When the morning sun’s fingers crept over the stone sill of my window and the nurse brought in our burbling four year old son Milo to play with us, the dark thoughts were dissipated for a time and I held hope of healing for my sorceress. I had to give her time, and life was improving, but as always there were the dispatches. I had a kingdom to manage, and it was unravelling.
First came news of the Saxons, who were collecting ominously powerful new strength. There were reports from beyond the Wall of a Pictish gathering, reports on which I focused, as Allectus could well be behind them. Raiders had burned settlements and an abbey in the northwest, far on our side of the Wall. There was significant news from spies of a revolt by Christians who had been dispossessed of their lands for treason against the old emperor, and not least was a rumour that the Augustus Maximian had now subdued the Alemanni beyond the Rhine. Released from that urgent business, he was supposedly turning his thoughts and his energies to recover the lost colonia of Britain. It was a huge threat.
Guinevia came into the chamber and leaned on the mensa where I was working. “I wish I could line these enemies up one by one,” I grumbled. “It’s a mess keeping them straight in my head, I feel like a juggler with too many objects spinning at once.”
She yawned and rubbed her eyes. “I could chart them for you, easily enough,” she said casually.
Something jangled in my brain. “Chart them?”
“Yes,” she said, smoothing a strand of hair from her forehead. “I can just put them down on a piece of papyrus, make a map of them and tell you what each is doing.”
Maybe my lower jaw made a noise as it hit my chest, or maybe I imagined that. “Tell me what they are doing?” I echoed her.
“I can view them, watch them without ever leaving this room,” she said simply. “And I can give you an eagle’s view of the kingdom.”
What she told me and showed me in the next turn of the sandglass gave me hope that with the aid of her knowledge, we could take Britain back for ever. First, she sketched what Myrddin had once shown her: a view from the sky of the islands of Britain. Guinevia had trained as a scribe, and she had the powers of an adept of a mighty witch goddess. Instead of offering the usual Roman itinerum’s list of places along a road, she could draw on her mental view of the land to produce a chart that showed the positions of settlements, roads, rivers and mountains, all displayed as if looked at from above, from under the wings of a hawk or an eagle. But that was not all.
From Myrddin and a group of Mesopotamian magi, she had gained the power to send her mind out to far places where she could see what was happening. She could see the people, hear the wind, feel the warmth of a faraway sun, all as it happened. She could not hear what those people were saying, but she could see them clearly in their most secret conclaves, at their very actions. As well as this tremendous ability to view events far in the distance, she had developed a way to reliably peer into the future. This she explained to me as I tried to grasp its staggering implications.
“When I found that I could send my mind out to view in a remote place what was happening, I wondered if I could also see what would be happening in the future. So I devised a small experiment. I told my maid to choose two objects without telling me what they were. One would represent ‘Yes,’ one would represent ‘No.’ The question I posed was simple. Would her lover’s fishing boat come back within two days? When the time was up, she would show me the thing that meant ‘Yes’ if he had come back. If he had not, she would show me the ‘No’ object.
“I would not know before the two days were up what either object was, but after two days, I would be shown one of them. Once my maid had decided on the objects I would be shown in the future, I went into my chamber and sent out my mind, and I saw a shield.
“Two days later, as planned, she showed me the object that was relevant to events. Because he had not yet returned, she showed me the ‘No’ object. It was a shield, just as I had seen, and it closed the circle: I had foreseen what I would be shown, and it was correct.”
Guinevia had made the tests more elaborate, but they still did not fail her. By choosing objects that were not similar, she could easier identify the symbol that would reflect a future result. It was critical that she should be shown the correct object after the event had happened, but if that were done, she could predict events. She could tell me if I would be successful in battle, she could tell me if Maximian would invade, she could predict the future. But that was not all.
By sending out her mind, she could also tell me what was happening at this moment. It was how she had seen Allectus plotting with the Picts, how she had witnessed her father being boiled to death by my traitorous lieutenant. Thanks to her Druidical learning and the painful price of her suffering, I had a psychic spy who could tell me of my enemies’ actions as they performed them, even if they were scores of miles away, even if they were safe inside their own strongholds. It was a weapon more powerful than any sword like Exalter, more potent than any fleet or army. It was a secret armament that could save Britain.
So I planned to start with the Picts. They’d been a thorn in my flesh for a while, raiding across the Wall, burning settlements and taking Britons as slaves. They had broken the agreements we’d made, had not sent the tribute they’d promised. I’d tried to slap them down, but our last expedition had failed. When we tried to pincer their army they had slipped through our steel noose. This time, with Guinevia’s vision to guide me, I could trap the troublesome bastards and bring them to heel.
I had put aside the endless reports concerning supplies and rosters and was pondering this pleasant thought when a commotion at the gate below my window attracted my attention. Guards were bringing in an unusual coffle of shackled prisoners. They were led by a tall Celtic woman whose fiery hair hung in a single braid down to her waist. Behind her was chained another woman, equally tall, whose fair hair was surprisingly worn in the style of a fashionable Roman matron, low across the forehead and tightly curled. A big shaggy-haired brute shambled behind the two women, well shackled and with a battered and bruised face that spoke of resistance to his capture. Behind him trailed a dozen more brigands wearing an array of tattered finery, much of it clerical and likely plundered. One, in full monk’s cowled habit, had an empty scabbard at his belt and looked around furiously, his face red with anger above his blond beard. The coffle was brought up at the rear by a pair of villainous brigands chained to and pulling along a small handcart that was sheeted and roped, and probably contained plunder. I called down to the guard to halt while I went to examine them.
“Got this lot near Carnforth, trying to sneak back to their ship, but it had already gone – we’d chased it off, lord,” said the centurion. “They tried to fool us with a fake hostage and pretended there were more of them so we didn’t get too close too soon. It paid off at first, but the Scotch one, that bishop over there, the one with too much to say, led the others right into us just before dawn. I think he was trying to reconnect with the others, and got it wrong.”
The women were eager to talk, the bishop and his men admitted nothing and claimed to have been spreading the gospel of the Jesus prophet, and the surly, black-haired brute simply spat at me. Their stories were simple and gelled with what I’d heard. One group had been separated from the rest of their longship’s crew and when they had returned to where they’d left their vessel, it had already sailed without them. After some muttering in Gaelic to get their stories straight, the others said they had never seen the first group before, but it was obvious enough to me that they had been raiding together as a joint force.
“They fooled us for a while, lord,” admitted the guard captain. “Made us think there were more of them than we could cope with. This one,” he gestured at the redhead, “pretended to have been their hostage, but she’s as savage as any of them and worse than most.”
The Celt smiled sweetly at me. “Can we have our cooking pots, please?” she said, nodding to the wrapped plunder. “We only came here to t
rade.”
The guard sighed and shook his head. “She’s giving me an ear ache again. They burned five or six farms, sacked an abbey and gave the abbot a good spanking. He won’t be sitting down between prayers for a while. Oh yes, most of the abbey goods are on the cart.”
I nodded. “Bang the captives up, we’ll deal with them later. Take anything useful on the cart to the quartermaster, get the coin and silver to my aide Androcles. I’ll send thanks to the abbot for his generous donation. It’s good to see the Christians wanting to help keep Britain free.”
The furious-looking monk overheard what I said and spoke up loudly. “I am Bishop Iacomus Candless,” he said. “I represent Mother Church and it is sacrilege to take what is rightfully hers. Set me and my men free, and return our goods to us.” He paused, then added: “At once.” I probably flexed an eyebrow at this chained, muddied wretch with the imperious manner, but I responded softly.
“I am Arthur, Imperator Caesar Britannicus, Marcus Aurelius Mauseus Carausius, the dutiful, fortunate and unconquered Augustus,” I said slowly. “You will be pleased to be my guest, and your accommodations, dear Bishop Candless, are waiting for you, so please do not delay us in our hospitality.” I turned to the centurion. “Do have care about the good bishop’s quarters,” I said.
The soldier grinned. “Yes, lord,” he said. “I will give it my full attention.” As the prisoners moved away, I saw the bishop take a kick up his hindquarters from the centurion’s nailed caliga. Not a good time for churchmen’s bottoms, I thought, if that abbot, too, was standing to pray these days.
XXVIII Javelin
That day, the hunting had been good. The beagle pack had worked with the big hounds and had scented, tracked and brought to bay a scarred old tusker of a wild boar. He had made his defiant stand in a thicket of brambles, but the canny dogs had wormed in after him and he burst out with Axis grimly hanging onto one ear, Javelin on the other, a shaggy yellow Agassian hound called Aurum ripping at his gut and a couple of game little beagles biting furiously at his hooves. The infuriated pig turned to shake one dog from his ear, and Aurum was ripping into his belly. When he turned his attention to Aurum, Axis had his great fangs tearing into the pig’s throat. I stepped forward with my heavy ash-hafted boar spear to stick the beast, but my mutilated foot slowed me, and one of my house carls was quicker.
His blade was into the boar’s wide chest as the beast lunged forward, its impetus driving the iron deeper. The man tried to lift the pig like a hay bale on a fork, but the weight was too much and he skidded to one knee. I skipped sideways as nimbly as I could and drove for the beast’s ribs but another houseman was again quicker and his blade hit the pig in the throat, stopping it before it could reach the grounded man. Finally, I put my blade in under the ribs, into the beast’s fighting heart, saying a prayer to Mithras as I did. The thrust was all that was needed. The furious beast was dying, slumping sideways. The dogs, bloodied from shoulder to paws, were mauling at the expiring boar and we let them have their reward for a few moments before calling them off.
My blood-spattered house carls, panting and grinning, slapped each other and me on the back and we laughed like boys and boasted noisily about what a feast we’d have that night. And we did. We ate and caroused in the domed Roman hall in Chester that had been a council chamber, a splendid edifice unlike any other. Ingenious engineers had created it by rotating several arches to support a roof made from concrete that was lighter than any stone. It intrigued me, and I called on a military bridge builder to explain how it could be.
The fellow said the Romans had invented a liquid rock from a mix of rubble, lime, volcanic ash and sand. They mixed it with water and poured it into wooden moulds. To make the dome, the old Romans had constructed scaffolding and moulds, packed the mix into it then poured in water. Because concrete is much lighter than stone, it could be supported on the stone walls and pillars below, where stone would have been too heavy. Its ability to be shaped also was an advantage, allowing concrete to be made into the dome shape that creates such spacious, airy chambers.
What the engineer told me next made my military mind buzz. This concrete would set underwater, and when seawater came into contact with the mix it triggered a hot chemical reaction that set the whole mixture quickly. I wondered about an application to make bridge piers that might allow us to cross unfordable rivers without the enemy’s knowledge. It was an idea that could be extremely useful one day…
I came back to the present when Guinevia tugged at my sleeve. “The floor is warm,” she hissed. “I think the building is on fire!” I smiled. My widely-read Druid had never been in the hall before and knew nothing of the hypocaust that provided piped heating under our feet and through the wall tiles. I explained it, and though she looked at me doubtfully, I later noticed with pleasure that she had slipped off her sandals and was warming her feet on the flagged floor. When I teased her, she blushed. “My father’s hall was regarded as very fine,” she said. “It had a wood-planked floor over a wide pit that was filled with straw to keep it insulated in the winter, but it was chilly. The walls were just wood reinforced with wattles and mud. There was a fire in the middle, but it was cold around the edges of the hall, and it was always smoky because the smoke’s only way out was through a vent in the roof.”
It was a splendid evening, Guinevia seemed to be recovering and, though pale, was smiling and gracious and listened attentively to the musicians who accompanied several bards in a musical story-telling contest. I had no ear for the music provided by a couple of reed flutes and a lyre, though I enjoy the sound of drums and trumpets, but the bards’ stories were wisely-chosen epics of battle and hunting, of monsters slain and sea voyages taken. I enjoyed them, though I noticed Guinevia sometimes yawning surreptitiously.
It was a rare evening of relaxation. The wild boar meat was good, we had hare and pheasant, root vegetables, fruit, soft cheese, mead and some thin red wine from Gaul. I was a tired and satisfied Imperator that night, when I unpinned my silver and amber badge of British office and slipped onto our sleeping pallet beside my returned queen.
However, before I could sleep there began one of the worst hours of my life. Guinevia’s maid, who acted as nurse to little Milo, rushed into the room, screaming and hysterical. In her arms was my son, limp and covered in blood. The nurse was shouting: “The dogs! The dogs attacked him!”
I was on my feet, grabbing for my scabbarded sword Exalter where it hung, racing for the door, throwing aside the sheath and belt and bursting into the child’s chamber. Both my hounds were in there. Axis was in the far corner, in the shadows, panting hard. Javelin was lying near the door, his broad chest sheeted in blood, his jaws open, gasping, and dripping gore. He looked up at me and thumped his tail feebly, but did not rise to his feet. I looked at his golden brown eyes, and he gazed up at me, remaining still, and unusually not rising. The blood was puddled around his great paws and I said: “You treacherous killer! Why? Why did you attack my son?” He was looking at me with what flashed through my mind was reproach, but I was committed to the swing. “Why did you?” I said. They were the last words he ever heard, and I hacked down hard at my hound’s neck.
May the gods forgive me, but at least he died painlessly, silently. Axis, curiously motionless in his dark corner, growled and I turned to kill him, my other hound, then Guinevia was at me, grasping my arm, tugging at me. “Milo is unhurt! He’s not injured!” she was screaming. Behind her I heard the thuds and clatter as guards came running. I turned, stupid with rage and fear at what she might say. “What?” was all I could say.
“Milo is fine. It is not his blood.” I still did not comprehend. A movement from Axis caught my attention, and he groaned and slid to the floor. A guard was entering with an oil lamp and in its light I saw that my big dog was lying on his side now, blood puddling under him, too.
I stepped forward and caught a gleam in the shadows to my left. Teeth. I moved towards it, the lamplight moved and I saw a large, humped shadow in its o
wn pool of blood. “Lights!” I shouted, and two or three lamps were raised as the room began to fill with people. I moved towards the gleam of teeth, Exalter readied to strike. Then I saw what I had done.
The motionless, shadowy hump was a dead wolf, its throat torn out. I swivelled to see Axis. He raised his head and thumped his tail weakly against the floor. The flesh of his ribs was torn open, I could see the white gleam of bone. I went to my knees beside him, hearing a scrape and thump as a guard ran a spear into the dead wolf’s carcass. Axis licked my hand and seemed to sigh. The odd angle at which his forepaw rested showed me that it was broken. His pelt was hideously torn open, he was bleeding profusely.
“Get a medic here!” I shouted and glared around me. “Get a medic, now!” I tried to raise my big hound, but he groaned, so I eased him back down. Guinevia, weeping, was kneeling beside me.
“The dogs saved Milo,” she said simply. I moaned aloud and left her petting my black hound’s lacerated head. I stumbled as I picked up Javelin’s body from the floor, his noble head lolling, near-separated by my killing sword. For the first time since I was a boy, I wept hot tears.
My faithful dog had given his life to save my child from a predator wolf, and I had rewarded him with death. The medic rushed into the room, scared-looking and tousled from sleep. “Save that dog,” I sad harshly, pointing to Axis. “If he dies, it’s your back that will be torn open.” Then, tear-stained and humiliated, I stamped out of the room to compose myself.
Later, we found scratches on Milo’s neck, marks we believed were inflicted when the wolf had seized him in his cot. From the punishing wounds on my hounds, we saw how they must have taken on the gray killer and fought him to the death. Axis had escaped with the lesser wounds, but they were still terrible. His ribs and head were lacerated, his forepaw broken, but even lamed, he must have fought on, his gallant heart refusing to give in.
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