Clash of Kings (41 page)

On a wave of enthusiasm, Baldur and another grizzled veteran of dozens of battles took their leave at dusk. As they set off, with only the bare essentials for the gruelling journey, Hengist felt a weight lift from his mind. He watched the steady, loping run of the two warriors as they disappeared into the deepening blue shadows of the tree line.

‘Baldur has survived a long time because he is clever in sea, wood and war-craft. He will succeed. Now, Gunter, let’s consider your conundrum.’

‘Con . . .’ Gunter repeated, his weathered face screwing into wrinkles of confusion.

‘A problem, Gunter! Don’t ever – ever – question my decisions again. Since you will not go to Rutupiae, then you shall find Vortimer at Durovernum. But be very sure that I’m not sending you to Vortimer so you can be murdered, or Ambrosius can be the one who punishes you. I’d do that myself, if you really annoyed me.’

‘I understand, lord.’

‘In fact, your argument against my plans tells me that you are a man who is prepared to speak your mind. I am hoping that you have the wit, the courage and the ability to lie with the bland face that is needed to convince those fools that I really would surrender. Baldur’s warriors won’t return for another three nights. During this time, you will return to the Celtic encampment outside Durovernum.’

Gunter nodded, relieved that Hengist was permitting him to redress his lack of loyalty.

‘I have prepared this gift to tempt them.’ Hengist threw back the lid on a simple wooden box that he always carried as a part of his travelling kit. The warriors sighed as they glimpsed heavy rings set with cabochon gems, a lump of gold, coins, and an arm-ring of particular beauty.

‘This box contains all the wealth that Horsa and I have collected in fifteen long years of wandering. The arm-ring is all that is left to me of my father, so I consider it precious, while the rings came from the Danish king who bought our swords when Horsa was little more than a boy. Coin by coin, we set aside wealth for our house and our children. Take the large nugget of gold as a surety of my good faith, and promise Vortimer the entire Saxon hoard if he is prepared to comply with my wishes. Horsa is gone now, but his sons deserve his share, so I am gambling everything I own and hold dear on your ability to convince the Celts that we are snivelling barbarians without honour.’

Cowed by the weight of his responsibilities, Gunter nodded, wide green eyes round with the complexity of Hengist’s plot. ‘I will do all that a man can to achieve your ends, Thane Hengist. All!’

‘Even unto death, Gunter? Even if they torture you to try to discover my plans?’

‘Even this, lord. I will kill myself before I say a word.’

Hengist clapped the warrior on the back. ‘Then you may have to sacrifice your own life, Gunter, for all men will speak when they undergo determined torture. It is my hope that you will deal with Catigern rather than his brother, for Vortimer scents danger under every bush. But Catigern would give his birthright for treasure, so if the gods are with us you’ll bring Horsa’s body back to me in company with a large contingent of Celts. They’ll believe that this trifle is part of a larger treasure, so they’ll search for it. Catigern will expect treachery, but he will intend to betray me anyway. We might all die here in this villa.’ Hengist paused to allow the dangers of his orders to settle into Gunter’s mind. ‘You will offer Vortimer the whole of our treasure in return for Horsa’s body, the burial of the Saxon dead and safe passage for our warriors to proceed to Rutupiae. He’ll agree to your demands, but he’ll lie. Your life will hang on Celtic greed.’

‘As Horsa often said, my lord, we live only to perish,’ one warrior put in. ‘I, for one, will gladly die to wipe the smiles off those smug red faces.’

‘And I,’ Gunter agreed. He kneeled and kissed Hengist’s booted foot.

‘Then eat and rest, for tomorrow we go into the hypocaust and make it habitable for a hundred men. In two days, our plans will begin to unfold.’

Hengist looked out into the darkness. His eyes and heart were icy, colder by far than the glaciers he had seen in the cold north in shades of blue and white that resonated with beauty and terror. Once, as they stood at the foot of a great wave of ice that towered above them, Horsa had joked about the cold, but Hengist hadn’t truly recognised the truth behind the laughter. Until now.

‘Those little men in the south think that Hades is hot, brother, but we know that Hell is cold, cold, cold. Wait for me, Horsa, and watch from the Abode of Heroes, for the day of reckoning is coming and it will surely be bloody.’

Vortimer rode out of Durovernum after dismissing the levies from Londinium and Durobrivae and completing the dispersal of the city’s gold to the various troops, while keeping a measure of the Saxon spoils for Ambrosius. Although Hengist had left little of value behind him during the retreat, Vortimer had ordered the looting of the dead, who had given up a fortune in golden torcs, arm-rings and weaponry. Most of the troops from Dyfed and Glywising rode with the king, and only a token force of two hundred men were left with Catigern, who had been instructed to drive every surviving Saxon into the sea.

Vortimer’s decision was sound, for Catigern had a boundless capacity for hatred and he would enjoy the destruction of the Saxon stragglers. Besides, Vortimer was discovering why his father had always been distrustful of those closest to him, preferring hired mercenaries to good, patriotic Celts. In recent times, Vortimer had become engrossed with watching Catigern out of the corner of his eye, in the full knowledge of his brother’s growing ambition.

Nor was Catigern without his own cadre of supporters. Capable of easy, superficial charm and blessed with an open, handsome face, Catigern had no difficulty in winning the affections of those men and women who were easily seduced by surface values. Vortimer was all too aware that he cut a grim, cheerless figure beside his younger, illegitimate brother.

Vortigern rode away from Durovernum with relief. He had won the battle, and he would ensure that Ambrosius knew all the details of his victory. A shiver of mingled distaste and premonition stirred the hairs on his arms as he remembered Catigern’s desecration of Horsa’s body. Hengist would desire blood price beyond doubt, and if Catigern were to be killed because of his foolish bravado, Vortimer would shed no tears.

Within the folds of his woollen cloak, Vortimer shivered once again. Brushing aside the concerned hand of his nearest guards-man, he tried to banish Hengist’s face from his memory. Vortimer would for ever remember the expression of those wolf-like features when the Saxon had seen Horsa’s head leap from his shoulders during the melee on the riverbank. Vortimer knew that he would be unable to sleep soundly until both Hengist and Catigern were dead.

Let the gods be kind for once! Let them kill each other!

So Vortimer set his face towards the southern hills and Venta Belgarum, carefully choosing the words of flattery that would make him an integral part of the kingdom of Ambrosius Aurelianus.

Far away, among hills whose steep escarpments rose like broken teeth in serried ranks towards a grey sky, Myrddion and Annwynn laboured in the healer’s tent in Vortigern’s encampment. The tribes who had sworn to deny troops to the old king now found themselves embroiled on the fringes of an ugly civil war. The ancient Melvig ap Melwy of the Deceangli and the Ordovice king both sent food, fresh men and words of conciliation to Vortigern, choosing to be offended by the treasonous actions of his sons. Nor did they love Ambrosius, a stranger and an outlander, who had swept into the soft lands of the south and now lorded his Roman ways over the southern kings. Neither the Deceangli nor the Ordovice knew the High King of the south, because he had made no overtures to them when he forced them to live under the thumb of Vortimer and his bastard brother Catigern.

‘Faugh! It’s a filthy business all round, and my dear Olwyn would be sickened by the carnage that Celt has brought to Celt,’ Melvig commented. ‘Still, strange as it is, my daughter’s killer is the best man to lead us through these troubled times.’

By and large, the people of the north agreed with Melvig, but they counted the days until Vortigern and his whole army marched away to some other place. Any other place!

By now, the healers’ tents were almost empty of patients, for their charges had mostly recovered from their wounds and returned to their homes. Between them, the healers had saved large numbers of the wounded and only a few gravely ill warriors still needed Annwynn’s medication and Myrddion’s surgical skills. Even Vortigern had survived Balbas’s incompetence, although he would walk with a limp for the rest of his days.

Myrddion had grown very fond of Tegwen, who had gradually relaxed in his company until the healer had been able to discover something of her past. She had been born at Gelligaer in the south, on the fringes of the grey mountain chain, where her parents had scratched out a precarious living shepherding the small, woolly mountain sheep. The family cottage had been built of stones, piled one on top of the other with the cracks smeared with clay to keep out the winds that blew cold off the mountains. The roof, with its primitive rafters, was covered with thatch and the single room within the house had a hard-packed sod floor. Life was hard, and Tegwen and her brothers were rarely warm or free from hunger.

When Tegwen was twelve, disease had struck Gelligaer, and when the contagion had passed she was the only survivor from her family. For the first time in her life, Tegwen had been forced to dig graves out of the iron-hard shale of their land. She would have perished of starvation, but she was a grown woman and she sold her body for food. Then, at a time when she was desperate through abuse, rape and violence, Gartnait had appeared and offered his protection.

‘Gartnait was an ugly, misshapen little man who never truly believed that I loved him, but I did. At a time when I needed someone to take care of me, Gartnait was there – gentle and sad. He had beautiful eyes with long, curling lashes, just like a girl. His irises were golden and tawny, like a wild cat’s, and most men thought he had a bad temper. But he only shouted to cover how sweet he was inside, like a juicy apple that has grown irregularly and small, but still tastes wonderful anyway. I miss him every day.’

Myrddion was moved by Tegwen’s candour, and he realised that when her spiral curls were combed and her face was clean she had a piquancy and charm that few women possessed. Perhaps it was the lines of suffering around her fine eyes, or the delicate line of her neck as she bent over a patient, but Myrddion found himself becoming more and more conscious of her presence as she moved through the healer’s tent.

Quick-eyed, empathic Annwynn noticed Myrddion’s interest and grinned behind her hand. The boy was almost a man and she had nearly despaired that he would ever take a man’s interest in the other sex. His curious, far-ranging mind was so in control of his emotions that it left little space for the desires of the flesh, but at last, it seemed, Myrddion was experiencing the first stirrings of lust.

Tegwen understood his interest as well. Women are quick to recognise the sideways glances of a man and the way his eyes linger on breasts, lips and the sweet curve of female hips. Tegwen knew that Myrddion was beginning to see her as something more than an ageing camp follower who laboured with him to tend to the injured and dying. Privately, she sought out Annwynn, the wise woman who ruled the leather tents of the hospice.

‘What shall I do, mistress? Master Myrddion looks at me with the eyes of a man, but he lacks the experience to put his desires into action. He’s so young and beautiful, Mistress Annwynn, that he makes me afraid. What do I do? What do I say? I’m too old and far too tired to be of any use to him. I’ve . . .’ Her voice faded, and her head dropped with shame. ‘I’ve been a common whore since I was twelve years old – not out of choice, but because everyone has to eat. But I’m not for someone as kind or as nice as the master.’

Sluggish tears slid from her eyes, and with a sharp pain in her breast Annwynn recognised the lost child who existed in Tegwen’s body. Life had not been kind to the shepherd girl from Gelligaer. She had lost every thing and every person she had loved, and now circumstance were tearing away the friendship and comforts of the battlefield hospital as well.

‘Myrddion has never known the touch of a woman’, Annwynn murmured. ‘Until now, he has never felt the lack, but I can see his mind working when his eyes follow you. Whatever you do now, Tegwen, your friendship with my boy will never be the same again.’

Tegwen wept bitter tears of loss for the brief period of security she had known. ‘Where will I go? What will I do with the rest of my life?’

Annwynn enfolded the woebegone young woman in her arms. ‘Oh, darling, did you think I would set you adrift in the world? When my dear boy has such true affection for you? Never! After . . . afterwards, you shall go to Segontium, to the villa of Eddius where you will be given work and a bed. Eddius has served as Myrddion’s stepfather in all but name, so he will happily welcome you.’

Tegwen hid her face and wept in earnest. Years of despair had made her old. A decade of shame had soured her disposition as she had loitered in the lee of Gelligaer’s shabby inn and accepted any man with coin in the putrid alleyway where she plied her trade. Crude sex that assailed her body with bruises, contusions, small broken bones and, on one occasion, a knife slash over the abdomen, had taught her to distrust and loathe men almost as much as she hated herself. For five years Gartnait had filled the hollows in her heart, and, out of gratitude rather than passion, she had followed him all over Cymru as he carried out the dangerous trade of soldiering. Now she stood on the brink of a new life, one that could resurrect the child who had been murdered by circumstance.

‘What should I do, Annwynn?’ she asked, her eyes beginning to smile in the way of women who are desired. ‘Should I seduce the young master?’

‘No, child! He’d see your advances as a mark of pity or gratitude and so reject your gift. He has pride, does my wild young lordling, so you must wait for the time when he seeks you out. Perhaps it will never come. But Fortuna and our Mother have plans for my boy, so I believe he will come to you when they have decided that he should.’