Morning's Journey (3 page)

If Gyan could be as well-favored at that age, she would consider herself blessed.

“Chieftainess Ygraine.” Merlin thumped fist to chest in salute. “It truly gladdens my heart to see you looking as lovely as ever.”

“Ha, you old flatterer.” Fists on hips, Ygraine grinned. “Your silver tongue could confound the devil himself.”

“Would God that it could be so, my dear lady. The devil is a subtle and persistent adversary, indeed.”

“Some things never change.” Ygraine flicked a hand at Merlin’s legion badge. “Including you. Still playing soldier, I see.”

“Your son refuses to let me retire.” Merlin glanced, smiling, at Arthur before returning his gaze to Ygraine. “He has his father’s single-mindedness of purpose.” The smile widened. “And his mother’s powers of persuasion.”

As Ygraine returned the smile, Gyan got the distinct impression that she and Merlin shared a private jest.

Arthur exchanged a look with Bedwyr that bordered on consternation. “If this is true,” Arthur said, “then I must persuade you both to continue your reunion elsewhere so I can start the cavalry games.” He motioned at the restive crowd. “Before we have a riot on our hands.”

Ygraine laughed lightly. “A pleasure to see you too, Arthur.”

“Forgive me, my lady mother. Of course I’m glad—and honored—to see you. It’s only, well…forgive me.”

Gyan arched an eyebrow. Though she found it highly amusing that the conqueror of thousands could be bested in a single verbal stroke by his mother, she decided she’d be a poor wife indeed if she failed to come to his defense. She clasped his hand.

“Chieftainess Ygraine, your son is a man of single purpose. He does whatever is best for his people. And now, my people as well.” Gazing at Arthur, Gyan infused her expression with love. Her pulse quickened as he rewarded her in kind. “It is but one of the reasons I love him so.” She reached behind his head and drew his face to hers. Closing her eyes, she blotted out all other sensations as her tongue probed and twined with his.

The crowd’s impatient chants soon gave way to ribald shouts.

“Now who’s inciting a riot?” Merlin asked with mock asperity.

Arthur gave Gyan a grateful smile as they parted. He turned and approached the rail, his gold-trimmed scarlet cloak unfurling in the morning breeze.

“Well spoken, my dear. Arthur is indeed evenly yoked.” Ygraine’s smile radiated approval. “Well come to the family, Gyanhumara.”

Gyan nodded, smiling. “I bid you well come to mine too, Ygraine.” As a peer, she had no qualms about using the woman’s given name, but she hadn’t contemplated the idea of calling her “mother.”

Death had robbed her of the right to call any woman by that title.

With an incline of her head, Ygraine withdrew to join Morghe at the end of the platform, and Bedwyr returned to his place beside Merlin.

Down on the field, Caius glanced toward Arthur, nodded, and barked a set of commands. The men clotted into thirty rectangles to march past the platform. Under the Pendragon’s gaze, the soldiers’ movements adopted noticeable changes: lifted chins, puffed chests, livelier steps, and smart salutes.

Arthur beckoned to Gyan, and she took her place at his side. She’d spurned a gown in favor of her leather-and-bronze battle-gear. Gold dove-headed torcs flashed at her throat and upper arms. Braonshaffir hung at her left hip from the bronze dragon sword belt. Over it all draped the gold-edged, scarlet-and-saffron-banded blue mantle, symbolic of her status as Chieftainess of Clan Argyll. On its folds rode her consort’s gift, the sapphire-eyed gold dragon.

After the last century had disappeared through the gap in the wildly applauding throng, a troop of mounted heralds galloped onto the parade ground sounding blasts on great curved brass horns. Men with sacks slung over their shoulders swarmed over the field, carefully spilling the sacks’ contents into the dust. Four long, narrow white ovals marked their passage. Inside the far curve of each oval lay a set of three concentric circles.

Next entered two groups of men on foot. Wearing nothing more than sandals and white tunics girded with leather belts, the first crew lugged armloads of javelins. Gyan recognized the men to be the cavalry squads’ drudges. Four of their number split away and took up positions in the near curve of each chalk track. The rest congregated nearby under the stern gaze of their overseer.

The other men had donned helmets and mail shirts. Weaponless, they hefted tall, curved shields, and each man carried a staff bearing a different cavalry standard or clan banner.

As four of these soldiers marched into the rings inside each track, Gyan cocked a questioning eyebrow at her consort.

“The targets,” Arthur explained.

“I guessed as much. Why not use straw bales?”

“Straw is fine for practice, but the crowd”—he raised his voice over the swelling sea of voices—“craves blood. The javelins are blunted to reduce the risk, but to the crowd it looks no different.” His expression took on a determined cast. “I will not fall prey to the ways of my forebears.” She intended to ask him to explain when a smile broke across his face. He pointed. “Here come the contestants!”

Threescore and four horsemen spurred their mounts in a slow canter around the perimeter of the parade ground. A rainbow of banners, horsehair crests, cloaks, and saddle blankets wafted in the breeze. Helmets, body armor, shield bosses, and harness fittings gleamed. Many warriors waved at people beyond the fence, and the audience devoured every moment.

The eight alae of the Horse Cohort each had entered a team. Caledonaich rode in seven alae, the result of the Abar-Gleann treaty. These men wore their variously patterned clan cloaks over traditional Caledonach black leather battle-gear—another condition of the treaty, since Arthur couldn’t afford to equip a thousand new conscripts with Ròmanach armor.

Selected from the only all-Breatanach ala, the eighth team wore scarlet officers’ cloaks. Curiously, their identical helmets obscured their faces, rendering identification impossible. The frozen silvery stares gave Gyan a preternatural chill.

“Arthur, where did First Ala get such strange headgear?” Urien, as prefect of the Horse Cohort, might have put himself on the team, and no one would ever know. She squinted at them, looking for clues in their rank badges, bodies, horses, and riding styles to no avail. “Why would anyone want to fight half-blind like that?”

“Those helms are made only for cavalry games. And—” Arthur frowned as the teams lined up before the platform.

“And what?” Gyan asked.

His fingers closed over hers. “They don’t reduce vision as much as you might think.”

“You have worn one?”

“My father’s.” The frown gave way to a rueful smile. “With all the battles, I haven’t had a chance to use it lately. Perhaps we”—his quiet emphasis on the last word sent a thrill up her spine—“can change that. Permanently.”

She glimpsed that future pooled in the fiery depths of his eyes, a future holding no threat of enemy attacks, when warring peoples would become as brothers, when warriors could hang up their weapons and turn their hands and minds from destruction to creation. A future of happiness and prosperity, a future to believe in, a future well worth the cost in sweat and pain and blood to bring to life.

A mild cough disturbed her reverie, and Merlin approached the rail on the other side of Arthur, with Bedwyr a pace behind him. Gyan again studied the parade ground.

Eight independent teams rounded out the field. Clans Argyll and Alban represented the Caledonach Confederacy. The other six teams included Breatanach clans Cwrnwyll, called in Caledonaiche Càrnhuilean, the Rock-Elbows People; Moray, called Móran, the Many People; Lothian, called Lùthean, the People of Power; and three others whose banners Gyan didn’t recognize.

“Bedwyr,” she said, “is your clan down there?”

“Aye, Gyan! Clan Lammor’s banner is the green stag’s head on silver.” He waved at his clansmen, a gesture they cheerfully returned.

“Ah, of course, Làmanmhor, the People of Great Hands—such as those who made your exquisite jerkin?” That won Bedwyr’s nod and grin. Gyan surveyed the Làmanmhor team. By the expert way they controlled their mounts, they looked as likely a team as any to win the laurels. “Why aren’t you riding with them?”

Arthur shot his friend a grin before looking at Gyan. “If you saw him ride, my love, you’d know why he serves in the fleet.”

She would have explored his comment further, but her attention riveted to a nervous horse on the Clan Móran team. As the warrior quieted the animal, Gyan couldn’t find Urien riding with his clan, which meant he’d probably chosen to lead the masked First Ala riders. She tried to curb her growing dread as she observed her clan’s team. Her father, naturally, led them, joined by Per, Rhys, and…Angus? Surely she had to be mistaken. She looked again.

Angusel of Clan Alban regarded her proudly amid his Argyll teammates. She answered with the Caledonach warrior’s salute: upraised sword hand clenched in a fist, splayed, and clenched again.

Arthur drew Caleberyllus and held it aloft, gazing at the crowd until every face turned toward him. “Let the games begin!”

ANGUSEL SWILLED dust from his mouth, spat, and splashed the rest of the water on his face. He wished he could douse his entire body but doubted whether anything could wash away the fatigue.

Argyll had outperformed its opponents in the earlier rounds. Not surprisingly, so had Alban. Two of the Pendragon’s Horse Cohort alae also had survived the morning trials, the Sixth—Argyll’s current opponent—and the oddly armored First. Soon, two more teams would go down in defeat.

In this game, accuracy counted as much as speed. Angusel had watched more teams be eliminated by failing to score direct hits on their targets than by being too slow to finish the relay, although the sacrifice of speed for accuracy didn’t assure victory, either.

As Angusel glanced at the games marshals, who were busily recording details of each rider’s performance on damp clay tablets while their assistants copied the completed notations to parchment leaves, he appreciated being a participant and not a judge.

One of the members of the Sixth Ala team cut the far corner too closely. Rider and mount went down amid a choking cloud of dust, and the crowd uttered a collective gasp. As the dust cleared, the horse rolled to its feet and cantered off the field, but the warrior writhed on the ground, clutching a leg and howling.

A pair of medics raced to his side carrying a leather sheet stretched between two stout poles, and they carefully loaded him onto the litter. Before they could bear him to safety, another shout went up. Angusel faced the adjacent track.

An important rule involved passing a bronze ring between team members. Possession of the ring by the fourth member at the end of his ride didn’t garner extra points. A nuisance, to be sure, but to drop the ring meant elimination.

Amid cursing warriors and snorting horses, Clan Alban’s ring gleamed serenely in the dust. In the space of a dozen breaths, the final two teams had been decided, and Angusel had never dreamed he’d be riding with one of them. The honor’s magnitude drove all thought of fatigue from his mind.

The chief games marshal halted the competition to give the remaining teams a chance to refresh themselves, change horses, and inspect their gear.

“Fresh mount, lad?” Chieftain Ogryvan nodded toward the Argyll groomsmen, each holding the bridle of a rested horse, as Peredur and Rhys made their selections. “We have plenty.”

“Thank you, my lord. But no, I—” Grinning, Angusel stroked Stonn’s dappled gray flank. He’d seen to his stallion’s needs after each round, walking him slowly to cool him down, checking for stones in his hooves, and taking care not to let him stay too long at the trough or hay crib. “
We
are just fine.”

“Very well. Mount up!” This command, shouted to the entire Argyll team, barely carried over the bleating pipes that signaled preparation for the start of the final race.

A hush descended. The pipes skirled again, and the first two contestants spurred their horses ahead of the crowd’s tumultuous roar.

As in the preliminary rounds, each rider had to complete three passes around the track. In theory, it wasn’t difficult to collect a javelin from the drudge, fling it at the armored human target standing in the opposite curve, and swing around to begin again while the horse galloped as fast as the warrior’s nerves allowed.

Theory had little to do with reality.

Peredur raced a flawless round, his best of the day. With each pass, he widened the gap between him and his opponent, who struggled with a skittish mare. By the time Angusel guided Stonn into position for transfer of the ring, Peredur had pulled half a lap ahead, scoring direct hits with all three throws.

Angusel set heels to Stonn’s flanks and snatched the ring from Peredur’s outstretched hand. After slipping it onto his left wrist, he poured his concentration into the ride.

Give Stonn his head on the straightaway…slow him just enough to grab the javelin…lean into the turn…judge the rate of closure on the target…take aim, throw!

He let his ears tell him how successful the throw had been. A metallic thump meant a direct hit. If the javelin missed, the crowd’s cheers and jeers conveyed whether or not it had landed within one of the nested chalk circles.