Clash of Kings (20 page)

The boy was like a sea sponge that wholly absorbed his mistress’s words.

Mistress and apprentice were sitting companionably under her hazel tree, Myrddion practising with a scalpel on the skin of an apple, when Annwynn observed three warriors riding up the path leading to the cottage.

They brought their horses to a halt, the three large, grim-faced men, fully armed, looking at the boy as if he were some dangerous beast. Annwynn struggled to her feet, her face creased with concern and a dawning fear that Myrddion was in danger. She positioned herself to stand between the boy and the three bearded, hulking warriors.

‘How may I help you? I presume from your presence here that that you need a healer.’

‘Stand aside, woman,’ one warrior ordered, as he unsheathed his long, barbarian sword. ‘We mean you no harm. We want the boy to accompany us to the fortress of King Vortigern. He is the son of a demon, and the king has urgent need of him and his special talents. We don’t wish to hurt either of you, but the boy goes with us.’

‘But he is Myrddion, great-grandson of Melvig ap Melwy, king of the Deceangli clan. It’s not fitting to drag a young prince of both the Ordovice and the Deceangli tribes away from his home as if he were some common felon. Nor is it wise to draw a naked blade under a hazel tree. The gods will bring trouble to you and yours, for the hazel is sacred to even your barbarian peoples.’

‘King Vortigern decides what is fitting, woman. Enough! Tell the boy to put down the knife and come with us, or else we’ll tie him down, muzzle him so he can’t enchant us and beat him senseless anyway, before we take him to Vortigern.’

Myrddion shakily stood his ground and handed the scalpel to Annwynn.

‘Tell Gran what has happened,’ he whispered. ‘And ask her to guard my scrolls with her life.’ He held his hands out to the waiting warriors, who looked a little shamefaced before the courage of such a young boy. ‘And take care of my dog, sweet Annwynn. I haven’t named him yet, but he’s nearly dead of starvation. I’ll return, I swear to you!’

One of the warriors, the youngest, who had yet to grow a full, manly beard, coughed with embarrassment. He hadn’t yet learned how to tell lies with his face as well as his mouth, and Annwynn felt the firm earth shudder under her feet as if it were dropping away from her. Although Myrddion’s capture made no sense, she knew that the boy was in deadly peril, but she also recognised that she lacked the power to protect him. As the warriors bound his hands, she embraced him from behind.

‘Your ancestor, Ceridwen, will protect you. Be bold, speak truthfully and the Mother will protect you too. Here!’ She reached up and thrust his satchel into Myrddion’s hands. ‘Take it. My master swore that a healer always needs his kit when he hasn’t got it.’

As the warriors swept him onto the back of a horse where he was held tightly in front of the youngest warrior, Myrddion smiled warmly down at Annwynn as if she were the person needing comfort. Then, in a clatter of hooves and flying stones, the warriors galloped away to the east, bearing the apprentice with them.

Annwynn paused to tie up her trailing skirts, and then she ran as if all the demons of chaos were pursuing her. By the time she reached Segontium, her breath came gasping into her lungs and her heart was thudding painfully in her breast. Ignoring her exhaustion, she shuffled onwards, oblivious of the stares and superstitious mutterings of those citizens who took one look at her livid face and staring eyes and stepped aside. On the cliff path, the ocean breeze cooled her flushed skin and she knew that Olwyn’s villa was close.

When she reached the forecourt at the double doors of the villa, she leaned on the doorjamb as she tried to catch her breath.

‘Myrddion’s room!’ she gasped when Olwyn and her steward appeared, their eyes round and staring at Annwynn’s dishevelled appearance. Then, following Olwyn’s pointing finger, she staggered to the indicated door. As she pushed it open, another guest of the house leapt back from Myrddion’s sleeping pallet, which had been torn to pieces.

‘You! What do you want, Democritus? Have you come to pick over Myrddion’s bones before he’s even dead?’

Annwynn’s voice shook with so powerful a rage that she trembled visibly as she confronted the scribe. Fearfully, he stepped away from her shaking, accusatory finger.

‘What are you talking about, mistress healer?’ Olwyn whispered. Her dark eyes were suddenly very large in her ageing face. ‘Why should my grandson be near to death?’

‘He’s been taken by King Vortigern’s warriors. He was abducted by force, but before they carried him off I swore to him that I would tell you of his fate. I also vowed to protect his scrolls and his dog from this scum.’

As understanding dawned on Olwyn’s face, Annwynn rounded on Democritus, who shrank back against the wall when the healer raised her long nails towards his eyes.

‘You know why the warriors came to my door, scholar, don’t you? Myrddion told me that you lusted after my master’s old scrolls.’

‘He’s here because he asked to see them,’ Olwyn interrupted. ‘I couldn’t see any harm in it, so I allowed him to enter Myrddion’s room. However, I refused permission for him to search through my grandson’s possessions without being present myself. It seems that Democritus hasn’t respected my wishes.’

‘Anyone could have told Vortigern’s men about Myrddion’s birth,’ Democritus whined, every line of his face screaming his guilt. ‘Why do you judge me?’

‘Myrddion’s birth?’ Olwyn whispered. Then, rigid with anger, she turned on the scribe with all the venom of a mother protecting her infant.

‘Get out, Democritus! Leave this house before I set the field servants after you. My father will be informed of what you have done in spite of his warnings, so go now before I lose control.’

Olwyn’s face was parchment white, and her hands shook as if she had the palsy. Democritus ran as if the demons of chaos were after him.

‘This land is not wide enough to protect you or hide you from me and mine if Myrddion should be harmed,’ Olwyn yelled at the scribe as he fled. ‘I swear you will beg me to cut the memory of those accursed scrolls out of your living brain before you meet your death.’ She turned. ‘Someone find Eddius in the south field. Run!’ Her voice was hoarse with panic. ‘Please sit, Annwynn, for I swear you’re about to collapse. That worm! That cowardly, lustful worm! Plautenes, find Crusus and some wine for our visitor. She needs sustenance, and our cook will soon restore her to strength. Hurry! I swear I’ll murder Democritus if our boy has suffered harm. Hurry, Plautenes! Myrddion is in terrible danger.’

But Plautenes had already departed and the villa seethed with scurrying servants.

Eddius came running, his face smeared along the jaw with a line of soil from where he had been supervising the ploughing-in of the last of the crops before the winter winds froze the earth to iron. As he clattered into the atrium, Plautenes returned with a tray bearing beakers, a dusty flagon and a platter of small oaten cakes. Eddius saw at a glance that Olwyn was terrified and that Annwynn was exhausted from her frenzied dash from her home to the villa.

‘What’s amiss? Are the children ill?’ he began, but Olwyn cut off his questions and explained, with remarkable clarity, the terrible danger in which Myrddion had been placed by Democritus.

‘We must do something, husband, for Vortigern will kill my boy, thinking he is a child of evil.’

Olwyn was beside herself with dread, and Eddius longed to lift the fear from her shoulders, but only one solution presented itself.

‘I’ll send a message to your father. He’ll not easily permit one of his great-grandsons to be carried off so arrogantly. I’ll find Democritus as well, for I’ve a notion that Melvig will require an accounting from that creature.’

‘Aye, husband, but Vortigern won’t care. I must go to him and petition him to spare our boy. Gods, let me arrive in time.’

She hurried to the door, but turned back on the threshold to fix her husband with angry eyes. The gentle Olwyn was hidden now, and the Mother stared out at Eddius with an inflexible fury.

‘If any harm should come to my boy because of the Greek, I want you to petition Melvig to have him choked by being forced to eat the scrolls that he lusts after. The man was prepared to sacrifice my boy’s life for his own ambition and the contents of a sandalwood box.’

Beg as they might, neither Eddius nor Annwynn could shake Olwyn’s resolve to pursue the Saxon warriors. The stable boys were set to work preparing two horses for a long journey, while Plautenes and Olwyn’s maidservants were sent running to pack a small leather bag with clothing and prepare another containing provisions for the journey. With some difficulty, Eddius convinced Olwyn to take a manservant as a guard, and Plautenes offered his services immediately. Within three hours, against the wishes of the household and with the wailing of her children following her into the long dusk, Olwyn was on her way.

Had Myrddion been free, he would have enjoyed the journey from Segontium to Dinas Emrys. He had received few opportunities to examine fighting men and Saxons had been described to him much as monsters are used to frighten small children at bedtime. Even bound and uncomfortable, the boy listened intently to the warriors’ conversations, examined their dress and tried to work out the nuances of the Saxon tongue.

His personal guard, the young warrior called Horsa, was still child enough to while away the tedious journey by describing points of interest along their path. Sometimes he spoke in his own language and he would have been amazed had he realised how quickly Myrddion absorbed its common words, and how the boy’s retentive memory allowed him to catch at the meaning of the Saxon’s private conversations with his fellow warriors.

‘I would not have thought that Saxons were so kind to demon children,’ Myrddion told him as they rode through the gorse-covered hills. ‘The old people of Segontium have told me that Saxons
eat
children, but you seem civilised to me.’

‘I am Frisian – which is not exactly Saxon – and I spent years with my brother in the court of the Jute king, Hnaef, in Denmark, which your people call Jutland. Yes, I’m civilised, but I wouldn’t say such things to my brother if I were you, Demon Seed. He takes his ancestry more seriously than I do. I just follow him, even to this particular
Udgaad
.’

Myrddion looked puzzled at the unfamiliar word and asked what
Udgaad
was. Fortunately, Horsa was an even-tempered young man.

‘
Udgaad
is the Underworld, through which the world tree grows. Don’t you Celts know anything?’ He laughed delightedly at the look of consternation on Myrddion’s face. ‘See how it feels to be spoken to as if you’re feeble-witted?’

Myrddion drew his brows together and thought hard, then his brilliant smile washed over Horsa with genuine appreciation. ‘I do understand, and I’m sorry if I was insulting, but I wanted to know the truth. Saxons aren’t all fair-haired people, nor are all fair-haired people Saxons. Only a child, or a fool, would make silly comparisons. Is that right, Horsa?’

The young Frisian laughed and nodded, then kicked his horse into a canter for the sheer joy of feeling the breeze through his hair. Seated in front of him, Myrddion laughed with the shared pleasure of being young and alive.

In the future, many of the Saxons of Dyfed would present as lice-ridden, cruel barbarians, but these later remnants of a once-proud people were parodies of Horsa and his companions. Horsa was tall, over six feet in height, and his body was already ropy with heavy muscle at the shoulder, forearms, thighs and belly. Under his fur cape, Horsa’s dress was unremarkable and Myrddion chided himself for believing that all Saxons were primitive brutes who were only washed on the day of their birth. Horsa’s skin was mostly clean and his teeth were white and healthy. He had obviously chewed mint to cleanse his mouth, for his breath smelled sweet. With an engaging, quick smile, a pair of frank, pale blue eyes and a sprinkling of freckles across his nose, Horsa appeared to be a wholesome, amiable young man.

Nor were the other Saxon warriors so very different from their young companion. Their hair was pale, shaded from honey-blond to auburn-brown, and their beards were usually a little darker, luxuriant and often curled. Of course, compared with Eddius, Horsa’s companions were hairy and rather wild in appearance, but the boy recognised that they were the same as warriors everywhere, being primarily concerned with the weather, when they would next be paid and how to keep their kit shining and clean. Willing women also figured prominently in their thoughts and their conversation.

Other riders joined the three successful members of the king’s guard after the first day, and Myrddion was prodded and poked as if he were an exotic and dangerous animal. By Saxon standards, Myrddion was an unusual-looking boy with his long, blue-black hair, his forelock of white and his odd, narrow hands and feet. They even forced his mouth open and examined his teeth. Myrddion suffered his humiliation equably, including the stripping of his entire body to the skin while the warriors searched for signs of his demon ancestry on his torso and limbs. Finding no obvious signs of abnormality, Vortigern’s Saxons were disappointed, so they left Myrddion to dress as best he could with bound hands.

Myrddion was forced to beg for water on the second day because his captors seemed convinced that a demon’s seed neither ate nor drank. The warriors weren’t deliberately cruel, or even stupid in their misconceptions, Myrddion decided, merely superstitious and curious. But their fears and precautions caused him hunger, thirst and acute embarrassment.

On the evening of the second day, Myrddion was given the opportunity to prove his worth to his captors. Horsa was an adequate horseman, as were all his fellow warriors, but he was nervous around his huge, hairy-footed mount and only prevailed by brute force and the beast’s own passive nature. However, the most placid horse will still rear and fight his rider if fear applies sufficient spur. Under its hooves, the stallion saw a serpent coiled in the grass and, like all of its kind, was immediately maddened with terror.