Arthur, p.33
Arthur, page 33
‘The boy,’ Beran said, looking up at Nabor for a heartbeat before a foot between his shoulder blades thrust him forward onto the floor. Then they were kicking and stamping, and he did not fight, did not try to squirm away from the onslaught, like some submissive, beaten animal.
It was strange, he thought, how even as they rained their blows upon him, on his head, his ribs, his thighs, his back, he was more aware of their ragged breaths and their grunts as they worked, than of any pain. He felt himself drifting away. He sensed a deeper darkness closing in on him and he welcomed it.
‘Balor’s arse,’ Beran groaned. ‘Why am I alive?’ He pushed himself into a sitting position against the ancient, moss-cloaked stump of a hazel, watching Nabor poke at the campfire with a stick, sending sparks crackling up into the night air.
‘You sound disappointed.’ Nabor was watching the embers weave up towards the canopies of oak and ash above them.
Beran answered that with a gruff, guttural sound from his throat as he tried to find a more comfortable position. He had not escaped the pain after all, not that he had expected to. Every part of his body hurt. At least one of his ribs was broken, his nose had been broken again, and the vision in his left eye was reduced to a narrow slit, the flesh around it puffy and hot, so that he imagined it to be swelling like the Saracen’s had after his fight in the temple chamber at Caer Lundein. He suspected that if he lived long enough to bathe in a stream again, and look down at his naked body, he would see a patchwork of bruises as green as the moss on the stump behind him.
But he was alive and hadn’t thought to be.
‘Why didn’t you finish the job?’ he asked Nabor, who looked up at him, easing his legs out of the squat to sit back against an ash. Beran saw the others now too. Yann and Stenes, Dyfnwal and Konan and other men he had fought beside. Killed beside. A couple sat by the fire, another two were snoring in their furs, while the rest stood nearby, on watch or talking in low voices.
But he could not see Palamedes or the boy, and their absence twisted his guts with cold hands.
‘That day you betrayed me and my men,’ Nabor said, ‘you also took a share of the prize from that pretty Roman carriage.’
‘And you didn’t?’ Beran asked, thinking of the chest brimming with bronze, silver and gold coin, the necklaces set with green emeralds, jet and amber, the torcs of twisted silver and the finger rings shining with precious stones. The treasures of a doomed people, which he had hidden and which, to his small amusement, Nabor had clearly not discovered.
Nabor’s lip pulled back from his teeth. ‘Having failed to kill the boy, I thought it would be unwise to upset Queen Morgana further,’ he said. ‘That old crone can see inside a man’s skull.’ He put two fingers to his own eyes, then pointed them at Beran. ‘She’s a damned witch, Beran. I’d wager she can weigh a man’s thoughts and count the silver in them.’ He shrugged. ‘I saw a few spilled coins in that carriage and thought to myself, old Beran likely stashed a handful or two somewhere, like a squirrel burying acorns for later.’ He smiled, the gaps where teeth used to be as dark as the night. ‘So, I will take your share, Beran, after we’ve given her the boy.’
The thief must have seen the relief in Beran’s face. ‘Oh, he’s alive, Beran,’ Nabor went on. ‘The Saracen too.’
‘No one else was going to lug you all the way from Portus Adurni,’ Dyfnwal remarked, placing a hazelnut on a flat stone and bringing the pommel of his knife down on it.
Nabor looked off into the dark woods. ‘Gone for a piss, I think.’ He turned his gaze back to Beran. ‘So, I need you breathing a little longer, old man, whether you like it or not.’
Beran heard someone coming through the trees and turned his pain-ridden torso as much as he could so that his good eye could see. It was Palamedes and the boy, being led back to the fire by another of Nabor’s men. Their hands were tied but they looked unhurt. Beran’s heart kicked in his chest to see the boy alive, though when the boy saw Beran, he looked away and would not meet his eye again as he and the Saracen sat down on the other side of the fire.
‘Guess I won’t need you to carry him now,’ Nabor told Palamedes, shooting the Saracen a sour grin.
Palamedes nodded at Beran, who nodded back.
‘Why is the boy alive?’ Beran asked Nabor.
‘What’s he to you, you old snake?’ Stenes rumbled, running his Saxon long knife along a whetstone, just as he had been doing the night before they had ambushed Queen Brendana and her son, Prince Erbin, and slaughtered those fleeing from Caer Colun and King Cynric’s Saxons.
Nabor threw his stick into the fire. ‘So many questions, Beran. I preferred it when you were lying there senseless as a log. But, since you ask …’ He scratched his bearded cheek and looked up as the wind stirred the heavy boughs above, causing one to creak ominously. ‘The queen wanted him dead before. Now she wants him alive. Don’t ask me why.’ He spread his arms wide. ‘You know how it is. We do the job and we take the money. That’s it.’ He frowned. ‘What I want to know is, why did you betray us? Did you plan to sell the boy to someone else? Or claim the witch’s silver for yourself? Tell her we were dead, then disappear with the reward before we turned up?’ He leant his head back against the tree trunk and eyed Beran with suspicion. ‘Because I can’t think why else you would kill Red Tooth and Hygwydd and Blandigan.’ He flapped a hand. ‘Donan, I understand. That arse rag was never meant to grow old. All the brains of a shit bucket, that boy.’
‘I didn’t kill Blandigan,’ Beran said.
Nabor shrugged again, as if it made no difference.
‘Let the boy go, Nabor,’ Beran said. ‘You know who he is?’
‘I know,’ Nabor said.
‘Then you know why Morgana can’t let him live. Because since King Cerdic died and the Saxons turned on her, she knows her only way back to power is to put Melehan on Uther’s high seat.’ He turned his good eye onto the boy. ‘The boy threatens that ambition. She knows he is the rightful heir. He’s the grandson of Ambrosius Aurelius.’
‘Such things are far above the likes of you and me, Beran.’ Nabor shrugged. ‘What does it matter to us whose arse polishes some throne in Dumnonia? Camelot will be gone soon enough anyway, along with anyone foolish enough to stand in the shieldwall against Cynric.’ He lifted a hand to his unkempt beard and raked fingers through it, teasing at the knots. ‘There’s no stopping the Saxons now. That’s a dream that died long ago.’
‘No,’ Palamedes said. All eyes looked to the Saracen then. ‘Prince Erbin can unite the kingdoms. Like Arthur did,’ he said, his gaze weighing on Beran.
‘He’s just a boy,’ Nabor said.
‘Maybe Queen Morgana is right,’ Dyfnwal said, cracking another shell and putting the nut in his mouth. ‘Maybe Prince Melehan has a better chance of raising the war banners. Better than any other. Better than some boy from a kingdom of ash.’
Beran shook his head. ‘Morgana sided with the Saxons once. The kings of Britain will not trust her again.’
‘Not my business,’ Nabor said. ‘And I’d never have thought it was yours.’ He turned to Palamedes. ‘Nor yours, you Saracen devil.’ He shook his head. ‘You could be in Armorica now, drinking wine with that arrogant little bastard. Instead, you’ve thrown in with this miserable old turd and a boy who’ll be food for the crows two days from now.’ He glowered at Palamedes. ‘Join us. You’re a good fighter. The gods know I’ve won many a wager thanks to you. Black skin of yours puts the fear of Belatucadrus in men’s bellies. That’s useful to me.’
‘I follow him.’ Palamedes nodded at the boy beside him.
‘Then you’re a dead man, too,’ Stenes said without looking up from his work on the scramasax.
But Nabor held up a hand. ‘We’ll see,’ he said. ‘When we’ve delivered the boy to Queen Morgana, I’ll ask you again, Saracen.’ His lip curled. ‘I don’t think you’ll want to follow where he’s going.’
No one spoke for a long time then. They watched the fire and listened to the wind in the trees and the scrape of iron against stone. Somewhere to the south, an owl screeched.
Beran half wished he had some strong wine to numb the many pains, some throbbing, some aching, others feeling like fire in his flesh. But it was nothing less than he deserved. He knew that. He had failed the boy. As, truth be told, he had known he would. The boy was not the first to have misplaced his hope in Beran.
But he would be the last.
‘Boy,’ Beran said.
But the boy would not look at him.
‘Boy, I’m sorry. I should have been there.’
The boy turned his head away, as though he was looking at something in the darkness between the trunks of oak and ash.
‘I’m sorry,’ Beran said again.
‘It’s too late for all that, Beran,’ Nabor said.
And perhaps it was.
15
Warlord
A BIG WARRIOR WITH TWO braids of reddish hair had pulled the strap from his own shield and tied Arthur’s wrists with it, and now Arthur strained against the binding, his right shoulder screaming in its joint, until his efforts earned him a dig in the ribs with a spear butt and another in his back.
A Frank growled at him in words he did not understand, though he understood the man’s meaning well enough, and they pushed him on through the darkening forest, leaving the remnants of Prince Aegidius’s cataphracts lying where they had died, a scattering of ruined bodies amongst the forest litter.
He looked back and saw them butchering his mare, the animal shrieking and snorting as they hacked at its limbs with their feared franciscas, gouts of blood flying from the edges of those short axes. He felt the mare’s suffering like a blade in his own heart, though he knew that death was a mercy now. She had snapped her right foreleg in some creature’s burrow amongst the roots of a tree, and he had been catapulted from the saddle, landing hard enough to rattle his bones and knock the wits out of his head.
How many riders had broken from the main force, following the prince as he galloped headlong after the fleeing enemy? A score, perhaps? Arthur did not know, but he had known it was madness.
It was coming back to him now as his head cleared and the pain in his shoulder and ribs sharpened his mind again. He could picture it, the way an eagle must view the world and its people as it soared high above.
The Franks had fled the field, scattering in the wake of King Syagrius’s charge like sparks flying from the blow of the forge hammer, but Prince Aegidius had seen the enemy’s leader, King Childeric, running for the safety of the trees, his silver-decorated helmet and richly dressed household warriors marking him amidst the chaos. And so the prince had peeled off from the main thrust and spurred his grey stallion after the Frankish king, his scale armour and lance blade glinting in the late afternoon sun. And Arthur had followed him.
A madness of the soul. A fever of blood in spate.
It would be dark soon. It was already dark in the forest, where shadows reigned and sound deceived the ear, being scattered amongst the tall trunks, or being masked by the rustle of leaves, the sway of bough, the creak of stem. And this forest being mostly unknown to him, a strange place, heavy with unusual, unidentified scents and the ghosts of an unfamiliar people.
He thought he could hear the distant roar of battle still, out there beyond the forest, like the faint murmur of the sea breaking on rocks.
Somewhere nearby, a raven croaked, its hoarse voice carrying amongst the trees. There would be a feast of flesh for the bird this day, Arthur thought, his muscles still thrumming with the thrill of the battle, like wing beats in his flesh and blood. His ears still thumping with the drumbeat of a hundred warhorses’ hooves on sun-parched earth.
They had pushed the enemy back, reclaimed lost land. A victory for King Syagrius, though it would not feel like one to the king, knowing that his son lay pale and sightless in the forest barely an arrow-shot from his own hall on the banks of the Liger.
Arthur looked up as he walked, spying patches of red sky between the tall pines. A blood dusk. He wondered if the gods had been watching the battle and, if so, which gods they were, for they said that the Christ had grown powerful in this land, and that the old gods were fading like morning mist.
One of the warriors barked at him to stop and so he did. He did not know why they had chosen this spot. Perhaps because there was more sky above them here, where an old pine had died and another had fallen.
Other men had already taken his helmet, spear and sword. Had pulled him out of his mail shirt, so that he had felt vulnerable and defenceless in nothing but his tunic and trews, like some creature of the tideline prised from its shell. And yet they had not killed him as they had killed his mare and those six or seven of his companions who had not died outright amongst the trees when the Franks had turned on their pursuers and fallen like a darkness upon them. These two older warriors, war-warped and grizzled men both, had claimed him for themselves, and the others had not defied them.
Could it be these men did not honour the Christian god like their axe-brothers, but rather sought the favour of some lord of battle, a god of war? Perhaps they meant to cut his throat and give their invocations to the sky before returning to their village and their kinfolk with tales of courage and loss, and of armoured men on armoured horses setting the earth itself to tremble.
Arthur’s mouth was dry, his breathing fast and shallow. There was no give at all in the strap binding his wrists, the leather digging into his flesh so that the skin there was white as bone.
He looked up again and wondered what the druid would say if he could see him then. Something about proving Uther right by getting himself killed before he had achieved anything worthy of a tale from a cheap bard. He smiled at the thought in spite of himself.
He saw a squirrel scrabbling up the bare, brown branches of a pine, and wondered if Merlin was here in a way, watching him through the eyes of that creature. For such spirit-journeying was not beyond the druid’s abilities, or so he claimed.
One of the Franks leant his spear against a tree and opened the scrip at his waist, pulling out a small carving of a bull, while the other warrior kept the point of his spear pressed against Arthur’s spine at the base of his neck.
‘I am gods-cursed,’ Arthur told them. ‘For killing a druid.’
The spear blade stayed where it was against his neck, and nor did the other man, with the little bull in one hand, show any understanding or interest, and so Arthur did not feel he risked Merlin’s fury for speaking of it. ‘I tell you this because I do not think your gods, whoever they are, will thank you for cutting my throat in their name.’
The older of the two warriors, his dark beard sprinkled with snow, had pulled his francisca from his belt, so that he held the short axe in one hand, the carved bull in the other. It looked snug in the big man’s hand, that axe, its blade sharp enough to cut the veil between this life and the next.
And now he was walking towards Arthur, his boots crunching on dry pine needles, his intention as red as the sky.
The warrior behind Arthur moved the spear blade down, so that it now rested in the middle of his back.
Now. Do it now.
Arthur rolled around the spear blade, knocked the shaft aside with his right elbow and kicked the warrior between the legs. Then he was running, jumping deadfall and weaving between the pines. He felt the thrown francisca cut the air beside his left ear before it thunked into a trunk two spear lengths ahead, and a heartbeat later he was cutting his bonds on the part of that wicked sharp blade not buried in the wood.
The leather strap fell away and he yanked the axe from the pine tree and turned, twisting out of the path of a spear thrust before scything the francisca backhanded, opening the Frank’s throat in a spray of blood. The man crumpled to the ground, his ruined neck bubbling with gore, and Arthur took up the dying man’s spear and faced the other warrior then, who was pale and grimacing, reeling still from the injury to his stones. Yet the Frank steeled himself and squared his shoulders and came.
Arthur held the spear in his left hand, in his right the francisca, feeling strange with its heavy head and curving haft.
‘I told you, your gods don’t want me,’ Arthur said, and the Frank jabbed with his spear. But Arthur was too fast. He parried the blade into the earth, then stepped in with his right foot and swung the short axe into the man’s neck. He felt the man’s hot blood hit his face like a slap.
For a heartbeat he looked down at the man, whose lifeblood was pooling impossibly fast, too fast even for the dry ground to drink it. Then he turned and ran.
Someone saw him and yelled to warn the other Franks, but Arthur was light in only tunic and trews, and he was young and fast, and he weaved amongst the pines as agile as a sparhawk in flight.
He glimpsed a blur of movement ahead, two Franks racing to cut him off, then one of them appeared amongst the trees ahead, bellowing a challenge, and Arthur did not stop but threw the francisca, the short axe turning end over end before embedding itself in the man’s chest with a crack of splitting bone.
The second warrior emerged and hurled his own francisca, which spun amongst the trees, whirring past Arthur like a fleeing spirit, and the Frank hauled at his sword, scrabbling to draw it from its scabbard, eyes round with fear as Arthur speared him in the belly and ran on.
He was near the edge of the forest now, close to where they had butchered his horse and where the last light of the day yet lingered, a slack tide of gold at the margins. There were Franks everywhere, looting the dead, or treating the wounded, or standing in knots of four or five as they passed around flasks and relived the day. They were calling out to one another in that twilight of shadows, for they had heard the clash of arms and the shouts, and they did not know who was fighting who in the darkling.
Arthur ran towards the forest fringe and the ebbing day, his heart pumping, his stride seeming impossibly fast in that gathering gloom, as though he meant to outrun the darkness itself, as though he knew that more than his own life depended on him making it out of that forest.
