For King and Country

by Robert Asprin

  Cutha's dismissive glance at Ancelotis as the Saxon strode through the doorway into the throne room sent the hairs on the nape of Stirling's neck bristling. Aye, Ancelotis growled silently, a mannerless heathen, well schooled in testing a man's temper with calculated and subtle insults. The Saxons have made an art form of discourtesy.

  Unlike the men of his bodyguard, who wore leather tunics to which iron rings or overlapping metal plates had been sewn, Cutha wore a heavy chain-mail shirt which fell just short of his waist. Cutha's conical helmet bore a rim of iron around the bottom edge, and two arches of iron met at the crown. The spaces in between sported thick horn plates. An iron boar covered with gold leaf had been welded at the top, strengthening the helmet as well as decorating it. An iron noseguard added to the young man's fierce appearance. Bindings made from linen sewn to leather wrapped his calves from ankle to knee, fairly useless as greaves, but effective at keeping the bottoms of his trousers from catching on things that might snag or trip him up.

  In his wake came another young man, thickset and short and flushed from exertion or nerves or both. Like Cutha, he wore sword and ornately inlaid wooden scabbard through a slit in the side of a mail shirt. Unlike Cutha, who carried a war axe with a surprisingly narrow cutting surface, this second young man wore no other weaponry. The men of their bodyguard wore axes, but not swords, and carried long thrusting spears with ash-wood hafts a good five feet long. The spears ended in bristling iron points. Circular wooden shields with iron-bound rims and cone-shaped bosses at the center, brightly painted in pagan designs, made for a glittering, barbaric display. Cutha's guards were staring, goggle-eyed, at the display of wealth on every side.

  Cutha stalked toward Thaney and the empty throne beside her, allowing a contemptuous glance to slide across Clinoch's beardless face without even acknowledging the boy's presence. Clinoch stiffened, but he did not say anything, neither in anger nor in nervous fear. He simply glared at his enemy with a look that promised blood. If Cutha noticed, he gave no outward sign.

  "Queen Thaney," the Saxon said as he halted several paces short of the twin thrones. He sketched a perfunctory bow which was nearly as insulting as his tone. "I would speak with your husband on important matters that touch your kingdom."

  Thaney, cool as a winter sky, didn't even bother to return the insulting bow, not even inclining her head in greeting. "You will speak your business with me, if you seek to discuss Rheged's business. Unlike your Saxon sows, Briton queens are fully capable of ruling. Particularly when mere Saxons come calling."

  Cutha flushed a dull red against the blond hair which stirred in the cold breeze drifting in through the peristyle garden's open doors. Behind him, Prince Creoda of Wessex, a Briton traitor Ancelotis would have spat on were they in Gododdin, paled so disastrously, Stirling wondered that he didn't keel over on the spot.

  Thaney, eyes cold and voice chilly, asked, "What is your business in our kingdom, Saxon? Why have you demanded a place in Rheged's council, as though you were Briton born, not an invader with pretensions to royal blood?" Her glance raked Creoda, tarring him with the same brush. The insult scored blood with Creoda, at least, whose face darkened in a flush of anger and embarrassment.

  Cutha's mouth twitched in feigned—or perhaps real—amusement. "Alliance, Queen Thaney. Profitable alliance against mutual enemies."

  What mutual enemies? Stirling wanted to ask.

  Echoing Stirling's thoughts, a new voice asked in a slow, amused drawl, "What mutual enemies might those be, Saxon?"

  Cutha slewed around and Prince Creoda actually stumbled in his haste to take himself out of Cutha's way. King Meirchion Gul had appeared from the garden, balanced lightly on the balls of both feet, eyes glittering as he swept a contemptuous glance across Cutha's men. Cutha regained his composure with difficulty as Meirchion Gul sauntered lazily forward, nodding toward Artorius as he took the high-backed throne next to his wife. "What enemies?" he repeated, crossing his legs at the ankles and giving Cutha a slow, infuriatingly dismissive smile.

  The Saxon narrowed his eyes. "Angles," he spat out. "Angles from Frisia, and Jutland Danes. They land by the shipload between our Saxon kingdoms of Sussex, Kent, and Wessex, and your strongholds of the midlands and the north, challenging and harassing our power, laying waste to farms and villages alike, killing and plundering. If we do not act to crush these brigands, they will grow so bold, there will be no stopping them." Cutha's smile deepened nastily. "But alliance between the Saxon kings and the kings of the Britons would crush our enemies between two strong armies and give further raiders pause when looking to these shores for plunder."

  And leave the Britons understrength, Stirling thought darkly. It would also put Saxon armies deep in the heart of Briton territory, able to strike at will in any direction, catching off guard any Britons fool enough to make alliance. It had almost worked for Hitler, making a pact with the Soviet Union long enough to rape Eastern Europe, then striking at the Russian heartland in a surprise betrayal.

  Only the bitter Russian winter had stopped Hitler's plan, as harsh winter weather had stopped Napoleon a century previously—and there was not a finger's length of ground anywhere in the British Isles with winters bitter enough to do the same for the Britons. With the interposing Angles and Jutes out of harm's way, there would be little to stop Wessex and Sussex from expanding to fill the entire island.

  King Meirchion answered Cutha with a scornful drawl, gazing up from under hooded eyes. "We will, of course, give your offer the full consideration it deserves. But we will make no such decisions for the next seven-day. Mayhap you have not heard, but we Britons honor royal dead this day. The kings of Gododdin and Strathclyde have joined their ancestors and we will spend the coming week honoring their memory. The heirs of Gododdin and Strathclyde have joined us this morning," he added, "as have the queens of Galwyddel, Ynys Manaw, and Caer-Guendoleu, by chance here on other business. You are welcome, of course, to participate in the funerary games while you wait for our holy observances to end."

  Funerary games? Stirling wondered, even as Cutha's eyes widened in a moment of unguarded shock. Prince Creoda's mouth dropped open. He stared wildly around the room while tugging at Cutha's sleeve in agitation. When Creoda saw Artorius in the shadows, saw the Dux Bellorum's smile of grim pleasure, the traitorous young Briton gave a start of pure horror, realizing too late the true nature of what the Saxons had blundered into here. Cutha ignored Creoda utterly, narrowing his eyes in swift recognition that the boundaries of his game had just shifted, perhaps dramatically. "My sorrow for your sorrows, King of Rheged."

  "We thank you for your concern," Meirchion Gul replied with fine irony.

  Cutha bowed slightly. "I am not familiar with your customs. What funerary games are these you speak of?"

  Morgana stepped forward with quiet authority. "They do honor to my husband's departed spirit, and to King Dumgual Hen's, as well," she said with a chilly look, "and give their spirits a glimpse of the pleasures awaiting them in the Otherworld. They will dwell in the Otherworld with the Christ as warriors in God's army and will fight against the Great Deceiver and all the powers of darkness. We will honor their bravery in this world, as well as the battles they will fight at God's side. We celebrate their birth into the Otherworld with feasting and contests of strength and skill and speed, wrestling and races on foot and horseback, prowess with weapons. Warriors will fight to the glory of their memories, and horses and dogs will be sacrificed to journey with them to the Christ's eternal kingdom."

  "Games well worthy of any king," Cutha murmured. "Where are these heirs you speak of, Meirchion of Rheged?" he asked, glancing away from Morgana as though she had ceased to exist.

  Clinoch stepped forward, flushed with anger. "I am Strathclyde's heir, Saxon! King Clinoch ap Dumgual Hen." The boy shot a lethal stare at Creoda, who gulped nervously, then snapped at Cutha, "Why do you ask?"

  "Why, to discover who my new allies will be." His glance slid unpleasantly across Clinoch's slim, boy
ish frame. "I would honor your father, as well, Clinoch ap Dumgual Hen. Many times have I matched swords with a man in ritual combat. It would please me to match strength and skills with Strathclyde's new king."

  Even as Stirling snarled under his breath, Ancelotis tightened his grip on the pommel of the sword under their shared hand and strode forward. "With all apologies to King Clinoch and no insult intended to his good name," Ancelotis growled, "I would prefer that Gododdin gave you the opportunity you seek." Cutha slewed around, taken off guard a second time and clearly infuriated by it. Ancelotis added, with an apologetic glance toward Clinoch, "Gododdin's king died before Dumgual Hen was killed, giving Gododdin the right of first challenge and response. I would gladly show Saxons how we honor a fallen Briton king."

  Cutha glared at Stirling. "And who are you, to issue such a challenge?"

  "Ancelotis, King of Gododdin. I'll meet you on the field, Saxon. Unless, of course, it is the habit in Sussex to fight only beardless boys and women?"

  Creoda gasped. King Meirchion toyed almost idly with the hilt of his dagger while watching Cutha through narrowed eyes. Young Clinoch gulped, looking both insulted and relieved to have escaped the challenge.

  Cutha snarled, "I will meet you on any field you choose! Name the time and place."

  "On the final day of the funerary games, Cutha of Sussex. I will meet you then with sword and lance on horseback and finish you on foot when I've unhorsed you. Match me, if you can."

  Cutha's mouth twitched. "Talk is cheap. I accept your challenge with pleasure."

  "Done."

  Emrys Myrddin stepped forward from the shadows. "Until then, you would do well to remember that this villa is in mourning, for King Lot Luwddoc of Gododdin was Queen Thaney's father. Take your men and retire until summoned to the field, if you have any respect for civilized customs. An escort will show you the way to your quarters. And take the dregs of Wessex with you. Traitors are not welcome in the councils of Briton kings."

  Creoda flushed and gulped nervously and would not meet Emrys Myrddin's eye. As the Saxons stalked out into the clear sunlight of early morning, Stirling resisted the urge to wipe sweat off his brow, mostly because his trembling hand would have betrayed him. What in God's name had he signed up for, fighting a sixth-century duel with weapons he scarcely knew how to use? Oh, for one lowly handgun and a bottomless supply of cartridges...

  Artorius broke the tense silence. "We have bought a little time, at least," he said quietly. "We must watch him day and night, lest he send a courier to Sussex with word to strike while we are in disarray. If such an attempt is made," he added in a voice like a steel rasp, "we kill the courier. No warning, no mercy. Cutha will not get a message out to his father."

  Ruthless, thoroughly dangerous...

  Exactly what the Britons needed.

  Stirling thanked God he did not face Artorius as enemy.

  * * *

  Lailoken hummed contentedly under his breath as he strolled through the crowded, muddy streets of Caerleul, carrying a heavy sailcloth bag over one shoulder and jostling elbows with the largest group of people he had ever seen in one place. Soldiers in armor haggled over the prices of knives made by the secretive island smiths of Ynys Manaw and Glastenning Tor, which lay many days' journey to the south. Shrieking children darted nimbly through the crowds with the quicksilver lightning of schooling fish.

  Gold-torqued royalty strolled in their silks and long woolen robes with ermine trim, with exquisite cloaks stitched from wild mink pelts or ruinously expensive, imported black sable—the coveted favorite of northern queens during the harsh northern winters. Other cloaks had been made from shining silver fox furs that caught the light like a full moon over snow. Kings and queens, arrogant young princelings and their elegant, fine-boned sisters strolled serenely along in self-absorbed groupings of two and three, even as many as five at once, a sight Lailoken had never seen in his life.

  He had never before been able to reach Caerleul in time for the councils of kings held in the ancient Sixth Legionary Fortress. The influx of royalty summoned to Caerleul by the Dux Bellorum and the soldiers and tradesmen who followed them, had jammed into every available inn, taverna, private house, barracks room, stable, privy, and hog lot within half an hour's ride of Caerleul's walls. It was a rare thing, indeed, to celebrate the rebirths into the Otherworld of two Briton kings at once and the merchants were making the best of it.

  Native townspeople hawked fine needlework and hand-dipped beeswax candles scented with herbs stirred into the heated wax—far cleaner to burn than smoky, smouldering tallow and a far steadier light, for those who wished to sew or read by candlelight. There were beautifully carved chairs, platters, and bowls with a knobbly, gnarled texture, cut from the burls that disfigured many a tree in the forested hills. Jewelers displayed cloak pins, ear bobs, necklaces and bracelets and animal-motif brooches, their patterns twisting and curling back on themselves. Belt buckles as ornate as the brooches were displayed next to ladies' waist-clasping girdles with delicate links of silver or shining, sunny gold.

  Farmers in from the countryside, having culled their herds in preparation for the long northern winter, sold their surplus of newly slaughtered smoked and salted meats, alongside freshly plucked and roasted chickens and ducks, all of which sent mouth-watering aromas spilling into the streets. The farmers jockeyed for the best positions at the open-air markets, squeezing in cheek-by-jowl next to fishermen with their reeking barrows and baskets crammed full of gleaming, silvery blind-eyed fish, mussels and cockles, scallops, shrimp, and freshwater oysters and eels, just pulled from the sea or scoured from every lake bottom for miles around.

  The fish drew appreciative and thieving attention from the town's population of half-feral cats and hungry dogs, as well, looking for a free meal while the tantalizing smells of fresh-baked breads, jellied fruits, slabs of cheese coated with thin layers of protective beeswax, and wreaths of dried onions and garlic cloves mingled with the other scents of abundance Lailoken mourned the inability to share.

  Tradesmen's daughters in pretty lace caps, their dainty white stockings peeping out from under tucked-up skirts, laughed and chatted gaily, calling out to townsmen they knew and attracting everything male within ogling range. The girls set out finely made wares, some of them imported at great cost and danger and all of them to be had at premium prices—but made to seem a bargain when sold by those dewy-eyed, well-endowed maidens. Lailoken returned a few sinful smiles without stopping, ducked into a narrow side street where small boys were playing a tag and fetch game with enthusiastic puppies, and unlocked the door to the room he had rented just a few hours before Artorius had summoned the bedlam through which he and his secret companion, Banning, had just walked.

  Lailoken shifted the heavy sailcloth bag to the floor, loosened the neck, and lifted out bottle after bottle to be set in rows on his new worktable. He had acquired the table cheaply from an inn which had suffered the effects of several hundred cavalrymen arriving from kingdoms scattered all across the British Isles, acting as guard escorts for the royalty. He made sure the firewood he used to prop up the broken table leg was securely in place, leveling the surface, then started setting out glass and rough-fired clay bottles and jugs. He'd been forced to scour the surrounding villages and several trash middens, just to find as many as Banning wanted, but this morning's trip had finally garnered enough to do a proper job of it and the work was well under way.

  Into each bottle or jug, he spooned chunks of boiled beef, stewed vegetables, and several spoonfuls of dirt, mixing the earth liberally with the food. He capped them with a stopper of wax, which he further secured against expansion of gasses—something invisible which Banning insisted would be created by some alchemical process Lailoken didn't understand in the slightest—by tying thin cords around them, mouths to bottoms, several snug twists each. He didn't understand why he was to do all of this, other than it would somehow magically produce a potent poison, their means of vengeance against the Irish
. More potent, Banning assured him, than even witch's bane, which had been used to poison wells in the face of advancing armies.

  Filling Banning's bottles took relatively little of his time each day, so Lailoken carried out a number of other tasks as well, borrowing a horse from one of his new minstrel companions and riding out to meet Queen Morgana at the time they had arranged. On the day of Cutha's arrival, they met near dusk in a grove of crimson oaks along the Roman road leading north. The grove sheltered a little stone shrine that was doubtless older than Christ, from the look of its carvings. The wind had lifted his new cloak and Morgana's long, unbound hair, fine tendrils of which blew across her face like strands of silk. She had not dismounted from her saddle, waiting for him on horseback, along with a young boy who could scarcely claim manhood, he was still so young.

  "Lailoken," she greeted him quietly, "my nephew, Medraut. Nephew, this minstrel proposes to help you to a wife."

  Medraut gazed at him with guileless, curious eyes. "Then we are well met."

  "It is my pleasure to serve Britain. When shall I leave, Queen Morgana, for the north?"