.

  But Dafydd was still looking at Myrddin, who realized that he too had to answer. “It seems that I am. My mother was Seren, maidservant to Juliana and mistress to Ambrosius. I was conceived during the Christmas feast before Ambrosius died and born in September, seven months after his death. Seren died at my birth, and Queen Juliana told the few people who knew of me—King Arthur and Gareth’s mother—that I’d died too. That is why my identity has remained hidden until now.”

  Myrddin paused. Listening to himself recite this story made his parentage suddenly far more real than it had been when Gareth had told him of it.

  Dafydd looked Myrddin up and down, as if taking in his appearance and worth in one go, and finally nodded. “The church is built on top of the old public baths. The crypt connects with these and leads to a tunnel that empties into the Severn River.”

  Myrddin understood what the archbishop was talking about in a way he wouldn’t have before tonight and went with Dafydd to the altar, hoping at the same time that these tunnels were better maintained than those on the other side of the city. With Huw’s help, he pushed at one corner of the altar to reveal steps leading down. When the altar was in place, nobody could tell what lay beneath.

  Nell squeezed Myrddin’s hand once. “Defeat them quickly and join us.” Then she hurried down the steps into the dark.

  Arthur gazed down at where she and Huw had gone and then looked to Archbishop Dafydd. “You would have me follow?”

  “I would, sire.” The archbishop didn’t even stumble over the honorific.

  King Arthur turned to Myrddin. “I will guard your wife and son with my life.”

  The two men saluted each other, one cousin to another, and then the king disappeared down the stairs, leaving the archbishop at the top of the steps with Myrddin.

  “Thank you.” Myrddin didn’t wait to see what the archbishop was going to do next. He ran for the door, reaching it in ten strides, and then he checked himself. A Saxon had broken through the defenders’ line and launched himself up the steps towards the church door.

  Godric’s men were fighting in a half-circle in front of the church steps, so after thrusting his sword through the approaching Saxon’s gut, Myrddin filled the space the man had come through. As he fought, the dream of King Arthur’s death at the church by the Cam River rose before his eyes. This wasn’t a waking vision, but merely a memory, and Myrddin prayed that he hadn’t averted that future only to fall prey to an identical one two days later. That had been Nell’s fear too.

  The original company of attackers consisted of upwards of thirty men. Myrddin didn’t know what had prompted them to come to the church. Perhaps they’d merely been on patrol or Modred’s men had discovered that the Roman house was empty. A town-wide alarm had not yet been raised, however—and while Godric’s men had been taken by surprise by the attack, they were a handpicked force and thus the better fighters.

  The battle was brutal and yet, despite their greater numbers, within a quarter of an hour, most of the attackers had fallen. The remaining dozen or so retreated to regroup, and Myrddin took that moment to do the same. “Back! Into the church before the general alarm is raised!”

  Myrddin wasn’t taking charge because he was Ambrosius’s son and heir to the throne of Wales—and his companions didn’t obey with alacrity because of his new station either. They moved because they could see as well as he that if Modred’s men returned in force, being outnumbered ten to one was not good odds.

  They scrambled up the steps, closed the door, and the last man dropped the bar across it. The walls of the church were thick, but the windows were not, and through them Myrddin could hear—finally—the bonging of the warning bell at the top of the palisade tower. The alarm had been raised, and if they didn’t get out of the church and across the Severn as quickly as possible, they were dead men.

  Archbishop Dafydd had remained at the entrance to the crypt and, as Myrddin reached him, he handed Myrddin one of the flaming brands that had lit the nave. “I followed after them most of the way to the Severn to make sure they were safe. They should be waiting for you on the bank.”

  Myrddin allowed all his companions to file past him so he could bring up the rear. “Thank you again. I mistrusted your motives and judged you unfairly.”

  Showing a sense of humor for the first time, Archbishop Dafydd gave a low snort. “I excommunicated your king.” Then he gave a slight jerk of his head. “I am sorry that Ambrosius did not live to acknowledge your birth. Illegitimate or not, any man would be proud to claim you as his son.”

  A man was deemed legitimate in Wales as long as his father acknowledged him, which Myrddin’s had not and could not have done, since he’d been seven months dead by the time Myrddin was born. Still, Myrddin had royal blood, and with the succession hanging in the balance, it seemed that even Archbishop Dafydd was willing to overlook that failure.

  “What will you tell Modred?” Myrddin said.

  “The truth.” The archbishop bowed slightly. “You, not Modred, are the rightful heir to the throne of Wales.”

  Myrddin gave a shake of his head, not understanding how Dafydd could have supported Modred all this time, but now that Myrddin had been named, he’d recanted. Myrddin didn’t have time to argue, however, and he didn’t think he’d waste his breath telling Dafydd that he should be fleeing with them. “What about his soldiers? They will batter down that door sooner rather than later.”

  “I will open it for them before that happens and berate them for disturbing the peace of my church,” Dafydd said. “They will search the nave, but none of them would know about the crypt, and they will not learn of it from me. Most haven’t darkened the door of any church, much less this one, in years.”

  Myrddin offered the archbishop his forearm, which Dafydd looked at for a moment before taking. Then he leaned forward and surprised Myrddin (and possibly himself) by embracing him. “God go with you.”

  “And with you,” Myrddin said.

  Once on the stairs, Myrddin assisted with the repositioning of the altar from below. It fell into place just in time too, as the first sounds of hammering on the door echoed through the stone church. As Myrddin loped along the low passage, he prayed that the archbishop could withstand the force of Modred’s rage without breaking—and that the Saxon soldiers wouldn’t expend their frustration on him rather than on the stones of the church. He estimated that they had a quarter of an hour—perhaps a half-hour at most—before it would occur to someone to send men outside of Wroxeter to look for them.

  Fortunately for Myrddin, this tunnel was less like the maintenance tunnel he’d been unable to enter and more like the one under King Arthur’s seat at Garth Celyn. Still, even taken at a run, the distance to the end seemed endless, but as a light appeared, Myrddin realized that he’d come hardly more than a hundred yards and had taken no more than a hundred breaths.

  Gareth met him twenty feet inside the door. “Your wife is the most sensible woman I’ve ever met.”

  Myrddin allowed himself a momentary glow
of pride before asking why Gareth would say such a thing.

  “She sent Huw up the Severn looking for a boat, and he found one. They used it to cross safely to the far side, and then, once we appeared, Huw ferried Godric’s men. You and I are the last.”

  Myrddin’s boots slipped in the grass that lined the bank, and he caught the branch of an overhanging tree above his head. He would have swum the Severn if he had to, but he was very glad that he wasn’t going to spend the rest of the night soaked from head to foot.

  The boat was a typical Severn rowboat, flat-bottomed, eight feet by four. Myrddin accepted the hand of Heard, who was now manning the stern, and stepped over the side, wavering a little as the boat took his weight. He moved quickly to the front to allow Gareth room to climb aboard too.

  “We could send the king, Nell, and Huw downstream in the boat while the rest of us cover the distance on foot,” Myrddin said. “South seems to me the best way to go.”

  “We have very little time to decide, whatever we decide to do,” Gareth said. “Modred’s men will soon realize that we are not in the fort at all and will send out riders—whether or not he knows about the tunnel.”

  “And that’s if Archbishop Dafydd can hold his tongue,” Myrddin said.

  The boat hit the bank, and Edgar reached down to grasp Myrddin’s hand and haul him out of the boat. “I say we strike out west for my castle at Montgomery. It’s twenty-five miles as the crow flies, and the closest stronghold.”

  “No,” Gareth said immediately. “We should go south, even retrace our steps to Buellt where we left our men. Modred will expect us to go west.” Still arguing, Gareth and Edgar came up the bank.

  King Arthur stood with his hands on his hips, facing west, as if he could see any of the above-mentioned places from here if only he looked hard enough. He turned to Myrddin. “What say you?”

  Gareth and Edgar immediately ceased speaking. A month ago, Myrddin would have stuttered out his reply, but Ambrosius’s paternity aside, Myrddin wasn’t the same man as he’d been then. “I say we make for Mt. Badon, if not Gaer Fawr a few miles further on, but even still not as far as Montgomery. The fort at Badon was destroyed and never rebuilt, but Gaer Fawr still stands and remains a formidable stronghold.” He turned to look at the others, and he could tell that his idea was being met with interest by their thoughtful expressions.

  King Arthur nodded and without looking at Gareth or Edgar, he instead settled a hand on Myrddin’s shoulder. “I have been a foolish old man, but I have learned the error of my ways. No longer shall Wales be divided between king and heir. No longer shall we fear Modred’s wrath.” The king wore no sword himself, but he surprised Myrddin by pulling Myrddin’s own from its sheath. “Kneel!”

  Myrddin obeyed on instinct, as he’d obeyed every command Arthur had given him since he was sixteen years old. They didn’t have time for this, but he didn’t have the voice to say as much to the king. Edgar and Gareth, Huw and Nell, Godric and all of his men also sank to one knee and bowed their heads.

  King Arthur settled the flat of the sword on Myrddin’s right shoulder. “Ten years ago, it was my honor to knight you on the field of battle. Little did I know that I was knighting my own cousin.” He drew in a breath. “Myrddin ap Ambrosius, I name you as my heir!” King Arthur’s voice was exultant. “Rise, Myrddin, Prince of Wales.”

  “Long live Myrddin ap Ambrosius! Long live King Arthur!” The echoing chorus rose into the air, a triumphant call despite the danger and the dark.

  “And now,” King Arthur said, motioning with his hands that everyone should rise, “we run.”

  ________________

  Thank you for reading The Lion of Wales series. The final book in the series, Frost Against the Hilt, releases April 17, 2016 and is available for preorder at Amazon and all Amazon stores.

  Frost Against the Hilt

  Love, magic, faith. All roads lead to Camlann as Arthur gathers his men for a single battle—a final great contest against the full might of Modred and his Saxon army. Wales will win all or lose all in one last throw of the dice.

  Frost Against the Hilt is the fifth and final installment in the Lion of Wales series. It is available for preorder at Amazon and all Amazon stores.

  To be notified whenever I have a new release, please see the sidebar of my web page: www.sarahwoodbury.com

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  Continue reading for the opening of The Last Pendragon, the first novella in The Last Pendragon Saga, set in dark age Wales.

  The Last Pendragon

  Rhiann knows that demons walk the night. She has been taught to fear them. But from the moment Cade is dragged before her father's throne, beaten and having lost all of his men to her father's treachery, he stirs something inside her that she has never felt before. When Cade is revealed to be not only Arthur's heir but touched by the sidhe, Rhiann must choose between the life she left behind and the one before her--and how much she is willing to risk to follow her heart.

  Kingdom of Gwynedd

  655 AD

  Rhiann

  The smell of smoke and sweat filled the hall, mingling with the overlay of roast pig and boiled vegetables. More soldiers than usual sat at the long tables, here to celebrate their victory. The mood was subdued, however, not the wild jubilation that sometimes accompanied triumph and caused Rhiann’s father to lock her in her room in case he couldn’t control the men.

  Today, the drinking had begun in earnest the moment the men had returned from the fight and settled into a steady rhythm Rhiann had never quite seen before. Here and there, a hand clenched a cross hung around the neck or an amulet against the powers of darkness, that should her father see, might mean death for that soldier. For a man to ask the gods for protection instead of the Christ meant he was less afraid of the King of Gwynedd than someone, or perhaps something, else. Rhiann had been afraid of her father her whole life and couldn’t imagine fearing another more, not even the demons that were said to walk the night, hungering for men’s souls.

  Perspiration trickled down the back of Rhiann’s dress, made of the finest blue wool that her father had gotten in trade from merchants on the continent. Welsh wool, while plentiful, was courser than that of sheep raised in warmer climates. The Saxon threat was enough to keep the Cymry within their own borders, but the sailors still took to the western seas, bringing in trade goods of wine, finely wrought cloth, metalwork, and pottery.

  For once, Rhiann’s father, King Cadfael of Gwynedd, had eaten little and drunk less. For her own preservation, Rhiann had always been sensitive to his moods and noted the exact instant his disposition changed. He shifted in his seat and rolled his shoulders, like a man preparing for a battle instead of the next course of his meal. A moment later, the big, double doors to the hall creaked open, pushed inward by two of the men who always guarded them. The rain puddled in the courtyard behind them, and Rhiann wished she were out in it instead of here—anywhere but here.

  She kept her place, standing behind and to the left of her father’s chair. It was her duty to tend to his needs at dinner as punishment for her refusal to marry the man he’d chosen for her. Rhiann hadn’t turned the man down because he didn’t love her, or she him; she knew better than to wish for that. It was a hope for mutual respect for which she was holding out. But even this seemed too much to ask for an unloved, bastard daughter. Consequently, Rhiann spent her days as a maidservant, albeit one who worked above stairs. She didn’t regret her station. As the months passed, she’d come to prefer it to sharing space at the table with her father and his increasingly belligerent allies.

  Silence descended on the hall as two of King Cadfael’s men-at-arms entered, dragging between them a young man whose head fell so far forward that no one could see his face. He was visibly collapsed, with his arms dangling over the guards’ shoulders and his feet trailing behind him. As the trio progressed along the aisle between the tables toward the king’s seat, the youth s
eemed to recover somewhat, getting his feet under him and managing to keep up with their strides. As he came more to himself, he straightened further.

  By the time he reached the dais on which Rhiann’s father sat, he was using the men-at-arms as crutches on either side of him. Because he was significantly taller than they, it was even as if he was hammering them into the ground with his weight. His footsteps rang out more firmly with every stride, echoing from floor to ceiling, matching the drumming of Rhiann’s heart. The closer he got to her father, the harder it became to swallow her tears. By the souls of all the Saints, Cadwaladr, why did you come?

  Rhiann had been her father’s prisoner her whole life, unable to escape his iron hand. The high, wooden palisade that circled Aberffraw had always signified prison walls to her, rather than a means to protect her from the darkness beyond. This young man had grown up on the other side of that wall. He’d not had to enter here. He’d had a choice, but had recklessly thrown that choice away and was now captive, just as she was. She felt herself dying a little inside with every step he took as he approached Cadfael.

  The young man, Cadwaladr, the last of the Pendragons, fixed his eyes on those of the woman sitting beside the King. She was Alcfrith, Cadfael’s wife, taken as bride after the death of Cadwaladr’s father. Rhiann couldn’t see her face, but from the back, the tension was a rod up her spine, and her shoulders were frozen as if in ice.

  “Hello, Mother.” Cadwaladr’s lips were cracked and bleeding, puffy from the beating that had bruised the whole length of him. Rhiann had heard they’d close to killed him, but from the look of him now, he wasn’t yet at death’s door.

  “Son.” Alcfrith’s voice was as stiff as her body.

  Rhiann’s father ranged back in his chair, legs crossed at the ankles to project his calm and deny the importance of the moment. “Foolish whelp. I’d thought you’d put up more of a fight, not that I regret the ease of your defeat. This will allow me to reinforce my eastern border more quickly than I’d thought. Penda will be pleased.”