For King and Country

by Robert Asprin

She considered for a moment. "Not until the High Council of Kings has met at week's end. I will be traveling home to Galwyddel then, and will take Medraut with me, to meet our proposed allies to discuss terms of marriage."

  "And what token might I give the king of Dalriada as evidence of good faith?"

  She lifted one hand, on which glittered a large gold ring. "My signet, with Galwyddel's royal seal. I will loan it to you the day you travel north to arrange the meeting, along with the precise message you are to carry."

  He nodded, satisfied. "And where, precisely, shall I bid the king of Dalriada to meet you?"

  "Along the coast, at the Lochmaben Stone Circle. Do you know the place? On the northern shore of Solway Firth, not far south of Caer-Gretna."

  "Yes, I know it," Banning said smoothly when Lailoken hesitated. "A fitting trysting place for a marriage of alliance," he added with a smile. Indeed, as an ancient shrine dedicated to Maponos, god of youth and music, Lochmaben was still famous in the twenty-first century for hastily concluded marriages between runaway lovers. And if Banning's memory served, it had also served—for several centuries running—as the spot where border disputes were settled. "I cannot imagine a more perfect spot."

  She lifted a brow. "Indeed? So long as you can find it without difficulty, I will be satisfied. Do this quietly and you will never lack for a home or money. Cross me," she added, eyes glittering like ice chips struck from a glacier, "and you will discover just how intense my displeasure can be."

  His borrowed mount, picking up Lailoken's abrupt surge of nervousness, shook its head and mouthed the bit. When the animal pawed restively at the ground, Lailoken booted him under the shoulder with a toe, eliciting a snort and an unhappy shifting of weight. Banning, speaking smoothly over Lailoken's discomfort, assured her, "I have only the interests of Britain at heart."

  "See to it that remains so. Meet me here again the morning after the High Council of Kings. We'll ride together to Caer-Birrenswark, for there is safety in numbers. From there, you will continue on to the coast and travel north by water."

  Medraut glanced curiously at his aunt. "Why by water?"

  Her glanced softened. "Because," she said gently, "a man riding north by horseback must pass the Antonine Wall. Our border guards allow no Briton north of the mile forts, just as they allow no Pict or Irishman south. Not without meeting heavy resistance." She pursed her lips, studying Lailoken. "You should pose as a trader. Yes, I think that would be best, to reduce Dalriadan suspicions. A British bard might think twice about sailing into Dalriadan waters, but traders eager for profit will sell to anyone with the coinage—including an Irish clan chieftain who has proclaimed himself king. Return by water, as well, when you bring our proposed allies to Lochmaben."

  "When shall we meet?"

  She considered the question for a moment. "On the night of the next full moon, I think. That will give you time enough to travel both ways. Find me there at moonrise. Take this now," she pulled a small leather bag from under her cloak. "You will have expenses to bear before leaving Caerleul, for a man who poses as a trader must have something to trade—and a pack animal to carry it. I leave the details—and much else—to your discretion."

  Lailoken accepted a small purse heavy with gold, exulting in his good fortune. Once back in town, he bought a fine riding horse, two sturdy pack horses, a variety of baubles such as women coveted for their necks and wrists, fine woolen gowns and kidskin slippers for delicate feet, several bottles of excellent wine imported from Rome itself, and a bale of hay to cinch down over the sets of panniers he bought for the pack animals, baskets which would carry the trade goods near the top, as a screen for the more lethal cargo carefully cushioned beneath.

  With Morgana's gold, he had no need to gamble for money, as Banning had originally intended. He still picked up the odd coin playing as a minstrel, of course, and spent many pleasant hours at the town's sandstone racing and gladiatorial arena, watching the games and cheering the crowd's favorites to victory. Banning, in particular, was fascinated with the arena and the games.

  'Tis a grand arena, Banning said the first time they entered the immense structure which stood like a red sandstone battleship at the edge of town. It's completely unknown in my own time. Doubtless the poor dismantled it for building materials, over the centuries, Banning mused, more's the pity. It boasted an outer, one-story colonnade of the same red sandstone as the legionary fortress. One end was gracefully rounded, typical of raceways from one end of history to the other, but the opposite end had been squared off, giving the outer portico a truncated, clumsy look, like an elongated horseshoe with a blunt, square wall closing off the opening.

  This puzzled Banning until they passed through one of the arched entrances cut into the portico. Sandstone starting gates had been built right through the squared-off end, a series of wide arches which formed stone chambers giving access to the track. A red sandstone balcony capped the starting boxes, roofed over to shelter officials who moved with a colorful flutter of woolen plaids stirred by the wind. A wooden machine something like the wheel of a sailing ship evidently controlled the heavy wooden doors of each racing stall. At the moment, these doors stood open, giving Lailoken and Banning a clear view of the open space beyond the back of the starting boxes. Runners and wrestlers stood waiting for the end of the foot race currently under way.

  What startled Banning most of all was the seating. Unlike other Roman-era arenas he'd seen, which boasted tiers of stone seats, Caerleul's outer colonnade enclosed multiple ranks of tall wooden bleachers, the highest tiers of which rose some twenty feet above the sandstone parapet. The bleachers gave the arena an incongruous look, reminiscent of a small-town cricket or soccer field—games Lailoken didn't understand, even when Banning attempted to explain the rules.

  Cricket's a bloody marvelous game, if you'd brains enough to learn it, Banning finally said in peevish ill temper. Now shut up and let me watch your idea of sport. Fortunately for Lailoken, who was coming to dread Banning's anger, his unseen guest enjoyed the barbaric splendor of the funerary games even more than Lailoken did. And so the week passed, very pleasantly indeed, with money in his pouch, games to entertain him, and lively music each night, with plenty of good wine to wet his throat. Even better, as one of the minstrels favored by the royal house of Rheged, he had access to the royal villa and the Dux Bellorum's councils virtually any time he wanted it. For the first time in his life, Lailoken had every luxury he wanted or needed within reach.

  All that remained now was the waiting.

  Chapter Nine

  The morning of Stirling's fight with Cutha dawned as dismally as his spirits: overcast and cold, with a wet wind whipping across Solway Firth from the distant, slate-grey Atlantic. Ragged, racing clouds were a low-scudding promise of more rain before midmorning or Stirling was no judge of late autumn weather in the border counties. Ancelotis merely grunted agreement after their mutual, quick look at the sky. Stirling, with a twenty-first-century soldier's appreciation of the need for cleanliness, nevertheless muttered under his breath about the tepid bathwater his servant Gilroy brought in a pitcher and basin, shivering in the cold air as the rapidly cooling water sluiced down his chest and back.

  Ancelotis, growing impatient with his bellyaching, finally said, The villa's baths are kept fired, you know. Meirchion and Thaney would hardly begrudge you a long, hot soak. Or if you're reluctant to trespass on Thaney's charity, the officers' baths at the fortress are kept heated, as well. We're hardly barbarians, the Briton king growled in an irritable tone, due more to pre-combat nerves than Stirling's naivety about the Britons' civilized manners. It's the Saxons who don't bathe or comb their hair more than once or so a month, he added peevishly.

  Stirling blinked, taken completely by surprise. The Roman baths were still operational? A delighted grin chased its way across his face. Jolly well fabulous! He'd arrange for a very long and very hot soak, at the earliest possible moment—say, right after his bout with Cutha. He couldn't think of a bet
ter way to soothe the inevitable crop of bruises and cuts he would pick up.

  Stirling had no sooner finished pulling on clean clothing and his armor, assisted by Gilroy, than Emrys Myrddin arrived. "An excellent morning to you, Ancelotis. One might have wished the weather to grant us more favorable conditions, but I have every faith you will prevail."

  "May your faith in my sword arm be justified," Ancelotis responded as they strode briskly outside to their waiting horses. Gilroy followed, carrying Ancelotis' spare weapons and shields.

  They rode through the town at a bracing trot, past cheering Britons who closed ranks behind them and followed eagerly toward the field. Little girls along the side of the road waved branches of greenery cut from pines and spruces before joining the throng at their heels and small boys darted in front of Ancelotis' immense charger, shouting gleefully as they dared each other to dash past the war-horse's enormous hooves. The horse snorted and tossed his head and pranced almost sideways down the road, proudly flicking the white feathers which hid his feet, slinging mud every which way and having a marvelous time with all the attention directed at him.

  Ancelotis let the animal dance, commenting laconically, He mirrors my feelings, belike.

  Stirling muttered, If all you feel is nervous tension, you're a better man than I am, Gunga Din.

  Gunga Din? Ancelotis frowned. Who or what is a Gunga Din? And why do you call me by the name?

  Stirling's ill-advised quotation left him trying to explain Kipling. Ah, yes, well, Gunga Din was a water boy, not a boy at all really, that's just a name given to natives who carried water to the wounded during battle. A rude name, I'm afraid, demeaning and given to a grown man who was both a native of India and a servant. Two things guaranteed to earn such a man scorn from the British soldiers who had gone to India to win an empire—

  British soldiers, fighting a war in India? Ancelotis interrupted excitedly. Building such an empire as exceeded Roman might? Emrys Myrddin has a piece of ivory taken from the tusk of an elephant that came from India, stolen, he says, while he was still a slave in Constantinople. Traders still ply the route from the city astride the Bosporus and the fabled realm of eastern spices and mysterious, veiled women. So far as I know, not one Briton has ever been there. This Kipling, then, was he a British soldier in India?

  Stirling tried frantically to recall details of Kipling's career. Not a soldier, exactly. Well, maybe he was, I don't remember that part of it, and I ought to. In my opnion, he was the greatest poet Britain ever produced, should've been Poet Laureate, the way he understood people and the military—

  Poet Laureate? Ancelotis interrupted again, his thoughts both excited and dreamy, this time. Now that's a grand idea, so it is, to give a laurel crown of victory to the greatest poet of the Britons...

  Stirling kicked himself mentally and tried to convince himself that nothing critical would be altered, surely, if the Britons decided to name a Poet Laureate a millennium or so before they were supposed to? Before Ancelotis could ask for the rest of Gunga Din's story, which put the British in a rather seriously unpleasant light, full of bigotry and pride and arrogance to a man who had given his life bringing water to wounded men who despised him, Emrys Myrddin interrupted.

  "Cutha," the one-time slave leaned in his saddle to speak above the crowd noise, "has spent the week carousing, an activity we have encouraged with plenty of wine and ale and a ghastly excess of mead, which they have drunk by the hogshead. That will give you at least some advantage, since we made very certain that the Saxons were up late last night." Myrddin smiled a crook-mouthed, conspiratorial little smile. "They're already celebrating Cutha's victory, in fact. Drank themselves into a stupor recounting the glorious blows he plans to strike against you. When we roused them at cockcrow, they could barely stand, much less offer anyone serious threat."

  Stirling nodded his appreciation. "While I've gone to bed early every night and have taken care to sleep well. It certainly ought to help. After all, 'Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.'" That quintessentially American tidbit of wisdom didn't come out with quite the same poetic impact, translated into Brythonic Welsh, but the idea came across well enough.

  Nicely enough that Myrddin shot a startled stare his way.

  Ah, bugger all, Stirling swore under his breath, if Brenna McEgan's taken shelter with Emrys Myrddin, I've just cocked it up as badly as a fool could manage.

  "Yes," the Druid said thoughtfully, his keen glance revealing his thoughts only too clearly. Ancelotis might be respected as a warrior and man of honor, but quite obviously he was not noted for the glib turning of a phrase. "A lesson worthy of an ancient Druidic master," Myrddin mused, "if somewhat awkwardly phrased," he added with a faint smile, "and lacking the proper meter and alliterations of a teaching epigram. The thought, however, is sound enough. Let us hope it bears the fruit we seek."

  "Right."

  Stirling vowed to keep his conversations with Emrys Myrddin as laconic as possible, during the eleven months, three weeks and one or two odd days he had left to stay in the sixth century. As they neared the arena, the cheering crowd which had followed them through town abruptly broke away, spilling through arched entryways that led to the arena's wooden seats, everyone scrambling eagerly for places not already taken. Emrys Myrddin ignored the pedestrian entrances and reined around toward the circus' farthest end. When they turned the corner, Stirling peered curiously through the starting boxes into the arena floor. He'd been to the arena several times during the week, but hadn't come down to look through the starting boxes.

  Ten racers clad in linen trousers were pelting down the long straight stretch toward the far turn. Sweat pouring down their bare backs suggested a multi-lap event nearing its conclusion, since the day was chilly and full of blustery cold wind. A wildly cheering crowd encouraged the runners to greater efforts. The thing that surprised Stirling the most was the large number of empty bleachers. There didn't seem to be enough people in Caerleul or even the surrounding countryside to fill so much as a quarter of the viewing stands. No wonder the Dux Bellorum worried about Saxon incursions, when apparently there weren't enough Britons left to do the fighting.

  Too bloody right, Ancelotis muttered, picking up one of Stirling's favorite swearwords. We cannot breed ourselves fast enough to replace men lost in battle. Meanwhile, our enemies arrive by the endless shipload from lands far larger than our own, all of them eager to plunder and seize ground that isn't already overcrowded with their uncles and brothers and cousins and their nagging wives and children.

  It was, God help the Britons, the classic predicament of civilized nations who found themselves under siege by migrating peoples or by cultures who bred themselves faster for any of a variety of reasons. The runners rounded the end of a low central spine, little more than a meter in height and not much wider, that divided the two straightways of the racetrack. Some of them skidded in the sand as they raced back toward the starting gates once more. Regular and deep holes in the long central spine, digging into its pitted surface like badger holes, suggested missing monuments which had once crowned the low dividing wall. Stirling wondered what had become of them, since the rest of the arena had been maintained well.

  To Stirling's irritation, Ancelotis didn't know, nor was the Scots king particularly interested in statues and monuments that had vanished more than a century previously. Doubtless any statue depicting a pagan deity had ignited the full and blazing wrath of Caerleul's Christian priesthood—and anything bronze had doubtless been melted down long since to recover the valuable metal. Britain had been providing the ancient world's supply of tin for centuries, but it was much easier to melt down existing bronze than create new batches of the alloy from its constituent metals. Bronze hadn't been required for weapons in centuries, of course, but many a luxury item was fashioned of it.

  It was rather sad, however, that the grand arena had been stripped of what had doubtless been its greatest finery, since what was left was heartlessly pl
ain and utilitarian. The one luxurious note stood halfway down the homestretch, shading the only section of stone seating in the entire arena: an awning of purple-bordered white wool, which protected Briton royalty from inclement weather. A wise precaution, given the threat from ragged, rain-heavy clouds racing low across the sky, in tattered banners caught in the crosscurrents of unpredictable winds.

  Kings from most of the kingdoms of Britain shared the pavilion, along with their queens, councillors, and a few princes of royal blood from distant Briton neighbors, representing their fathers and voting proxy in the council to be held tonight, after the last of the week-long funerary games. It had taken this long for some of the visiting princes and kings to reach Caerleul. Stirling couldn't help wondering what the outcome of the council would be, and how it might affect his mission.

  He puzzled for a moment over why the royal pavilion hadn't been set up on the balcony above the starting boxes, which would have offered better shelter from the weather, then decided the view would be better from mid-track. Stirling picked out Morgana under the awning, seated next to her nephew and her two very young sons, Gwalchmai and Walgabedius, names that had startled him when they'd first translated in his mind into their English equivalents: Gawain and Galahad, aged six and four, respectively. The boys had arrived from Trapain Law only the previous day, unable to travel any faster. Stirling's throat closed, or perhaps Ancelotis' did, seeing those two small figures huddled close to their mother. Both children had clung to her since their arrival, eyes wide and bereft. Little Gwalchmai, not quite seven years old yet, had gazed up at his uncle with a brave attempt at manliness in his little face. Ancelotis had crouched down in front of the child and very gently removed the heavy golden torque from his own neck.

  "You see this, lad?"

  The boy had nodded, wordless and hurt.

  "Well, my king, 'tisn't mine at all. It's yours." He placed the heavy torque around the boy's neck, where it flopped down his chest in a forlorn fashion.