M. K. Hume [King Arthur Trilogy 04] The Last Dragon

by M. K. Hume

  Finally, Eamonn mustered the courage to answer Mareddyd’s slurs against Arthur’s character. ‘The whole argument was a trivial matter, as Master Taliesin explained, and I think we were all actually enjoying the prospect of a fair fight,’ he began. ‘I, for one, longed to see Mareddyd thrown down on his skinny arse, because he spent most of last season making my life miserable. Didn’t many of you feel the same way?’

  A murmur of agreement soughed through the tent – softly at first, but growing louder as the audience grew bolder.

  ‘But we allowed Arthur to fight our battles for us because he was bigger than we were. Our cowardice seemed harmless, for we thought that Arthur was strong enough to bear the brunt of Mareddyd’s resentment. We should have fought our own battles. By the gods, I’ve said a thousand more insulting things about Mareddyd and his lack of character than Arthur’s single fall from grace. So why did I let him face an older man who was a warrior in his own right? Why did I even permit the contest to take place? Yes, between us all we could have stopped the fight if we had made our feelings known. But we were afraid, and would not accept that united we are strong. Worse still, we were excited by the prospect of seeing Arthur grind Mareddyd’s face in the dirt. If we accept Mareddyd’s feeble excuses for his treachery, then we are just as guilty as he is because we know his words to be lies.’

  Even Taliesin was surprised by the edge of command in Eamonn’s voice. He might have been only fourteen years old and still far from his full growth, but his words were so compelling that every man present responded, even Mareddyd, although the warrior flinched at the contempt in Eamonn’s tone.

  ‘You called me every foul name imaginable last season, and I never demanded recompense. By your rules, Mareddyd, I should have called you to account a hundred times for your slurs about me. But, out of cowardice, I didn’t utter a word of complaint against you. Once only, out of all the times you deserved censure, did Arthur say anything that could have insulted you – only once – and that was today when he scoffed at your sword. For someone who claims he was frightened of the situation he found himself in, you had several opportunities to ensure your personal safety. Arthur apologised often enough and you could have retreated with your honour intact on several occasions. A frightened man wouldn’t have faced Arthur in physical combat. But then, in the way of the coward, you decided to be certain of winning by secreting a blade in your boot.’

  ‘You Cornish squib! You can’t match me in birth or in learning, so you seek to blacken my name by accusing me of cowardice. If I attack you now, or call you out, you’ll charge me with being a bully. You’re using your lack of height to demean me.’

  ‘Yet you’ve used your lack of height to demean yourself. You felt you could use a knife on Arthur because he was bigger than you.’

  Mareddyd’s face was flushed with fury and guilt. But years of swaggering braggadocio was a habit that was impossible to break, now that he was a man. ‘You have no right to criticise me, you bag of hot air. You’re nothing, Eamonn! Even the women in my family stand tall. My great-aunt was a queen!’

  ‘My father’s great-uncle was married to the legendary Ygerne, and the High King himself was my cousin, so you should beware how you toss family connections around,’ Eamonn snarled back at him. ‘There are many lads here whom you have scorned who can claim a finer bloodline than you. Assumptions of grandeur matter little here, Mareddyd, for the history of our people has no bearing on the character we display to those who know us. I’ll speak to you no more, whether you choose to stay at the Warriors’ Dyke or not. Belatedly, I stand for Arthur.’

  Then Eamonn turned his back on Mareddyd and waited beside the tent flap, leaving the accused to continue the diatribe of justification that had served him so successfully in the past. One by one, the young tribal aristocrats rose and turned their backs on him, before leaving the tent to join their entourages. Eventually, Mareddyd fell silent in a room where only three men still faced him – the captain of the guard, the enigmatic, judgemental Taliesin and the youthful Eamonn beside the tent flap.

  ‘Since this is the way you allow these curs to taunt me, I will have none of any of you, Taliesin. Everyone present tonight should dread the time when I become the ruler of the Dobunni tribe, especially if their people should have any need for strong allies. I’ll see all the tribes of the Britons turned to ashes for the insults that have been aimed at me this night. I’d prefer that the Saxons ruled our holy places than to offer aid to any of you. And you can tell that piece of shite, Arthur, that he’d best watch his back from now on. He’s my sworn enemy until death takes one of us.’ Then Mareddyd laughed, and the sound was an ugly, grating expression of contempt. ‘You too, Eamonn! You too! Your head will decorate my hall before my life is done. You shamed me and I will not forget you.’

  ‘You can only be shamed by what other men believe if guilt already lives in your heart,’ Taliesin whispered, knowing that he was wasting his time. ‘Go now, and make any excuses you choose to explain your return to your father. No one here will argue with any version of events that is not a direct lie. But you should be gone quickly, before the guards of some of these young men decide that you’re a danger to their masters. They may decide to protect their charges from your threats in a more permanent fashion. Arthur is well liked, and you are not.’

  Mareddyd spat on the sod, leaving the vile globule of phlegm lying at Taliesin’s feet. Then the young man turned on his heel and approached the captain of the guard, his hand outstretched to receive his confiscated blade. The captain placed the knife in his hand. Then he stepped away from Mareddyd, turning his back on the heir to the Dobunni throne with the studied insolence of a trained warrior, and left the tent.

  ‘You’ll regret this day,’ Mareddyd promised in a soft voice, his face bone-white and his clenched fists trembling with an anger that was barely contained. The childish threat was frightening because the Dobunni’s voice was utterly flat, belying the physical signs of powerful emotion revealed by his body. The air seemed cleaner once he had left the tent.

  Ostentatiously, Taliesin placed his boot on the globule of phlegm lying on the grass and ground it into the sod. ‘This wasn’t a good day’s work, Eamonn. With luck, Mareddyd will forget this silly incident when he grows to adulthood, but perhaps he won’t. However, the dyke still needs to be built and Arthur will be upset if his injury slows down its construction. We return to work tomorrow, and we will still boast with pride that we worked together on the Warriors’ Dyke.’

  Slowly, man and boy left the tent, leaving behind broken trestle tables and overturned stools, and the servants hurried in to clean the eating area before the light failed and night settled around them. Outside, a wind began to rise and set the forest to moaning as the breeze grew to a small gale, bending the smaller trees and forcing the predators of the night to scurry to safe cover as heavy rain began to fall.

  ‘May the heavens protect us,’ one of the older servants, a peasant farmer hired by Taliesin for the season, crossed himself in the Christian fashion, and stroked a runic amulet round his neck for added luck.

  ‘What’s your problem, Cobb? It’s just an early storm, not a reason for worry,’ a fellow villager answered as he staggered under a pile of used wooden platters, notable for the scraps of food left upon them by the aristocracy. The dogs would dine well this night.

  ‘Can’t you smell it?’ Cobb asked bluntly. ‘The storm reek, but worse, that only comes when the Wild Hunt is abroad and Cernunnos goes hunting for human souls.’ Everyone experienced a fleeting mental picture of the stag-horned god, huge and menacing, as he led the harrowers from hell. Even the Christians felt a frisson of horror at the thought.

  ‘You’re supposed to be a Christian, Cobb. The baby Jesus has driven the Old Ones out of this land, so how can the Hunt even exist?’

  ‘You’ll see, Brud,’ Cobb snapped, and his fingers strayed to the protective amulet again. ‘Men carry the Wild Hunt in them, so Cernunnos has been called up by men. I’l
l take my chances with baby Jesus and my runes. Perhaps both will protect me.’

  ‘You’re right about one thing: there’s a storm coming,’ Brud answered drily. ‘So move your arses, mates, or we’ll still be cleaning in the dark while the nobs are sound asleep under their warm dry furs.’

  Aye, but we’ll not all sleep this night, Cobb thought bleakly. Something frightening is coming. The dark years are beginning now, just as the Witch Woman warned the Brigante people. The Dragon King has been dead too long and the peaceful days are over. I had hoped to be safely in my grave before the bad times came again, but such is not to be my lot. Ah, Cobb, it’s the very devil to live in the shadows of great men, and the poor peasant always suffers, pays and dies. Hours later, the farmer’s thoughts were still bleak and dark as he made his way to his damp bed in the crowded servants’ tent.

  Outside, the black sky was riven with forks of white and yellow fire while the earth rumbled and shook with thunder. The trees cried as they were ripped from the ground by unusually strong winds, and even the nocturnal owls were forced to seek safe places where they could survive the terror that came from the heavens.

  Had anyone cared to look, the stars were blotted out, one by one, as the storm marched across the sky, so that heaven itself became invisible. Under his warm furs, with his wound stitched, treated and covered, Arthur slept with the innocence of a healthy animal, unaware that the margins of his world were shrinking as time turned Britannia into a cauldron of trouble.

  CHAPTER XI

  OF LOVE AND WAR

  The soul is placed in the body like a rough diamond and must be polished, or the lustre of it will never appear.

  Daniel Defoe, Of Academies: an Academy for Women

  That season was to live in Arthur’s memory as the last months of his boyhood, the period before time, war and violence swept away everything he valued. His wound healed swiftly, leaving a spectacular new scar so that he now had two white lines running parallel across his body, occasioning much curiosity when they were compared with his healed shoulder wound.

  Arthur hated being confined to his bed, so while he recovered he was permitted to carry out light duties working at the forge with Rhys ap Myrddion. A horrified Glynn was quite colourful in his description of Arthur’s fate if the wound tore open and permitted the invisible evils of infection to creep beneath the skin. So graphic and ghastly were Glynn’s word pictures that Arthur actually spent most of his time in his quarters until the wound was nothing but a pink-red scar stretching from one side of his abdomen to the other.

  After that, he enjoyed his daily sessions at the forge where the iron was melted for the construction of Taliesin’s chains. Once he could move freely, Rhys permitted him to ply the huge leather bellows that kept the fires white hot. Where Taliesin had found the large store of iron scrap needed to complete their task was beyond Arthur’s imaginings.

  ‘Your brother must have prised every nail and scrap of iron out of the tribes, not to mention pillaging Roman sites, to find such a store of metal. Is our little dyke worth all this effort?’

  Rhys grinned with a white and charcoal smile that was much brighter for the glare of flame that surrounded them. ‘My brother is . . . strange, as you are no doubt aware, but he’s rarely wrong when he obeys his instincts. And those instincts led him to you, Arthur, just as our father was led to King Artor a generation or two ago.’ He withdrew a long ribbon of iron from the forge as he spoke, and Arthur thought it resembled a coil of white rope that gradually flushed to cherry red as it cooled. With a sharp iron chisel in one hand and a wooden-handled hammer in the other, Rhys cut the pliant cord of iron into three . . . four . . . five regular strips a little longer than a man’s hand. From his position at the bellows, Arthur found it impossible to raise his eyes from Rhys’s deft gloved fingers. He watched as Rhys put down the chisel to pick up a set of long tongs and replace one of the short pieces of iron in the forge before nodding to his assistant. Using the muscles in his back and upper arms, Arthur brought the red-hot coals to shimmering life until the short thread of iron glowed white again. ‘I, on the other hand, have no gifts beyond those things that are perceived by my brain, my hands and my curiosity.’

  Rhys fed the glowing thread of iron through the last completed link in the chain, then twisted the white-hot metal into a perfect oval around the horn of the anvil. Using another set of tongs and his heavy hammer, he pounded the ring with perfectly judged force until small chips of red metal sparked in the hot, dry air and the two raw edges of cooling iron joined perfectly.

  ‘I consider myself to be a free man,’ Rhys added, and twisted the iron ring off the anvil and placed it in a wooden barrel of cold water, where it sizzled momentarily before changing to the grey of dead men’s lips.

  ‘You’re a natural man,’ Arthur said slowly as Rhys placed the next thread of iron on top of the hot coals.

  ‘So are you, boy. I see no sign of a white streak in that curly mop of yours, and you do not appear to be haunted by dreams or strange images in your head. We’re the lucky ones.’ Rhys lifted the end of the growing chain from the barrel and laid it on the anvil while the new thread became white with heat. Then he took the newly cooled ring at the end of the chain in his gloved left hand, bent the hot iron thread through the oval loop with his long-nosed pliers and wound it round the horn of the anvil. A few quick strikes of the hammer sealed the half-formed circlet, and the chain continued to grow.

  At last Rhys pulled off his gloves and used a tin dipper to douse his head with water from the barrel. Sighing with pleasure, he turned back to Arthur, taking in the broad shoulders, the keen eyes and the thick bones of wrist and ankle and lamenting the loss of the master smith who lived within this lad, who was still as malleable as the iron he was forcing to bend to his will.

  ‘I hear a screaming at the back of my skull, just there, when I’m in danger.’ Arthur tapped the back of his head with his knuckles. ‘Sometimes it starts with an itch, or a word or two, but whenever I’m in danger it just seems to come from nowhere.’

  Rhys leaned back against his anvil and crossed his arms across his belly, not in dread or out of a need for protection, but with the ease of a man who has always lived with wonders.

  ‘Your gift seems useful to me, even if it’s only in your imagination. Given your kin, I wouldn’t be surprised by anything you came up with in the way of talents we cannot see. Father was fascinated by those strange gifts, although he hated his own talent for prophecy. He lost it in middle age in some type of unholy bargain and it didn’t return until his last years, but growing up it seemed perfectly normal to me to have a father who spoke of flying ships of iron and journeys to distant stars. I’ve thought hard about some of Father’s more improbable weapons of war and I’m convinced they could be made to work by great and inventive minds.’

  ‘Your father was a living legend. Neither my mother nor my father has any such talent, but I understand exactly what you are saying.’

  ‘To Father’s best knowledge, Pridenow was the earliest of your family to bear this unseen affliction, although he managed to hide his fits from others.’ Rhys eyed Arthur carefully as he spoke, hoping the young man was mature enough to understand his colourful background. ‘Father’s stories say that Pridenow had cruel headaches which were passed on to his daughter, Ygerne, a woman who possessed true glamour and the power to draw men to her. No one ever thought of harming Ygerne, not even Uther Pendragon, who seemed to have been prepared to kill almost everyone else, regardless of their station. Morgan was obviously tainted, and gloried in it, while Morgause had a talent for long life, childbirth and power. I know that sometimes these gifts don’t seem to be anything more than odd coincidences, but you and I both know that they are real. Don’t you feel the oddness in your sister Anna? Doesn’t Ector’s wife sometimes make you wonder? Is it so odd then that you imagine warnings when you’re in danger? Be grateful for it, but tell no one about this particular skill, for they might make connections which could do
you harm. Do you understand me, Arthur?’

  ‘I understand, Master Rhys. I must admit that I wish I was free to choose a craft. How fine it would be to become a smith, or to learn the rudiments of healing. I try to imagine the freedom of choice, but I don’t believe that the sons of masters can ever have free will, for we are all born to serve our tribes. Such is the privilege and the punishment of leadership. We have a soft bed, food for our bellies and servants to smooth our lives, but in return we must serve our people, giving our whole selves to the welfare of the weakest, the least able and the most elderly as a sacred duty. Bedwyr believes this service to be an absolute obligation and so does my mother. I have thought about it a lot, and I have come to believe that they are correct. Power and wealth are only transitory, and their pleasures must be paid for. The voice in my head might be a part of that payment.’

  Rhys wiped his dripping face with a twist of old cloth. ‘You could be right, lad, but my brother expects his chain to be finished by the time the season is done, so it can be set in place before winter comes. Back to the bellows with you, young Arthur, and exercise your muscles in the service of the west. This chain must hold back the Saxon boats.’

  The approach of winter was scarcely noticeable in the fair but slightly tawdry city of Aquae Sulis. The wind was cold and the trees were relinquishing their leaves in sodden piles of brown sludge, but the walled gardens encircling every public building were still quite green, while the Roman predilection for fountains found full expression at every crossroad and in every courtyard.

  At first, Arthur was embarrassed by the baths for which the city was famed, for both sexes bathed there on a regular basis, separately and together. He had nothing against swimming – but in public? And naked? He felt sick at the very thought of baring his whole body for the amusement of a crowd of men, servant girls and food vendors. Huddled in his towel, he watched incredulously as Germanus and Lorcan oiled their bodies and used their strigils to clear the accumulated grime out of their pores before plunging into the hot pool, where they stood and jeered at their student. Sheer embarrassment drove him to oil his skin in imitation, but the strigil seemed shaped to cut and nick his underarms and upper thighs. He obviously lacked the necessary familiarity and dexterity with the implement.