Warrior of the West (29 page)

‘Repeat your names.’ Glamdring shouted from above. ‘Who are you, and what do you want of me?’

‘We are Cerdan Shapechanger and Modrod of Forden. These other men are my servants.’ Gruffydd paused to ensure that anyone within earshot heard his voice. ‘We’ve been avoiding Artor’s cavalry for days, but they’re now only a few hours’ riding from Caer Fyrddin. My family lived near Castell Collen, but my kin are now dead and we came to take our revenge when the battle commences here. All the west knows that only Glamdring Ironfist still resists Artor of the south.’

Glamdring swelled a little at Gruffydd’s flattery. He pointed a horny finger at Bedwyr. ‘And what of you, Modrod of Forden, wherever that is? Why have you come to me? You seem well enough fed.’

‘My wife and children are dead, my fields have been burned, and Artor’s men have put my slaves to the sword.’ Bedwyr made his voice as high-pitched as he could. ‘I may be plump, but my arm is strong, and I pledge it to the service of Glamdring Ironfist.’

Some worm of doubt must have wriggled in Ironfist’s memory.

‘Take off your helmet, Modrod.’

Glamdring inspected Bedwyr carefully from his position atop the watchtower.

Bedwyr was now grateful for his recognition of the heads of his fellow servants. Anger helped him to stare into Glamdring’s eyes without fear. Determination squared his shoulders and raised his chin in defiance, which Glamdring mistook as a desire to revenge himself on the Celts. After all, Dog would never have looked his master in the eye.

‘You’re hairless for a Saxon,’ Glamdring stated bluntly. ‘That’s unusual for our people. How did you get your bald head?’

‘Illness, great thane. Hairless I may be, but my heart is Saxon! If you don’t need our swords, we will go to a place of safety. We’ll have done our duty, for we have warned you of the arrival of the bastard Celts.’

‘Don’t be hasty, Modrod. In time of war, strange faces and circumstances breed distrust. The caer welcomes your extra swords, so you may enter as welcome guests.’

One problem negotiated, Bedwyr thought silently to himself, and limped through the gates into Caer Fyrddin, a place that was little changed from the night when he had fled its slavery.

‘You may eat with us after you have rested,’ Glamdring called from his position on the ramparts, his eyes never leaving the new arrivals as they passed into the confines of the fortress.

 

The meal that evening was almost Bedwyr’s undoing.

The hall was so filthy that Gruffydd feared food poisoning. The fire pit pumped thick smoke up to the soot-stained ceiling rafters, and the walls were greasy and stained where men had leaned against the wooden planks.

Long food-crusted tables and benches ran the length of the hall, while Glamdring and his chief officers sat at a shorter table that spanned its breadth at the head of the hall. Gruffydd and the other Celts sat as far as possible from the high table. They ate quickly, and drank little.

Warriors stabbed at the greasy swill of meat with their knives, careless of the gravy that stained their beards, and the whole room stank of spilled ale. The Saxons amused themselves by casting their bones over their shoulders and occasionally giving meaty treats to the hounds. It was one of the hounds, the young grey mastiff called Wind, that almost betrayed Bedwyr. The dog remembered him, and made a great fuss of him by licking his hands and leaping up to place his huge paws on Bedwyr’s shoulders.

‘You have a rare talent with dogs, friend Modrod. Do they always offer you their friendship?’ Glamdring was joking, but a trace of suspicion lurked in his muddy blue eyes.

‘I’ve bred animals since I was a lad, my lord. I swear I can train the most recalcitrant pup into a useful fighting dog.’

Glamdring whistled, and the grizzled head of his deerhound rose over the end of the table.

‘Let us see what you can do with old Grodd here,’ Glamdring challenged. ‘He allows no one but me to feed him.’

Liar, thought Bedwyr. Grodd had been fed regularly by most of the servants whenever Glamdring tired of caring for his dogs, although Bedwyr doubted that the thane had even noticed.

Holding up a succulent bone, still dripping with fat, Bedwyr called the dog by name. At first, Grodd looked at him with hostility, and growled at the strange human before him. Glamdring began to laugh. But the bone was tempting and Grodd warily approached Bedwyr. When it was close enough to pick up Bedwyr’s scent, the dog remembered shared scraps and it allowed Bedwyr to scratch its ears before it snapped up the bone. The Celt feigned the near loss of a finger in the process.

‘A fine beast, thane. I can see why you take pride in him.’

Glamdring was mollified. ‘It seems you are indeed talented with animals, Modrod. Let’s hope that you’re as capable with Celts.’

The ale flowed and Bedwyr conspired to spill as much as he drank, knowing he would need a clear head for the task before him.

Another difficult moment was narrowly avoided when a serving woman almost dropped her ale jug when she recognized the hazel eyes of Bedwyr. She had managed to avoid death because she was half-Saxon and had been forced to share Glamdring’s bed since she was eleven. No one had considered that she was Demetae and might resent her servile place in the caer. Bedwyr saw her look of consternation and recognition, and pulled her towards him and on to his lap before she could utter a word. Gripping one large breast in his hand, he forced her to kiss him and then began to nuzzle her ear.

‘Smile, woman! Do not betray me if you value your life.’

She smiled nervously as Bedwyr ripped open her tattered gown and fondled her breasts while Glamdring, ever observant, laughed crudely with his captains. When Bedwyr bent to kiss her nipples, he whispered again.

‘Lock yourself in the kitchen tonight and, with luck, you and your children may survive the night’s events.’

‘Leave her, Modrod!’ Glamdring ordered from his elevated table. ‘She’s just a serving wench and not worth much, except that she’s carrying good ale. If you want a real woman, there are Saxon widows here who’ll share a riding with you like you’ve never known.’

Glamdring held his horn cup out for the girl to fill, her breasts still bare in the firelight. The thane twisted one nipple cruelly with his left hand, and she gasped with pain. Then, as she hurried away to refill her jug, she gave Bedwyr a brief, enigmatic smile.

‘My thanks, lord thane, but I’ve always had a taste for servile woman flesh. There’s something about fear that gives a man . . . that extra spice.’

Glamdring laughed and agreed, and the evening passed on.

Eventually, feigning drunkenness, the five Celts made nests for themselves in the straw by the doors of the hall, while those Saxon warriors still able to walk returned to their barracks.

Gruffydd marvelled at the confidence displayed by Glamdring. In spite of the warning that danger was on his doorstep, life within the fortress continued on as if the Saxons were at peace.

Our task is made easy, Gruffydd thought sardonically. Defeat at Mori Saxonicus has taught Glamdring nothing. He is prepared to risk his remaining warriors against Artor’s vengeance without so much as an extra guard at the gate. The man is a fool!

As Bedwyr pretended to sleep in the verminous straw with the pungent-smelling Wind pressed hard against his side, he marvelled at how quickly his circumstances had changed. He had laid out this same pile of straw only a week earlier, and now he was here again, planning to bring Caer Fyrddin down around Glamdring’s head.

‘It’s time to go,’ Gruffydd hissed.

Five men and a huge mastiff rose to their feet.

‘Must we take the beast?’ Gruffydd pointed his knife. ‘It could get in our way.’>

Bedwyr was appalled. ‘Wind is my dog, and I’ll keep him for myself. I raised him from a pup, so I’ll vouch for his temper. If possible, I’d prefer that all the animals should be kept alive. The Saxons usually treat them far better than they treat humans.’

‘Oh, sod it then! Just don’t let that great lump get in the way. Lead on, Bedwyr.’

The great hall was still, except for snorers and the shifting mounds of dogs. Bedwyr had only to whisper a command and the beasts returned to their sleep.

At the head of the group of five men, Bedwyr led the way, holding a small, flaming torch. Gruffydd brought up the rear, lighting the darkness with another small torch. The men edged their way through the narrow, muddy passages between kitchens and sleeping quarters until they reached a sloping compound and a dark doorway with worn steps leading downward into Stygian blackness.

‘These are the granaries,’ Bedwyr whispered and began to descend.

Through the wicker baskets, and the leather and wooden storage bins, Bedwyr picked his way until, behind a heavy wooden box filled with miscellaneous pieces of ironmongery, he revealed a low stone opening, curved at the top. It was barely three feet high.

‘From here on, the passage tends to get smaller and smaller as we move along.’

Wind balked at entering the dark hole at first, but soon scrambled after Bedwyr when he realized that his master might well abandon him. At the rear, Gruffydd swore pungently as he crawled through after the other men.

The stone passage widened after a hundred yards so they could walk, albeit bent over. The walls were covered with decades of encrusted filth and old, dried slime, and Gruffydd tried hard not to imagine the waste from latrines that had fed into this channel over the years.

At least we can be grateful that the sewers are no longer in use, he thought grumpily.

Down and down the sewer went, narrowing sometimes until Bedwyr was forced to remove the rope so he could wriggle through the restricted space. The oppressive feeling of tons of earth and stone above them made the Celts feel like men long buried, and their bodies were fouled by decades of waste.

They spent an unpleasant hour crawling.

Then, as suddenly as they had entered the sewer, they reached its end. A small crack of moonlight appeared at the end of the sloping tunnel, and the five men found themselves at a rubble-strewn exit hanging dizzily over empty air.

As Bedwyr cast his eye around the cavernous opening, he noted that the Romans had built these sewers out of smooth dressed stone and the living rock of the mountain. But, at one time, those canny engineers had recognized some weakness in the defence of their fortress, and had contrived to set bars of iron deep into the stone, probably to prevent a persistent enemy from attacking their unprotected backs.

Most of the iron bars were rusted through or broken by the passage of time, but two metal stanchions at the very edge of the exit were still firmly embedded in the rock floor. Fearing danger in using only one, Bedwyr used both stanchions to secure the rope.

Gruffydd dropped a large pebble into the black void below.

A hissed curse came from the darkness far below, and Gruffydd grinned whitely at Bedwyr.

‘I think I may have hit someone on the head.’

The rope was lowered and the men retreated back into the sewer. Soon, there was a tug on the line, and Bedwyr pulled it back up to the sewer entrance with the rope ladder tied firmly in place. Within minutes the ladder, too, was secured to the iron stanchions.

Bedwyr patted Wind’s large square head, and prayed that the ladder was long enough and would hold the strain of the men’s weight.

The rope sang and strained as it took up the weight of the first climber. In the sewer entrance, the five men watched, hearts in mouths, as the metal bent a little, but the bars held.

Then Odin, the heaviest warrior by far, crawled into the sewer entry.

One by one, other men followed. Artor stared at Wind with mild curiosity. The mastiff bared his teeth for an instant, but then dropped his massive head submissively.

‘Is that your dog, Bedwyr?’

‘Yes, my lord. I’d consider it a favour if you spared the Saxon animals when we take the fortress. They are superb beasts and are magnificent hunting and fighting animals. I promise you that they are the one true skill of these Saxons. They’ve been bred to be man-killers, but they are noble creatures nonetheless. If we ever bred such animals ourselves, we could train them to be useful to our cause.’

Artor grinned down at Bedwyr’s earnest, worried face.

‘Did you feed them when you were a slave?’

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘Would they obey you?’

‘Yes, my lord.’ Bedwyr nodded his assurances to the High King. ‘One further matter, my lord,’ he continued. ‘There is a female slave in Caer Fyrddin who is only part Saxon. She has not betrayed me and I promised that she and her children would be freed. She’s lucky that her head didn’t become a decoration for the gates of Caer Fyrddin, as did those of the other Celt slaves who were here when I killed Wyrr. These slaves have been ill-used for years, and she considers herself to be beyond hope. I ask that you spare her if you can. I have told her to lock herself in the kitchens, and I would hate to see her suffer because of me and mine.’

‘Very well, Bedwyr,’ Artor replied. ‘After all, she does have some Celt blood in her veins.’

It took several hours for a hundred men to enter the fortress. The stanchions were only strong enough for one man at a time to climb the rope ladder. Against all the odds the old iron stayed firmly within the rock.

The remnants of Artor’s forces, under the commands of Llanwith and Lot, would be in position to pour through the entrance gates as soon as they were needed.

‘Lead the way, Bedwyr,’ Artor ordered. ‘Odin will be directly behind you, followed by myself. I will follow Odin because we are the two largest men and will have the most difficulty passing through the tunnels.’

In any event, both men nearly became wedged in the narrowest sections. When they finally clambered into the relative comfort of the storage room, both Artor and Odin had decided privately that never again would they commit themselves to such an ordeal.