The Winter King

PART TWO The Princess Bride

IGRAINE is UNHAPPY. She wants tales of Arthur's childhood. She has heard of a sword in the stone and wants me to write of it. She tells me he was sired by a spirit on a queen and that the skies were filled with thunder on the night of his birth and maybe she is right and the skies were noisy that night, but everyone I ever talked to slept through it, and as for the sword in the stone, well, there was a sword and there was a stone, but their place in the tale is still far ahead. The sword was called Caledfwlch, which means 'hard lightning' though Igraine prefers to call it Excalibur and I shall call it so as well because Arthur never cared what name his long sword carried. Nor did he care about his childhood, for certainly I never heard him speak of it. I once questioned him about his early days and he would not answer.

“What is the egg to the eagle?” he asked me, then said that he had been born, he had lived and he had become a soldier, and that was all I needed to know.

But for my most fair and generous protector, Igraine, let me set down what little I did learn. Arthur, despite Uther's denial at Glevum, was the son of the High King, though there was small advantage to be gained from that patronage for Uther fathered as many bastards as a torn cat makes kittens. Arthur's mother was, like my most precious queen, called Igraine. She came from Caer Gei in Gwynedd and is said to have been the daughter of Cunedda, King of Gwynedd and High King before Uther, though Igraine was no princess for her mother was not Cunedda's wife, but was instead married to a chieftain of Henis Wyren. All that Arthur would ever say of Igraine of Gwynedd, who died when he was on the verge of manhood, is that she was the most wonderful and clever and beautiful mother any boy could ever wish for, though according to Cei, who knew Igraine well, her beauty was sharpened by a rancorous wit. Cei is the son of Ector ap Ednywain, the chieftain at Caer Gei who took Igraine and her four bastard children into his household when Uther rejected them. That rejection occurred in the same year Arthur was born, and Igraine never forgave her son for it. She used to say that Arthur was one child too many, and somehow she believed that she would always have ruled as Uther's mistress had Arthur not been born.

Arthur was the fourth of Igraine's children to survive infancy. The other three were all girls and Uther evidently liked his bastards to be female for they were less likely to make demands on his patrimony when they grew. Cei and Arthur were raised together and Cei says, though never in Arthur's hearing, that both he and Arthur were frightened of Igraine. Arthur, he told me, was a dutiful, hard-working boy who strove to be the best at every lesson, whether in reading or sword-fighting, but nothing he could ever achieve gave his mother pleasure, though Arthur always worshipped her, defended her, and wept inconsolably when she died of a fever. Arthur was then thirteen, and Ector, his protector, appealed to Uther to help Igraine's four impoverished orphans. Uther brought them to Caer Cadarn, probably because he thought the three daughters would be useful throw pieces in the game of dynastic marriages. Morgan's marriage to a Prince of Kernow was shortlived thanks to fire, but Morgause married King Lot of Lothian and Anna was wed to King Budic ap Camran across the water in Brittany. These last two were not important marriages, for neither king was close enough to send reinforcements to Dumnonia in time of war, but both served their small purposes. Arthur, being a boy, had no such usefulness and so he went to Uther's court and learned to use a sword and spear. He also met Merlin, though neither man talked much of what passed between them in those months before Arthur, despairing of ever being given preferment by Uther, followed his sister Anna to Brittany. There, in the turmoil of Gaul, he grew into a great soldier and Anna, ever conscious that a warrior brother was a valued relative, kept his exploits known to Uther. That was why Uther brought Arthur back to Britain for the campaign which ended in his son's death. The rest you know.

And now I have told Igraine all I know of Arthur's childhood and doubtless she will embellish the tale with the legends that are already being told of Arthur among the common folk. Igraine is taking away these skins one by one and having them transcribed into the proper tongue of Britain by Dafydd ap Gruffud, the clerk of the justice who speaks the Saxon tongue, and I do not trust him or Igraine to leave these words untouched by their own fancies.

There are times when I wish that I dared to set this tale down in the British tongue, but Bishop Sansum, whom God cherishes above all the saints, still suspects what I write. At times he has tried to stop this work, or else has commanded the imps of Satan to impede me. One day I found my quills all gone, and on another there was urine in the inkhorn, but Igraine restores everything and Sansum, unless he learns to read and masters the Saxon tongue, cannot confirm his suspicions that this work is not, in truth, a Saxon Gospel.

Igraine urges me to write more and faster, and pleads with me to tell the truth about Arthur, but then complains when that truth does not match the fairy-tales she hears in the Caer's kitchen or in her robing chamber. She wants shape-changing and questing beasts, but I cannot invent what I did not see. It is true, God forgive me, that I have changed some things, but nothing important. Thus, when Arthur saved us in the battle before Caer Cadarn, I realized he was coming long before he actually appeared, for Owain and his men knew all along that Arthur and his horsemen, newly arrived from Brittany, were concealed in the woodlands north of Caer Cadarn, just as they knew that Gundleus's war-band was approaching. Gundleus's mistake was to fire the Tor, for the smoke pyre served as a warning beacon to all the south country and Owain's mounted scouts had been watching Gundleus's men since midday. Owain, having helped Agricola defeat Gorfyddyd's invasion, had hurried south to greet Arthur, not out of friendship, but rather to be present when a rival warlord appeared in the kingdom, and it was fortunate for us that Owain had returned. Yet even so, the battle could never have happened as I described it. If Owain had not known that Arthur was nearby he would have given the baby Mordred to his swiftest horseman and sent the child galloping to safety, even if the rest of us did go down beneath Gundleus's spears. I could have written that truth, of course, but the bards showed me how to shape a tale so that the listeners are kept waiting for the part they want to hear, and I think the tale is better for keeping the news of Arthur's arrival until the very last minute. It is a small sin, this tale-shaping, though God knows Sansum would never forgive it.

It is still winter here in Dinnewrac, and bitter cold, but King Brochvael ordered Sansum to light our fires after Brother Aron was found frozen dead in his cell. The saint refused until the King sent firewood from his Caer, and so we do now have fires, though not many and never great. Still, even a small fire makes the writing easier, and of late the blessed Saint Sansum has been less meddlesome. Two novices have joined our small flock, mere boys with unbroken voices, and Sansum has taken it upon himself to train them in the ways of Our Most Precious Saviour. Such is the saint's care for their immortal souls that he even insists the boys must share his sleeping cell and he seems a happier man for their company. God be thanked for that, and for the gift of fire, and for the strength to go on with this tale of Arthur, the King that Never Was, the Enemy of God and our Lord of Battles.

I shall not weary you with the details of that fight before Caer Cadarn. It was a rout, not a battle, and only a handful of Silurians escaped. Ligessac, the traitor, was one who escaped, but most of Gundleus's men were captured. A score of the enemy died, including the two naked fighters who went down to Owain's war spear. Gundleus, Ladwys and Tanaburs were all taken alive. I killed no one. I did not even dent my sword's edge.

Nor do I even remember much about the rout, for all I wanted to do was stare at Arthur. He was mounted on Llamrei, his mare, a great black beast with shaggy fetlocks and flat iron shoes tied to her hooves with leather straps. All Arthur's men rode such big horses that had their nostrils slit into flaring holes so that they could breathe more easily. The beasts were made even more alarming by extraordinary shields of stiffened leather that hung to protect the animals' chests from spear thrusts. The shields were so thick and cumbersome that the horses could not lower their heads to graze at the battle's end and Arthur ordered one of his grooms to unstrap the device so Llamrei could feed. Each of the horses needed two grooms apiece, one to look after the horse shield, body cloth and saddle, the other to lead the horse by the bridle, while still a third servant carried the warrior's spear and shield. Arthur had a long, heavy spear named Rhongomyniad while his shield, Wynebgwrthucher, was made of willow boards covered with a skin of beaten silver that was polished until it dazzled. At his hip hung the knife called Carnwenhau and the famous sword Excalibur in its black scabbard that was cross-hatched with golden thread. I could not see his face at first for his head was enclosed in a helmet with broad cheek pieces that shadowed his features. The helmet, with its gash for eyes and dark hole for a mouth, was made of polished iron decorated with swirling patterns of silver and had a high plume of white goose feathers. There was something deathly about that pale helmet; it had a fearsome, skull-like appearance which suggested its wearer was one of the walking dead. His cloak, like his plume, was white. The cloak, which he was fastidious about keeping clean, hung from his shoulders to keep the sun off his long coat of scale armour. I had never seen scale armour before, though Hywel had told me of it, and seeing Arthur's I was overwhelmed with a desire to possess such a coat myself. The armour was Roman and made from hundreds of iron plates, each no bigger than a thumbprint, sewn in overlapping rows on to a knee-length coat of leather. The plates were square at the top, where two holes were left for the sewing thread, and pointed at their base, and the scales overlapped in such a manner that a spear head would always encounter at least two layers of iron before striking the stout leather beneath. The stiff armour chinked when Arthur moved, and it was not just iron sounding for his smiths had added a row of golden plates around the neck and scattered silver scales among the polished iron so that the whole coat seemed to shimmer. It took hours of polishing each day to prevent the iron rusting, and after every battle a few plates would be missing and would need to be reforged. Few smiths could make such a coat, and very few men could afford to buy one, but Arthur had taken his from a Prankish chieftain he had killed in Armorica. Besides the helmet, cloak and scale coat, he wore leather boots, leather gloves and a leather belt from which Excalibur hung in its cross-hatched scabbard that was supposed to protect its wearer against all harm.

To me, dazzled by his coming, he appeared as a white, shining God come to earth. I could not take my eyes from him.

He embraced Owain and I heard the two men laugh. Owain was a tall man, but Arthur could look him in the eye, though he was nowhere near as heavily built as Owain. Owain was all muscle and bulk, while Arthur was a lean and wiry man. Owain thumped Arthur's back and Arthur returned the affectionate gesture before the two men walked, their arms about each other's shoulders, to where Ralla was holding Mordred.

Arthur fell to his knees before his King and, with a surprising delicacy for a man in stiff, heavy armour, lifted a gloved hand to take the hem of the baby's robe. He pushed his helmet's hinged cheek pieces aside, then kissed the robe. Mordred responded by screaming and struggling. Arthur stood and held his arms towards Morgan. She was older than her brother, who was still only twenty-five or twenty-six years old, but when he offered to embrace her she began to cry behind her gold mask that clashed lightly against Arthur's helmet as they clasped each other. He held her tight and patted her back. “Dear Morgan,” I heard him say, 'dear, sweet Morgan.“ I had never realized how lonely Morgan was until I saw her weep in her brother's arms. He pulled gently away from her grip then used both his gloved hands to lift the silver-grey helmet from his head. ”I have a gift for you,“ he told Morgan, 'at least I think I do, unless Hygwydd's stolen it. Where are you, Hygwydd?”

The servant Hygwydd ran forward and was given the white-plumed helmet in exchange for a necklace of bears' teeth that were set in gold sockets on a gold chain that Arthur hung around his sister's neck.

“Something beautiful for my lovely sister,” he said, and then he insisted on knowing who Ralla was, and when he heard about her baby's death his face showed such pain and sympathy that Ralla began to weep and Arthur impulsively hugged her and almost crushed the baby King against his scale-armoured chest. Then Gwlyddyn was introduced, and Gwlyddyn told Arthur how I had killed a Silurian to protect Mordred and so Arthur swung round to thank me.

And, for the first time, I looked full into his face.

It was a face of kindness. That was my first impression. No, that is what Igraine wants me to write. In truth my first impression was of sweat, lots of sweat come from wearing metal armour on a summer's day, but after the sweat I noticed how kind he looked. You trusted Arthur on sight. That was why women always liked Arthur, not because he was good-looking, for he was not overly handsome, but because he looked at you with genuine interest and an obvious benevolence. He had a strong, bony face that was full of enthusiasm, and a full head of dark brown hair that when I first saw him was sweat-plastered tight to his skull, thanks to his helmet's leather liner. His eyes were brown, he had a long nose and a heavy, clean-shaven jaw, but his most noticeable feature was his mouth. It was unnaturally large and had a full set of teeth. He was proud of his teeth and cleaned them every day with salt when he could find it, and with plain water when he could not. It was a big face and a strong one, yet what impressed me most about him was that look of kindness and the impish humour in his eyes. There was an air of enjoyment about Arthur, something in his face radiated a happiness that embraced you in its aura. I noticed then, and ever after, how men and women became more cheerful when Arthur was in their company. Everyone became more optimistic, there was more laughter, and when he departed a dullness would ensue, yet Arthur was no great wit, nor a storyteller, he was simply Arthur, a good man of infectious confidence, impatient will and iron-hard resolve. You did not notice that hardness at first, and even Arthur himself pretended it was not there, yet it was. A slew of battlefield graves bear witness to it.

“Gwlyddyn tells me you're a Saxon!” he teased me.

“Lord,” was all I could say as I dropped to my knees.

He stooped and lifted me by the shoulders. His touch was firm. “I'm no King, Derfel,” he said, 'you don't kneel to me, but I should kneel to you for risking your life to save our King.“ He smiled. ”For that I thank you.“ He had the knack of making you feel that no one else in the world mattered to him as much as you did and I was already lost in worship of him. ”How old are you?" he asked me.

“Fifteen, I think.”

“But big enough for twenty years.” He smiled. “Who taught you to fight?”

“Hywel,” I said, “Merlin's steward.”

“Ah! The best teacher! He taught me too, and how is good Hywel?” The question was asked eagerly, but I had neither the words nor courage to answer.

“Dead,” Morgan answered for me. “Slain by Gundleus.” She spat through the mouth-slit of her mask towards the captured King who was being held a few paces away.

“Hywel dead?” Arthur asked the question of me, his eyes on mine, and I nodded and blinked back tears and Arthur instantly hugged me. “You are a good man, Derfel,” he said, 'and I owe you a reward for saving our King's life. What do you want?"

“To be a warrior, Lord,” I said.

He smiled and stepped away from me. “You're a lucky man, Derfel, because you are what you want to be. Lord Owain?” He turned to the burly, tattooed champion. “Can you use this good Saxon warrior?”

“I can use him.” Owain agreed readily enough.

“Then he's your man,” Arthur said, and he must have sensed my disappointment for he turned back and rested a hand on my shoulder. “For the moment, Derfel,” he said softly, “I employ horsemen, not spearmen. Let Owain be your lord, for there's no one better to teach you the soldier's trade.” He gripped my shoulder with his gloved hand, then turned and waved the two guards away from Gundleus's side. A crowd had gathered close to the captured King who stood beneath the victors' banners. Arthur's horsemen, helmed with iron, armoured in iron-clad leather and cloaked in linen or wool, mingled with Owain's spearmen and the Tor's fugitives about the grassy space where Arthur now faced Gundleus. Gundleus straightened his back. He had no weapons, but he would not let go of his pride, nor did he flinch as Arthur approached.

Arthur walked in silence until he stood two paces from the captured King. The crowd held its breath. Gundleus was shadowed by Arthur's standard that showed a black bear on a white field. The bear was flying between Mordred's recaptured dragon banner and Owain's boar standard, while at Gundleus's feet was his own fallen fox banner that had been spat on, pissed on and trampled by the victors. Gundleus stared as Arthur drew Excalibur from its scabbard. The blade had a bluish tinge to its steel that was polished as brightly as Arthur's scale coat, helmet or shield.

We waited for the fatal stroke, but instead Arthur dropped to one knee and held Excalibur's hilt to Gundleus. “Lord King,” he said humbly and the crowd, who had been anticipating Gundleus's death, gasped.

Gundleus hesitated for a heartbeat, then reached out to touch the sword's pommel. He said nothing. Perhaps he was too astonished to speak.

Arthur stood and sheathed the sword. “I took an oath to protect my King,” he said, 'not to kill kings. What happens to you, Gundleus ap Meilyr, is not mine to decide, but you will be held captive till the decision is made."

“Who makes that decision?” Gundleus demanded. Arthur hesitated, plainly unsure of the answer. Many of our warriors were shouting for Gundleus's death, Morgan was urging her brother to avenge Norwenna while Nimue was shrieking for the captive King to be given to her revenge, but Arthur shook his head. Much later he explained to me that Gundleus was a cousin of Gorfyddyd, King of Powys, and that made Gundleus's death a matter of state, not revenge. “I wanted to make peace, and peace rarely comes out of revenge,” he admitted to me, 'but I probably should have killed him. Not that it would have made much difference." Now though, facing Gundleus in the slanting sun outside Caer Cadarn, he merely said that Gundleus's fate was in the hands of Dumnonia's council.

“And what of Ladwys?” Gundleus asked, gesturing towards the tall, pale-faced woman who stood close behind him with a look of terror on her face. “I ask that she be allowed to stay with me,” he added.

“The whore is mine,” Owain said harshly. Ladwys shook her head and moved closer to Gundleus.

“She is my wife!” Gundleus protested to Arthur, thereby confirming the old rumour that he had indeed married his low-born lover. Which also meant that he had married Norwenna falsely, though that sin, considering what else he did to her, was small indeed.

“Wife or whatever,” Owain insisted, 'she is mine.“ He saw Arthur's hesitation. ”Until the council decides otherwise,“ he added in a deliberate echo of Arthur's invocation of that higher authority. Arthur seemed troubled by Owain's claim, but his position in Dumnonia was still uncertain, for though he had been named as Mordred's protector and one of the kingdom's warlords, that only gave him an authority equal to Owain's. All of us had noted how, in the wake of the Silurian rout, Arthur had taken charge, but Owain, by demanding Ladwys as his slave, was reminding Arthur that he held equal power. The moment was awkward until Arthur sacrificed Ladwys to Dumnonian unity. ”Owain has decided the matter,“ he said to Gundleus, then turned away so he would not have to witness the effect of his words on the lovers. Ladwys screamed her protest, then went silent as one of Owain's men dragged her away. Tanaburs laughed at Ladwys's distress. He was a Druid, so no harm would be done to him. He was no prisoner, but free to go, though he would have to leave the field without food, blessing or company. Yet, emboldened by the day's events, I could not let him go without speaking and so I followed him across the pasture that was littered with the Silurian dead. ”Tanaburs!“ I called after him. The Druid turned and watched me draw my sword. ”Careful, boy," he said and made a sign of warning with his moon-tipped staff.

I should have felt fear, but a new warrior spirit filled me as I stepped close to him and placed the sword in the tangled white hairs of his beard. His head jerked back at the touch of the steel, rattling the yellow bones tied to his hair. His old face was lined, brown and blotchy, his eyes red and his nose twisted. “I ought to kill you,” I said.

He laughed. “And the curse of Britain will follow you. Your soul will never reach the Otherworld, you will have torments unknown and unnumbered, and I will be their author.” He spat towards me, then tried to push the sword blade out of his beard, but I tightened my grip on the hilt and he suddenly looked alarmed as he realized my strength.

A few curious onlookers had followed me and some tried to warn me of the dreadful fate that would torment me if I killed a Druid, but I had no intention of killing the old man. I just wanted to frighten him.

“Ten or more years ago,” I said, 'you came to Madog's holding." Madog was the man who had enslaved my mother, and whose homestead the young Gundleus had raided.

Tanaburs nodded as he remembered the raid. “So we did, so we did. A good day! We took much gold,” he said, 'and many slaves!"

“And you made a death-pit,” I said.

“So?” He. shrugged, then leered at me. “The Gods must be thanked for good fortune.” I smiled and let the sword point tickle his scrawny throat. “So I lived, Druid. I lived.” It took Tanaburs a few seconds to understand just what I had said, but then he blanched and trembled, for he knew that I, alone of all in Britain, possessed the power to kill him. He had sacrificed me to the Gods, but his carelessness in not making sure of his gift meant that the Gods had granted the power of his life into my keeping. He screamed in terror, thinking my blade was about to lunge into his gullet, but instead I pulled the steel away from his ragged beard and laughed at him as he turned and stumbled away across the field. He was desperate to escape me, but just before he reached the woodland into which the handful of Silurian survivors had fled, he turned and pointed a bony hand towards me. “Your mother lives, boy!” he shouted. “She lives!” Then he was gone. I stood there with my mouth open and my sword hanging in my hand. It was not that I was overcome by any particular emotion for

I could hardly remember my mother and had no real recollection of any love between us, but the very thought that she lived wrenched my whole world as violently as that morning's destruction of Merlin's hall. Then I shook my head. How could Tanaburs remember one slave among so many? His claim was surely false, mere words to unsettle me, nothing more, and so I sheathed the sword and walked slowly back towards the fortress.

Gundleus was placed under guard in a chamber off the great hall at Caer Cadarn. There was a feast of sorts that night, though because so many people were in the fortress the helpings of meat were small and hastily cooked. Much of the night was spent by old friends exchanging news of Britain and Brittany, for many of Arthur's followers had originally come from Dumnonia or from the other British kingdoms. The names of Arthur's men blurred in my mind, for there were over seventy horsemen in his band, as well as grooms, servants, women and a tribe of children. In time the names of Arthur's warriors became so familiar, but that night they meant nothing: Dagonet, Aglaval, Cei, Lanval, the brothers Balan and Balin, Gawain and Agravain, Blaise, Illtyd, Eiddilig, Bedwyr. I did notice Morfans, for he was the ugliest man I ever saw, so ugly that he took pride in his twisted looks, goitred neck, hare lip and misshapen jaw. I also noticed Sagramor, for he was black and I had never seen, let alone believed in, such men. He was a tall, thin and sourly laconic man, though when he could be persuaded to tell a story in his horribly accented British he could put a whole hall under his spell.

And, of course, I noticed Ailleann. She was a slender, black-haired woman, a few years older than Arthur, with a thin, grave and gentle face that gave her a look of great wisdom. She was dressed in royal finery that night. Her robe was of linen dyed a rusty red with iron-soil, girdled by a heavy silver chain, and had long loose sleeves that were fringed with otter fur. She wore a gleaming torque of heavy gold about her long neck, bracelets of gold around her wrists and an enamelled brooch showing Arthur's symbol of the bear at her breast. She moved gracefully, spoke little and watched Arthur protectively. I thought she had to be a queen, or at least a princess, except that she was carrying bowls of food and flasks of mead like any common servant.

“Ailleann's a slave, lad,” Morfans the Ugly said. He was squatting opposite me on the hall floor and had seen me watching the tall woman as she moved from the patches of firelight into the hall's flickering shadows.

“Whose slave?” I asked.

“Whose do you think?” he asked, then put a rib of pork in his mouth and used his two remaining teeth to strip the bone of its succulent flesh. “Arthur's,” he said after he had tossed the bone to one of the many dogs in the hall. “And she's his lover as well as his slave, of course.” He belched, then drank from a horn cup. “She was given to him by his brother-in-law, King Budic. That was a long time ago. She's a good few years older than Arthur and I don't suppose Budic thought he'd keep her long, but once Arthur takes a fancy to someone they seem to stay for ever. Those are her twin boys.” He jerked a greasy beard towards the back of the hall where a pair of sullen boys of about nine squatted in the dirt with their bowls of food.

“Arthur's sons?” I asked.

“No one else's,” Morfans said derisively. “Amhar and Loholt, they're called, and their father worships them. Nothing's too good for those little bastards, and that's exactly what they are, lad, bastards. Real good-for-nothing little bastards.” There was a genuine hatred in his voice. “I tell you, son, Arthur ap Uther is a great man. He's the best soldier I've ever known, the most generous man and the most fair lord, but when it comes to breeding children I could do better with a sow for a mother.” I looked back to Ailleann. “Are they married?”

Morfans laughed. “Of course not! But she's kept him happy these ten years. Mind you, the day will come when he'll send her away just like his father sent his mother away. Arthur will marry something royal and she won't be half as gentle as Ailleann, but that's what men like Arthur have to do. They have to marry well. Not like you and me, boy. We can marry what we want, so long as it isn't royal. Listen to that!” He grinned as a woman screamed in the night outside the hall.

Owain had left the hall and Ladwys was evidently being taught her new duties. Arthur flinched at the sound, and Ailleann raised her elegant head and frowned at him, but the only other person in the hall who seemed to notice Ladwys's distress was Nimue. Her bandaged face was drawn and sad, but the scream made her smile because of the torment she knew the sound would give to Gundleus. There was no forgiveness in Nimue, not one drop. She had already begged Arthur and Owain for permission to kill Gundleus herself, and had been refused, but so long as Nimue lived Gundleus would know fear. Arthur led a party of horsemen to Ynys Wydryn the next day and returned that evening to report that Merlin's settlement had been burned to the ground. The horsemen also returned with poor mad Pellinore and an indignant Druidan who had taken shelter in a well belonging to the monks of the Holy Thorn. Arthur declared his intention of rebuilding Merlin's hall, though how it was to be done without money and an army of labourers, none of us knew, and Gwlyddyn was formally appointed as Mordred's royal builder and instructed to start felling trees to remake the Tor's buildings. Pellinore was locked into an empty stone-built store-room attached to the Roman villa at Lindinis, which was the settlement nearest to Caer Cadarn and the place where the women, children and slaves who followed Arthur's men found themselves roofs. Arthur organized everything. He was always a restless man who hated to be idle and in those first few days after Gundleus's capture he worked from dawn until long after dusk. Most of his time was spent in arranging for his followers' livelihoods; royal land had to be allotted to them and houses enlarged for their families, all without offending the people already living at Lindinis. The villa itself had belonged to Uther and Arthur now took it for himself. No task was too trivial for him and I even found him wrestling with a great sheet of lead one morning. “Give me some help, Derfel!” he called. I was flattered that he remembered my name and hurried to help him lift the unwieldy mass. “Rare stuff, this!” he said cheerfully. He was stripped to the waist and his skin was stained with the lead that he planned to cut into strips to line the stone gutter that had once carried water from a spring into the villa's interior. “The Romans took all the lead away with them when they left,” he explained, 'and that's why the water conduits don't work. We should get the mines working again.“ He dropped his end of the lead and wiped his brow. ”Get the mines working, rebuild the bridges, pave the fords, dig out the sluices and find a way of persuading the Sais to go back home. That's enough work for one man's life, don't you think?"

“Yes, Lord,” I said nervously, and wondered why a warlord would busy himself repairing water conduits. The council was to meet later in the day and I thought Arthur would be busy enough preparing for that business, but he seemed more concerned with the lead than with matters of state.

“I don't know if you saw lead, or cut it with a knife,” he said ruefully. “I ought to know. I'll ask Gwlyddyn. He seems to know everything. Did you know that you always put tree trunks upside down if you use them for pillars?”

“No, Lord.”

“It stops the damp from rising, you see, and keeps the timber from rotting. That's what Gwlyddyn tells me. I like that sort of knowledge. It's good, practical knowledge, the kind that makes the world work.” He grinned at me. “So how are you liking Owain?” he asked.

“He's good to me, Lord,” I said, embarrassed by the question. In truth I was still nervous of Owain, though he never showed me any unkindness.

“He should be good to you,” Arthur said. “Every leader depends on having good men for his reputation.”

“But I'd rather serve you, Lord,” I blurted out with youthful indiscretion. He smiled. “You will, Derfel, you will. In time. If you pass the test of fighting for Owain.” He made the remark casually enough, but later I wondered if he foresaw what was to come. In time I did pass Owain's test, but it was hard, and perhaps Arthur wanted me to learn that lesson before I joined his band of men. He stooped again to the lead sheet, then straightened as a howl sounded through the shabby building. It was Pellinore, protesting his imprisonment. “Owain says we should send poor Pell' to the Isle of the Dead,” Arthur said, referring to the island where the violent mad were put away. “What do you think?”

I was so astonished at being asked that at first I did not reply, then I stammered that Pellinore was beloved of Merlin and Merlin had wanted him kept among the living and I thought Merlin's wishes should be respected. Arthur listened gravely and even seemed grateful for my advice. He did not need it, of course, but was just trying to make me feel valued. “Then Pellinore can stay here, lad,” he said. “Now get hold of the other end. Lift!”

Lindinis emptied next day. Morgan and Nimue returned to Ynys Wydryn where they planned to rebuild the Tor. Nimue brushed aside my farewell; her eye still hurt, she was bitter, and she wanted nothing from life except revenge on Gundleus which was denied her. Arthur went north with all his horsemen to reinforce Tewdric on Gwent's northern border while I stayed with Owain who had no taken up residence in Caer Cadarn's great hall. I might be a warrior, but in that high summer it was more important to gather in the harvest than stand guard on the fort's ramparts, so for days at a time I gave up my sword and the helmet, shield and leather breastplate I had inherited from a dead Silurian and went to the King's fields to help the serfs bring in the rye, barley and wheat. It was hard work done with a short sickle that had to be sharpened constantly on a strickle: a wooden baton that was first dipped in pig's grease, then coated with fine sand that put a keen edge on the sickle's blade, though the edge never seemed sharp enough for me and, fit as I was, the constant stooping and tugging left my back aching and my muscles sore. I had never worked so hard when I lived on the Tor, but I had now left Merlin's privileged world and was a part of Owain's troop.

We stocked the cut grain in the fields, then carted vast heaps of rye straw to Caer Cadarn and Lindinis. The straw was used to repair the thatched roofs and to restuff the mattresses so that for a few blissful days our beds were free of lice and fleas, though that blessing did not last long. It was at that time I grew my first beard, a wispy gold affair of which I was inordinately proud. I spent my days doing backbreaking work in the fields but I still had to endure two hours of military training each night. Hywel had taught me well, but Owain wanted better. “That Silurian you killed,” Owain said to me one evening when I was sweating on Caer Cadarn's ramparts after a bout of single-stick with a warrior named Mapon, “I'll wager you a month's wages to a dead mouse that you killed him with your sword's edge.” I did not take the wager, but confirmed that I had indeed sliced the sword down like an axe. Owain laughed, then dismissed Mapon with a wave of his hand. “Hywel always taught people to fight with the edge,” Owain said. “Watch Arthur the next time he fights. Slash, slash, like a haymaker trying to finish before the rain comes.” He drew his own sword. “Use the point, boy,” he told me. “Always use the point. It kills quicker.” He lunged at me, making me parry desperately. “If you're using the sword's edge,” he said, 'it means you're in the open field. The shield-wall has broken, and if it's your shield-wall that's broken then you're a dead man, however good a swordsman you are. But if the shield-wall holds firm then it means you're standing shoulder to shoulder and you don't have room to swing a sword, only to stab.“ He thrust again, making in me parry. ”Why do you think the Romans had short swords?" he asked me.

“I don't know, Lord.”

“Because a short sword stabs better than a long one, that's why,” he said, 'not that I'll ever persuade any of you to change your swords, but even so, remember to stab. The point always wins, always.“ He turned away then suddenly whipped back to stab at me and somehow I managed to knock his blade aside with the clumsy single-stick. Owain grinned. ”You're fast,“ he said, 'and that's good. You'll make it, boy, so long as you stay sober.” He sheathed his sword and stared eastwards. He was looking for those distant grey smears of smoke that betrayed the presence of a raiding party, but this was harvest time for the Saxons as well as for ourselves and their soldiers had better things to do than cross our distant frontier. “So what do you think of Arthur, boy?” Owain asked me suddenly.

“I like him,” I said awkwardly, as nervous of his question as I had been of Arthur's about Owain. Owain's great shaggy head, so much like his old friend Uther's, turned to me. “Oh, he's likeable enough,” he said grudgingly. “I've always liked Arthur. Everyone likes Arthur, but the Gods alone know if anyone understands him. Except Merlin. You think Merlin's alive?”

“I know he is,” I said fervently, knowing nothing of the sort.

“Good,” Owain said. I came from the Tor and Owain assumed I had a magical knowledge denied to other men. The word had also spread among his warriors that I had cheated a Druid's death-pit, and that made me both lucky and auspicious in their eyes. “I like Merlin,” Owain went on, 'even though he did give Arthur that sword."

“Caledfwlch?” I asked, using Excalibur's proper name.

“You didn't know?” Owain asked in astonishment. He had heard the surprise in my voice, and no wonder, for Merlin had never spoken of making such a great gift. He sometimes talked of Arthur whom he had known in the brief time Arthur spent at Uther's court, but Merlin always used a fondly disparaging tone as if Arthur was a slow but willing pupil whose later exploits were greater than Merlin had ever expected, but the fact that he had given Arthur the famous sword suggested that Merlin's opinion of him was a great deal higher than he pretended it to be.

“Caledfwlch,” Owain explained to me, 'was forged in the Other-world by Gofannon.“ Gofannon was the God of Smith-craft. ”Merlin found it in Ireland,“ Owain went on, 'where the sword was called Cadalcholg. He won it off a Druid in a dream contest. The Irish Druids say that when Cadalcholg's wearer is in desperate trouble he can thrust the sword into the soil and Gofannon will leave the Otherworld and come to his help.” He shook his head, not in disbelief, but in wonderment. “Now why did Merlin give such a gift to Arthur?”

“Why not?” I asked carefully for I sensed the jealousy in Owain's question.

“Because Arthur doesn't believe in the Gods,” Owain said, 'that's why not. He doesn't even believe in that milksop God the Christians worship. So far as I can make out Arthur doesn't believe in anything, except big horses, and the Gods alone know what earthly use they are."

“They're frightening,” I said, wanting to be loyal to Arthur.

“Oh, they're frightening,” Owain agreed, 'but only if you've never seen one before. But they're slow, they take two or three times the amount of feed of a proper horse, they need two grooms, their hooves split like warm butter if you don't strap those clumsy shoes on to their feet, and they still won't charge home into a shield-wall."

“They won't?”

“No horse will!” Owain said scornfully. “Stand your ground and every horse in the world will swerve away from a line of steady spears. Horses are no use in war, boy, except to carry your scouts far and wide.”

"Then why' I began.

“Because,” Owain anticipated my question, 'the whole point of battle, boy, is to break the enemy's shield-wall. Everything else is easy, and Arthur's horses scare battle lines into flight, but the time will come when an enemy will stand firm, and the Gods help those horses then. And the Gods help Arthur too if he's ever knocked off his lump of horseflesh and tries to fight on foot wearing that suit of fish-armour. The only metal a warrior needs is his sword and the lump of iron at the end of his spear, the rest's just weight, lad, dead weight.“ He stared down into the fort's compound where Ladwys was clinging to the fence that surrounded Gundleus's prison. ”Arthur won't last here,“ he said confidently. ”One defeat and he'll sail back to Armorica where they're impressed by big horses, fish suits and fancy swords.“ He spat, and I knew that despite Owain's professed liking for Arthur there was something else there, something deeper than jealousy. Owain knew he had a rival, but he was biding his time as, I guessed, Arthur was biding his, and the mutual enmity worried me for I liked both men. Owain smiled at Ladwys's distress. ”She's a loyal bitch, I'll say that for her,“ the big man said, 'but I'll break her yet. Is that your woman?” He nodded towards Lunete who was carrying a leather bag of water towards the warriors' huts.

“Yes,” I said and blushed at the confession. Lunete, like my new beard, was a sign of manhood and I wore both clumsily. Lunete had decided to stay with me instead of going back to what was left of Ynys Wydryn with Nimue. The decision really had been Lunete's and I was still nervous of everything about our relationship, though Lunete seemed to have no doubts about the arrangement. She had taken over a corner of the hut, swept it, screened it with some withy hurdles, and now talked confidently about our joint future. I had thought she would want to stay with Nimue, but since her rape Nimue had been quiet and withdrawn. Indeed, she had become hostile, speaking to no one except to turn away their conversation. Morgan was tending her eye and the same smith who had made Morgan's mask was offering to make a gold ball to replace the lost eyeball. Lunete, like the rest of us, had become a little frightened of this new, sour, spitting Nimue.

“She's a pretty girl,” Owain said grudgingly of Lunete, 'but girls live with warriors for one reason only, boy, to get rich. So make sure you keep her happy, or sure as eggs she'll make you miserable.“ He fished in his coat's pockets and found a small gold ring. ”Give it to her," he said. I stammered my thanks. Warrior leaders were supposed to grant their followers gifts, yet even so the ring was a generous gift for I had yet to fight as one of Owain's men. Lunete liked the ring which, with the silver wire I had unwrapped from my sword's pommel, was the beginning of her treasure hoard. She incised a cross on the ring's worn surface, not because she was a Christian, but because the cross made it into a lover's ring and showed that she had passed from girlhood into womanhood. Some men also wore lovers' rings, but I craved after the simple iron hoops that victorious warriors hammered from the spearheads of their defeated enemies. Owain wore a score of such rings in his beard, and his fingers were dark with others. Arthur, I had noticed, wore none.

Once our own harvest was gathered from the fields around Caer

Cadarn we marched all over Dumnonia to collect the tax crops. We visited client kings and chiefs, and were always accompanied by a clerk from Mordred's treasury who tallied the revenue. It was strange to think that Mordred was now King and that it was no longer Uther's treasury we filled, but even a baby king needed money to pay for Arthur's troops as well as all the other soldiers who were keeping Dumnonia's borders secure. Some of Owain's men were sent to reinforce the permanent guard in Gereint's frontier fortress at Durocobrivis while the rest of us became taxmen for a while. I was surprised that Owain, that famous lover of battle, did not go to Durocobrivis nor back to Gwent, but instead stayed with the commonplace work of assessing tax. To me such work seemed menial, but I was just a wispy-bearded boy who did not understand Owain's mind.

Tax, to Owain, was more important than any Saxon. Taxes, as I was to learn, were the best source of wealth for men who did not want to work, and this tax season, now that Uther was dead, was Owain's opportunity. At hall after hall he reported a bad harvest, and thus levied a low tax payment, and all the while he was lining his own purse with the bribes offered in return for making just such a false report. He was quite guileless about it. “Uther would never have let me get away with it,” he told me one day as we walked along the southern coast towards the Roman town of Isca. He spoke fondly of the dead king.

“Uther was a fly old bastard, and always had a shrewd idea of what he should get, but what does Mordred know?” He looked to his left. We were crossing a wide, bare heath atop a great hill and the view to the south was of the glittering empty sea where a wind blew strong to fleck the grey waves white. Way off to the east, where a long sweeping shingle bank ended, there was a mighty headland on which the waves shattered into foam. The headland was almost an island, joined to the mainland only by a narrow causeway of stone and shingle. “Know what that is?” Owain asked me, jutting his chin towards the headland.

“No, Lord.”

“The Isle of the Dead,” he said, then spat to ward off ill luck while I stopped and stared at the awful place that was the seat of Dumnonian nightmares. The headland was the isle of the mad, the place where Pellinore belonged with all the other crazed and violent souls who were considered dead the moment they crossed the guarded causeway. The Isle was under the guardianship of Crom Dubh, the dark crippled God, and some men said that Cruachan's Cave, the mouth of the Otherworld, lay at the Isle's extremity. I stared at it in dread until Owain clapped my shoulder. ”You'll never need to worry about the Isle of the Dead, boy,“ he said. ”You've got a rare head on your shoulders.“ he walked on westwards. ”Where are we staying tonight?" he called to Lwellwyn, the treasury clerk whose mule carried the year's falsified records.

“With Prince Cadwy of Isca,” Lwellwyn answered.

“Ah, Cadwy! I like Cadwy. What did we take from the ugly rogue last year?” Lwellwyn did not need to look at his wooden tally sticks with their recording notches, but reeled off a list of hides, fleeces, slaves, tin ingots, dried fish, salt and milled corn. “He paid most in gold, though,” he added.

“I like him even more!” Owain said. “What will he settle for, Lwellwyn?” Lwellwyn estimated an amount half of what Cadwy had paid the previous year, and that was precisely the amount agreed before the evening meal in Prince Cadwy's hall. It was a grand place, built by the Romans, with a pillared portico that faced down a long wooded valley towards the sea reach of the River Exe. Cadwy was a Prince of the Dumnonii, the tribe which had given our country its name, and Cadwy's princedom made him of the second rank in the kingdom. Kings were of the highest rank, princes like Gereint and Cadwy and client kings like Melwas of the Belgae came next, and after them were the chiefs like Merlin, though Merlin of Avalon was also a Druid which put him outside the hierarchy altogether. Cadwy was both a prince and a chief and he ruled a sprawling tribe that inhabited all the land between Isca and the border of Kernow. There had been a time when all the tribes of Britain were separate and a man of the Catuvellani would look quite different from a man of the Belgae, but the Romans had left us all much alike. Only some tribes, like Cadwy's, still retained their distinct appearance. His tribe believed themselves to be superior to other Britons, in mark of which they tattooed their faces with the symbols of their tribe and sept. Each valley had its own sept, usually of no more than a dozen families. Rivalry between the septs was keen, but nothing compared to the rivalry between Prince Cadwy's tribe and the rest of Britain. The tribal capital was Isca, the Roman town, which had fine walls and stone buildings as great as any in Glevum, though Cadwy preferred to live outside the town on his own estate. Most of the townspeople followed Roman ways and eschewed tattoos, but beyond the walls, in the valleys of Cadwy's land where Roman rule had never lain heavily, every man, woman and child bore the blue tattoo marks on their cheeks. It was also a wealthy area, but Prince Cadwy had a mind to make it wealthier still.

“Been on the moor lately?” he asked Owain that night. It was a warm, sweet night and supper had been served on the open portico that faced Cadwy's estates.

“Never,” Owain said.

Cadwy grunted. I had seen him at Uther's High Council, but this was my first chance to look closely at the man whose responsibility was to guard Dumnonia against raids from Kernow or distant Ireland. The Prince was a short, bald, middle-aged man, heavily built, with tribal marks on his cheeks, arms and legs. He wore British dress, but liked his Roman villa with its paving and pillars and channelled water that ran in stone troughs through the central courtyard and out to the portico where it made a small foot-washing pool before running over a marble dam to join the stream further down the valley. Cadwy, I decided, had a good life. His crops were plentiful, his sheep and cows fat, and his many women happy. He was also far from the threat of Saxons, yet still he was discontented. “There's money on the moor,” he told Owain.

“Tin.”

“Tin?” Owain sounded scornful.

Cadwy nodded solemnly. He was fairly drunk, but so were most of the men around the low table on which the meal had been served. They were all warriors, either Cadwy's or Owain's men, though I, being junior, had to stand behind Owain's couch as his shield-bearer. “Tin,” Cadwy said again, 'and gold, maybe. But plenty of tin.“ Their conversation was private, for the meal was almost over and Cadwy had provided slave girls for the warriors. No one had any attention for the two leaders, except for me and Cadwy's shield-holder, who was a dozy lad staring slack-jawed and dull-eyed at the slave girls' antics. I was listening to Owain and Cadwy, but kept so still and straight that they probably forgot I was even standing there. ”You may not want tin," Cadwy said to Owain, 'but there's plenty who do. Can't make bronze without tin, and they pay a fancy price for the stuff in Armorica, let alone up country.” He jerked a dismissive fist towards the rest of Dumnonia, then gave a belch that seemed to surprise him. He calmed his belly with a draught of good wine, then frowned as though he could not remember what he had been talking about. “Tin,” he finally said, remembering.

“So tell me about it,” Owain said. He was watching one of his men who had stripped a slave girl naked and was now smearing butter on her belly.

“It isn't my tin,” Cadwy said forcefully.

“Must be someone's,” Owain said. “You want me to ask Lwellwyn? He's a clever bastard when it comes to money and ownership.” His man slapped the girl's belly hard, splattering butter all over the low table and causing a gust of laughter. The girl complained, but the man told her to be quiet and started scooping butter and pork grease on to the rest of her body.

“The fact of the matter is,” Cadwy said forcefully to get Owain's attention off the naked girl, 'that Uther let in a pack of men from Kernow. They came to work the old Roman mines, because none of our people had the skills. The bastards are supposed, mark that, supposed to send their rent to your treasury, but the buggers are sending tin back to Kernow. I know that for a fact.“ Owain's ears had pricked up now. ”Kernow?"

“Making money off our land, they are. Our land!” Cadwy said indignantly. Kernow was a separate kingdom, a mysterious place at the very end of Dumnonia's western peninsula that had never been ruled by the Romans. Most of the time it lived in peace with us, but every now and then King Mark would stir himself from his latest wife's bed and send a raiding party over the River Tamar. “What are men of Kernow doing here?” Owain asked in a voice every bit as indignant as his host's.

“I told you. Stealing our money. And not just that. I've been missing good cattle, sheep, even a few slaves. Those miners are getting above themselves, and they're not paying you like they should. But you'll never prove it. Never. Not even your clever fellow Lwellwyn can look at a hole in the moor and tell me how much tin is supposed to come out in a year.” Cadwy swiped at a moth, then shook his head moodily. “They think they're above the law. That's the problem. Just because Uther was their patron they think they're above the law.”

Owain shrugged. His attention was back on the butter-smothered girl who was now being chased about the lower terrace by a half dozen drunken men. The grease on her body made her hard to catch and the grotesque hunt was making some of the watching men helpless with laughter. I was having a hard time stopping myself from giggling. Owain looked back to Cadwy. “So go up there and kill a few of the bastards, Lord Prince,” he said as though it was the easiest solution in the world.

“I can't,” Cadwy said.

“Why not?”

“Uther gave them protection. If I attack them they'll complain to the council and to King Mark and I'll be forced to pay sarhaed.” Sarhaed was the blood price put on a man by law. A King's sarhaed was un payable a slave's was cheap, but a good miner probably had a high enough price to hurt even a wealthy prince like Cadwy.

“So how will they know it's you who attacked them?” Owain asked scornfully. For answer Cadwy just tapped his cheek. The blue tattoos, he was suggesting, would betray his men. Owain nodded. The buttered girl had at last been pinned down and was now surrounded by her captors among some shrubs that grew on the lower terrace. Owain crumbled some bread, then looked up at Cadwy again. “So?”

“So,” Cadwy said slyly, 'if I could find a bunch of men who could thin these bastards out a little, it would help. It'll make them look to me for protection, see? And my price will be the tin they're sending to King Mark. And your price…“ He paused to make sure Owain was not shocked by the implication, '.. will be half that tin's value.”

“How much?” Owain asked quickly. The two men were speaking softly and I had to concentrate to hear their words over the warriors' laughter and cheers.

“Fifty gold pieces a year? Like this,” said Cadwy and took a gold ingot the size of a sword handle from a pouch and slid it along the table.

“That much?” Even Owain was surprised.

“It's a rich place, the moor,” Cadwy said grimly. “Very rich.” Owain stared down Cadwy's valley to where the moon's reflection lay on the distant river as flat and silver as a sword blade. “How many of these miners are there?” he finally asked the Prince. The nearest settlement,“ Cadwy said, 'has got seventy or eighty men. And there are a deal of slaves and women, of course.”

“How many settlements?”

“Three, but the other two are a way off. I'm just worried about the one.”

“Only twenty of us,” Owain said cautiously.

“Night-time?” Cadwy suggested. “And they've not been attacked ever, so they won't be keeping watch.” Owain sipped wine from his horn. “Seventy gold pieces,” he said flatly, 'not fifty.“ Prince Cadwy thought for a second, then nodded his acceptance of the price. Owain grinned. ”Why not, eh?“ he said. He palmed the gold ingot, then turned fast as a snake to look up at me. I did not move, nor took my eyes from one of the girls who was wrapping her naked body round one of Cadwy's tattooed warriors. ”Are you awake, Derfel?“ Owain snapped. I jumped as though startled. ”Lord?" I said, pretending my mind had been wandering for the last few minutes.

“Good lad,” Owain said, satisfied I had heard nothing. “Want one of those girls, do you?” I blushed. “No, Lord.”

Owain laughed. “He's just got himself a pretty little Irish girl,” he told Cadwy, 'so he's staying true to her. But he'll learn. When you get to the Otherworld, boy' he had turned back to me 'you won't regret the men you never killed, but you will regret the women you passed up.“ He spoke gently. In my first days in his service I had been frightened of him, but for some reason Owain liked me and treated me well. Now he looked back at Cadwy. ”Tomorrow night,“ he said softly. ”Tomorrow night." I had gone from Merlin's Tor to Owain's band, and it was like leaping from this world to the next. I stared at the moon and thought of Gundleus's long-haired men massacring the guards on the Tor, and I thought of the people on the moor who would face the same savagery the very next night and I knew I could do nothing to stop it, even though I knew it should be stopped, but fate, as Merlin always taught us, is inexorable. Life is a jest of the Gods, Merlin liked to claim, and there is no justice. You must learn to laugh, he once told me, or else you'll just weep yourself to death. Our shields had been smeared with boat-builder's pitch so they would look like the black shields of Oengus Mac Airem's Irish raiders whose long, sharp-pr owed boats raided Dumnonia's northern coast. A local guide with tattooed cheeks led us all afternoon through deep, lush valleys that climbed slowly towards the great bleak loom of the moor that was occasionally visible through some break in the heavy trees. It was good woodland, full of deer and cut with fast, cold streams running seaward off the moor's high plateau.

By nightfall we were on the moor's edge, and after dark we followed a goat track up to the heights. It was a mysterious place. The Old People had lived here and left their sacred stone circles in its valleys while the peaks were crowned with jumbled masses of grey rock and the low places were filled with treacherous swamps through which our guide led us unerringly.

Owain had told us that the people of the moor were in rebellion against King Mordred, and that their religion had taught them to fear men with black shields. It was a good tale, and I might have believed it had I not eavesdropped on his conversation with Prince Cadwy the night before. Owain had also promised us gold if we did our task properly, then warned us that this night's killing would have to stay secret for we had no orders from the council to mete out this punishment. Deep in the thick woods on our way to the moor we had come to an old shrine built beneath a grove of oaks and Owain had made us each swear the death-oath of secrecy in front of the moss-grown skulls that were lodged in niches of the shrine's wall. Britain was full of such ancient, hidden shrines — evidence of how widespread the Druids had been before the Romans came where country folk still came to seek the Gods' help. And that afternoon, under the great lichen-hung oaks, we had knelt before the skulls and touched the hilt of Owain's sword and those men who were initiates in the secrets of Mithras had received Owain's kiss. Then, thus blessed by the Gods and sworn to the killing, we moved on towards the night. It was a filthy place we came to. Great smelting fires spewed sparks and smoke towards the heavens. A sprawl of huts lay between the fires and around the gaping black maws that showed where men delved into the earth. Huge mounds of charcoal looked like black tors, while the valley smelt like no other I had ever seen; indeed, to my heated imagination that upland mining village seemed more like Annawn's realm, the Otherworld, than any human settlement.

Dogs barked as we approached, but no one in the settlement took any notice of their noise. There was no fence, not even an earth bank to protect the place. Ponies were picketed close to rows of carts and they began to whinny as we edged down the valley's side, but still no one came out of the low huts to find the cause of the unrest. The huts were circles made of stone and roofed with turf, but in the settlement's centre was a pair of old Roman buildings; square, tall and solid.

“Two men apiece, if not more,” Owain hissed at us, reminding us how many men we were each expected to kill. “And I'm not counting slaves or women. Go fast, kill fast and always watch your backs. And stay together!”

We divided into two groups. I was with Owain whose beard glinted from the fire that reflected off his iron warrior rings. The dogs barked, the ponies whinnied, then at last a cockerel crowed and a man crawled from a hut to discover what had disturbed the livestock, but it was already too late. The killing had begun.

I saw many such killings. In Saxon villages we would have burned the huts before we began the slaughter, but these crude stone and turf circles would not take the fire and so we were forced to go inside with spears and swords. We snatched burning wood from a nearby fire and hurled it inside the huts before entering so that the interior would be light enough for the killing, and sometimes the flames were enough to drive the inhabitants out to where the waiting swords chopped down like butchers' axes. If the fire did not drive the family out then Owain would order two of us to go inside while the others stood guard outside. I dreaded my turn, but knew it would come and knew, too, that I dared not disobey the command. I was oath-bound to this bloody work and to refuse it would have been my death warrant. The screaming began. The first few huts were easy enough for the people were asleep or only just waking, but as we moved deeper into the settlement the resistance became fiercer. Two men attacked us with axes and were cut down with contemptuous ease by our spearmen. Women fled with children in their arms. A dog leaped at Owain and died whimpering with its spine broken. I watched a woman run with a baby in one arm and holding a bleeding child's hand with the other, and I suddenly remembered Tanaburs's parting shout that my mother still lived. I shuddered as I realized that the old Druid must have laid a curse on me when I had threatened his life, and though my good fortune was holding the curse at bay, I could feel its malevolence circling me like a hidden dark enemy. I touched the scar on my left hand and prayed to Bel that Tanaburs's curse would be defeated.

“Derfel! Licat! That hut!” Owain shouted and, like a good soldier, I obeyed my orders. I dropped my shield, flung a firebrand through the door, then crouched double to get through the tiny entrance. Children screamed as I entered, and a half-naked man leaped at me with a knife that forced me to twist desperately aside. I fell on a child as I lunged at her father with my spear. The blade slid off the man's ribs and he would have landed on top of me and stabbed the knife down through my throat if Licat had not killed him. The man doubled over, clasping his belly, then he gasped as Licat wrenched the spearhead free and drew his own knife to begin killing the screaming children. I ducked back outside, blood on my spearhead, to tell Owain there had only been the one man inside.

“Come on!” Owain shouted. “Demetia! Demetia!” That was our war cry of the night; the name of Oengus Mac Airem's Irish kingdom to the west of Siluria. The huts were all empty now and we began hunting miners down in the dark spaces of the settlement. Fugitives were running everywhere, but some men stayed behind and tried to fight us. One brave group even formed a crude battle line and attacked us with spears, picks and axes, but Owain's men met the crude charge with a terrible efficiency, letting their black shields soak up the impact, then using their spears and swords to cut down their attackers. I was one of those efficient men. May God forgive me, but I killed my second man that night, and perhaps a third too. The first I speared in the throat, the second in the groin. I did not use my sword, for I did not think Hywel's blade a fit instrument for that night's purpose.

It ended quickly enough. The settlement was suddenly empty of all but the dead, the dying and a few men, women and children trying to hide. We killed all we found. We killed their animals, we burned the carts they used to fetch the charcoal up from the valleys, we stove in the turf roofs of their huts, we trampled their vegetable gardens, and then we ransacked the settlement for treasure. A few arrows flickered down from the skyline, but none of us was hit.

There was a tub of Roman coins, gold ingots and silver bars in their chief's hut. It was the biggest hut, full twenty feet across, and inside the hut the light of our firebrands showed the dead chief sprawling with a yellowish face and a slit belly. One of his women and two of his children lay dead in his blood. A third child, a girl, lay under a blood-soaked pelt and I thought I saw her hand twitch when one of our men stumbled on her body, but I pretended she was dead and left her alone. Another child screamed in the night as her hiding place was found and a sword hacked down.

God forgive me, God and his angels forgive me, but I only ever confessed that night's sin to one person, and she was not a priest and had no power to grant me Christ's absolution. In purgatory, or maybe hell, I know I will meet those dead children. Their fathers and mothers will be given my soul for their plaything, and I shall deserve the punishment.

But what choice did I have? I was young; I wanted to live; I had taken the oath; I followed my leader. I killed no man who did not attack me, but what plea is that in the face of those sins? To my companions it seemed no sin at all: they were merely killing creatures of another tribe, another nation indeed, and that was justification enough for them; but I had been raised on the Tor where we came from all races and all tribes, and though Merlin was himself a tribal chief and fiercely protective of anyone who could boast the name of Briton, he did not teach a hatred of other tribes. His teaching made me unfit for the unthinking slaughter of strangers for no reason other than their strangeness.

Yet, unfit or not, I killed, and may God forgive me that, and all the other sins too numerous to remember. We left before dawn. The valley was smoking, blood-sodden and horrid. The moor stank from the killing and was haunted with the wailing cries of widows and orphans. Owain gave me a gold ingot, two silver bars and a handful of coins and, God forgive me, I kept them.

Autum brings battle, for all through spring and summer the boats ferry new Saxons to our eastern shore, and the autumn is when those newcomers try to find their own land. It is war's last fling before winter locks the land.

And it was in the autumn of the year of Uther's death that I first fought the Saxons, for no sooner had we come back from our tax collecting in the west than we heard of Saxon raiders in the east. Owain put us under the command of his captain, a man named Griffid ap Annan, and sent us to aid Melwas, King of the Belgae, a client monarch of Dumnonia. Melwas's responsibility was to defend our southern shore against the Sais invaders who, in that grim year of Uther's bale fire had found a new belligerence. Owain stayed at Caer Cadarn for there was a sharp squabble in the kingdom's council about who should be responsible for Mordred's upbringing. Bishop Bedwin wanted to raise the King in his household, but the non-Christians, who were the majority on the council, did not want Mordred raised as a Christian, just as Bedwin and his party objected to the child-King being raised as a pagan. Owain, who claimed to worship all Gods equally, proposed himself as a compromise. “Not that it matters what God a king believes in,” he told us before we marched, 'because a king should be taught how to fight, not how to pray.“ We left him arguing his case while we went to kill Saxons. Griffid ap Annan, our captain, was a lean, lugubrious man who reckoned that what Owain really wanted was to prevent Arthur from raising Mordred. ”It isn't that Owain doesn't like Arthur," he hastened to add,

'but if the King belongs to Arthur, then so does Dumnonia."

“Is that so bad?” I asked.

It's better for you and me, boy, if the land belongs to Owain." Griffid fingered one of the gold torques around his neck to show what he meant. They all called me boy or lad, but only because I was the youngest in the troop and still un blooded by proper battle against other warriors. They also believed that my presence in their ranks brought them good luck because I had once escaped from a Druid's death-pit. All Owain's men, like soldiers everywhere, were mightily superstitious. Every omen was considered and debated; every man carried a hare's foot or a lightning stone; and every action was ritualized, so that no man would pull on a right boot before a left or sharpen a spear in his own shadow. There were a handful of Christians in our ranks and I had thought they might show less fear of the Gods, spirits and ghosts, but they proved every bit as superstitious as the rest of us.

King Melwas's capital, Venta, was a poor frontier town. Its workshops had long closed down and the walls of its large Roman buildings showed great scorch marks from the times when the town had been sacked by raiding Saxons. King Melwas was terrified that the town was about to be sacked again. The Saxons, he said, had a new leader who was hungry for land and dreadful in battle. “Why didn't Owain come?” he demanded petulantly, 'or Arthur? They want to destroy me, is that it?“ He was a fat and suspicious man with the foulest breath of anyone I ever met. He was the king of a tribe, rather than of a country, which made him of the second rank, though to look at him you would have thought Melwas was a serf and a querulous serf at that. ”There aren't many of you, are there?“ he complained to Griffid. ”It's a good thing I raised the levy."

The levy was Melwas's citizen army and every able-bodied man in his Belgic tribe was supposed to serve, though a good few had made themselves scarce and most of the richer tribesmen had sent slaves as substitutes. Nevertheless Melwas had managed to assemble a force of more than three hundred men, each carrying his own food and bringing his own weapons. Some of the levy had once been warriors and came equipped with fine war spears and carefully preserved shields, but most had no armour and a few had nothing but single-sticks or sharpened mattocks for weapons. A lot of women and children accompanied the levy, unwilling to stay alone in their homes when the Saxons were threatening. Melwas insisted that he and his own warriors would stay to defend the crumbling ramparts of Venta, which meant that Griffid had to lead the levy against the enemy. Melwas had no idea where the Saxons were and so Griffid blundered helplessly into the deep woods east of Venta. We were more of a rabble than a war-band, and the sight of a deer would start a mad whooping pursuit that would have alerted any enemy within a dozen miles, and the pursuit would always finish with the levy scattered across a swathe of woodland. We lost nearly fifty men that way, either because their careless pursuit led them into Saxon hands, or else because they simply became lost and decided to go home. There were plenty of Saxons in those woods, though at first we saw none. Sometimes we found their campfires still warm and once we found a small Belgic settlement that had been raided and burned. The men and the old people were still there, all of them dead but the young and the women had been taken as slaves. The smell of the dead dampened the high spirits of the remaining levy and made them stay together as Griffid edged on eastwards.

We encountered our first Saxon war-band in a wide river valley where a group of the invaders was making a settlement. By the time we arrived they had built half a wooden stockade and planted the wood pillars of their main hall, but our appearance at the edge of the woods made them drop their tools and pick up their spears. We outnumbered them three to one, yet even so Griffid could not persuade us charge their well-knit, fierce-speared shield-line. We younger men were keen enough and some of us pranced like fools in front of the Saxons, but there were never enough of us to charge home and the Saxons ignored our taunts while the rest of Griffid's men drank their mead and cursed our eagerness. To me, desperate to earn a warrior ring made from Saxon iron, it seemed madness that we did not attack, but I had yet to experience the butchery of two locked shield-walls, nor had I learned how hard it is to persuade men to offer their bodies to that grisly work. Griffid did make some half-hearted efforts to encourage an attack; then was content to drink his mead and shout insults; and thus we faced the enemy for three hours or more without ever advancing more than a few steps. Griffid's timidity at least gave me a chance to examine the Saxons who, in truth, did not look so very different from ourselves. Their hair was fairer, their eyes palely blue, their skins ruddier than ours, and they liked to wear a lot of fur about their clothes, but otherwise they dressed like us and the only differences in weapons were that most Saxons carried a long-bladed knife that was wicked for close-quarter work, and many of them used huge broad-bladed axes that could split a shield with one stroke. Some of our own men were so impressed by the axes that they carried such weapons themselves, but Owain, like Arthur, disdained them as clumsy. You cannot parry with an axe, Owain used to say, and a weapon that does not defend as well as attack was no good in his eyes. The Saxon priests were quite different from our own holy men, for these foreign sorcerers wore animal skins and caked their hair with cow dung so that it stood in spikes about their heads. On that day in the river valley one such Sais priest sacrificed a goat to discover whether or not they should fight us. The priest first broke one of the animal's back legs, then stabbed it in the neck and let it run away with its broken leg trailing. It lurched bleeding and crying along their battle line, then turned towards us before collapsing on the grass, and that was evidently a bad omen for the Saxon shield-line lost its defiance and summarily retreated through their half-built compound, across a ford, and back into the trees. They took their women, children, slaves, pigs and herd with them. We called it a victory, ate the goat and pulled down their stockade. There was no plunder.

Our levy was now hungry, for in the manner of all levies they had eaten their whole supply of food in the first few days and now had nothing to eat except for the hazelnuts they stripped from the wood's trees. That lack of food meant we had no choice but to retreat. The hungry levy, eager to be home, went first while we warriors followed more slowly. Griffid was dour, for he was returning with neither gold nor slaves, though in truth he had accomplished as much as most war-bands that roamed the disputed lands. But then, when we were almost back in familiar country, we met a Saxon war-band returning the other way. They must have encountered part of our retreating levy for they were burdened with captured weapons and women.

The meeting was a surprise to both sides. I was at the rear of Griffid's column and only heard the beginning of the fight which started when our vanguard emerged from the trees to find a half dozen Saxons crossing a stream. Our men attacked, then spearmen from both sides rushed to join the haphazard fight. There was no shield-wall, just a bloody brawl across a shallow stream, and once again, just like that day when I had killed my first enemy in the woods south of Ynys Wydryn, I experienced the joy of battle. It was, I decided, the same feeling that Nimue felt when the Gods filled her; like having wings, she had said, that lift you high into glory, and that was just how I felt that autumn day. I met my first

Saxon at a flat run, my spear levelled, and I saw the fear in his eyes and I knew he was dead. The spear stuck fast in his belly, so I drew Hywel's sword, that now I called Hywelbane, and finished him with a sideways cut, then waded into the stream itself and killed two more. I was screaming like an evil spirit, shouting at the Saxons in their own tongue to come and taste death, and then a huge warrior accepted my invitation and charged me with one of the big axes that look so terrifying. Except an axe has too much dead weight. Once swung it cannot be reversed, and I put the big man down with a straight sword thrust that would have warmed Owain's heart. I took three gold torques, four brooches and a jewelled knife off that one axe man alone and I kept his axe blade to make my first battle rings. The Saxons fled, leaving eight dead and as many again wounded. I had killed no fewer than four of the enemy, a feat which was noticed by my companions. I basked in their respect, though later, when I was older and wiser, I ascribed my day's disproportionate killing to mere youthful stupidity. The young will often rush in where the wise go steadily. We lost three men, one of them Licat, the man who had saved my life on the Moor. I retrieved my spear, collected two more silver torques from the men I had killed in the stream, then watched as the enemy wounded were despatched to the Otherworld where they would become the slaves of our own dead fighters. We found six British captives huddled in the trees. They were women who had followed our levy to war and been captured by these Saxons, and it was one of those women who discovered the single enemy warrior still hiding in some brambles at the stream's edge. She screamed at him, and tried to stab him with a knife, but he scrambled away into the stream where I captured him. He was only a beardless youngster, perhaps my own age, and he was shaking with fear.

“What are you called?” I asked him with my bloody spear-blade at his throat. He was sprawling in the water. “Wlenca,” he answered, and then he told me he had come to Britain just weeks before, though when I asked him where he had come from he could not really answer except to say from home. His language was not quite the same as mine, but the differences were slight and I understood him well enough. The King of his people, he told me, was a great leader called Cerdic who was taking land on the south coast of Britain. Cerdic, he said, had needed to fight Aesc, a Saxon king who now ruled the Kentish lands, to establish his new colony, and that was the first time I realized that the Saxons fought amongst themselves just as we British did. It seems that Cerdic had won his war against Aesc and was now probing into Dumnonia.

The woman who had discovered Wlenca was squatting close by and hissing threats at him, but another of the women declared that Wlenca had taken no part in the raping that had followed their capture. Griffid, feeling relief at having some booty to take home, declared that Wlenca could live and so the Saxon was stripped naked, put under a woman's guard and marched west towards slavery. That was the last expedition of the year and though we declared it a great victory it paled beside Arthur's exploits. He had not only driven Aelle's Saxons out of northern Gwent, but had then defeated the forces of Powys and in the process had chopped off King Gorfyddyd's shield arm. The enemy King had escaped, but it was a great victory all the same and all of Gwent and Dumnonia rang with Arthur's praises. Owain was not happy.

Lunete, on the other hand, was delirious. I had brought her gold and silver, enough so she could wear a bearskin robe in winter and employ her own slave, a child of Kernow whom Lunete purchased from Owain's household. The child worked from dawn to dusk, and at night wept in the corner of the hut we now called home. When the girl cried too much Lunete hit her, and when I tried to defend the girl Lunete hit me. Owain's men had all moved from Caer Cadarn's cramped warrior quarters to the more comfortable settlement at Lindinis where Lunete and I had a thatched, wattle-walled hut inside the low earth ramparts built by the Romans. Caer Cadarn was six miles away and was occupied only when an enemy came too close, or when a great royal occasion was celebrated. We had one such occasion that winter on the day when Mordred turned one year old and when, by chance, Dumnonia's troubles came to their head. Or perhaps it was not chance at all, for Mordred was ever ill-omened and his acclamation was doomed to be touched by tragedy.

The ceremony happened just after the Solstice. Mordred was to be acclaimed king and the great men of Dumnonia gathered at Caer Cadarn for the occasion. Nimue came a day early and visited our hut, which Lunete had decorated with holly and ivy for the solstice. Nimue stepped over the hut's threshold that was scored with patterns to keep the evil spirits away, then sat by our fire and pushed back the hood of her cloak.

I smiled because she had a golden eye. “I like it,” I said.

“It's hollow,” she said, and disconcertingly tapped the eye with a fingernail. Lunete was shouting at the slave for burning the pottage of sprouted barley seeds and Nimue flinched at the display of anger.

“You're not happy,” she said to me.

“I am,” I insisted, for the young hate to admit making mistakes. Nimue glanced about the untidy and smoke-blackened interior of our hut as though she was scenting the mood of its inhabitants. “Lunete's wrong for you,” she said calmly as she idly picked from the littered floor half an empty egg-shell and crunched it into fragments so that no evil spirit could lurk in its shelter.

“Your head is in the clouds, Derfel,” she went on as she tossed the shell fragments on to the flames, 'while Lunete is earth-bound. She wants to be rich and you want to be honourable. It won't mix." She shrugged, as though it was not really important, then gave me her news of Ynys Wydryn. Merlin had not come back and no one knew where he was, but Arthur had sent money captured from the defeated King Gorfyddyd to pay for the Tor's reconstruction and Gwlyddyn was supervising the building of a new and grander hall. Pellinore was alive, as were Druidan and Gudovan the scribe. Norwenna, Nimue told me, had been buried in the shrine of the Holy Thorn where she was revered as a saint.

“What's a saint?” I asked.

“A dead Christian,” she said flatly. “They should all be saints.”

“And what about you?” I asked her.

“I'm alive,” she said tonelessly.

“Are you happy?”

“You always ask such stupid things. If I wanted to be happy, Derfel, I'd be down here with you, baking your bread and keeping your bedding clean.”

“Then why aren't you?”

She spat in the fire to ward off my stupidity. “Gundleus lives,” she said flatly, changing the subject.

“Imprisoned in Corinium,” I said, as though she did not already know where her enemy was.

“I've buried his name on a stone,” she said, then gave me a golden-eyed glance. “He made me pregnant when he raped me, but I killed the foul thing with ergot.” Ergot was a black blight that grew on rye and women used it to abort their young. Merlin also used it as a means of going into the dream-state and talking with the Gods. I had tried it once and was sick for days.

Lunete insisted on showing Nimue all her new possessions: the trivet, cauldron and sieve, the jewels and cloak, the fine linen shift and the battered silver jug with the naked Roman horseman chasing a deer about its belly. Nimue made a bad pretence of being impressed, then asked me to walk her to Caer Cadarn where she would spend the night. “Lunete's a fool,” she told me. We were walking along the edge of a stream that flowed into the River Cam. Brown brittle leaves crunched underfoot. There had been a frost and the day was bitterly cold. Nimue looked angrier than ever and, because of that, more beautiful. Tragedy suited Nimue, she knew it and so she sought it. “You're making a name for yourself,” she said, glancing at the plain iron warrior rings on my left hand. I kept my right hand free of the rings so I could keep a firm grip of a sword or spear, but I now wore four iron rings on my left hand.

“Luck.” I explained the rings.

“No, not luck.” She raised her left hand so I could see the scar. “When you fight, Derfel, I fight with you. You're going to be a great warrior, and you'll need to be.”

“Will I?”

She shivered. The sky was grey, the same grey as an unpolished sword, though the western horizon was streaked with a sour, yellow light. The trees were winter black, the grass sullenly dark, and the smoke from the settlement's fires clung to the ground as though it feared the cold, empty sky. “Do you know why Merlin left Ynys Wydryn?” she asked me suddenly, surprising me with the question.

“To find the Knowledge of Britain,” I answered, repeating what she had told the High Council in Glevum.

“But why now? Why not ten years ago?” Nimue asked me, then answered her own question. “He has gone now, Derfel, because we are coming into the bad time. Everything good will get bad, everything bad will get worse. Everyone in Britain is gathering their strength because they know the great struggle is coming. Sometimes I think the Gods are playing with us. They are heaping all the throw pieces at once to see how the game will end. The Saxons are getting stronger and soon they'll attack in hordes, not war-bands. The Christians' she spat into the stream to avert evil 'say that very soon it will be five hundred winters since their wretched God was born and claim that means the time for their triumph is coming.” She spat again. “And for us Britons? We fight each other, we steal from each other, we build new feasting halls when we should be forging swords and spears. We are going to be put to the test, Derfel, and that's why Merlin is gathering his strength, for if the kings will not save us then Merlin must persuade the Gods to come to our aid.” She stopped beside a pool of the stream and stared into the black water that had the gelid stillness that comes just before freezing. The water in the cattle hoofprints at the pool's edge was already frozen.

“What of Arthur?” I asked. “Won't he save us?”

She gave me a flicker of a smile. “Arthur is to Merlin what you are to me. Arthur is Merlin's sword, but neither of us can control you. We give you power' she reached out her scarred left hand and touched the bare pommel of my sword 'and then we let you go. We have to trust that you will do the right thing.”

“You can trust me,” I said.

She sighed as she always did when I made such a statement, then shook her head. “When the Test of Britain comes, Derfel, and it will, none of us will know how strong our sword will prove.” She turned and looked at the ramparts of Caer Cadarn that were bright with the banners of all the lords and chiefs come to witness Mordred's acclamation on the morrow. “Fools,” she said bitterly, 'fools." Arthur arrived the next day. He came shortly after dawn, having ridden with Morgan from Ynys Wydryn. He was accompanied by only two warriors, the three men all mounted on their big horses, though they carried no armour or shields, just spears and swords. Arthur did not even bring his banner. He was very relaxed, almost as though this ceremony had no interest for him other than curiosity. Agricola, Tewdric's Roman warlord, had come in place of his master who had a fever, and Agricola too seemed aloof from the ceremony, but everyone else in Caer Cadarn was tense, worried that the day's omens might prove bad. Prince Cadwy of Isca was there, his cheeks blue with tattoos. Prince Gereint, Lord of the Stones, had come from the Saxon frontier and King Melwas had come from decaying Venta. All the nobility of Dumnonia, more than a hundred men, waited in the fort. There had been sleet in the night that had left Caer Cadarn's compound slick and muddy, but first light brought a brisk westerly wind and by the time Owain emerged from the hall with the royal baby the sun was actually showing on the hills which circled Caer Cadarn's eastern approaches.

Morgan had decided on the hour of the ceremony, divining it from auguries of fire, water and earth. It was, predictably, a morning ceremony, for nothing good comes of endeavours undertaken when the sun is in decline, but the crowd had to wait until Morgan was satisfied that the exact hour was imminent before the proceedings could begin in the stone circle that crowned Caer Cadarn's peak. The stones of the circle were not large, none was bigger than a stooping child while in the very centre, where Morgan fussed as she took her alignments on the pale sun, was the royal stone of Dumnonia. It was a flat, grey boulder, indistinguishable from a thousand others, yet it had been on that stone, we were taught, that the God Bel had anointed his human child Beli Mawr who was the ancestor of all Dumnonia's kings. Once Morgan was satisfied with her calculation, Balise was ushered to the circle's centre. He was an ancient Druid who lived in the woods west of Caer Cadarn and, in Merlin's absence, had been persuaded to attend and invoke the Gods' blessings. He was a stooped, lice-ridden creature, draped in goatskin and rags, so dirty that it was impossible to tell where his rags began and his beard ended, yet it was Balise, I had been told, who had taught Merlin many of his skills. The old man raised his staff to the watery sun, mumbled some prayers, then spat in a sunwise circle before succumbing to a terrible coughing fit. He stumbled to a chair at the edge of the circle where he sat panting as his companion, an old woman almost indistinguishable in appearance from Balise himself, feebly rubbed his back. Bishop Bedwin said a prayer to the Christian God, then the baby King was paraded around the outside of the stone circle. Mordred had been laid upon a war shield and swathed in fur and it was thus he was shown to all the warriors, chiefs and princes who, as the baby passed, dropped to their knees to pay him homage. A grown king would have walked about the circle, but two Dumnonian warriors carried Mordred, while behind the child, his long sword drawn, paced Owain, the King's champion. Mordred was carried against the sun, the only time in all a king's life when he would so go against the natural order, but the unlucky direction was deliberately chosen to show that a king descended from the Gods was above such petty rules as always going sunwise in a circle.

Mordred was then laid in his shield upon the central stone while gifts were brought to him. A child laid a loaf of bread before him as a symbol of his duty to feed his people, then a second child brought him a scourge to show that he had to be a magistrate to his country, and afterwards a sword was laid at his feet to symbolize his role as a defender of Dumnonia. Mordred screamed throughout, and kicked so lustily that he almost tipped himself out of his shield. His kicking bared his maimed foot and that, I thought, had to be a bad omen, but the celebrants ignored the clubbed limb as the great men of the kingdom approached one by one and added their own gifts. They brought gold and silver, precious stones, coins, jet and amber. Arthur gave the child a golden statue of a hawk, a present that made the onlookers gasp with its beauty, but Agricola brought the most valuable gift of all. He laid the royal war gear of King Gorfyddyd of Powys at the baby's feet. Arthur had captured the gold-trimmed armour after rousting Gorfyddyd from his encampment and had, in turn, presented the armour to King Tewdric who now, through his warlord, gave the treasure back to Dumnonia.

The fretful baby was at last lifted from the stone and given to his new nurse, a slave of Owain's household. Now came Owain's moment. Every other great man had come cloaked and furred against the day's cold, but Owain strode forward dressed in nothing but his trews and boots. His tattooed chest and arms were as bare as the drawn sword that, with due ceremony, he laid flat upon the royal stone. Then, deliberately, and with scorn on his face, he walked around the outer circle and spat towards all present. It was a challenge. If any man there deemed that Mordred should not be King then all he needed to do was step forward and pluck the naked sword from the stone. Then he must fight Owain. Owain strutted, sneered and invited a challenge, but no one moved. Only when Owain had made two full circuits did he go back to the stone and pick up the sword.

Upon which everyone cheered, for Dumnonia had a king again. The warriors who ringed the ramparts beat their spear-staffs against their shields.

One last ritual was needed. Bishop Bed win had tried to forbid it, but the council had over-ridden him. Arthur, I noticed, walked away, but everyone else, even Bishop Bedwin, stayed as a captive was led, naked and frightened, to the royal stone. It was Wlenca, the Saxon lad I had captured. I doubt he knew what was happening, but he must have feared the worst.

Morgan tried to rouse Balise, but the old Druid was too weak to do his part, so Morgan herself walked up to the shivering Wlenca. The Saxon was unbound and could have tried to run, though the Gods know there could have been no escape through the armed crowd that circled him, but in the event he stood quite still as Morgan approached him. Maybe the sight of her gold mask and limping walk froze him, and he did not move until she had dipped her maimed and gloved left hand in a dish and then, after a moment's deliberation, touched him high on his belly. At that touch Wlenca jumped in alarm, but then went still again. Morgan had dipped her hand into a dish of newly drawn goat's blood that now made its wet red mark on Wlenca's thin, pale belly.

Morgan walked away. The crowd was very still, silent and apprehensive, for this was an awesome moment of truth. The Gods were about to speak to Dumnonia.

Owain entered the circle. He had discarded his sword and was instead carrying his black-shafted war spear. He kept his eyes on the frightened Saxon lad who seemed to be praying to his own Gods, but they had no power at Caer Cadarn.

Owain moved slowly. He took his eyes off Wlenca's gaze for only a second, just the time he needed to place the tip of his spear directly over the marked spot on the Saxon's belly, then he looked again into the captive's eyes. Both men were still. There were tears in Wlenca's eyes and he gave a tiny shake of his head in a mute appeal for mercy, but Owain ignored the plea. He waited until Wlenca was still again. The spear-tip rested on the blood mark and neither man moved. The wind stirred their hair and lifted the damp cloaks of the spectators.

Owain thrust. He gave one hard-muscled lunge that drove the spear deep into Wlenca's body and then wrenched the blade free and ran backwards to leave the bleeding Saxon alone in the royal circle. Wlenca screamed. The wound was a terrible one, deliberately inflicted to give a slow, pain-crazed death, but from the dying man's death-throes a trained augurer like Balise or Morgan could tell the kingdom's future. Balise, stirred from his torpor, watched as the Saxon staggered with one hand clutched to his belly and his body bent over against the awful pain. Nimue leaned eagerly forward, for this was the first time she had witnessed the most powerful of all divinations and she wanted to learn its secrets. I confess I grimaced, not for the horror of the ceremony, but because I had liked Wlenca and seen in his broad, blue-eyed face an idea of what I myself probably looked like, yet I consoled myself with the knowledge that his sacrifice meant he would be offered a warrior's place in the Otherworld where, one day, he and I would meet again.

Wlenca's screaming had subsided into a desperate panting. His face had gone yellow, he was shaking, but somehow he kept his feet as he tottered towards the east. He reached the circle of stones and for a second it seemed he must collapse, then a spasm of pain made him arch his back, then snap forward again. He whirled in a wild circle, spattering blood, and took a few steps to the north. And then, at last, he fell. He was jerking in agony, and each spasm meant something to Balise and Morgan. Morgan scuttled forward to watch him more closely as he twisted, shivered and twitched. For a few seconds his legs shuddered, then his bowels broke, his head went back and a choking rattle sounded in his throat. A great wash of blood spilt almost to Morgan's feet as the Saxon died. Something in Morgan's stance told us that the augury was bad and her sour mood spread to the crowd who waited for the dreaded pronouncement. Morgan went back to stoop beside Balise who gave a raucous, irreverent cackle. Nimue had gone to inspect the blood trail and then the body, and afterwards she joined Morgan and Balise as the crowd waited. And waited.

Morgan at last went back to the body. She addressed her words to Owain, the King's champion who stood beside the baby King, but everyone in the crowd leaned forward to hear her speak. “King Mordred,” she said, 'will have a long life. He will be a leader of battle, and he will know victory." A sigh went through the crowd. The augury could be translated as favourable, though I think everyone knew how much had been left unsaid and a few present could remember Uther's acclamation when the dying man's blood trail and agonized twitches had truthfully predicted a reign of glory. Still, even without glory, there was some hope in the augury of Wlenca's death.

That death ended Mordred's acclamation. Poor Norwenna, buried beneath Ynys Wydryn's Holy Thorn, would have done it all so differently, yet even if a thousand bishops and a myriad of saints had gathered to pray Mordred on to his throne, the auguries would still have been the same. For Mordred, our King, was crippled and neither Druid nor bishop could ever change that.

Tristan of Kernow arrived that afternoon. We were in the great hall at Mordred's feast, an event remarkable for its lack of cheer, but Tristan's arrival made it even less cheerful. No one even noticed his arrival until he drew near to the big central fire and the flames glinted off his leather breastplate and iron helmet. The Prince was known as a friend of Dumnonia and Bishop Bedwin greeted him as such, but Tristan's only response was to draw his sword.

The gesture commanded instant attention for no man was supposed to carry a weapon into a feasting hall, let alone a hall that celebrated a king's acclamation. Some men in the hall were drunk, but even they went silent as they gazed at the young, dark-haired Prince.

Bedwin tried to ignore the drawn sword. “You came for the acclamation, Lord Prince? Doubtless you were delayed? Travel is so difficult in winter. Come, a seat here? Next to Agricola of Gwent? There's venison.”

“I come with a quarrel,” Tristan said loudly. He had left his six guards just outside the hall door where a cold sleet was spitting across the hilltop. The guards were grim men in wet armour and dripping cloaks whose shields were the right way up and whose war spears were whetted bright.

“A quarrel!” Bedwin said as though the very thought was remarkable. “Not on this auspicious day, surely not!”

Some of the warriors in the hall growled challenges. They were drunk enough to enjoy a quarrel, but Tristan ignored them. “Who speaks for Dumnonia?” he demanded. There was a moment's hesitation. Owain, Arthur, Gereint and Bedwin all had authority, but none was pre-eminent. Prince Gereint, never a man to put himself forward, shrugged the question away, Owain stared balefully at Tristan, while Arthur respectfully deferred to Bedwin who suggested, very diffidently, that as the kingdom's chief counsellor he could speak as well as any man on behalf of King Mordred.

“Then tell King Mordred,” Tristan said, 'that there will be blood between my country and his unless I receive justice."

Bedwin looked alarmed and his hands fluttered with calming motions as he tried to think what to say. Nothing suggested itself to him and in the end it was Owain who responded. “Say what you have to say,” he said flatly.

“A group of my father's people,” Tristan said, 'were given protection by High King Uther. They came to this country at Uther's request to work the mines and to live in peace with their neighbours, yet late last summer some of those neighbours came to their mine and gave them sword, fire and slaughter. Fifty-eight dead, tell your King, and their sarhaed will be the value of their lives plus the life of the man who ordered them killed, or else we shall come with our own swords and shields to take the price ourselves.“ Owain roared with laughter. ”Little Kernow? We're so frightened!“ The warriors all around me shouted scorn. Kernow was a small country and no match for Dumnonia's forces. Bishop Bedwin tried to stop the noise, but the room was full of men drunk into boastfulness and they refused to calm down until Owain himself called for silence. ”I heard, Prince,“ Owain said, 'that it was the Blackshield Irish of Oengus Mac Airem who attacked the moor.” Tristan spat on the floor. “If they did,” he said, 'then they flew across country to do it, for no man saw them pass and they did not steal so much as an egg from any Dumnonian."

“That's because they fear Dumnonia, but not Kernow,” Owain said, and the hall burst into jeering laughter again.

Arthur waited until the laughter had subsided. “Do you know of any man other than Oengus Mac Airem who might have attacked your people?” he asked courteously.

Tristan turned and searched the men squatting on the hall floor. He saw Prince Cadwy of Isca's bald head and pointed at it with his sword. "Ask him. Or better still' he raised his voice to quieten the jeers

'ask the witness I have outside.“ Cadwy was on his feet and shouting to be allowed to fetch his sword while his tattooed spearmen were threatening all Kernow with massacre. Arthur slapped his hand on the high table. The sound echoed in the hall, drawing silence. Agricola of Gwent, sitting next to Arthur, kept his eyes down, for this quarrel was none of his business, but I doubt if a single nuance of the confrontation was escaping his shrewd wits. ”If any man draws blood tonight,“ Arthur said, 'he is my enemy.” He waited until Cadwy and his men subsided, then looked again to Tristan. “Bring your witness, Lord.”

“Is this a court of law?” Owain objected.

“Let the witness come in,” Arthur insisted.

“This is a feast!” Owain protested.

“Let the witness come, let him come.” Bishop Bedwin wanted the whole distasteful business over, and agreeing with Arthur seemed the quickest way to settle it. Men at the hall's edges shuffled closer to hear the drama, but laughed when Tristan's witness appeared, for she was just a small child, perhaps nine years old, who walked calmly and stiff-backed to stand beside her Prince who put an arm about her shoulder. “Sarlinna ferch Edain.” He gave the child's name, then squeezed her shoulder reassuringly.

“Speak.”

Sarlinna licked her lips. She chose to speak direct to Arthur, perhaps because he had the kindest face of the men sitting at the high table. “My father was killed, my mother was killed, my brothers and sisters were killed…” She spoke as though she had been rehearsed in her words, though no man present doubted the truth of them. “My baby sister was killed,” she went on, 'and my kitten was killed' — a first tear showed 'and I saw it done."

Arthur shook his head in sympathy. Agricola of Gwent ran a hand across his close-cropped grey hair, then stared up into the soot-blackened rafters. Owain leaned back in his chair and drank from a horn beaker while Bishop Bedwin looked troubled. “Did you really see the killers?” the Bishop asked the child.

“Yes, Lord.” Sarlinna, now that she was no longer saying words she had prepared and practised, was more nervous.

“But it was night, child,” Bedwin objected. “Wasn't the raid at night, Lord Prince?” he demanded of Tristan. The Lords of Dumnonia had all heard about the raid on the moor, but they had believed Owain's assertion that the massacre was the work of Oengus's Blackshield Irish. “How could the child see at night?” Bedwin asked.

Tristan encouraged the child by patting her shoulder. “Tell the Lord Bishop what happened,” he instructed her.

“The men threw fire into our hut, Lord,” Sarlinna said in a small voice.

“Not enough fire,” a man growled from the shadows and the hall laughed.

“How did you live, Sarlinna?” Arthur asked her gently when the laughter had faded.

“I hid, Lord, under a pelt.”

Arthur smiled. “You did well. But did you see the man who killed your mother and father?” He paused.

“And your kitten?”

She nodded. Her eyes were bright with tears in the dim hall. “I saw him, Lord,” she said quietly.

“So tell us about him,” Arthur said.

Sarlinna was wearing a small grey shift under a black woollen cloak and now she lifted her thin arms and pushed the shift's sleeves back to bare her pale skin. “The man's arms had pictures, Lord, of a dragon. And of a boar. Here.” She showed where the tattoos might be on her own small arms, then looked at Owain. “And there were rings in his beard,” the girl added, and then she went silent, but she had no need to say more. Only one man wore warrior rings in his beard, and every man present had watched Owain's arms drive the spear into Wlenca's midriff that morning, and everyone knew those arms were tattooed with Dumnonia's dragon and with his own symbol of a long-tusked boar. There was silence. A log crackled in the fire, sending a puff of smoke into the rafters. A gust of wind pattered sleet on the thick thatch and fluttered the rush-light flames that were scattered about the hall. Agricola was examining the silver-chased holder of his drinking horn as though he had never seen such an object before. Somewhere in the hall a man belched, and the noise seemed to prompt Owain to turn his great shaggy head to stare at the child. “She lies,” he said harshly, 'and children who lie should be beaten bloody,"

Sarlinna began to cry, then buried her face in the wet folds of Tristan's cloak. Bishop Bedwin frowned.

“It is true, Owain, is it not, that you visited Prince Cadwy late in the summer?”

“So?” Owain bristled. “So?” He roared the word again, this time as a challenge to the whole assembly.

“Here are my warriors!” He gestured at us, sitting together on the right-hand side of the hall. "Ask them!

Ask them! The child lies! On my oath, she lies!"

The hall was in sudden uproar as men spat their defiance at Tristan. Sarlinna was weeping so much that the Prince stooped, picked her up and held her in his arms and continued to hold her while Bedwin tried to regain control over the hall. “If Owain swears on his oath,” the Bishop shouted, 'then the child does lie." The warriors growled agreement.

Arthur, I saw, was watching me. I looked down at my wooden bowl of venison. Bishop Bedwin was wishing he had not invited the child into the hall. He dragged his fingers through his beard, then shook his head wearily. “A child's word carries no weight in law,” he said plaintively. “A child is not among the Tongued-ones.” The Tongued-ones were the nine witnesses whose word carried the weight of truth in law: a Lord, a Druid, a priest, a father speaking of his children, a magistrate, a gift-giver speaking of his gift, a maiden speaking of her virginity, a herdsman speaking of his animals and a condemned man speaking his final words. Nowhere in the list was there any mention of a child speaking of her family's massacre. “Lord Owain,” Bishop Bed win pointed out to Tristan, 'is a Tongued-one.“ Tristan was pale, but he would not back down. ”I believe the child,“ he said, 'and tomorrow, after sunrise, I shall come for Dumnonia's answer, and if that answer denies Kernow justice then my father will take justice for himself.”

“What's the matter with your father?” Owain jeered. “Lost interest in his latest wife, has he? So he wants to take a beating in battle instead?”

Tristan walked out amidst laughter, a laughter that grew as men tried to imagine little Kernow declaring war on mighty Dumnonia. I did not join in the laughter, but finished my stew instead, telling myself I needed the food if I was to keep warm during my spell of guard duty that would start at the feast's end. Nor did I drink any mead, so I was still sober when I fetched my cloak, spear, sword and helmet and went to the north wall. The sleet had stopped and the clouds were passing to reveal a bright half-moon sailing amidst a shimmer of stars, though more clouds were heaping in the west above the Severn Sea. I shivered as I paced the rampart.

Where Arthur found me.

I had known he was coming. I had wanted him to come and yet I felt a fear of him as I watched him cross the compound and climb the short flight of wooden steps that led to the low wall of earth and stone. At first he said nothing, but just leaned on the wood palings and stared towards the distant speck of flame light that lit Ynys Wydryn. He was dressed in his white cloak, which he had gathered up so that its hem would not drag in the mud. He had tied the cloak's corners about his waist just above his cross-hatched scabbard. “I'm not going to ask you,” he spoke at last, his breath misting in the night air, 'what happened on the moor, because I don't want to invite any man, least of all a man I like, to break a death-oath."

“Yes, Lord,” I said, and wondered how he had known it was a death-oath that had bound us on that dark night.

“So instead, let us walk.” He smiled at me, and gestured along the rampart. “A walking sentry stays warm,” he said. “I hear you're a good soldier?”

“I try, Lord.”

“And I hear you succeed, so well done.” He fell silent as we passed one of my comrades who was huddled against the palings. The man looked up at me as I passed and his face showed alarm that I might betray Owain's troop. Arthur pushed the cloak's hood back off his face. He had a long, firm stride and I had to hurry to keep pace with him. “What do you think a soldier's job is, Derfel?” he asked me in that intimate manner that made you feel he was more interested in you than anyone else in the world.

“To fight battles, Lord,” I said.

He shook his head. “To fight battles, Derfel,” he corrected me, 'on behalf of people who can't fight for themselves. I learned that in Brittany. This miserable world is full of weak people, powerless people, hungry people, sad people, sick people, poor people, and it's the easiest thing in the world to despise the weak, especially if you're a soldier. If you're a warrior and you want a man's daughter, you just take her; you want his land, you just kill him; after all, you're a soldier and you have a spear and a sword, and he's just a poor weak man with a broken plough and a sick ox and what's to stop you?“ He did not expect an answer to the question, but just paced on in silence. We had come to the western gateway and the split-log steps that climbed to the platform over the gate were whitening with a new frost. We climbed them side by side. ”But the truth is, Derfel,“ Arthur said when we reached the high platform, 'that we are only soldiers because that weak man makes us soldiers. He grows the grain that feeds us, he tans the leather that protects us and he polls the ash trees that make our spear-shafts. We owe him our service.”

“Yes, Lord,” I said and stared with him across the wide, flat land. It was not so cold as the night on which Mordred had been born, but it was still bitter, and the wind made it more so.

“There is a purpose to all things,” Arthur said, 'even being a soldier." He smiled at me, as though apologizing for being so earnest, yet he had no need to be apologetic for I was drinking in his words. I had dreamed of becoming a soldier because of a warrior's high status and because it had always seemed to me that it was better to carry a spear than a rake, but I had never thought beyond those selfish ambitions. Arthur had thought far beyond and he brought to Dumnonia a clear vision of where his sword and spear must take him.

“We have a chance' Arthur leaned on the high rampart as he spoke 'to make a Dumnonia in which we can serve our people. We can't give them happiness, and I don't know how to guarantee a good harvest that will make them rich, but I do know that we can make them safe, and a safe man, a man who knows that his children will grow without being taken for slaves and his daughter's bride price won't be ruined by a soldier's rape, is a man more likely to be happy than a man living under the threat of war. Is that fair?”

“Yes, Lord,” I said.

He rubbed his gloved hands against the cold. My hands were wrapped in rags that made holding my spear difficult, especially as I was also trying to keep them warm beneath my cloak. Behind us, in the feasting hall, a great roar of men's laughter gusted. The food had been as bad as any at a winter feast, but there had been plenty of mead and wine, though Arthur was as sober as I was myself. I looked at his profile as he gazed west towards the building clouds. The moon shadowed his lantern jaw and made his face seem bonier than ever. “I hate war,” Arthur said suddenly.

“You do?” I sounded surprised, but then I was young enough to enjoy war.

“Of course!” He smiled at me. “I happen to be good at it, maybe you are too, and that just means we have to use it wisely. Do you know what happened in Gwent last autumn?”

“You wounded Gorfyddyd,” I said eagerly. “You took his arm.”

“So I did,” he said, almost in a tone of surprise. “My horses aren't much use in hilly country, and no use at all in wooded land, so I took them north into Powys's flat farmlands. Gorfyddyd was trying to knock down Tewdric's walls so I started burning Gorfyddyd's haystacks and grain-stores. We burned, we killed. We did it well, not because we wanted to, but because it needed to be done. And it worked. It brought Gorfyddyd back from Tewdric's walls to the flat farmland where my horses could break him. And they did. We attacked him at dawn, and he fought well, but he lost the battle along with his left arm, and that, Derfel, was the end of the killing. It had served its purpose, do you understand? The purpose of the killing was to persuade Powys that it would be better for them to be at peace with Dumnonia than at war. And now there will be peace.”

“There will?” I asked dubiously. Most of us believed the spring thaw could bring only a fresh attack from Powys's embittered King Gorfyddyd.

“Gorfyddyd's son is a sensible man,” Arthur said. “His name is Cuneglas and he wants peace, and we must give Prince Cuneglas time to persuade his father that he'll lose more than one arm if he goes to war with us again. And once Gorfyddyd is persuaded that peace is better than war he'll call a council and we'll all go and make a lot of noise and at the end of it, Derfel, I shall marry Gorfyddyd's daughter, Ceinwyn.” He gave me a swift and somehow embarrassed look. “Seren, they call her, the star! The star of Powys. They say she's very beautiful.” He was pleased by that prospect and his pleasure somehow surprised me, but back then I had still not recognized the vanity in Arthur. “Let's hope she is as beautiful as a star,” he went on, 'but beautiful or not, I'll marry her and we'll pacify Siluria, and then the Saxons will face a united Britain. Powys, Gwent, Dumnonia and Siluria, all embracing each other, all fighting the same enemy, and all at peace with one another."

I laughed, not at him, but with him, for his ambitious prophecy had been so matter of fact. “How do you know?” I asked.

“Because Cuneglas has offered the peace terms, of course, and you're not to tell that to anyone, Derfel, otherwise it might not happen. Even his father doesn't know yet so this is a secret between you and me.”

“Yes, Lord,” I said, and I felt hugely privileged to be told such an important secret, but of course that was just how Arthur wanted me to feel. He always knew how to manipulate men, and he especially knew how to manipulate young, idealistic men.

“But what use is peace,” Arthur asked me, 'if we're fighting amongst ourselves? Our task is to give Mordred a rich, peaceful kingdom, and to do that we have to make it a good and just kingdom.“ He was looking at me now, and speaking very earnestly in his deep, soft voice. ”We cannot have peace if we break our treaties, and the treaty that let the men of Kernow mine our tin was a good one. I've no doubt they were cheating us, all men cheat when it comes to giving their money to kings, but was that reason to kill them and their children and their children's kittens? So next spring, Derfel, unless we finish this nonsense now, we shall have war instead of peace. King Mark will attack. He won't win, but his pride will ensure that his men kill a lot of our farmers and we shall have to send a war-band into Kernow and that's a bad country to fight in, very bad, but we'll win in the end. Pride will be settled, but at what price? Three hundred dead farmers? How many dead cattle? And if Gorfyddyd sees that we're fighting a war on our western frontier he'll be tempted to take advantage of our weakness by attacking in the north. We can make peace, Derfel, but only if we're strong enough to make war. If we look weak then our enemies will swoop like hawks. And how many Saxons will we face next year? Can we really spare men to cross the Tamar to kill a few farmers in Kernow?"

“Lord,” I began, and was about to confess the truth, but Arthur hushed me. The warriors in the hall were chanting the War Song of Beli Mawr, beating the earth floor with their feet as they proclaimed the great slaughter and doubtless anticipated more slaughter in Kernow.

“You mustn't say a word about what happened on the moor,” Arthur warned me. “Oaths are sacred, even to those of us who wonder if any God cares enough to enforce them. Let us just assume, Derfel, that Tristan's little girl was telling the truth. What does that mean?” I gazed into the frosted night. “War with Kernow,” I said bleakly.

“No,” Arthur said. “It means that tomorrow morning, when Tristan returns, someone has to challenge for the truth. The Gods, people tell me, always favour the honest in such encounters.” I knew what he was saying and I shook my head. “Tristan won't challenge Owain,” I said.

“Not if he has as much sense as he seems to have,” Arthur agreed. “Even the Gods would find it hard to make Tristan beat down Owain's sword. So if we want peace, and if we want all those good things that follow peace, someone else must be Tristan's champion. Isn't that right?” I looked at him, horrified at what I thought he was saying. “You?” I finally asked. He shrugged under his white cloak. “I'm not sure who else will do it,” he said gently. “But there is one thing you can do for me.”

“Anything, Lord,” I said, 'anything." And at that moment I think I would even have agreed to fight Owain for him.

“A man going into battle, Derfel,” Arthur said carefully, 'should know that his cause is right. Perhaps the Blackshield Irish did carry their shields across the land unseen by anyone. Or maybe their Druids did make them fly? Or maybe, tomorrow, the Gods, if they take an interest, will think I fight for a good cause. What do you think?"

He asked the question as innocently as if he was merely enquiring about the weather. I stared at him, overwhelmed by him and desperately wanting him to avoid this challenge against the best swordsman in Dumnonia.

“Well?” he prompted me.

“The Gods…” I began, but then had difficulty speaking for Owain had been good to me. The champion was not an honest man, but I could count on my fingers how many honest men I had met, yet despite his roguery, I liked him. Yet I liked this honest man much more. I also paused to determine whether or not my words broke any oath, then decided they did not. “The Gods will support you, Lord,” I said at last. He smiled sadly. “Thank you, Derfel.”

“But why?” I blurted out.

He sighed and looked back to the moon-glossed land. “When Uther died,” he said after a long time, 'the land fell into chaos. That happens to a land without a king, and we are without a king now. We have Mordred, but he is a child, so someone has to hold the power until he is of age. One man must hold the power, Derfel, not three or four or ten, just one. I wish it were not so. With all my heart, believe me, I would rather leave things as they are. I would rather grow old with Owain as my dear friend, but it cannot be. The power must be held for Mordred, and it must be held properly and justly and given to him intact, and that means we cannot afford perpetual squabbles between men who want the king's power for themselves. One man has to be a king who is no king, and that one man must relinquish the powers of the kingdom when Mordred is of age. And that's what soldiers do, remember? They fight the battles for people who are too weak to fight for themselves. They also,“ he smiled, 'take what they want, and tomorrow I want something of Owain; I want his honour, so I shall take it.” He shrugged.

“Tomorrow I fight for Mordred and for that child. And you, Derfel' he poked me hard in the chest 'will find her a kitten.” He stamped his feet against the cold, then peered westward. “You think those clouds will bring rain or snow in the morning?” he asked.

“I don't know, Lord.”

“Let us hope so. Now, I hear you had a conversation with that poor Saxon they killed to learn the future. So tell me all he told you. The more we know of our enemies, the better.” He walked me back to my post, listened to what I had to say about Cerdic, the new Saxon leader on the south coast, then went to his bed. He seemed untroubled by what must happen in the morning, but I was terrified for him. I remembered Owain beating back the combined attack of both Tewdric's champions and I tried to say a prayer to the stars which are the homes of the Gods, but I could not see them because my eyes were watering.

The night was long and bitterly cold. But I wished the dawn would never come. Arthur's wish was granted for at dawn it began to rain. It soon became a hard pelting storm of winter rain that swept in grey veils across the long, wide valley between Caer Cadarn and Ynys Wydryn. The ditches overflowed; water poured off the ramparts and puddled under the great hall's eaves. Smoke leaked from the holes in damp thatched roofs and sentries hunched their shoulders beneath their soaking cloaks.

Tristan, who had spent the night in the small village just east of Caer Cadarn, struggled up the fort's muddy approach path. His six guards and the orphaned child accompanied him, all of them slipping in the steep mud whenever they could not find a foothold on the tufts of grass growing at the path's sides. The gate was open and no sentry moved to stop the Prince of Kernow as he splashed through the compound's mud to the door of the great hall.

Where no one waited to receive him. The hall's interior was a damp chaos of men sleeping off a night's drunkenness, of discarded food, scavenging dogs, soggy grey embers and vomit congealing in the floor rushes. Tristan kicked one of the sleeping men awake and sent him to find Bishop Bedwin or some other person in authority. “If anyone,” he called after the man, 'has any authority in this country.“ Bedwin, heavily cloaked against the seething rain, slipped and staggered his way through the treacherous mud. ”My Lord Prince,“ he gasped as he dashed out of the weather into the hall's dubious shelter, 'my apologies. I had not expected you so early. Inclement weather, is it not?” He wrung water from the skirts of his cloak. “Still, rather rain than snow, I think, don't you?” Tristan said nothing.

Bedwin was flustered by his guest's silence. “Some bread, perhaps? And warm wine? There will be a porridge cooking, I'm sure.”

He looked about for someone to despatch to the kitchens, but the sleeping men lay snoring and immovable. “Little girl?” Bedwin winced because of an aching head as he leaned towards Sarlinna, 'you must be hungry, yes?"

“We came for justice, not food,” Tristan said harshly.

“Ah, yes. Of course. Of course.” Bedwin pushed the hood away from his white tonsured hair and scratched in his beard for a troublesome louse. “Justice,” he said vaguely, then nodded vigorously. “I have thought on the matter, Lord Prince, indeed I have, and I have decided that war is not a desirable thing. Won't you agree?” He waited, but Tristan's face showed no response. “Such a waste,” Bedwin said, 'and while I cannot find my Lord Owain to be at fault I do confess we failed in our duty to protect your countrymen on the moor. We did indeed. We failed sadly, and so, Lord Prince, if it pleases your father, we shall, of course, make payment of sarhaed, though not,“ and here Bedwin chuckled, 'for the kitten.” Tristan grimaced. “What of the man who did the killing?”

Bedwin shrugged. “What man? I know of no such man.”

“Owain,” Tristan said. “Who almost certainly took gold from Cadwy.” Bedwin shook his head. “No. No. No. It cannot be. No. On my oath, Lord Prince, I have no knowledge of any man's guilt.” He gave Tristan a pleading look. “My Lord Prince, it would hurt me deeply to see our countries at war. I have offered what I can offer, and I shall have prayers said for your dead, but I cannot countermand a man's oath of innocence.”

“I can,” Arthur said. He had been waiting behind the kitchen screen at the hall's far end. I was with him as he stepped into the hall where his white cloak looked bright in the damp gloom. Bedwin blinked at him. “Lord Arthur?”

Arthur stepped between the stirring, groaning bodies. “If the man who killed Kernow's miners is not punished, Bedwin, then he may murder again. Do you not agree?” Bedwin shrugged, spread his hands, then shrugged again. Tristan was frowning, not sure where Arthur's words were leading.

Arthur stopped by one of the hall's central pillars. “And why should the kingdom pay sarhaed when the kingdom did not do the killing?” he demanded. “Why should my Lord Mordred's treasury be depleted for another man's offence?”

Bedwin gestured Arthur to silence. “We do not know the murderer!” he insisted.

“Then we must prove his identity,” Arthur said simply.

“We can't!” Bedwin protested irritably. “The child is not a Tongued-one! And Lord Owain, if he is the man you speak of, has sworn on oath that he is innocent. He is a Tongued-one, so why go through the farce of a trial? His word is enough.”

“In a court of words, yes,” Arthur said, 'but there is also the court of swords, and by my sword, Bedwin,“ here he paused and drew Excalibur's glittering length into the half-light, ”I maintain that Owain, Champion of Dumnonia, has caused our cousins of Kernow harm and that he, and no other, must pay the price." He thrust Excalibur's tip through the filthy rushes into the earth and left it there, quivering. For a second I wondered if the Gods of the Otherworld would suddenly appear to aid Arthur, but there was only the sound of wind and rain and newly woken men gasping.

Bedwin gasped too. For a few seconds he was speechless. “You…” he finally managed to say, but then could say no more.

Tristan, his handsome face pale in the wan light, shook his head. “If anyone should contend in the court of swords,” he said to Arthur, 'let it be me."

Arthur smiled. “I asked first, Tristan,” he said lightly.

“No!” Bedwin found his tongue. “It cannot be!”

Arthur gestured at the sword. “You wish to pluck it, Bedwin?”

“No!” Bedwin was in distress, foreseeing the death of the kingdom's best hope, but before he could say another word Owain himself burst through the hall door. His long hair and thick beard were wet and his bare chest gleamed with rain.

He looked from Bedwin to Tristan to Arthur, then down to the sword in the earth. He seemed puzzled.

“Are you mad?” he asked Arthur.

“My sword,” Arthur said mildly, 'maintains your guilt in the matter between Kernow and Dumnonia."

“He is mad,” Owain said to his warriors who were crowding in behind him. The champion was red-eyed and tired. He had drunk for much of the night, then slept badly, but the challenge seemed to give him a new energy. He spat towards Arthur. “I'm going back to that Silurian bitch's bed,” he said, 'and when I wake up I want this to prove a dream."

“You are a coward, a murderer and a liar,” Arthur said calmly as Owain turned away and the words made the men in the hall gasp once more.

Owain turned back into the hall. “Whelp,” he said to Arthur. He strode up to Excalibur and knocked the blade over, the formal acceptance of the challenge. “So your death, whelp, will be part of my dream. Outside.” He jerked his head towards the rain. The fight could not be held indoors, not unless the feasting hall was to be cursed with abominable luck, so the men had to fight in the winter rain. The whole fort was stirring now. Many of the folk who lived at Lindinis had slept in Caer Cadarn that night and the compound seethed as people were woken to witness the fight. Lunete was there, and Nimue and Morgan; indeed all Caer Cadarn hurried to watch the battle that took place, as tradition demanded, within the royal stone circle. Agricola, a red cloak over his gorgeous Roman armour, stood between Bedwin and Prince Gereint while King Melwas, a hunk of bread in his hand, watched wide-eyed among his guards. Tristan stood on the circle's far side where I, too, took my place. Owain saw me there and assumed I had betrayed him. He roared that my life would follow Arthur's to the Otherworld, but Arthur proclaimed my life was under his surety.

“He broke his oath!” Owain shouted, pointing at me.

“On my oath,” Arthur said, 'he broke none." He took off his white cloak and folded it carefully on to one of the stones. He was dressed in trews, boots and a thin leather jerkin over a woollen vest. Owain was bare chested. His trews were crisscrossed with leather and he had massive nailed boots. Arthur sat on the stone and pulled his own boots off, preferring to fight barefoot.

“This is not necessary,” Tristan said to him.

“It is, sadly,” Arthur said, then stood and pulled Excalibur from its scabbard.

“Using your magic sword, Arthur?” Owain jeered. “Afraid to fight with a mortal weapon, are you?” Arthur sheathed Excalibur again and laid the sword on top of his cloak. “Derfel,” he turned to me, 'is that Hywel's sword?"

“Yes, Lord.”

“Would you lend it me?” he asked. “I promise to return it.”

“Make sure you live to keep that promise, Lord,” I said, taking Hywelbane from her scabbard and handing it to him hilt first. He gripped the sword, then asked me to run to the hall and fetch a handful of gritty ash that, when I returned, he rubbed into the oiled leather of the hilt. He turned to Owain. “If, Lord Owain,” he said courteously, 'you would rather fight when you are rested, then I can wait."

“Whelp!” Owain spat. “Sure you don't want to put on your fish armour?”

“It rusts in the rain,” Arthur answered very calmly.

“A fair-weather soldier,” Owain sneered, then gave his long sword two practice cuts that whistled in the air. In the shield-line he preferred to fight with a short sword, but with any length of blade Owain was a man to fear. “I'm ready, whelp,” he called.

I stood with Tristan and his guards as Bedwin made one last futile effort to stop the fight. No one doubted the outcome. Arthur was a tall man, but slender compared with Owain's muscled bulk, and no one had ever seen Owain bested in a fight. Yet Arthur seemed remarkably composed as he took his place at the circle's western edge and faced Owain who stood, uphill of him, at the east.

“Do you submit judgment to the court of swords?” Bedwin asked the two men, and both nodded their assent.

“Then God bless you, and God give the truth victory,” Bedwin said. He made the sign of the cross and then, his old face heavy, he walked out of the circle.

Owain, as we had expected, rushed at Arthur, but halfway across the circle, right by the King's royal stone, his foot slipped in the mud, and suddenly Arthur was charging. I had expected Arthur to fight calmly, using the skills Hywel had taught him, but that morning, as the rains poured from the winter skies, I saw how Arthur changed in battle. He became a fiend. His energy was poured into just one thing, death, and he laid at Owain with massive, fast strokes that drove the big man back and back. The swords rang harsh. Arthur was spitting at Owain, cursing him, taunting him, and cutting again and again with the edge of the sword and never giving Owain a chance to recover from a parry. Owain fought well. No other man could have sustained that opening, slaughterous assault. His boots slipped in the mud, and more than once he had to beat off Arthur's attacks from his knees, but he always managed to recover his footing even if he was still driven backwards. When Owain slipped a fourth time I understood part of Arthur's confidence. He had wanted rain to make the footing treacherous and I think he knew that Owain would be bloated and tired from a night's feasting. Yet he could not break through that dogged guard, even though he did drive the champion clean back to the place where Wlenca's blood was still just visible as a darker patch of soaking mud.

And there, by the Saxon's blood, Owain's luck changed. Arthur slipped, and though he recovered the falter was all the opening Owain needed. He lunged whip-fast. Arthur parried, but Owain's sword slit through the leather jerkin to draw the fight's first blood from Arthur's waist. Arthur parried again, then again, this time stepping back before the hard, quick lunges that would have gored an ox to its heart. Owain's men roared their support as the champion, scenting victory, tried to throw his whole body on to Arthur to drive his lighter opponent down into the mud, but Arthur had been ready for the manoeuvre and he sidestepped on to the royal stone and gave a back-cut of his sword that slashed open the back of Owain's skull. The wound, like all scalp wounds, bled copiously so that the blood matted in Owain's hair and trickled down his broad back to be diluted by the rain. His men went silent. Arthur leaped from the stone, attacking again, and once again Owain was on the defensive. Both men were panting, both were mud-spattered and bloody, and both too tired to spit any more insults at the other. The rain made their hair hang in long, soaking hanks as Arthur cut left and right in the same fast rhythm with which he had opened the fight. It was so fast that Owain had no chance to do anything but counter the strokes. I remembered Owain's scornful description of Arthur's fighting style, slashing like a haymaker, Owain had said, hurrying to beat bad weather. Once, and only once, did Arthur whip his blade past Owain's guard, but the blow was half parried, robbing it of force, and the sword was checked by the iron warrior rings in Owain's beard. Owain threw the blade off, then tried again to drive Arthur down on to the ground with the weight of his body. Both fell and for a second it looked as though Owain would trap Arthur, but somehow Arthur scrambled away and climbed to his feet. Arthur waited for Owain to rise. Both men were breathing hard and for a few seconds they watched each other, judging their chances, and then Arthur moved forward into the attack again. He swung again and again, just as he had before, and again and again Owain parried the wild blows, then Arthur slipped for a second time. He called in fear as he fell, and his cry was answered by a shout of triumph as Owain drew back his arm for the killing blow. Then Owain saw that Arthur had not slipped at all, but had merely pretended it to make Owain open his guard and now it was Arthur who lunged. It was his first lunge of the battle, and his last. Owain had his back to me and I was half hiding my eyes so that I would not have to see Arthur's death, but instead, right before me, I saw the shining tip of Hywelbane come clean out through Owain's wet and blood-streaked back. Arthur's lunge had gone straight through the champion's body. Owain seemed to freeze, his sword arm suddenly powerless. Then, from nerveless fingers, his sword dropped into the mud.

For a second, for a heartbeat, Arthur left Hywelbane in Owain's belly, then, with a huge effort that took every muscle in his body, he twisted the blade and ripped it free. He shouted as he tore that steel out of Owain, shouted as the blade broke the flesh's suction and ripped through bowel and muscle and skin and flesh, and still shouted as he dragged the sword out into the day's grey light. The force needed to drag the steel from Owain's heavy body meant that the sword kept going in a wild backswing that sprayed blood far across the mud-churned circle.

While Owain, disbelief on his face and with his guts spilling into the mud, fell. Then Hywelbane thrust down once into the champion's neck.

And there was silence in Caer Cadarn.

Arthur stepped back from the corpse. Then he turned sunwise to look into the faces of every man around the circle. Arthur's own face was hard as stone. There was not a scrap of kindness there, only the face of a fighter come to triumph. It was a terrible face, his big jaw set in a rictus of hate so that those of us who only knew Arthur as a painstakingly thoughtful man were shocked by the change in him. “Does any man here,” he called in a loud voice, 'dispute the judgment?“ None did. Rain dripped from cloaks and diluted Owain's blood as Arthur walked to face the fallen champion's spearmen. ”Now's your chance,“ he spat at them, 'to avenge your Lord, otherwise you are mine.” None could meet his eye, so he turned away from them, stepped over the fallen warlord and faced Tristan. “Does Kernow accept the judgment, Lord Prince?”

Tristan, pale-faced, nodded. “It does, Lord.”

“SarhaedJ Arthur decreed, 'will be paid from Owain's estate.” He turned again to look at the warriors.

“Who commands Owain's men now?”

Griffid ap Annan stepped nervously forward. “I do, Lord.”

“You will come to me for orders in one hour. And if any man of you touches Derfel, my comrade, then all of you will burn in a fire-pit.” They lowered their gaze rather than meet his eyes. Arthur used a handful of mud to clean the sword of its blood, then handed it to me. “Dry it well, Derfel.”

“Yes, Lord.”

“And thank you. A good sword.” He closed his eyes suddenly. “God help me,” he said, 'but I enjoyed that. Now' his eyes opened “I've done my part, what about yours?”

“Mine?” I gaped at him.

“A kitten,” he said patiently, 'for Sarlinna."

“I have one, Lord,” I said.

“Then fetch it,” he said, 'and come to the hall for breakfast. Do you have a woman?"

“Yes, Lord.”

“Tell her we leave tomorrow when the council has finished its business.” I stared at him, hardly believing my luck. "You mean' I began.

“I mean,” he interrupted me impatiently, 'that you will serve me now."

“Yes, Lord!” I said. “Yes, Lord!”

He picked up his sword, cloak and boots, took Sarlinna's hand and walked away from the rival he had killed.

And I had found my Lord.

Lunete did not want to travel north to Corinium where Arthur was wintering with his men. She did not want to leave her friends and besides, she added almost as an afterthought, she was pregnant. I greeted the announcement with disbelieving silence.

“You heard me,” she snapped, 'pregnant. I can't go. And why should we go? We were happy here. Owain was a good lord, then you had to spoil it. So why don't you go by yourself?“ She was squatting by our hut's fire, trying to take what warmth she could from its feeble flames. ”I hate you," she said and she vainly tried to pull our lovers' ring from her finger.

“Pregnant?” I asked in a shocked voice.

“But maybe not by you!” Lunete screamed, then gave up trying to tug the ring off her swollen finger and hurled a billet of firewood at me instead. Our slave howled in misery at the back of the hut and Lunete threw a log at her for good measure.

“But I have to go,” I said, “I have to go with Arthur.”

“And abandon me?” she shrieked. “You want me to be a whore? Is that it?” She hurled another piece of wood and I abandoned the fight. It was the day after Arthur's contest with Owain and we were all back in Lindinis where the council of Dumnonia was meeting in Arthur's villa, which was consequently surrounded by petitioners with their relatives and friends. Those eager people waited at the villa's front gates. At the back a huddle of armouries and storehouses stood where the villa's garden had once grown. Owain's old war-band was waiting for me there. They had chosen the site of their ambush well, at a place where holly trees hid us from the buildings. Lunete was still screaming at me as I walked up the path, calling me a traitor and a coward. “She's got you right, Saxon,” Griffid ap Annan said, then spat towards me.

His men blocked my path. There were a dozen spearmen there, all old comrades, but all now with implacably hostile faces. Arthur might have placed my life under his protection, but here, hidden from the villa windows, no one would know how I had ended up dead in the mud.

“You broke your oath,” Griffid accused me.

“I did not,” I claimed.

Minac, an old warrior whose neck and wrists were heavy with the gold given him by Owain, levelled his spear. “Don't worry about your girl,” he said nastily, 'there's plenty of us who know how to look after young widows."

I drew Hywelbane. Behind me the women had come from their huts to see their men avenge the death of their Lord. Lunete was among them and jeering at me like the rest.

“We've taken a new oath,” Minac said, 'and unlike you, we keep our oaths." He advanced down the path with Griffid beside him. The other spearmen crowded in behind their leaders, while at my back the women pressed closer and some of them put aside their ever-present distaffs and spindles to begin throwing stones to drive me forward on to Griffid's spear. I hefted Hywelbane, its edge still dented from Arthur's fight with Owain, and I said a prayer that the Gods would give me a good death.

“Saxon,” Griffid said, using the worst insult he could find. He was advancing very cautiously for he knew my skill with a sword. “Saxon traitor,” he said, then recoiled as a heavy stone splashed into the mud on the path between us. He looked past me and I saw the fear come on to his face and the blade of his spear drop.

“Your names,” Nimue's voice hissed from behind me, 'are on the stone. Griffid ap Annan, Mapon ap Ellchyd, Minac ap Caddan…" She recited the spearmen's names and ancestry one by one, and each time she pronounced a name she spat towards the curse stone that she had lobbed into their path. The spears dropped.

I stood aside to let Nimue pass. She was dressed in a black hooded cloak that cast her face into a shadow out of which her golden eye glittered malevolently. She stopped beside me, then suddenly turned and pointed a staff dressed with a sprig of mistletoe towards the women who had been throwing stones.

“You want your children turned into rats?” Nimue called to the onlookers. “You want your milk to dry and your urine to burn like fire? Go!” The women seized their children and ran to hide themselves in the huts.

Griffid knew Nimue was Merlin's beloved and possessed of the

Druid's power and he was shaking with fear of her curse. “Please,” he said as Nimue turned back to face him.

She walked past his lowered spear-point and struck him hard on the cheek with her staff. “Down,” she said. “All of you! Down! Flat! On your faces! Flat!” She struck Minac. “Get down!” They lay on their bellies in the mud and, one by one, she stepped on their backs. Her tread was light, but her curse heavy. “Your deaths are in my hand,” she told them, 'your lives are all mine. I will use your souls as gaming-pieces. Each dawn that you wake alive you will thank me for my mercy, and each dusk you will pray that I do not see your filthy faces in my dreams. Griffid ap Annan: swear allegiance to Derfel. Kiss his sword. On your knees, dog! On your knees!"

I protested that these men owed me no allegiance, but Nimue turned on me in anger and ordered me to hold out the sword. Then, one by one, with mud and terror on their faces, my old companions shuffled on their knees to kiss the tip of Hywelbane. The oath gave me no rights of lordship over these men, but it did make it impossible for any of them to attack me without endangering their souls, for Nimue told them that if they broke this oath their souls were doomed to stay for evermore in the dark Otherworld, never to find new bodies on this green, sunlit earth again. One of the spearmen, a Christian, defied Nimue by saying the oath meant nothing, but his courage failed when she prised the golden eye from its socket and held it towards him, hissing a curse, and in abject terror he dropped to his knees and kissed my sword like the others. Nimue, once their oaths were sworn, ordered them to lie flat again. She worked the golden ball back into her eye socket and then we left them in the mud. Nimue laughed as we climbed out of their sight. “I enjoyed that!” she said, and there was a flash of the old, childish mischief in her voice. “I did enjoy that! I do so hate men, Derfel.”

“All men?”

“Men in leather, carrying spears.” She shuddered. “Not you. But the rest I hate.” She turned and spat back down the path. “How the gods must laugh at little strutting men.” She pushed back her hood to look at me. “Do you want Lunete to go to Corinium with you?”

“I swore to protect her,” I said unhappily, 'and she tells me she's pregnant."

“Does that mean you do want her company?”

“Yes,” I said, meaning no.

“I think you're a fool,” Nimue said, 'but Lunete will do as I tell her. But I tell you, Derfel, that if you don't leave her now, she'll leave you in her own good time.“ She put her hand on my arm to check me. We had come close to the villa's porch where the crowd of petitioners was waiting to see Arthur. ”Did you know,“ Nimue asked me in a low voice, 'that Arthur is thinking of releasing Gundleus?”

“No.” I was shocked by the news.

“He is. He thinks Gundleus will keep the peace now, and he thinks Gundleus is the best man to rule Siluria. Arthur won't release him without Tewdric's agreement, so it won't happen yet, but when it does, Derfel, I'll kill Gundleus.” She spoke with the terrible simplicity of truth and I thought how ferocity gave her a beauty that nature had denied her. She was staring across the wet, cold land towards the distant mound of Caer Cadarn. “Arthur,” she said, 'dreams of peace, but there never will be peace. Never!

Britain is a cauldron, Derfel, and Arthur will stir it to horror."

“You're wrong,” I said loyally.

Nimue mocked that assertion with a grimace and then, without another word, she turned and walked back down the path towards the warriors' huts.

I pushed through the petitioners into the villa. Arthur glanced up as I came in, waved a casual welcome, then returned his attention to a man who was complaining that his neighbour had moved their boundary stones. Bed win and Gereint sat at the table with Arthur, while to one side Agricola and Prince Tristan stood like guards. A number of the kingdom's counsellors and magistrates sat on the floor, which was curiously warm thanks to the Roman way of making a space beneath that could be filled with warm smoky air from a furnace. A crack in the tiles was allowing wisps of the smoke to drift across the big chamber.

The petitioners were seen one by one and justice was pronounced. Almost all of the cases could have been dealt with in Lindinis's magistrates' court that stood just a hundred paces from the villa, but many folk, especially the pagan country dwellers, reckoned that a decision given in Royal Council was more binding than a judgment made in a court established by the Romans, and so they stored their grudges and feuds until the council was conveniently close by.

Arthur, representing the baby Mordred, dealt with them patiently, but he was relieved when the real business of the day could commence. That business was to dispose of the tangled ends left by the previous day's fight. Owain's warriors were given to Prince Gereint with Arthur's recommendation that they be split between various troops. One of Gereint's captains, a man called Llywarch, was appointed in Owain's place as the new commander of the King's guard, then a magistrate was given the task of tallying Owain's wealth and sending to Kernow the portion that was owed in sarhaed. I noted how brusquely Arthur conducted the business, though never without giving each man present a chance to speak his mind. Such consultation could lead to interminable argument, but Arthur had the happy talent of understanding complicated matters swiftly and proposing compromises that pleased everyone. I noticed, too, how Gereint and Bedwin were content to let Arthur take the first place. Bedwin had placed all his hopes for Dumnonia's future on Arthur's sword and Bedwin was thus Arthur's strongest supporter, while Gereint, who was Uther's nephew, could have been a opponent, but the Prince had none of his uncle's ambition and was happy that Arthur was willing to take the responsibility of government. Dumnonia had a new King's champion, Arthur ab Uther, and the relief in the room was palpable. Prince Cadwy of Isca was ordered to contribute to the sarhaed owed to Kernow. He protested against the decision, but quailed before Arthur's anger and meekly agreed to pay one quarter of Kernow's price. Arthur, I suspect, would have preferred to inflict a sterner punishment, but I was oath-bound not to reveal Cadwy's part in the attack on the moor and there was no other evidence of his complicity, so Cadwy escaped a heavier judgement. Prince Tristan acknowledged Arthur's decisions with a nod of his head.

The next business of the day was arranging the future of our King. Mordred had been living in Owain's household and now he needed a new home. Bedwin proposed a man named Nabur who was the chief magistrate in Durnovaria. Another counsellor immediately protested, condemning Nabur for being a Christian.

Arthur rapped on the table to end a bitter argument before it began. “Is Nabur here?” he demanded. A tall man stood at the back of the room. “I'm Nabur.” He was clean shaven and dressed in a Roman toga. “Nabur ap Lwyd,” he introduced himself formally. He was a young man with a narrow, grave face and receding hair that gave him the appearance of a bishop or a Druid.

“You have children, Nabur?” Arthur asked.

“Three living, Lord. Two boys and a girl. The girl is our Lord Mordred's age.”

“And is there a Druid or Bard in Durnovaria?”

Nabur nodded. “Derella the Bard, Lord.”

Arthur spoke privately with Bedwin, who nodded, then Arthur smiled at Nabur. “Would you take the King into your care?”

“Gladly, Lord.”

“You may teach him your religion, Nabur ap Lwyd, but only when Derella is present, and Derella must become the boy's tutor when he is five years of age. You will receive half a king's allowance from the treasury and will be required to keep twenty guards about our Lord Mordred at all times. The price of his life is your soul and the souls of your whole family. Do you agree?” Nabur blanched when he was told that his wife and children would die if he let Mordred be killed, but he still nodded acceptance. And no wonder. To be the King's guardian gave Nabur a place very close to the centre of Dumnonia's power. “I agree, Lord,” he said. The last business of the council was the fate of Ladwys, Gundleus's wife and lover, and slave to Owain. She was brought into the room where she stood defiantly in front of Arthur. “This day,” Arthur told her, “I ride north to Corinium where your husband is our captive. Do you wish to come?”

“So you can humiliate me further?” Ladwys asked. Owain, for all his brutality, had never managed to break her spirit.

Arthur frowned at her hostile tone. “So you can be with him, Lady,” he said gently. “Your husband's imprisonment is not harsh, he has a house like this, though admittedly it is guarded. But you may live with him in privacy and peace, if that is what you want.”

Tears showed at Ladwys's eyes. “He may not want me. I've been soiled.” Arthur shrugged. “I can't speak for Gundleus, I just want your decision. If you choose to stay here then you may. Owain's death means you are free.”

She seemed bemused by Arthur's generosity, but managed to nod. “I will come, Lord.”

“Good!” Arthur stood and carried his chair to the side of the room where he courteously invited Ladwys to sit. Then he faced the assembled counsellors, spearmen and chiefs. “I have one thing to say, just one, but you must all understand this one thing and you must repeat it to your men, your families, your tribes and your septs. Our King is Mordred, no one but Mordred, and it is to Mordred we owe our allegiance and our swords. But in the next years the kingdom will face enemies, as all kingdoms do, and there will be a need, as there always is, for strong decisions, and when those decisions are taken there will be men among you who will whisper that I am usurping the King's power. You will even be tempted to think I want the King's power. So in front of you now, and in front of our friends from Gwent and Kernow' here Arthur gestured courteously towards Agricola and Tristan 'let me swear upon whatever oath you hold most dear that I shall use the power you give me for one end only, and that one end is to see Mordred take his kingdom from me when he is of age. That I swear.” He stopped abruptly. There was a stir in the room. Until that moment no one had fully understood how swiftly Arthur had taken power in Dumnonia. The fact that he sat at the table with Bedwin and Prince Gereint suggested that the three men were equals in power, but Arthur's speech proclaimed that there was only one man in charge, and Bedwin and Gereint, by their silence, gave support to Arthur's claim. Neither Bedwin nor Gereint were stripped of their power, but rather they now exercised it at Arthur's pleasure and his pleasure decreed that Bedwin would stay to be the arbiter of disputes within the kingdom, Gereint would guard the Saxon frontier while Arthur went north to face the forces of Powys. I knew, and maybe Bedwin knew, that Arthur had high hopes of peace with Gorfyddyd's kingdom, but until that peace was agreed he would continue a posture of war.

A large party went north that afternoon. Arthur, with his two warriors and his servant Hygwydd, rode ahead with Agricola and his men. Morgan, Ladwys and Lunete rode in a cart while I walked with Nimue. Lunete was subdued, overwhelmed by Nimue's anger. We spent the night at the Tor where I saw the good work Gwlyddyn was doing. The new stockade was in place and a new tower rising on the foundations of the old. Ralla was pregnant. Pellinore did not know me, but just walked about his new cage as though he was on guard and barked orders at unseen spearmen. Druidan ogled Ladwys. Gudovan, the clerk, showed me Hywel's grave north of the Tor, then took Arthur to the shrine of the Holy Thorn where Saint Norwenna was buried close beside the miraculous tree. Next morning I said farewell to Morgan and to Nimue. The sky was blue again, the wind was cold, and I went north with Arthur.

In the spring my son was born. He died three days later. For days afterwards I would see that small wrinkled red face and tears would come to my eyes at the memory. He had seemed healthy, but one morning, hung in his swaddling clothes on the wall of the kitchen so he would be out of the way of the dogs and piglets, he simply died. Lunete, like me, wept, but she also blamed me for her baby's death, saying the air at Corinium was pestilential, though she was, in fact, happy enough in the town. She liked the clean Roman buildings and her small brick house that faced on to a stone-paved street, and she had struck up an unlikely friendship with Ailleann, Arthur's lover, and with Ailleann's twin sons, Amhar and Loholt. I liked Ailleann well enough, but the two boys were fiends. Arthur indulged them, perhaps because he felt guilty that they, like him, were not proper sons born to inherit, but bastards who would need to make their own way in a hard world. They received no discipline that I ever saw, except once when I found them prying at a puppy's eyes with a knife and I struck them both hard. The puppy was blinded and I did the merciful thing of killing it quickly. Arthur sympathized with me, but said it was not my place to strike his boys. His warriors applauded me, and Ailleann, I think, approved. She was a sad woman. She knew her days as Arthur's companion were numbered for her man had become the effective ruler of Britain's strongest kingdom and he would need to marry a bride who could buttress his power. I knew that bride was Ceinwyn, star and Princess of Powys, and I suspect Ailleann knew it too. She wanted to return to Benoic, but Arthur would not allow his precious sons to leave the country. Ailleann knew that Arthur would never let her starve, but nor would he disgrace his royal wife by keeping his lover close. As the spring put leaves on trees and spread blossom across the land her sadness deepened.

The Saxons attacked in the spring, but Arthur did not go to war. King Melwas defended the southern border from his capital at

Venta while Prince Gereint's war-bands sallied out of Durocobrivis to oppose the Saxon levies of the dreaded King Aelle. Gereint had the harder time of it and Arthur reinforced him by sending him Sagramor with thirty horsemen, and Sagramor's intervention tipped the balance in our favour. Aelle's Saxons, we were told, believed Sagramor's black face made him a monster sent from the Kingdom of the Night and they had neither the sorcerers nor the swords that could oppose him. The Numidian drove Aelle's men so far back that he made a new frontier a full day's march beyond the old and he marked his new boundary with a row of severed Saxon heads. He pillaged deep into Lloegyr, once even leading his horsemen as far as London, a city that had been the greatest in Roman Britain, but which was now decaying behind fallen walls. The surviving Britons there, Sagramor told us, were timid and begged him not to disturb the fragile peace they had made with their Saxon overlords. There was no news of Merlin.

In Gwent they waited for Gorfyddyd of Powys to attack, but no attack came. Instead a messenger rode south from Gorfyddyd's capital at Caer Sws and two weeks later Arthur rode north to meet the enemy King. I went with him, one of twelve warriors who marched with swords, but no shields or war spears. We went on a mission of peace, and Arthur was excited at the prospect. We took Gundleus of Siluria with us, and first marched east to Tewdric's capital of Burrium that was a walled Roman town filled with armouries and the reeking smoke of blacksmiths' forges, and from there we went north accompanied by Tewdric and his attendants. Agricola was defending Gwent's Saxon frontier and Tewdric, like Arthur, took only a handful of guards, though he was accompanied by three priests, among them Sansum, the angry little black-tonsured priest whom Nimue had nicknamed Lughtigern, the Mouse Lord. We made a colourful party. King Tewdric's men were cloaked in red above their Roman uniforms while Arthur had outfitted each of his warriors with new green cloaks. We travelled beneath four banners: Mordred's dragon for Dumnonia, Arthur's bear, Gundleus's fox and Tewdric's bull. With Gundleus rode Ladwys, the only woman in our party. She was happy again and Gundleus seemed content to have her back at his side. He was still a prisoner, but he wore a sword again and he rode in the place of honour alongside Arthur and Tewdric. Tewdric was still suspicious of Gundleus, but Arthur treated him like an old friend. Gundleus, after all, was a part of his plan to bring peace among the Britons, a peace that would allow Arthur to turn his swords and spears against the Saxons. At the border of Powys we were met by a guard come to do us honour. Rushes were laid on the road and a hard sang a song telling of Arthur's victory over the Saxons in the Valley of the White Horse. King Gorfyddyd had not come to greet us, but instead sent Leodegan, the King of Henis Wyren whose lands had been taken by the Irish and who was now an exile in Gorfyddyd's court. Leodegan had been chosen because his rank did us honour, though he himself was a notorious fool. He was an extraordinarily tall man, very thin and with a long neck, wispy dark hair and a slack wet mouth. He could never keep still, but darted and jerked and blinked and scratched and fussed all the time. “The King would be here,” he told us, 'yes indeed, but cannot be here. You understand? But all the same, greetings from Gorfyddyd!“ He watched enviously as Tewdric rewarded the hard with gold. Leodegan, we were to learn, was a much impoverished man and spent most of his days trying to recoup the vast losses that had been inflicted on him when Diwrnach, the Irish conqueror, had taken his lands. ”Shall we move on? There are lodgings at.. “ Leodegan paused. ”Bless me, I've forgotten, but the guard commander knows. Where is he? There. What's his name? Never mind, we'll get there."

The eagle flag of Powys and Leodegan's own stag banner joined our standards. We followed a Roman road that lay spear-straight across good country, the same country that Arthur had laid waste the previous autumn, though only Leodegan was tactless enough to mention the campaign. “You've been here before, of course,” he called up to Arthur. Leodegan had no horse and so was forced to walk alongside the royal party.

Arthur frowned. “I'm not sure I know this land,” he said diplomatically.

“Indeed you do, yes indeed. See? The burned farm? Your work!” Leodegan beamed up at Arthur. “They underestimated you, didn't they? I told Gorfyddyd so, told him straight to his face. Young Arthur's good, I said, but Gorfyddyd has never been a man to hear sense. A fighter, yes, a thinker, no. The son is better, I think. Cuneglas is definitely better. I rather hoped young Cuneglas might marry one of my daughters, but Gorfyddyd won't hear of it. Never mind.” He tripped on a tussock of grass. The road, just like the Fosse Way near Ynys Wydryn, was embanked so that the surface would drain into the edging ditches, but the years had filled in the ditches and drifted soil on to the road's stones that were now thick with weed and grass. Leodegan persisted in pointing out other places that Arthur had laid waste, but after a while he gave up trying to provoke any response and so fell back to where we guards walked behind Tewdric's three priests. Leodegan attempted to talk to Agravain, the commander of Arthur's guard, but Agravain was in a sullen mood and Leodegan finally decided that I was the most sympathetic of Arthur's entourage and so questioned me eagerly about Dumnonia's nobility. He was trying to discover who was and who was not married. “Prince Gereint, now? Is he? Is he?”

“Yes, Lord,” I said.

“And she's in health?”

“So far as I know, Lord.”

“King Melwas, then? He has a queen?”

“She died, Lord.”

“Ah!” He brightened immediately. “I have daughters, you see?” he explained very earnestly. “Two daughters, and daughters must be wed, must they not? Unwed daughters are no use to man or beast. Mind you, to be fair, one of my two darlings is to be married. Guinevere is spoken for. She's to marry Valerin. You know of Valerin?”

“No, Lord.”

“A fine man, a fine man, a fine man, but no…” He paused, seeking the right word. “No wealth! No real land, you see. Some scrubby stuff west, I think, but no money worth counting. He has no rents, no gold, and a man can't go far without rents or gold. And Guinevere's a princess! Then there's Gwenhwyvach, her sister, and she has no prospects of marriage at all, none! She lives off my purse only, and the Gods know that's thin enough. But Melwas keeps an empty bed, does he? That's a thought! Though it's a pity about Cuneglas.”

“Why, Lord?”

“He doesn't seem to want to marry either girl!” Leodegan said indignantly. “I suggested it to his father. Solid alliance, I said, adjoining kingdoms, an ideal arrangement! But no. Cuneglas has his eye set on Helledd of Elmet and Arthur, we hear, is to marry Ceinwyn.”

“I wouldn't know, Lord,” I said innocently.

"Ceinwyn's a pretty girl! Oh yes! But so's my Guinevere, only she's to marry Valerin. Dear me. What a waste! No rents, no gold, no money, nothing but some drowned pasture and a handful of sickly cows. She won't like it! She likes her comfort, Guinevere does, but Valerin doesn't know what comfort means!

Lives in a pig hut, so far as I can make out. Still, he is a chief. Mind you, the deeper you go into Powys the more men call themselves chiefs.“ He sighed. ”But she's a princess! I thought one of Cadwallon's boys in Gwynedd might marry her, but Cadwallon's a strange fellow. Never liked me much. Didn't help me when the Irish came."

He fell silent as he brooded on that great injustice. We had travelled far enough north now for the land and the people to be unfamiliar. In Dumnonia we were surrounded by Gwent, Siluria, Kernow and the Saxons, but here men spoke of Gwynedd and Elmet, of Lleyn and Ynys Mon. Lleyn had once been Henis Wyren, Leodegan's kingdom, of which Ynys Mon, the island of Mona, had been a part. Both were now ruled by Diwrnach, one of the Irish Lords Across the Sea who were carving out kingdoms for themselves in Britain. Leodegan, I reflected, must have been easy meat for a grim man like Diwrnach whose cruelty was famous. Even in Dumnonia we had heard how he painted the shields of his war-band with the blood of the men they killed in battle. It was better to fight the Saxons, men said, than take on Diwrnach.

But we travelled to Caer Sws to make peace not to contemplate war. Caer Sws proved to be a small muddy town surrounding a drab Roman fort set in a wide, flat-bottomed valley beside a deep ford across the Severn that was here called the River Hafren. The real capital of Powys was Caer Dolforwyn, a fine hill topped by a royal stone, but Caer Dolforwyn, like Caer Cadarn, had neither the water nor the space to accommodate a kingdom's law court, treasury, armouries, kitchens and storehouses, and so just as Dumnonia's day-to-day business was conducted from Lindinis, so the government of Powys functioned out of Caer Sws and only in times of danger or at high royal festivals did Gorfyddyd's court move down the river to Caer Dolforwyn's commanding summit.

Caer Sws's Roman buildings had all but vanished, though Gorfyddyd's feasting hall was built on one of their old stone foundations. He had flanked that hall with two new halls built specially for Tewdric and Arthur. Gorfyddyd greeted us inside his own hall. The Powysian King was a sour man whose left sleeve hung empty thanks to Excalibur. He was middle-aged, heavily built and had a suspicious, small-eyed face that showed no warmth as he embraced Tewdric and growled a reluctant welcome. He went sullenly silent as Arthur, no king, knelt before him. His chiefs and warriors all had long plaited moustaches and heavy cloaks dripping from the rain that had fallen all day long. The hall smelled of wet dogs. There were no women present except for two slaves who carried jars out of which Gorfyddyd scooped frequent hornfuls of mead. We learned later that he had taken to the drink in the long weeks after he had lost his arm to Excalibur; weeks in which he was fevered and men doubted his survival. The mead was brewed thick and strong, and its effect was to transfer the care of Powys from the embittered and befuddled Gorfyddyd on to the shoulders of his son Cuneglas, the Edling of Powys. Cuneglas was a young man with a round, clever face and long dark moustaches. He was quick to laugh, relaxed and friendly. He and Arthur, it was plain, were twin souls. For three days they hunted deer in the mountains and at night they feasted and listened to the bards. There were few Christians in Powys, but once Cuneglas learned that Tewdric was a Christian he turned a storehouse into a church and invited the priests to preach. Cuneglas even listened to one of the sermons himself, though afterwards he shook his head and said he preferred his own Gods. King Gorfyddyd called the church a nonsense, but did not forbid his son from indulging Tewdric's religion, though Gorfyddyd took care that his Druid surrounded the makeshift church with a ring of charms. “Gorfyddyd is not wholly convinced we mean to keep the peace,” Arthur warned us on the second night, 'but Cuneglas has persuaded him. So for God's sake stay sober, keep your swords in your scabbards and don't pick a fight. One spark here and Gorfyddyd will throw us out and make war again."

On the fourth day the council of Powys met in the great hall. The main business of the day was to make peace, and that, despite Gorfyddyd's reservations, was done swiftly. The Powysian King slouched in his chair and watched as his son gave the proclamation. Powys, Gwent and Dumnonia, Cuneglas said, would be allies, blood of each other's blood, and an attack on any one of the three would be construed as an attack on the others. Gorfyddyd nodded his assent, though without enthusiasm. Better still, Cuneglas continued, once his own marriage with Helledd of Elmet was achieved, Elmet too would join the pact and so the Saxons would be surrounded by a united front of British kingdoms. That alliance was the great advantage Gorfyddyd gained from making peace with Dumnonia: the chance to make war on the Saxons, and Gorfyddyd's price for that peace was a recognition that Powys would be the leader of that war. “He wants to be High King,” Agravain growled to us at the back of the hall. Gorfyddyd also demanded the restoration of his cousin, Gundleus of Siluria. Tewdric, who had suffered more than any from Siluria's raids, was reluctant to put Gundleus back on his throne and we Dumnonians were unwilling to forgive him for Norwenna's murder, while I hated the man for what he had done to Nimue, but Arthur had persuaded us that Gundleus's freedom was a small enough price to pay for peace and so the treacherous Gundleus was duly restored.

Gorfyddyd may have seemed reluctant to conclude the treaty, yet he must have been persuaded of its advantages for he was willing to pay the greatest price of all for its successful conclusion. He was willing for his daughter Ceinwyn, the star of Powys, to marry Arthur. Gorfyddyd was a dour man, suspicious and harsh, yet he loved his seventeen-year-old daughter and he poured on to her all the remnants of affection and kindness that were left in his soul, and the fact that he was willing for her to marry Arthur, who was no king and did not even possess the title of prince, was evidence of Gorfyddyd's conviction that his warriors had to be turned away from fighting fellow Britons. The betrothal was also evidence that Gorfyddyd, like his son Cuneglas, recognized that Arthur was the real power in Dumnonia and so, at the great feast that followed the council, Ceinwyn and Arthur were formally betrothed. The betrothal ceremony was deemed sufficiently important for the whole assembly to decamp from Caer Sws to the more auspicious feasting hall on the summit of Caer Dolforwyn that was named after Dolforwyn, a meadow at the hill's base which, appropriately enough, meant the Maiden's Meadow. We arrived at sunset when the hilltop was smoky from the great fires on which deer and swine were being roasted. Far beneath us the silvery Severn twisted in its valley, while to the north the great hill ranges stretched dim towards darkening Gwynedd. It was said that on a clear day Cadair Idris could be seen from Caer Dolforwyn's peak, but that evening the horizon was misted by a distant rain. The lower slopes of the hill were thick with great oaks out of which a pair of red kites climbed as the sun turned the western clouds scarlet and we all agreed that the sight of the two birds flying so late in the dying day was a wonderful omen for what was about to happen. Inside the hall the bards were singing the tale of Hafren, the human maid who had given Dolforwyn its name and who had turned into a Goddess when her stepmother tried to drown her in the river at the foot of the hill. They sang until the sun dropped. The betrothal was performed at night so that the Moon Goddess would bless the pair. Arthur prepared for it first, leaving the hall for a whole hour before returning in all his glory. Even hardened warriors gasped as he re-entered the hall, for he came in his full armour. The scale coat, with its gold and silver plates, glittered in the flame light and the goose feathers on his high, silver-chased, death's-head helmet brushed the hall rafters as he strode up the central passage. His silver-covered shield dazzled in the light while his white cloak swept the ground behind. Men did not carry weapons in a feasting hall, but that night Arthur chose to wear Excalibur and he stalked to the high table like a conqueror making peace and even Gorfyddyd of Powys gaped as his erstwhile enemy strode towards the dais. Till now Arthur had been a peacemaker, but that night he wanted to remind his future father-in-law of his power. Ceinwyn entered the hall a few moments later. Ever since our arrival at Caer Sws she had been hidden in the women's quarters and that concealment had only heightened the expectations among those of us who had never seen Gorfyddyd's daughter. I confess that most of us expected to be disappointed in this star of Powys, but in truth she outshone any star. She came into the hall with her attendant ladies and the sight of the Princess took men's breath away. It took mine. She had the fair colouring more common in Saxons, but in Ceinwyn that fairness was turned into a pale, delicate loveliness. She looked very young, with a shy face and a demure manner. She was dressed in a robe of linen dyed yellow-gold with hive-gum, and the dress was embroidered with white stars about its neck and hem. Her hair was gold and so light that it seemed to shine as brightly as Arthur's armour. She was so slender that Agravain, who was sitting next to me on the feasting floor, commented that she would be no good for breeding children.

“Any decent baby will die trying to struggle through those hips,” he said sourJy, yet even so I pitied Ailleann who must surely have hoped that Arthur's wife would prove to be nothing more than a dynastic convenience.

The moon sailed high above Caer Dolforwyn's summit as Ceinwyn paced slowly and shyly towards Arthur. In her hands she carried a halter, the gift she brought to her future husband as a symbol that she was passing from her father's authority to his. Arthur fumbled and almost dropped the halter when Ceinwyn gave it to him, and that was surely a bad omen, but everyone, even Gorfyddyd, laughed the moment away, and then lorweth, Powys's Druid, formally betrothed the couple. The torches flickered as their hands were bound in a knotted chain of grass. Arthur's face was hidden behind the silver-grey helmet, but Ceinwyn, sweet Ceinwyn, looked so full of joy. The Druid gave his blessing, enjoining Gwydion the God of Light and Aranrhod the Golden Goddess of the Dawn to be their special deities and to bless all Britain with their peace. A harpist played, men applauded and Ceinwyn, lovely silver Ceinwyn, wept and laughed for the joy in her soul. I lost my heart to Ceinwyn that night. Many men did. She looked so happy, and no wonder, for in Arthur she was escaping the nightmare of all princesses, which is to marry for their country rather than their heart. A princess will be bedded with any stinking, slack-bellied old goat if it will secure a frontier or make an alliance, but Ceinwyn had found Arthur and in his youth and kindness she doubtless saw an escape from her fears.

Leodegan, the exiled King of Henis Wyren, arrived at the feasting hall at the climax of the ceremony. The exiled King had not been with us since our arrival, but had instead gone to his own home north of Caer Sws. Now, eager to share in the largesse that always followed a betrothal ceremony, he stood at the back of the hall and joined in the applause that greeted the distribution of Arthur's gold and silver. Arthur had also gained the permission of Dumnonia's council to bring back Gorfyddyd's war gear that he had captured the previous year, but that treasure had been returned privately so that no man present need be reminded of the Powysian defeat.

Once the gifts were given Arthur took off the helmet and sat beside Ceinwyn. He talked to her, bending close as he always did so that she doubtless felt she was the most important person in all his firmament as, indeed, she had a right to feel. Many of us in the hall were jealous of a love that looked so perfect, and even Gorfyddyd, who must have been bitter at losing his daughter to a man who had beaten and maimed him in battle, seemed happy in Ceinwyn's joy.

But it was on that happy night, when peace had come at last, that Arthur broke Britain. None of us knew it then. The distribution of the betrothal gifts was followed by drinking and singing. We watched jugglers, we listened to Gorfyddyd's royal hard and we roared our own songs. One of our men forgot Arthur's warning and fell into a fight with a Powysian warrior and the two drunken men were dragged outside and drenched with water, and half an hour later they were clasped in each other's arms swearing undying friendship. And some time in that period, when the fires roared high and the drink flowed fast, I saw Arthur staring fixedly towards the back of the hall and, being curious, I turned to see what had trapped his gaze.

I turned and saw a young woman who stood head and shoulders above the crowd and who carried a bold defiant look on her face. If you can master me, that look seemed to say, then you can master whatever else this wicked world might bring. I can see her now, standing amidst her deer hounds that had the same thin, lean bodies, and the same long nose and the same huntress eyes as their mistress. Green eyes, she had, with a kind of cruelty deep inside them. It was not a soft face, any more than her body was soft. She was a woman of strong lines and high bones, and that made for a good face and a handsome one, but hard, so hard. What made her beautiful was her hair and her carriage, for she stood as straight as a spear and her hair fell around her shoulders like a cascade of tumbling red tangles. That red hair softened her looks, while her laughter snared men like salmon caught in basket traps. There have been many more beautiful women, and thousands who were better, but since the world was weaned I doubt there have been many so unforgettable as Guinevere, eldest daughter of Leodegan, the exiled King of Henis Wyren.

And it would have been better, Merlin always said, had she been drowned at birth. The royal party hunted deer next day. Guinevere's hounds brought down a pricket, a young male without antlers, though to hear Arthur praise the dogs you would have thought they had chased down the Wild Stag of Dyfed itself.

The bards sing of love and men and women yearn for it, but none knows what love is until, like a spear thrown from the dark, it strikes. Arthur could not take his eyes from Guinevere, though the Gods know he tried. In the days after the betrothal feast, when we were back at Caer Sws, he walked and talked with Ceinwyn, but he could not wait to see Guinevere and she, knowing just what game she played, tantalized him. Her betrothed, Valerin, was at the court and she would walk with her arm in Valerin's arm, laughing, then cast a sudden, modest sidelong glance at Arthur for whom the world would suddenly stop in its turning. He burned for Guinevere.

Would it have made a difference if Bedwin had been there? I think not. Not even Merlin could have stopped what happened. A man might as well call on the rain to go back to the clouds or command a river to curl back to its source.

On the second night after the feast Guinevere came to Arthur's hall in the dark and I, who was standing guard, heard the ring of their laughter and the murmur of their talk. All night they talked and maybe they did more than talk, I wouldn't know, but talk they did, and that I do know for I was posted outside the room and could hardly help but listen. Sometimes the talk was too low to hear, but at other times I heard Arthur explaining and cajoling, pleading and urging. They must have spoken of love, but that I did not hear, instead I heard Arthur talk of Britain and of the dream that had brought him over the sea from Armorica. He spoke of the Saxons and how they were a plague that must be cured if the land was ever to be happy. He spoke of war, and of the terrible joy it was to ride an armoured horse into battle. He spoke as he had spoken to me on the ice-cold ramparts of Caer Cadarn, describing a land at peace in which the common folk did not fear the coming of spearmen in the dawn. He talked passionately, urgently, and Guinevere listened so willingly and assured him his dream was inspired. Arthur spun a future from his dream and Guinevere was deep inside the thread. Poor Ceinwyn, she had only her beauty and her youth, while Guinevere saw the loneliness in Arthur's soul and promised to heal it. She left before the dawn, a dark figure gliding across Caer Sws with a sickle moon trapped in her tangling hair. Next day, full of remorse, Arthur walked with Ceinwyn and her brother. Guinevere wore a new torque of heavy gold that day and some of us felt a sorrow for Ceinwyn, but Ceinwyn was a child, Guinevere was a woman and Arthur was helpless.

It was a madness that love. Mad as Pellinore. Mad enough to doom Arthur to the Isle of the Dead. Everything vanished for Arthur: Britain; the Saxons; the new alliance; all the great, careful, balanced structure of peace for which he had worked ever since he had sailed from Armorica, was set whirling into destruction for the possession of that penniless, landless, red-haired Princess. He knew what he was doing, but he could no more stop himself than he could stop the sun from rising. He was possessed, he thought about her, talked about her, dreamed of her, could not live without her, yet somehow, agonizingly, he kept up the pretence of his betrothal to Ceinwyn. The marriage arrangements were being made. As a mark of Tewdric's contribution to the peace treaty the marriage was to be at Glevum and Arthur would travel there first and make his preparations. The wedding could not take place until the moon was waxing. It was now on the wane and no marriage could be risked in a time of such ill-omen, but in two weeks the auguries would be right and Ceinwyn would come south with flowers in her hair. But Arthur wore Guinevere's hair about his neck. It was a narrow red braid that he hid beneath his collar, but which I saw when I brought him water one morning. He was bare-chested, sharpening his shaving knife on a stone, and he shrugged when he saw me notice the woven braid. “You think red hair is unlucky, Derfel?” he asked when he saw my expression.

“Everyone says so, Lord.”

“But is everyone right?” he asked the bronze mirror. “To make a sword blade hard, Derfel, you don't quench it in water, but in urine passed by a red-headed boy. That must be lucky, must it not? And what if red hair is unlucky?” He paused, spat on the stone and worked the knife blade to and fro. “Our task, Derfel, is to change things, not let them stand. Why not make red hair lucky?”

“You can do anything, Lord,” I said with unhappy loyalty. He sighed. “I hope that's true, Derfel. I do hope that's true.” He peered into the bronze mirror, then flinched as he laid the knife against his cheek. “Peace is more than a marriage, Derfel. It has to be! You don't make war over a bride. If peace is so desirable, and it is, then you don't abandon it because a marriage doesn't happen, do you?”

“I don't know, Lord,” I said. I only knew that my Lord was rehearsing arguments in his head, repeating them over and over until he believed them. He was mad with love, so mad that north was south and heat was cold. This, to me, was an Arthur I had not seen before; a man of passion and, dare I say it, selfishness. Arthur had risen so fast. It is true he had been born with a king's blood in his veins, but he had not been given his patrimony and so he considered that all his achievements were his alone. He was proud of that and convinced by those achievements that he knew better than any other man save perhaps Merlin, and because that knowledge was so often what other men incoherently wished, his selfish ambitions were usually seen as noble and far-seeing, but at Caer Sws the ambitions clashed with what other men wanted.

I left him shaving and went outside into the new sunshine where Agravain was sharpening a boar spear.

“Well?” he asked me.

“He's not going to marry Ceinwyn,” I said. We were out of earshot of the hall, but even if we had been closer Arthur would not have heard us. He was singing.

Agravain spat. “He'll marry who he's told to marry,” he said, then rammed the spear-butt into the turf and stalked across to Tewdric's quarters.

Whether Gorfyddyd and Cuneglas knew what was happening I could not tell, for they were not in constant touch with Arthur as we were. Gorfyddyd, if he suspected, probably thought it did not matter. He doubtless believed, if he believed anything, that Arthur would take Guinevere as a lover and Ceinwyn as a wife. It was bad manners, of course, to come to such an arrangement in the week of the betrothal, but bad manners had never worried Gorfyddyd of Powys. He had no manners himself and knew, as all kings know, that wives are for making dynasties and lovers for making pleasure. His own wife was long dead, but a succession of slave girls kept his bed warm and, to him, impoverished Guinevere would never rank much above a slave and was thus no threat to his beloved daughter. Cuneglas was more perspicacious, and I am sure he must have scented trouble, but he had invested all his energies into this new peace and he must have hoped that Arthur's obsession with Guinevere would blow away like a summer squall. Or maybe neither Gorfyddyd nor Cuneglas suspected anything, for certainly they did not send Guinevere away from Caer Sws, though whether that would have achieved anything, the Gods alone know. Agravain thought the madness might pass. He told me that Arthur had been obsessed like this once before. “It was a girl in Ynys Trebes,”

Agravain told me, 'can't think of her name. Mella? Messa? Something like that. Pretty little thing. Arthur was besotted, trailing after her like a dog behind a corpse cart. But mind you, he was young then, so young that her father reckoned he'd never amount to anything so he packed his Mella-Messa off to Broceliande and married her to a magistrate fifty years older than her. She died giving birth, but Arthur was over her by then. And these things do pass, Derfel. Tewdric will hammer some brains back into Arthur, you watch."

Tewdric spent the whole morning closeted with Arthur, and I thought perhaps he had succeeded in hammering some brains back into my Lord for Arthur seemed chastened for the rest of the day. He did not look at Guinevere once, but forced himself to be solicitous of Ceinwyn, and that night, perhaps to please Tewdric, he and Ceinwyn listened to Sansum preach in the little makeshift church. I thought Arthur must have been pleased with the Mouse Lord's sermon for he invited Sansum back to his hall afterwards and was closeted alone with the priest for a long time.

Next morning Arthur appeared with a set, stern face and announced that we would all leave that very same morning. That very same hour, indeed. We were not due to depart for another two days and Gorfyddyd, Cuneglas and Ceinwyn must have been surprised, but Arthur persuaded them he needed more time to prepare for his wedding and Gorfyddyd accepted the excuse placidly enough. Cuneglas may have believed Arthur was going early to remove himself from Guinevere's temptation and so he made no protest, but instead ordered bread, cheese, honey and mead packed for our journey. Ceinwyn, pretty Ceinwyn, said her farewells, starting with us, the guard. We were all in love with her, and that made us resent Arthur's madness, though there had been little any of us could do about our resentment. Ceinwyn gave us each a small gift of gold, and each of us tried to refuse her gift, but she insisted. She gave me a brooch of interlocking patterns and I tried to thrust it back into her hands, but she just smiled and folded my fingers over the gold. “Look after your Lord,” she said earnestly.

“And after you, Lady,” I answered fervently.

She smiled and moved on to Arthur, presenting him with a spray of may blossom that would give him a swift and safe journey. Arthur fixed the blossom in his sword belt and kissed his betrothed's hand before clambering on to Llamrei's broad back. Cuneglas wanted to send guards to escort us, but Arthur declined the honour. “Let us leave, Lord Prince,” he said, 'the sooner to arrange our happiness." Ceinwyn was pleased by Arthur's words and Cuneglas, ever gracious, ordered the gates opened and Arthur, like a man released from an ordeal, galloped Llamrei madly out of Caer Sws and through the Severn's deep ford. We guards followed on foot to find a spray of may lying on the river's far bank. Agravain plucked the may from the ground so that Ceinwyn should not find it. Sansum came with us. His presence was not explained, though Agravain surmised that Tewdric had ordered the priest to counsel Arthur against his madness, a madness we all prayed was passing, but we were wrong. The madness had been hopeless from the very first moment Arthur had looked down Gorfyddyd's hall and seen Guinevere's red hair. Sagramor used to tell us an ancient tale of a battle in the old world; a battle over a great city of towers and palaces and temples, and the whole sorry thing was all started because of a woman, and for that woman ten thousand bronze-clad warriors died in the dust. The story was not so ancient after all.

For just two hours after we had left Caer Sws, in a stretch of lonely woodland where no farms stood, but only steep-sided hills and fast streams and thick, heavy trees, we found Leodegan of Henis Wyren waiting beside the track. He led us without a word down a path that twisted between the roots of great oaks to a clearing beside a pool made by a beaver-dammed stream. The woods were thick with dog mercury and lilies while the last bluebells made a dancing shimmer in the shadows. Sunlight fell on the grass where primroses, cuckoo pints and dog violets grew and where, shining brighter than any flower, Guinevere waited in a robe of cream linen. She had cowslips woven into her red hair. She wore Arthur's golden torque, bracelets of silver and a cape of lilac-coloured wool. The sight of her was enough to catch a man's throat. Agravain cursed quietly.

Arthur threw himself off his horse and ran to Guinevere. He caught her in his arms and we heard her laugh as he whirled her about. “My flowers!” she cried, putting a hand to her head, and Arthur let her gently down, then knelt to kiss the hem of her robe.

Then he stood and turned. “Sansum!”

“Lord?”

“You can marry us now.”

Sansum refused. He folded his arms over his dirty black robe and tilted up his stubborn mouse face.

“You are betrothed, Lord,” he insisted nervously.

I thought Sansum was being noble, but in truth it had all been arranged. Sansum had not come with us at Tewdric's bidding, but at Arthur's, and now Arthur's face turned angry at the priest's stubborn change of heart. “We agreed!” Arthur said, and when Sansum just shook his tonsured head, Arthur touched the hilt of Excalibur. “I could take the skull off your shoulders, priest.”

“Martyrs are ever made by tyrants, Lord,” Sansum said, dropping to his knees in the flowery grass where he bent his head to bare the grubby nape of his neck. “I'm coming to you, O Lord,” he bawled towards the grass, “Thy servant! Coming to Thy glory, oh praise Thee! I see the gates of heaven open! I see the angels waiting for me! Receive me, Lord Jesus, into Thy blessed bosom! I'm coming! I'm coming!”

“Be quiet and get up,” Arthur said tiredly.

Sansum squinted slyly up at Arthur. “You won't give me the bliss of heaven, Lord?”

“Last night,” Arthur said, 'you agreed to marry us. Why do you refuse now?“ Sansum shrugged. ”I have wrestled with my conscience, Lord.“ Arthur understood and sighed. ”So what is your price, priest?"

“A bishopric,” Sansum said hurriedly, struggling to his feet.

“I thought you had a Pope who grants bishoprics,” Arthur said. “Simplicius? Isn't that his name?”

“The most blessed and holy Simplicius, may he still live in health,” Sansum agreed, 'but give me a church, Lord, and a throne in the church, and men will call me bishop."

“A church and a chair?” Arthur asked. “Nothing more?”

“And the appointment to be King Mordred's chaplain. I must have that! His sole and personal chaplain, you understand? With an allowance from the treasury sufficient for me to keep my own steward, doorkeeper, cook and candle man He brushed grass off his black gown. ”And a laundress," he added hastily.

“Is that all?” Arthur asked sarcastically.

“A place on Dumnonia's council,” Sansum said as though it were trivial. “That's all.”

“Granted,” Arthur said carelessly. “So what do we do to get married?” While these negotiations were being consummated I was watching Guinevere. There was a look of triumph on her face, and no wonder for she was marrying far above her poor father's hopes. Her father, slack mouth trembling, was watching in abject terror in case Sansum should refuse to perform the ceremony, while behind Leodegan stood a dumpy wee girl who seemed to be in charge of Guinevere's quartet of leashed deer hounds and what little baggage the exiled royal family possessed. The dumpy girl, it turned out, was Gwenhwyvach, Guinevere's younger sister. There was a brother, too, though he had long since retired to a monastery on the wild coast of Strath Clota where strange Christian hermits competed to grow their hair, starve on berries and preach salvation to the seals. There was little enough ceremony to the marriage. Arthur and Guinevere stood beneath his banner while Sansum spread his arms to say some prayers in the Greek tongue, then Leodegan drew his sword and touched his daughter's back with the blade before handing the weapon to Arthur as a sign that Guinevere had passed from her father's authority to her husband's. Sansum then scooped some water from the stream and sprinkled it over Arthur and Guinevere, saying that thereby he was cleansing them of sin and receiving them into the family of the Holy Church that hereby recognized their union as one and indissoluble, sacred before God and dedicated to the procreation of children. Then he stared at each of us guards in turn and demanded that we declare that we had witnessed the solemn ceremony. We all made the declaration and Arthur was so happy that he did not hear the reluctance in our voices, though Guinevere did. Nothing escaped Guinevere. “There,” Sansum said when the paltry ritual was done,

'you're married, Lord."

Guinevere laughed. Arthur kissed her. She was as tall as he was, maybe a finger's breadth taller, and I confess as I watched them that they looked a splendid pair. More than splendid, for Guinevere was truly striking. Ceinwyn was beautiful, but Guinevere dulled the sun with her presence. We guards were in shock. There was nothing we could have done to stop this consummation of our Lord's madness, but the haste of it seemed as indecent as it was deceitful. Arthur, we knew, was a man of impulse and enthusiasm, but he had taken our breath away by the speed of this decision. Leodegan, though, was jubilant, babbling to his younger daughter how the family finances would now recover and how, sooner than anyone knew, Arthur's warriors would sweep the Irish usurper Diwrnach out of Henis Wyren. Arthur heard the boast and turned quickly. “I doubt that's possible, Father,” he said.

“Possible! Of course it's possible!” Guinevere intervened. “You shall make it my wedding gift, Lord, the return of my dear father's kingdom.”

Agravain spat his disapproval. Guinevere chose to ignore the gesture, and instead walked along the row of guards and gave us each a cowslip from the diadem she had worn in her hair. Then, like criminals fleeing a lord's justice, we hurried south to leave the kingdom of Powys before Gorfyddyd's retribution followed.

Fate, Merlin always said, is inexorable. So much followed from that hurried ceremony in the flower-speckled clearing beside the stream. So many died. There was so much heartache, so much blood and so many tears that they would have made a great river; yet, in time, the eddies smoothed, new rivers joined, and the tears went down to the great wide sea and some people forgot how it ever began. The time of glory did come, yet what might have been never did, and of all those who were hurt by that moment in the sun, Arthur was hurt the most.

But on that day he was happy. We hurried home.

The news of the marriage rang in Britain like a God's spear clanging against a shield. At first the sound stunned, and in that calm period, while men tried to understand the consequences, an embassy came from Powys. One of that embassy was Valerin, the chief who had been betrothed to Guinevere. He challenged Arthur to a fight, but Arthur refused, and when Valerin tried to draw his sword we guards had to drive him out of Lindinis. Valerin was a tall, vigorous man with black hair and a black beard, deep-set eyes and a broken nose. His pain was terrible, his anger worse and his attempt at revenge thwarted. lorweth the Druid was chief of Powys's delegation, which had been sent by Cuneglas rather than Gorfyddyd. Gorfyddyd was drunk with mead and rage, while his son still hoped there was a chance to retrieve peace from the disaster. The Druid lorweth was a grave and sensible man and he talked long with Arthur. The marriage, the Druid said, was not valid for it had been conducted by a Christian priest and the Gods of Britain did not recognize the new religion. Take Guinevere for your lover, lorweth urged Arthur, and Ceinwyn for your wife.

“Guinevere is my wife.” We all heard Arthur shout that statement. Bishop Bedwin added his support to lorweth, but Bedwin could not change Arthur's mind. Not even the prospect of war would change Arthur's mind. lorweth raised that possibility, saying that Dumnonia had insulted Powys and the insult would needs be washed clean with blood if Arthur did not change his mind. Tewdric of Gwent had sent Bishop Conrad to plead for peace, begging Arthur to renounce Guinevere and marry Ceinwyn, and Conrad even threatened that Tewdric might make a separate peace with Powys. “My Lord King will not fight against Dumnonia,” I heard Conrad reassure Bedwin as the two bishops paced up and down on the terrace in front of Lindinis's villa, 'but nor will he fight for that whore of Henis Wyren."

“Whore?” Bedwin asked, alarmed and shocked by the word.

“Maybe not,” Conrad allowed. “But I tell you one thing, my brother, Guinevere's never had a whip taken to her. Never!”

Bedwin shook his head at such laxity on Leodegan's part, then the two men walked out of my earshot. Next day both Bishop Conrad and the Powysian embassy left for their homes and took no good news with them.

But Arthur believed the time of his happiness had come. There would be no war, he insisted, for Gorfyddyd had already lost one arm and would not risk the other. Cuneglas's good sense, Arthur claimed, would ensure peace. For a time, he said, there would be grudges and mistrust, but it would all pass. He thought his happiness must embrace the world.

Labourers were hired to extend and repair Lindinis's villa to make it into a palace fit for a princess. Arthur sent a messenger to Ban of Benoic, beseeching his former lord to send him masons and plasterers who knew how to restore Roman buildings. He wanted an orchard, a garden, a pool of fish; he wanted a bath with heated water; he wanted a courtyard where harpists would play. Arthur wanted a heaven on earth for his bride, but other men wanted revenge and that summer we heard that Tewdric of Gwent had met with Cuneglas and made a treaty of peace, and part of that treaty was an agreement that Powys's armies could march freely across the Roman roads that crossed Gwent. Those roads led only to Dumnonia.

Yet, as that summer passed, no attack came. Sagramor held

Aelle's Saxons at bay while Arthur spent a summer in love. I was a member of his guard, so I was with him day in and day out. I should have carried a sword, shield and spear, but as often as not I was burdened with flasks of wine and hampers of food for Guinevere liked to take her meals in hidden glades and by secret streams and we spearmen were required to carry silver plate, horn cups, food and wine to the designated spot. She gathered a company of ladies to be her court and, so help me, my Lunete was one of them. Lunete had grumbled bitterly at having to abandon her brick house in Corinium, but it took her only a few days to decide that a better future lay with Guinevere. Lunete was beautiful and Guinevere declared that she would only be surrounded by people and objects that were pretty, and so she and her ladies dressed in the finest linens decorated with gold, silver, jet and amber, and she paid harpists, singers, dancers and poets to amuse her court. They played games in the woods where they chased each other, hid and paid forfeits if they broke one of the elaborate rules that Guinevere devised. The money for these games, like the money being spent on Lindinis's villa, was provided by Leodegan who had been appointed the treasurer of Arthur's household. Leodegan swore the money all came from back rents and maybe Arthur believed his father-in-law, though the rest of us heard dark tales of Mordred's treasury being lightened of gold and filled with Leodegan's worthless promises of repayment. Arthur seemed not to care. That summer was his foretaste of Britain at peace, but for the rest of us it was a fool's heaven. Amhar and Loholt were brought to Lindinis, though their mother Ailleann was not summoned. The twins were presented to Guinevere, and Arthur, I think, hoped they would live in the pillared palace that was rising around the heart of the old villa. Guinevere kept the twins company for one day, then said their presence upset her. They were not amusing. They were not pretty, she said, just as her sister Gwenhwyvach was not pretty, and if they were not pretty, nor amusing, they had no place in Guinevere's life. Besides, she said, the twins belonged to Arthur's old life, and that was dead. She did not want them, nor did she care that she made that announcement publicly. She touched Arthur's cheek. “If we want children, my Prince, we shall make our own.”

Guinevere always called Arthur a prince. At first Arthur claimed he was no prince, but Guinevere insisted he was Uther's son and therefore royal. Arthur, to humour her, allowed her to call him by the title, but soon the rest of us were ordered to use it too. Guinevere ordered it and we obeyed. No one had ever challenged Arthur about Amhar and Loholt and won the argument, but Guinevere did and so the twins were sent back to their mother in Corinium. The harvest was poor that year for the crops were blighted by late rain that left them blackened and wilting. Rumour claimed that the Saxon harvest had been better, for the rains had spared their lands and so Arthur led a war-band east beyond Durocobrivis to find and capture their stores of grain. He was happy, I think, to escape the songs and dances of Caer Cadarn, and we were happy that he was at our head again and that we were carrying spears instead of feasting cloths. It was a successful raid, filling Dumnonia with captured grain, plundered gold and Saxon slaves. Leodegan, now a member of Dumnonia's council, was given the task of distributing the free grain to every part of the kingdom, but there were horrid rumours that much of it was being sold instead and that the resultant gold found its way to the new house Leodegan was building across the stream from Guinevere's damp-plastered palace.

Madness ends sometimes. The Gods decree it, not man. Arthur had been mad for love all summer, and it was a good summer despite our menial occupations, for a happy Arthur was a beguiling and generous Lord, but as autumn swept the land with wind, rain and golden leaves, he seemed to wake from his summer dream. He was still in love indeed I do not think he was ever out of love with Guinevere but that autumn he saw the damage he had done to Britain. Instead of peace there was a sullen truce, and he knew it could not last.

We cut ash pollards for spears and the blacksmiths' huts rang with the sound of hammer on anvil. Sagramor was called back from the Saxon frontier to be nearer to the kingdom's heart. Arthur sent a messenger to King Gorfyddyd, acknowledging the hurt he had done to the King and to his daughter, apologizing for it, but pleading that there must be peace in Britain. He sent a necklace of pearls and gold to Ceinwyn, but Gorfyddyd returned the necklace draped about the messenger's severed head. We heard that Gorfyddyd had stopped drinking and taken his kingdom's reins back from his son, Cuneglas. That news confirmed that there would never be peace until the insult done to Ceinwyn had been avenged by Powys's long spears.

Travellers brought tales of doom from everywhere. The Lords Across the Sea were bringing new Irish warriors into their coastal kingdoms. The Franks were massing war-bands on the edge of Brittany. Powys's harvest was stored and its levies were being trained to fight with spears instead of cutting corn with sickles. Cuneglas had married Helledd of Elmet and men of that northern country were now coming to swell the ranks of Powys's army. Gundleus, restored in Siluria, was forging swords and spears in the deep valleys of his kingdom, while to the east, more Saxon boats were grounding on their captured shores.

Arthur donned his scale armour, only the third time I had seen it since his arrival in Britain, and then, with two score of his armoured horsemen, he rode in progress around Dumnonia. He wanted to show the kingdom his power, and he wanted the travellers who carried their goods across the kingdoms' frontiers to carry a tale of his prowess. Then he came back to Lindinis where Hygwydd, his servant, scoured the new rust from the armour's scales.

The first defeat came that autumn. There had been a plague in Venta, weakening King Melwas's men, and Cerdic, the new Saxon leader, defeated the Belgic war-band and captured a great swathe of good river land. King Melwas pleaded for reinforcements, but Arthur knew Cerdic to be the least of his problems. The war drums were beating throughout the Saxon-held Lloegyr and throughout the northern British kingdoms and no spears could be spared for Melwas. Besides, Cerdic seemed fully occupied with his new holdings and did not threaten Dumnonia further, so Arthur would let the Saxon stay for the time being. “We'll give peace a chance,” Arthur told the council. But there was no peace.

In late autumn, when most armies are thinking of greasing their weapons and storing them through the cold months, the might of Powys marched. Britain was at war.