The Hallowed Isle Book Four (19 page)

The wind died, and Medraut looked over his shoulder, seized by the odd sense that the spirits in the mound were watching him. He smiled sardonically. They must be very confused. A war of Briton against Briton would be familiar
enough, but behind Artor marched Jutes from Cantuware, while Saxons led by Cynric and Cymen and Anglians under Creoda rode in his own train.

The movement before him shivered to stillness. From Ar-tor's army a horn blew shrill, to be answered after a moment from his own side. Constantine of Dumnonia stepped forward, his thinning hair blowing in the breeze. From Artor's side, the spokesman was Gualchmai, grim-faced and frowning, limping a little from some wound got in the Gallian wars. There was a murmur of disbelief from the Dumnonians when they saw him come forward. If the king had sent Gualchmai, it was not to negotiate, but to deliver terms.

Gualchmai halted, his thumbs hooked through his belt, surveying the enemy. Medraut flinched at the chill in his brother's blue gaze.

“So, we are standing together. If I had my will, I'd answer the boasts of your little prince with a good hiding, but I am bound to hear ye out, so say on—”

“My lord Medraut . . .” Constantine coughed to stop his voice from wavering, “requires that the high king give him the North to govern and recognize him as heir to Britannia.”

“Fine words for a rebel!” growled Gualchmai. “My lord king requires first that Medraut return his lady and queen. After that, he may find the patience to receive your surrender!”

“Surrender?” Constantine tried to laugh. “When our army outnumbers yours?”

“We've beaten the Franks, who smashed every other army that faced them. D'ye think we'd have any trouble with yours?”

“It is a hard thing, when brother fights brother . . .” Constantine said piously. “And in any case, it is not for us to dispose of the Lady Guendivar—the choice of where she should go is hers.”

The queen had been left in the care of a household of holy women who had settled at Ambrosiacum, and even Medraut did not know what she would do. Sometimes the aching tenderness with which he courted her gave way to visions in which he held that smooth white body splayed beneath him,
victim of his desire. But he was too much his mother's son to dare to force her. He had felt her need for him—surely he was the one she would choose!

“Promise the prince a territory to govern and his place as heir, and we will disband,” Constantine went on.

Let me have the North
, thought Medraut,
and Artor will have to face Cynric and Cymen here.
. . . It would be good to get back to his own country. Once across the Wall he would be dealing with folk who had never really accepted the rule of Britannia. And beyond them waited the Picts, allies even more powerful than the Saxon tribes.

Artor nodded, and Gualchmai turned to Constantine with a sigh. “Let it be so.”

But not for long
, thought Medraut. Artor had not met his gaze, but in the grey light he could see the lines in the older man's face and the silver in his hair. He remembered how the stag had gasped out its life beneath his blade.
You are old, my father
—
and soon my time will come.

“We'll drink together to seal the bargain,” the Dumnonian replied, “and our lords shall swear to keep faith on the holy cross.” Young Maglocun brought out a silver-banded horn filled with ale, and Father Kebi was pushed forward across the grass with crucifix in hand, eyeing the warriors around him like a wether among wolves.

On both sides, the men moved forward, the better to see. And at that moment, someone yelled and steel flashed in the sun. Every head turned. Medraut saw Martinus' face contort in disgust, and a flicker of black-and-white in the grass. The bare blade in his hand lifted, stained with red.

But a greater light was already flaring from the wheeling arc of Gualchmai's sword. “Treachery!” he cried, and then he clove Martinus through the shoulder and struck him down.

For an instant longer Medraut stared. The scene had shattered like a broken mosaic, horns blaring, men running everywhere. Then Cunoglassus pulled him back, shoving helm and shield into his hands. He fumbled to fix the straps, saw Cymen with his houseguard forming a shieldwall, and ran towards its protection.

* * *

In the years that came after, few could tell the true story of that deadly, confused conflict before the ancient circle of stones; a battle begun without plan and ending in darkness, with no clear victor. Folk knew only that more blood dyed the plain that day than had ever moistened the pagan altar stone. When it was over, the remnants of Medraut's army marched northward. From that time, news of the war came to the Britons of the South only as rumors that blended to create an imagined reality.

But to Artor, searching the battlefield with flickering torch in hand, it was all too real. Though most of the fallen came from the ranks of his foes, the toll among the men he had brought back from Gallia was heavy as well. He moved among the heaped bodies, recognizing here a man who had saved his life in Armorica, and there a fellow who had always been able to make his comrades laugh.

And near the hour of midnight, when the flesh grows cold on the bones, he found Gualchmai.

The king saw first the corpses, heaped in a distorted circle as if some dark elf had tried to construct a hillfort from the bodies of the slain. He had seen such ramparts before, where some brave soldier had stood at bay, but never so high. He was still staring at it when Goriat came up to him.

“Have you found your brother?” Artor asked, and Goriat shook his head. “Well, perhaps we should look there—” the king said then, indicating the heap of slain.

Wordless, Goriat handed Artor his torch and began to drag the bodies aside. They had fallen in layers—Icel's Anglians atop men from Dumnonia, and beneath them warriors from Cynric's band, all slain by the strokes of a sword. When Goriat had cleared a narrow pathway, Artor followed him to the center. Gualchmai lay there in a pool of red, the great sword still clenched in his hand. No single warrior could have killed him—it was loss of blood from too many wounds that had felled him at last.

“I used to dream of surpassing him,” whispered Goriat. “But no warrior will ever enter Annuen with such a noble escort as these.”

Artor nodded agreement, then stiffened as Gualchmai
stirred. In the next moment he was kneeling beside him, feeling for a pulse beneath the blood-stiffened beard.

“Gualchmai, lad, can you hear me?” He cradled his nephew's head on his lap, stroking his brow. “Goriat, go for a wagon, bring blankets and water, run!” Gualchmai's flesh was cold, but his chest still rose and fell.

“Artor. . . .”

He could barely hear the whisper of sound. “Hush, lad, I am here.”

“My fault . . . it was an adder . . . I saw . . . as my sword fell. . . . I have paid.”

“Gualchmai, you must live,” Artor said desperately. “I loved you and Betiver best of all in the world. Without you, how can I survive?”

Perhaps it was a trick of the torchlight, but he thought Gualchmai's lips curved in a smile. “The king . . . will never die. . . .”

When Goriat and the others arrived, Artor was still sitting with Gualchmai's head pillowed on his thigh, but on the king's cheek they could see the glistening track of tears, and they knew that the champion of Britannia was gone.

“My lord, what shall we do now?”

“Bury Gualchmai in the Mound of the Princes, and dig a grave for the rest of our folk who have fallen here,” said Artor. From his eyes the tears still flowed, but his voice was like stone. “Where is the enemy?”

“The Dumnonians are scuttling westward like rats to their holes, but Medraut has gone north,” answered Goriat. “They say he has taken the queen and the lady Ninive.”

“Then north we shall go as well. Whether he flees to Alba or to Ultima Thule, there is no place on this earth so distant that I will not follow him.”

By the day, the air rang with the sound of adze and hammer as Medraut's soldiers rebuilt the palisade of Dun Bara, the fort on the hill. Escorted, Guendivar paced the old earthworks, Ninive beside her. Battered and bruised by the pace of their journey northward, she had prayed only for its ending,
but as her body recovered, she began to realize how small was the difference between prize and prisoner.

Beyond the half-built walls she could see a long sweep of hill and moorland and a bright glitter of water beyond them. It was the estuary of the Tava, they had told her. On the other side lay the dark masses of Fodreu. Even the Votadini lands, thought Guendivar as she refastened her cloak, would have seemed strange to her, but Medraut had carried her deep into the country of the Pretani, the Painted People, who had always been the enemies of Britannia. Wind and water tasted different here, and the soil was strange. Here, she was no longer a queen.

Ninive, on the other hand, had grown stronger with every step northward. “My mother was a Royal Woman of the Hidden People, the first folk to inhabit this land,” she said, laughing, her fair hair flying in the wind. “I ran wild as a moorland pony until I was eleven years old. Then Gualchmai rode that way out hunting, as he had done when he met my mother and begot me. She was dead by then, and he took me to the Isle of Maidens, to Igierne. Only in this land have I ever been truly free!”

Guendivar shook her head, understanding only that when Medraut ordered her to choose one woman to come with her she had been wise to take Ninive. Had Merlin come north as well? Some of Medraut's men claimed to have seen a Wild Man beyond the flicker of their fires, but if it was the Druid, he had made no attempt to speak with her.

And why should he?
she thought bitterly.
I have given him no reason to think I need rescuing. He waits for Ninive, not for me. . . .

She shivered, and turned towards the roughly thatched hut they had built for the women while they worked on Medraut's hall. It was dark and had few comforts, but at least there was a fire.

That night, Medraut returned, with a band of laughing Pictish warriors, a herd of hairy black cattle, and a line of laden horses. Soon fires were burning and two of the cows were cooking, the large joints roasting over the coals while the rest boiled in crude bags made from their own hides.

For Guendivar he brought a straw-filled mattress and warm woolen blankets, and a mantle of chequered wool in shades of earthy green that he said was a gift from the Pictish queen.

“I am grateful,” she said dully when Bleitisbluth, the smooth-tongued Pict who had become Medraut's shadow, had left them, “particularly since I am sure she has no wish to share her land with another queen. This is not my country, Medraut. How long will you keep me here?”

“Is it not?” He grinned whitely, and she realized that he had already had his share of the heather beer. “Pretani is just another word for Briton, and though this land never bowed to Rome, Alba and the south are all part of the same hallowed isle!”

“But these are Picts!” she said in a low voice. “They have always been our enemies!”

“The enemies of the soft southern tribes,” he answered, “and the foes of Rome, not mine.”

Guendivar could see that was true. Medraut stood now in kilt and mantle chequered in soft ochre and crimson. Of his southern gear he retained only the golden torque. His bare breast was shaded blue with the sinuous spirals of Pictish tatooing, his brow banded with Pictish gold.

“I have endured the rites by which they make a man a warrior. At the feast of Beltain we will swear formal alliance, and I will make for you a wedding feast in the old way that our people followed before ever Christian priest came into this land.”

As Medraut's hands closed on her shoulders she stepped backward, but the doorpost was behind her, and there was nowhere to go. She trembled as his mouth claimed hers, feeling even now, as his hands moved over her body, the traitorous leap in the blood.

“Lie with me, Guendivar . . .” he said thickly, his touch growing more intimate. “Open your womb, white lady, and let me possess you utterly. Then I will truly be king!”

“When we are wedded—” she gasped. “I am no use to you if men think me your whore.”

For a moment longer he gripped her, until she wondered
if the conflict between lust and logic would break him—or her. Then, with an oath, he jerked away.

“
Wise
Guendivar . . .” he said furiously. “You deny me with such reasonable words. But in half a moon I will have you, spread-eagled on the feasting table if need be, so that all men may see that you are mine!” He thrust her away and pushed through the cowhide that hung across the door.

The fire flared as it flapped shut behind him, and Guendivar sank to her knees, her breath coming in shuddering sobs.

“Help me, Ninive!” she whispered as the younger woman put her arms around her. “What can I do?”

“You want him, don't you . . .” murmured Ninive, helping her to sit down by the fire.

“Him?”
The queen shivered. “Not now, not anymore. But a man's strength to hold me, that I do—Medraut has lit the fire, damn him, and I burn! You don't understand, do you?” She lifted her head to look at Ninive. “Have you never felt your flesh quicken at the touch of a man?”

The other woman shook her head, her great eyes dark and quiet as forest pools.

“Not even Merlin?” Guendivar asked then.

“The love of the body is not what the Druid wants from me. . . .” Her lips curved in a secret smile.

The queen stared at her, but she had not the strength just now to try to understand. “It does not matter. But if Merlin were here, I would beg him to carry me away. . . .”

“Is that truly your will?” Ninive said slowly.

“Oh, my dear, I have known for moons that Medraut is no true king, but where could I go? Artor may have sworn to retrieve me, but he will not want me back again. Still, I will not weaken him further by joining myself to a man who would destroy Britannia! Better I should die in the wilderness, or live a hermit for the rest of my days, than become Medraut's queen!”