Pendragon 02 Pendragon Banner (49 page)

Arthur hefted his spear, cast a glance at his
sons who had inched forward. ‘Stay back,’ he ordered. ‘When the dogs send
him out, he’ll be madder than a pain-racked bull.’
Then he
grinned at them. ‘Your mam was quite right to protest at your
coming. Boars are dangerous beasts, not to be
trusted.’ He
winked. ‘But a man has to learn how to hunt.’

‘
A man
needs to learn many things before he can call himself
a man.’ Arthur
spun around, startled, as did the men with him. A
young woman stood beneath the willows. Dressed in green and
brown
she blended with the winter-clad trees, seemed almost a part of them. Several
men caught their breath, for she had not
been
there a moment earlier. ‘You come to hunt the great boar?’ she asked, stepping
forward from the shadows, her earth-brown
cloak sweeping back, revealing
a lithe, slender figure. She was
not
beautiful, this young woman with dark hair and even darker
eyes, but
there was something about her that arrested a man’s attention, something about
the way that she half smiled. ‘The
King
hunts the king,’ she said, her eyes shining. Mocking? ‘But
which king
will win?’ Arthur was no raw, superstitious youth, he did not believe in
demons lurking among the shadows or an old hag’s
love
potions, but this creature startled him, made his heart bump
uneasy, the hairs rise on his neck. What he did not see with his own eyes he
did not believe, yet, here was a woman who had come from nowhere.... He managed
to stammer a greeting,
adding with more
confidence, ‘You know who I am, Lady, but I
know you not. What is your
name?’ She smiled again, that half-smile, as she took another step
from beneath the overhang of trees. ‘Oh I know
you, Arthur the
Pendragon. 1 have known
you since ...’ she fluttered her
hand, tossing her hair back with a
slight shake of her head. Her bright eyes were watching him, looking into him. ‘Since
before the dawn of my time.’ A whine came from within the trees, followed by a
howl, picked up by others, rising almost instantly to wild baying. ‘They’ve
found the cur-son!’ someone shouted. There was a general shuffling, men
adjusting their grip on their heavy boar
spears,
eyes excitedly, anxiously searching the edge of the trees.
Waiting. When Arthur looked again, quickly, over
his
shoulder, the woman was gone. Nothing to show she had been there, no
movement of grass or branch, no footprint on the frost-wet ground. Then an
outraged pig’s squeal and the pack
baying the
find. Snarling. Yelping. Silence. A Decurion
exchanged a grim look with
Arthur.

‘
One’s
gone in, he’s had it.’
Arthur nodded. Damn the dog! Good hounds were hard to
come by, and some of these used this day were of
the best. And
damn that boar. Hunting dogs were valuable animals.

‘
Gwydre,
step back,’ Llacheu called to his brother. The
younger boy waved him
irritably to silence. How could he see from back there? He wanted to miss
nothing, see everything.

‘
Gwydre!’
Llacheu insisted, ‘step back.’
Gwydre would be seeing his eighth summer this year. A
lad
with the likelihood of taking after his
father in height, his
mother’s colouring. A boy full of laughter and
mischief. Who, like his da, would never do as he was asked.

The hounds were giving full tongue. Something
large was
crashing about in the undergrowth,
coming nearer. Arthur
turned at his eldest son’s voice, saw Gwydre
hopping from one leg to the other. He motioned with his hand, letting go his
firm grip on the spear. ‘Get back, boy!’ he cursed, ‘this is no game!’ The
thicket of overgrown reeds and withies parted with a crash of splintering bark,
a great blue-black creature erupted, sticks and twigs showering in all
directions as he hurtled out, grunting, head low, jaws slavering. Blood of the
gored hound dripped from his left tusk, covered the bristles of his snout. At
sight of the men he faltered, small, pig eyes mad red, darting from crouched
man to man. Movement. A swirl of bright blue, smaller, nearer than the rest.

Arthur’s hands clamped
with a gasp of indrawn breath on the spear. Mithras, the thing was big! For a
fleeting moment he had
to fight the
overwhelming instinct to run.

Boars, despite their bulk, were fast
creatures, unpredictable, fatally dangerous if underestimated. The hold on a
boar spear
must be right, the charge met
and challenged with the full force
of the creature’s own weight, the
spear driven clean through chest and heart. One hand too low down the shaft and
it could be the hunter not the hunted who lay squealing with the death blood
gushing.

The boar’s attention
diverted to Gwydre, the lad’s cloak
swirling as he turned
to run in sudden panic at the appearance of this great, bristling monster that
stank of hot breath, blood and pig. Arthur screamed at his son to be still,
keep still! No
time to think – he leapt in
the animal’s path, crouched, his
spear braced against his hip. The grip
wasn’t right – no time to change it.

The boar saw the man and the thrusting spear.
He knew all
about spears. The jagged scars
on his thick hide were testa
ment to
that. He swerved, meeting the blade at an angle, the
pain bursting into
him, piercing chest and lung; black blood spurted onto hoar-frosted grass. The
shaft bent. Arthur’s body took the force of the slamming weight, pain ripping
up his arm as the spear drove into the boar. He hung on, dragged along as
others rushed to help, spears aimed, daggers drawn. The shaft broke, snapped in
a shatter of splintered wood and Arthur fell, rolled, bruised and shaken,
blood, his own and the boar’s,
covering
hands and thigh where a tusk had ripped through
leather bracae and flesh. And the great boar turned to fight,
his
tusks thrashing, squealing defiance and rage.

Free of the man’s weight, the boar charged,
heedless of his
injury, blinded of senses,
pain-maddened by the spear blade
and
taste of blood in his nose and mouth. A second spear
plunged into his
rear quarters. He did not even feel it.

It was all happening so
quickly! So much noise and
confusion! Gwydre
hovered, uncertain between running and
standing
still, frightened by the sounds and smells. The
domestic farm boars were large creatures, not to be tangled
with,
but this creature was as big again as the biggest pig.
Gwydre had never seen anything so grossly huge. He
panicked, ran. Heard his father roaring, his
brother scream
ing, vaguely saw a fluttered movement to his left, a woman
running forward flapping her arms, waving
her cloak, her
mouth open, shouting something at him, but he could
nothear over the belling of excited dogs and the incessant pig squealing that
went on and on and on. Saw only the red angry eyes of the boar.

He felt nothing as the brute’s tusk drove
into him and shook
him aside with the ease
of a spirited wind blowing a fallen leaf.
Felt nothing as he was flung
several feet into the air; crumpled to the ground, dead.

PART TWO

The Banner Flies

April 465

§I

Caer Cadan, Arthur’s
stronghold, was built on an isolated
plateau
of eighteen or so acres, rising two hundred and fifty feet
above
the vivid, fresh, spring colours of the new-growing Summer Land. Tall, unruly trees had encroached along and up the crumbling defensive works of the
ditches and banks, the
scrub and grass
beneath their spread of foliage, scrambling thick
and tangled. Abandoned
after the Romans had settled Britain,
the
Caer, for so many centuries a proud Dun of the Celtic
peoples, had sat nodding quiet and lonely under the
summer
sun, or sleeping sound beneath
winter-covered mantles of
snow, unused until Arthur came to awaken its
spirit and revive new life into its ancient heart. Caer Cadan blossomed as the
Artoriani laid aside their shields and spears and
took up instead
axes and carpenters’ tools. From the slumbering vacancy
of the
abandonment, the complex building
rose, phoenix like, to
become the pride of her King; a stronghold to
dominate the
south-west, a royal place from
where Arthur could finally
become the
ruling King that he had always intended to be.
Britain was his, and they had, at least for a while, a unity of peace. Prosperity rose as
rapidly as the timbered walls of the
King’s
Hall, kitchens, stabling, barns and dwelling places.
Those trees had been felled, the spring cleared of
choking debris
and the ditches re-dug, the banks re-built. Timbered
walkways trudged along the top-most, highest bank and double gateways secured
entrance and exit beneath commanding watch-towers.

Some of the building, the stone facing in
particular, was crudely fashioned, for already the craft of Roman ways was
being lost, but there was enough memory to build strong, and the Hall,
sixty-three by thirty-four feet, sighted along the axial ridge atop the central
summit of the plateau, stood king-proud over stronghold and surrounding
country. From here, beat the heart of the place, and from here, Arthur lived
and ruled as
King, father and husband, enjoying with his Queen,
Gwenhwyfar, this first spring-time
settled in their own place, anticipating together, the expectation of
contentment.

‘
You
ride to Lindinis on the morrow then?’ The King,
Arthur,
tossed the question at Gwenhwyfar from the table
where he sat composing a
letter to his ex-wife. They were in
their
private chamber, to the rear of the Hall, and he had
written one short sentence only, had no idea what
else to write.
The woman had the effrontery to offer her services to act
as mediator between himself and Aesc of the Cantii. Hengest was dead and the
son now King, treaties would need renegotiating, the dance began again. The
Pendragon felt quite capable of
initiating
such a meeting for himself — yet Winifred was Aesc’s
niece, she could
be, the gods forbid, useful.

This was their private chamber, a quiet place
aside from the
daily bustle of family life,
built, as with the Hall and most of the
other buildings, of solid timber posts, wattle and daub plastered
walls
and a reed-thatched roof. The chamber, warm and comfortable adjoined the public
place of the King’s Hall. Built in the British style, there was very little
that was Roman about
Caer Cadan, save the
luxury of interior furnishings in this
private, homely, dwelling place.
Gwenhwyfar had her high-backed wicker chair, Arthur, his favourite couch — and
their
large bed with the carved wooden
head-board, rope and leather
webbing,
and wool stuffed mattress. The gay wall hangings were
rich fashioned,
the candle and lamp-stands silver and bronze. Gwenhwyfar’s pride was the valued
red Samian pottery that, even when her mother had been young, was becoming a
rarity to own.

Arthur had allowed
lavish wealth for his Hall and home.
They
deserved the pleasure of luxury after enduring for so long
the
mud-slush of marching camps and damp, cold tents.

Arthur smoothed the
stylus through the last word that he had
written
on the soft beeswax, looked across at Gwenhwyfar,
quirked a smile at her extreme expression of irritation. She
never was a woman who settled comfortably to a
woman’s work.
A memory of the past flashed into his mind, of her as a
child, declaring hotly that she would rather learn to hunt than sew.

She was standing at the loom, a vertical,
wooden structure, bending slightly and grumbling to herself, unpicking a knot
in the weave. Then she dropped the wooden shuttle, sending the
stone weights dangling at the end lengths of the
warp threads as
it clattered,
unravelling thread, to the floor. ‘Sod it,’ she
cursed.

Stifling his laughter, Arthur came from his
desk and helped her retrieve the wool, patiently unpicked the knot for her. ‘I
do better at this than you,’ he laughed. ‘Happen you could write to Winifred
for me?’
Flouncing to a stool, taking a
goblet of wine from the table as
she passed, Gwenhwyfar seated herself
with a huff of indigna
tion. ‘I hate weaving,’
she announced. ‘Enid professes to enjoy
it, I can’t think what’s wrong
with the woman.’ Returning to his desk, Arthur placed a quick kiss on her
forehead. ‘Lindinis?’ he asked again.