Agravain frowned uncomfortably. He had no liking for the idea of the styles of warfare changing, and less for being told that he was wrong. He found a pretext for another quarrel later that day. But he left me more, though not entirely, alone afterwards, and sometimes watched me with a frown. I think that even he was beginning to notice the change in me, and it puzzled him.
By that time Morgawse was beginning to teach me, as she had promised. Not the important things, the summonings and dark spells, but the basic things: the characteristics of that universe that exists alongside of and within our own. I do not know all the law that governs it; neither did Morgawse. But some of it I learned, and many things that before I had not seen became apparent to me.
Once Medraut adjusted to the change in me, we were as close as ever, perhaps closer, though he gave me occasional measuring looks I did not like. But I took him with me on my rides about the island, told him more and more stories, and played the harp for him. I was becoming very good at singing. Any bard, of course, did far better, but I have some small gift for it. I no longer cared that my father considered it shameful for me to spend time harping. I no longer cared what anyone found shameful.
April arrived, a bright month, and my father still had not left for Britain. The war was late in starting. All the labored-over alliances of the winter fell apart again with the spring, and the British kings scurried to build new ones. Several blood feuds had started, and some old ones reopened, and a war had begun between two of our enemies who had formerly been staunch allies, springing from a quarrel over some plundered cattle. This catastrophe disrupted all the old alliances and added a new faction to the civil war.
All that summer the war wore on without anything becoming clearer, and Lot made ready to invade, fumed, and waited for an invitation. Agravain, sixteen years old and considering himself a man, polished his weapons and hoped.
In early August, Gwynedd’s old enemy Dyfed and our one constant ally Gododdin decided to attack Gwynedd. It was a sensible idea, but ill-timed, and our allies finally made the long-awaited step of calling for my father to join them. It was nearing harvest time, and my father knew he could not raise his army, but he summoned his subject kings and their warbands, and sailed by night past Dalriada to attack Strathclyde, and proceed from there to join his allies.
Morgawse rejoiced in her husband’s departure. She ruled the Orcades absolutely while he was gone, and she loved the power. She spent very little time with me. There were two reasons for this. The first was simply that, unlike the summer before, there was a great deal for her to do. Most of the men remained in the Orcades to bring in the harvest, and from the harvest she must see that the king’s tribute was exacted and collected and stored. But the more forceful reason probably was that she no longer needed to draw me to her. I had come, and been trapped. She did not think that I could escape.
Knowledge of sorcery had not brought me happiness, as I had thought it would. It gave me a secret place, and a secret cause for pride, yes, but I was never entirely certain whether what I felt was pride or whether it was shame. The burdens were heavy. I would see things that no other saw, and they frightened me. Sometimes I heard overhead, the baying of the Hounds of Yffern, which hunt the souls of the damned to Hell, and the clear silver sound of the huntsman’s horn. I puzzled at the meaning of this, and it always meant death. I came to realize that I would die, and I feared this. Morgawse also feared it, but she had done something to keep the hunter from her back, something she would not explain, and this gave her security. I envied her. I sought to know more, to cure my fear, to lighten the burden, but I only succeeded in deepening the fear and loading my heart until it sank into the black sea which sometimes possessed me. And I did not think I could escape, either. Nor did I truly want to. There was nowhere else to go.
It was a hard winter. It does not usually snow in the Orcades, but it snowed that winter. In northern Britain, where the war had by then settled, the cold clasped the mountains with a brutal hand, casting great drifts and barriers before the path of any warband hardy enough to plow through them. Usually, most kings allow their warbands to rest in the winter, and most of the warriors scatter to their own households, to gather again when the leaves first begin to bud. That winter was different.
In the east, the Saxons were restless. They had by no means been altogether neutral in the war, but had enthusiastically taken part in the plotting and politicking, and taken what advantage they could from the fighting. They made small border raids which grew into larger ones, driving further and further across the boundaries which had been established in blood in the last major war against them. Arthur, the war-leader of the old Pendragon, tried to fight them. But he was a clanless man, and relied on Constantius, the king of Dum-nonia, for his support. Constantius had his own warband as well as Arthur’s to pay for, and could not spare tribute enough to keep the whole royal warband, for which the whole of Britain had paid taxes when there was a High King. Many warriors followed Arthur by preference, giving up much of the wealth a good warrior expects, but still there were not enough to protect even a part of the border.
The Saxons are a fierce people, young, vigorous, wholly barbarian, overflowing with brutal energy. They seem, however, to have an ability to keep peace among themselves which British kings have never learned. Some of the Saxon kingdoms were officially tributary to the British High King, since they were founded as colonies by the Romans under the last emperors, and sworn to protect the empire. But they are always land hungry, for their numbers increase more and more as other Saxons come over the sea, and the newer kingdoms acknowledged no ancient oaths. Only the strength of the High King, and his warband keeps them from overrunning Britain altogether. Like wolves about a stick stag, they watched the British kings at war.
We did not fear the Saxons in the Orcades, of course, nor did we have to worry about the other menace to Britain, the Scotti, who came from Erin in their long war-curraghs to plunder all the western shores of Britain. There was no peace between the Scotti and the Orcades—my father had left Erin because of a quarrel with the kings who led them—but the raiders would not brave the long journey to our islands, where they would be met with the cliffs and walls of Dun Fionn.
There were no raiding ships so foolhardy as to brave the Irish Sea in winter, but the Saxons and, most of all, the winter itself, made the British kings cautious, highly unwilling to leave their fortresses. Only my father, faced with no domestic enemies, felt free to travel. Our warband went the length and breadth of Britain, winning rich plunder and supplying themselves from the goods of their enemies.
Medraut was always full of talk of the war, though even more full of talk of how Morgawse was governing. She controlled the realm in a way which made my father’s grip seem light. My father required supplies: my mother commanded his subject kings to ship their portion of the yearly tribute they paid directly to Gododdin, using their own ships to do so. They were reluctant, for the journey was long and costly, as well as dangerous, as the North Sea in winter is treacherous and cruel. They asked, at least, for a reduction of the tribute. She refused, and threatened to raise the tribute if they did not comply. One ship making the journey was lost, with all its crew. She told the king concerned that another shipload of tribute must be sent to replace it, saying, “You must pay for your carelessness.” Justice she administered severely, commanding always the harshest penalties without compromise, and no clan was permitted to conceal a quarrel or offence from her: somehow she discovered their most secret concerns, and summoned them to give her an account of them.
One subject king attempted to stint her on the tribute, and denied any “mistake” when questioned on the matter. Morgawse seized his emissaries as hostages, and kept one of these hostages even after the king had paid what was due and more. The king of one of the Western Islands, a land only recently won over by my father, was discovered to have been entertaining emissaries from the king of the Dalriada, a gr
eat kingdom to the south. She summoned him to Dun Fionn; he refused to come. She took one of the hostages he had given my father, had him killed, and sent his head back to his lord on a spear. Then the king did come to Dun Fionn. She pretended to believe his oaths that it was all a mistake, and she paid him the blood-price for his servant, but she took his own son as a hostage to supply the place of the one she had killed.
All that she wished for was done, over all my father’s kingdom, and if the subject kings hated her—well, they also feared her, and obeyed, Medraut and I also feared her, and adored.
She worked magic, too, that winter, in her room. Usually she was alone, but sometimes she let me watch. Whatever she was doing, it strengthened her. Every day she seemed more beautiful. She went bare-armed in the cold, her long dark cloak flapping from her shoulder, fastened with a brooch set with stones as red as blood. No blood, though, showed in her white skin, and the gaze of her eyes was softer than darkness. Any room she entered seemed to dim, and others, beside her, seemed faint and unreal.
Medraut still said nothing more about learning sorcery, but I could tell that he often thought of it. There were pauses in our closeness when he watched me, thinking, perhaps envying, or wondering what it was I saw which made me swerve about the empty air. But such times were of short duration, and he would come back near to me, asking me about the day’s depression or telling me his thoughts. We often rode out together on our ponies, thundering along at full gallop in the low hills, scattering the sheep and trailing plumes of steam, or stopping to throw snowballs. I was most nearly happy when I was with Medraut.
He had his ninth birthday that winter, and entered the Boys’ House to begin learning the proper use of weapons. He excelled among the boys of his age, as I had expected. He was quick, nimble, intelligent, and he learned rapidly. He was so much better than the others at riding that he had nothing to learn from his teachers. He was deficient only in skill in composing on the harp, but he made up for this with his speed in learning a song, and his enthusiasm for the music. Being together in the Boys’ House we were with each other most of the day, but we shared everything and never quarrelled.
When Morgawse asked me about Medraut, I found myself evading her questions. She was beautiful, she seemed to me perfect, she ruled the Darkness—but I did not want Medraut to follow her.
In March Lot and the warband returned, but only briefly.
I saw Agravain, and was shocked at the change in him. He had now completed his growing spurt—he was nearly eighteen—and seemed entirely a young warrior, and more like Lot than ever. He was tall, and his gold hair, which he wore long, to his shoulders, glowed in the sun. The whole warband was in fine condition. Though the winter fighting had been difficult, the plunder had been rich, and there had been plenty of time to rest—but my brother stood out among them. He had a fine bright cloak, jewelry won from the men of Gwynedd and Strathclyde, Elmet and Rheged, where he had fought; he had mail-coat, and his weapons gleamed. He rode up to the gates of Dun Fionn behind our father on a high-stepping horse, carrying the standard. The people of Dun Fionn, and the clansmen from the surrounding countryside who had come to watch, cheered to see their king and his son together, so splendid they were. Agravain grinned and raised the standard, the warband laughed and shouted the war-cry as one, and the people cheered even louder.
Agravain was once more pleased to be home, to see Medraut and me again. He told us about the war, about the long series of carefully planned and successful raids, about how he had killed his first man in a border clash in Strathclyde, how he had travelled over all Britain, and once even fought with a Saxon raiding party in Gododdin. He had become what he had been destined to be: a warrior prince, a someday king of the Orcades. He no longer resented my few small talents, but accepted my gains in skill with a good-humored laugh and some praise, glad to see me, eager to be friendly. He was confident, and had no more need of pettiness. Medraut was very impressed, and held Agravain’s great spear while Agravain talked, stroking the worn shaft. I listened, but mainly I watched Agravain. Splendid sun-descended hero, knowing nothing of Morgawse’s “greatest power,” of the strength that lies in Darkness. I envied him.
He did not stay for long. After checking the state of the islands and collecting more warriors, Lot sailed off again. The war was going well. The young men were as anxious to return to it as to a mistress they found beautiful.
By May, when I had my fourteenth birthday and left the Boys’ House, the situation in Britain seemed to have taken a definite shape at last. My father stood firmly in our old alliance with Gododdin and Dyfed; Powys and Brycheiniog opposed him uncertainly and Ebrauc squarely—the middle kingdoms of Britain, all anxious to have a Romanized, anti-Saxon king—and finally Gwynedd, the first claimant to the High Kingship, in a shaky alliance with Rheged and Strathclyde—the anti-Irish, anti-Roman party. In the balance was the kingdom of the East Angles, a Saxon kingdom which had sent envoys to both Dyfed and Gwynedd during the winter, and Dumnonia, the most Romanized British kingdom, resolutely neutral. It appeared as though a few pitched battles would decide the war.
But, in June, all plans were swept away together.
The Saxons, as I have said, were restless. Those who had been settled longest raided the most widely, killing, looting, carrying off men, women, and children as thralls, but chiefly seizing lands. They needed it. Since the borders were last determined more Saxons had come to Britain: relations, fellow clansmen, fellow tribesmen, new families drawn by the promise of better land, families, ousted from old lands by new invaders, and single men drawn by the desire for war and adventure. They all wanted land to farm, to own, to build their squat, smoky villages on. They had much of the best already. The old land of the Cantii, the gentle hills and woodland about the old heart and capital of Britain; the fenlands that had belonged to the ancient tribe of the Icenii, and formed another province; the oldest Saxon kingdoms, Deira and Bernicia, given by the Roman High Kings to their Saxon mercenaries—all these were theirs, and it was not enough. They were officially subject to the British High King, successor of the Roman High Kings, and they had sworn him the same oath the British kings swore, but they never thought of keeping it. They resented the British who kept them back, when Rome itself had fallen before their kind. They needed only a small excuse to start them on a full-scale invasion of Britain.
And, in June, a great force of Saxons landed on the southwest coast, the Saxon Shore, taking the Roman fort of Anderida, allying themselves with the South Saxons and sweeping into eastern Dumnonia, crushing all before them. Their leader was a man named Cerdic, and they said that he was a king such as men would follow to the gates of Hell. They certainly followed him into Dumnonia. And what Cerdic and his tribe began was continued by the other Saxon tribes. First the South Saxons, then the East Saxons, then the tribes of the Angles, the Jutes, the Franks, the Frisians, and Swabians all swept into their neighboring British kingdoms, not just to raid but to settle there.
Despite this, the British did not turn their attention to fighting the Saxons. The civil war had gained momentum now. There were blood feuds involved in it, and honor, and many ancient hatreds. A man will not suddenly drop so old an enmity for a new one. The Saxons had been defeated before and could be defeated again. So the civil war continued, and the Saxons were allowed to seize portions of the eastern marches, while Cerdic began forging a kingdom. The western lands, such as Gwynedd, which did not have a border with the Saxons, were pleased that their British enemies were in difficulties; and everyone agreed that Dumnonia had been too large before, nearly the whole of an old province; and that it was well that the principal sufferer from the invasion was the one neutral kingdom. My father was annoyed at the Saxons and with this Cerdic, but he was confident that, when the war was over, he could see that the Saxons got some of the land they wanted and that Cerdic, after acquiring honor and a kingdom, was conveniently assassinated (it is not safe to allow great leaders to live
among the enemy). Then a Britain slightly reduced in size would be ruled from Dun Fionn.
So, after some dislocation, the war might have continued, had the invasion not elicited another claim to the High Kingship.
Uther’s war-leader had been the lord Arthur, from the time that Arthur was twenty-one, and Uther could have chosen many others for the position than this one of his many illegitimate sons. Arthur was twenty-five when Cerdic invaded, and had been fighting the Saxons throughout the civil war, supported only by Dumnonia, of all the British kingdoms. All acknowledged that he was a brilliant war-leader, the most innovative and successful since Ambrosius Aurelianus, who was the first High King after the legions left. And yet, no one had expected that Arthur would take sides in the struggle, or, indeed, that he would do anything but fight the Saxons. But when he saw the Saxons invading on a large scale and realized that the Britons were not going to drop the civil war to fight their common enemy (he thought half like a Roman, when it came to such matters) he was apparently “provoked,” the circumstance my mother had warned against.
He rode with the royal warband to Camlann, the royal fortress of Britain, abandoning his lonely and massively outnumbered position against the Saxons. There he met Con-stantius, king of Dumnonia, and there he declared himself High King, Augustus, and Pendragon of Britain.
This produced more effect on the kings of Britain than Cerdic’s invasion had. But Arthur ab Uther did not leave them any length of time for their shrieks of protest at usurping bastards. He raised the largest army he could and attacked first Brycheiniog and then Dyfed. He took the royal fortresses of each land after subduing and dispersing the war-bands, each time defeating forces larger than his own. The kings of both countries were forced to swear him the Threefold Oath of allegiance, and to provide supplies for Arthur’s forces. This accomplished, he proceeded to conquer Gwynedd.
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