The Return of Sir Percival (20 page)

“Milady, they would already have arrived but for … a diversion,” Seneas said carefully.

“What are you talking about?” Morgana demanded.

“A second messenger has arrived, Milady. Ivarr and his men strayed from the road and attacked a town on the edge of your lands—on the border itself.”

“Tell me of this attack,” she said, with restrained anger.

“The town, or more of a village, is at a crossroads, a day and a half ride south. The herdsmen and farmers meet to trade—”

“What happened, Seneas?” she demanded.

“Ivarr and his men killed near half the people in the village and burned their homes. The rest took refuge in a stone guard. It seems they were about to burn them out, when they received word of the fall of Londinium. Ivarr left for the city at once, with his mounted soldiers. Those afoot were ordered to follow as fast as possible.”

A cruel smile crossed her face for an instant. She recognized the primitive message Ivarr had been sending by attacking the village.
Such a fool
, she thought.
You will never see my knife, Norseman. You will only feel its blade
.

Morgana glanced over at Seneas. “How many men does the Norseman have?”

“Near seventy-five mounted and over a hundred afoot.”

She nodded. “Others will join him as he approaches Londinium—outlaws and brigands looking to join in the loot and pillage when the town is retaken. The people of Londinium will soon regret their moment of impudence. And as for this Sir Percival,” Morgana said in a voice laced with scorn, “I should so like to see the pain in his eyes as his moment of glory turns to ashes.

“Yet, I would not have him die too soon. No, I need him to live long enough for me to lay my hands on his would-be mentor and guide, Melitas Komnenos. And then, Seneas, the devil himself shall gasp at the agonies that I shall inflict upon my teacher.”

Morgana punctuated her last sentence by driving the blade of her bejeweled dagger into the table beside the divan. Its flawless point found near a half inch of purchase before coming to rest.

Seneas took a step back. “Of—of course, Milady,” he whispered. “What—what would you have me do?”

“Send two more spies to follow this Sir Percival wherever he goes. Melitas will be where he is. I am to receive reports from each spy, every week, and they are not to know of one another. Arrange for riders to meet with them so this can be done. Go now. I will not allow the traitor to slip through my hands a second time.”

T
HE
W
ID
R
IVER

s Ivarr rode alongside the line of horsemen on his way back to the head of the column, the road ahead disappeared in the drifting fog. A moment later, the grey cloud moved on, into the fens on the other side of the road. The Norse warlord had ridden to the rear to tell the stragglers to keep pace or die. They were still a long day's ride from Londinium, and he intended to mount an attack on the city the next morning at dawn.

As he rode by Ulf, the other Norseman pulled his horse out of the line and caught up with him, matching his gait.

“Speak, if you have something to say.”

“The horses tire, and the men would break their fast. They would know—”

“We ride,” Ivarr growled, “until I say otherwise.”

“That will not go well with—”

“I do not—” Ivarr's shout died in his throat. A horse on the narrow wooden bridge ahead reared up, and his rider fell heavily to the wooden deck below. The other riders crossing the bridge slowed and began to mill about in confusion.

“I told you!” Ulf snarled. “The horses are tired. We must—”

Ivarr turned to the other Norseman, his mailed fist raised to strike him down, but Ulf was already falling from his horse, an arrow buried deep in his chest. Ivarr stared down in confusion at the man lying on the ground. When he looked up, the bridge ahead had become a seething mass of frantic horses and men. Two more men fell from their horses as he watched, one screaming in agony.

Ivarr drove his heels into his horse and galloped forward, roaring, “We are attacked! Get off the bridge! Move!”

As he pressed forward, trampling over fallen men and horses, the Norseman saw ghostly bowmen in the fog, sending arrow after arrow into the massed warriors, killing men and animals alike. For a moment, it seemed as if the bowmen were standing on the river itself, but then he realized they were shooting from small islets.

Ahead of him, at the crest of the bridge, Ivarr saw mud-covered chains beneath the horses' hooves. Rage welled up inside of him. Once the column of horses had been evenly split between one side of the river and the other, men hiding beneath the bridge must have snapped the chains tight, tripping the horses and now barring passage across. This was a well-planned ambush.

Ivarr wheeled his horse, smashing into the rider to his right, and roared out a command.

“Move! Go back! It's a trap!”

The warriors on his right and left struggled to turn their mounts, cursing and screaming at each other and their horses. The panicked animals attacked each other in the desperate frenzy. An arrow slammed into Ivarr's breastplate, and a second scored a furrow across the upper part of his right arm. Another arrow pierced the thigh of the man behind him, drawing a scream of rage and pain.

Realizing he couldn't force a passage through the melee of men and horses to either the front or rear, Ivarr forced his mount to gallop directly at the wooden rails on the right side of bridge. Although the horse tried to slow its momentum as it approached the obstacle, the Norseman forced the animal to smash through the barrier and jump into the flowing water four feet below.

As soon as the horse splashed into the chest-high water, Ivarr wheeled the animal toward the shore, where he could see the rest of his column still riding toward the bridge. He drove his booted feet into the horse's sides, and it leaped forward, but the mud on the bottom of the river slowed its progress.

The men on the islet closest to him focused their fire on him, and

Ivarr felt two arrows glance off his breastplate and a third score a furrow across his left thigh, drawing a growl of rage. A moment later, his horse found firmer ground and galloped up the river bank to the safety of a row of trees.

Other men followed Ivarr's lead and leaped through the gap in the side of the bridge and plunged into the river below, but not all were as fortunate as their leader. The archers on the islet in the middle of the river were now ready. Many of the riders didn't make it to the far shore, and others who did were either wounded or dying.

* * *

A
N HOUR BEFORE
noon, Ivarr stood on a bluff, looking down at the growing force of men camped in a clearing on the far side of the bridge. The sight filled him with wrath. The approach of a man with a heavy step drew the Norse leader's attention, and he glanced coldly back at Geir, the old warrior who'd accompanied him to the parley with Morgana.

Geir had sailed with the Norse warlord's father on a longship in the early days. It was said they had raided as far south as the sea of the Romans. The warrior had joined Hengst and Ivarr's band five years earlier, after losing his own ship in a dicing match. The Norseman walked over to Ivarr, and the two men stood in silence for a moment, staring at the enemy camp on the far side of the river. When Ivarr finally spoke, his words were dripping with scorn.

“A week ago, this rabble cringed in fear at the sight of Ivarr the Red and his men. They cried and mewled like kittens as we took their wealth and women, and now they would be warriors. I shall kill them all, and their women and children shall labor under the slaver's lash all of their days.”

Geir waited a moment, until the Norseman's anger subsided, then pointed to the enemy camp in the distance. “Do you see the holes that those men over there are digging?”

Ivarr nodded.

“Those are for dung and urine. Do you see those men cutting wood?”

Ivarr grunted an acknowledgement.

“Those are for barrier walls. And those men, lined up there with their bows at the ready, they provide cover in case of attack. And—”

“What are you saying, Geir?” Ivarr said, with a mixture of impatience and anger.

“War leader, these men are not the sheep of yesterday. They now have leaders who know what they are about.”

“Bah! Sheep are sheep, and so what if they have found a farmer who was once a soldier to lead them.”

“War leader, whoever leads these men is not a farmer. Look at the white markings on the bridge, there, there, and there.”

Ivarr leaned forward and for the first time noticed the white chalk markings that divided the bridge into sections. Each section was marked with either a “I,” “II,” or “III.”

“Now,” Geir continued, “look at where their leader positioned his archers. I have seen this before. Each group of archers is told to fire only on the men within one section. This allows men to shoot from both sides of the bridge without hitting one another. Do you remember a voice calling out commands from the far shore during the battle?”

Ivarr hesitated and then nodded grudgingly.

“Their leader was commanding the archers in one location to target the men in a different section of the bridge as we tried to escape.”

“Why do you tell me this, Geir?” Ivarr said, his voice cold and hard.

“The men who set this trap and commanded this battle are truly skilled in the way of war. We must be wary—”

“Do not tell me what we must do, Geir!” Ivarr roared, his eyes blazing. “I know what we must do! We must slaughter these men and their leaders. This will happen on the morrow. Have Keld ride back up the road until he finds Ragnar and the men afoot. Tell him that if he is not here by the morn, I will have the skin flayed from his body!”

A
BBEY
C
WM
H
IR

Guinevere reviewed the ciphered message a third time and then stood up from her desk. She carefully rolled up the parchment and slid it into a small leather pouch. Then she placed a metal sheath over the candle on the desk to hide its light, and walked to the window overlooking the darkest part of the courtyard. Torn was barely visible there, sitting on a wooden bench in the dark, sharpening his knife. She opened the shutter and dropped the leather pouch to the ground. A moment later, Torn sheathed his knife and started across the courtyard, stopping to tie his bootlace beside the leather pouch. When he stood up, the pouch was gone.

The message was one of many Guinevere had sent out in the past week to the sparrows who lived along the roads she expected Percival to travel on as he made his way to the abbey. She knew every village and town he approached would assume the worst and prepare for a fight. A single errant arrow could take the Knight's life, bringing his long quest to a tragic end. In each message, she advised the women of his approach and told them to take whatever precautions they could to protect him.

Guinevere walked back to her desk, lifted the sheath from the flickering candle, and returned the book of cypher codes to the iron strongbox on the table. The light from the candle illuminated two golden rings. They must have fallen out of the white, silken bag, where she kept them, when she placed the strongbox on the table. She stared at the rings for a moment, and then she picked them up and slowly sat down.

One of the rings was made from the finest gold in the land, and it bore the seal of the house of Pendragon—a dragon. The second ring was smaller, and the gold of a lesser grade. The only visible marking on the smaller ring was a single word etched on the inside, where it would touch the skin of the wearer. The word was
Forever
.

As she stared at the rings, the memory of her wedding day returned. The ring that Arthur had placed on her finger that day was the larger of the two rings—the ring that the Royal Council had ordered the royal forge to make for the occasion. Although it was magnificent, her wedding ring was not the cherished family heirloom she had chosen for the occasion—the ring worn by her deceased mother and grandmother on the day of their nuptials. That ring waited under a stone at Pen Dinas, for a day that would never come.

When she'd asked Arthur for the right to choose her own wedding ring, he had made light of it, saying, “Guinevere, rings are a thing of no moment. Let the Royal Council have its way on the day of the wedding and wear another thereafter. For my part, I am no ring wearer, so I shall surely set aside whatever trinket they would have you give me on that day.”

A sad smile came to Guinevere's face as the scene faded from memory, for the truth, as she later discovered, was that Arthur did faithfully wear a ring. He wore it on a chain close to his heart, every day without fail.

Guinevere didn't realize Cadwyn had knocked on the door, or that she'd told her handmaiden to come in, until she was standing in front of her.

“Milady? Are you unwell?”

“Oh, Cadwyn, yes. I mean no, I'm fine. Why do you ask?”

“Your face,” Cadwyn said, “you look so sad.”

There was a moment of silence, and then Cadwyn asked in a soft voice, “Milady, those rings, I have never seen them before. If they make you so sad, why not hide them away?”

Guinevere glanced down at the bands of gold resting in her palm.

“I could do that, but the memories would still remain, and, in truth, I pray that those remembrances stay with me until my dying day. They have within them equal shares of joy and sadness, and I need to remember both, for although the first brings happiness, often the second brings wisdom.”

“Would … you speak of this, Milady … the story of the rings?” Cadwyn said in a near whisper.

“You would know all my deep, dark secrets, Cadwyn Hydwell,” Guinevere said with a laugh.

“I'm sorry, Milady, it's just that you have lived such a life! I could only dream of the things you have done … the people you have met, and, Milady, now that Sir Percival comes, why, who knows what the future will bring?”

Guinevere smiled. “Who knows, indeed? Very well, sit, and I will tell you of a girl who was much like you so many years ago.”

Cadwyn sat in the chair across from the Queen, her eyes glowing and face rapt with attention. Guinevere leaned back in her chair, a pensive look on her face.

“Where to begin? My father promised my hand to Arthur when I was still a child. At that time, Arthur was not yet King. He was one of a number of powerful and ambitious warlords seeking the throne left vacant by the death of Uther Pendragon. He needed the support of my father—an old and respected lord of great wealth—to achieve that end. So they met to discuss the matter. After meeting with Arthur and his councilor, Merlin the Wise, my father decided to support Arthur's claim to the throne.”

Cadwyn leaned forward in her chair, looking confused. “But, Milady, Arthur was Uther Pendragon's son, was he not? So he was the rightful king.”

Guinevere placed the two rings on the table and clasped her hands together on her lap.

“That, my dear, is the tale that has been told, and there is some truth to it. You see, the wiser Roman emperors had a practice, as they neared the time of their death, of adopting as their son another Roman who was wise and strong enough to rule the empire. It is said that King Uther, who didn't have any male heirs, followed that practice when he chose Arthur to be his successor.”