Authors: Alice Borchardt
“Yes,” Eme answered. “It seems so.”
“He wants to be king, this count?” Uther asked. “This count—would he be count of the Saxon shore?”
Eme nodded. “Yes!”
The music was closer. Uther stood, his back to the wattle-and-daub wall of the inn. Those remaining inside streamed out through the door, into the street, to watch the procession pass.
A group of Saxon mercenaries came first. They wore the remnants of Roman garb, an odd mix, muscle cuirasses with plumed helmets, tunics, but with added trousers and cross-gartered leggings. They carried not the Roman gladius-type sword, but long swords.
Uther didn’t see any spears, and he saw only one or two saddles. His eyes narrowed. Not true cavalry, they probably dismounted and fought on foot. His boys would make chopped meat of them.
But fight they would, because the oval shields they carried were hacked and scraped, and each man was a scarred and tough-looking survivor. Each man was dripping with jewelry, the reward of victory. They were adorned with bracelets, arm rings, torques, and finger rings, and glittering baldrics held their swords. They looked down at the largely peasant crowd with contempt.
A mob as yet,
Uther thought. Not an army, but dangerous, very dangerous.
Behind them streamed what Uther thought of as the hungry ones. Younger sons who could afford horses but no really good swords. They carried long saxes, the single-edged knife that gave the Saxons their name. A good many Roman swords were in evidence, the short gladius, and even the curved scimitar Roman cavalrymen carried as a backup weapon. Boiled leather armor was the best these could muster.
Last of all—trailing—the most dangerous of the gang were the rabble, in a way the most frightening ones of all, since they would, win or lose, stream onto the battlefield to cut the throats of the wounded for their valuables, or rob the dead. These were the men, and sometimes the women, who dreamed of battle and cared nothing of who won or lost. They would kneel on the floor beside the table of conquest and quarrel over the scraps that fell from the fingers of the powerful. It was a measure of the poverty in the three ancient kingdoms that there were so many.
The high kings had once been incredibly powerful; and tribute from the south made them so, until the Romans came and diverted the wealth in the south to their own uses. The high king had once been able to call on the wealth produced by eighteen royal villas. Then the Romans took them and the tributary lands surrounding these centers. They diverted the goods in gold, other metals, and food crops produced by the villas to their own use, impoverishing the high king. Romans gone, the Saxons now controlled these important centers and were rapidly turning them into power bases.
“This is the muster of how many of the southern villas?” Uther asked Eme.
“Only one,” she answered.
“Only one!” he repeated incredulously.
She nodded.
Gods above and below,
Uther thought.
But then it made sense. The Saxon lords would be recruiting as hard and fast as they possibly could.
The Frankish king had things well in hand now on the Continent. Between the popes and the Lombards and the imperial government at Ravenna, Italy would be as quiet as it ever was. But in the north, beyond the Rhine coasts of Africa, and in those frozen lands deep in the North Sea that were only legends even to his people, they swarmed: Huns, Goths, Vandals, Visigoths, Alans, Franks, Burgundians, Frisians, Thuringians, Alemanni, Chastuari. And that list of names but scratched the surface of those pressing in at the gates, all dreaming of loot, women, and above all the rest, land. Land, and more land for themselves.
They came and they died by the thousands, but those who survived, like the ones riding in the forefront of this mob, would grow rich and powerful, garnering the leavings of the dying empire. The Romans opened the floodgate when they took barbarian troops into the legions, and now were being overwhelmed by this human tide of warriors. And, of course, he and his people must face and try to contain them also.
The music had not been played to announce the procession of warriors. The stallion was behind them. No one was taking any chances with the horse. He was led on a double lead by two groups of footmen, one on each side.
An awesome beast, Uther wondered where the Saxons could have obtained him. At least seventeen hands, he dwarfed the beasts ridden by most of the Saxon warriors. The legs seemed oddly slender for so large a horse, but Uther saw, as the animal plunged and struck out with a forehoof at one of his human handlers, that the powerful legs were in perfect proportion to the rest of the deep-chested, strong-haunched body.
There were three men on each lead rope. Three men on each side.
“Hold him! Goddamn you, all of you!” someone shouted. “Hold him or I’ll have the six of you on crosses before nightfall!”
“Speak of the devil,” Eme whispered.
The man riding alone behind the horse wore gold Roman armor that blazed in the new sun.
“Count Severius, I take it,” Uther whispered.
He was big, a man whose size matched the bulk of the stallion. He also would dwarf other men the way the horse showed up the small size of other horses. The similarity ended there. The stallion was a gray, dark as a storm cloud, with almost black nose, mane, legs, and tail. The man was blond and beautiful. Clad in the Roman armor, he seemed a young god, the reincarnation of an Alexander or an Augustus.
He rode a gray mare that might have been the female twin of the stallion being led along ahead of him. She was also magnificent and rather restive, Uther thought, as she chewed at the bit and danced sideways along the road.
He concluded that she was probably the reason the stallion was so unruly. In fact, the curb she wore was so strong that red foam was visible at the corners of her mouth, and her head tosses flung it on the spectators lining the muddy trace.
Uther was disgusted by the sight of so beautiful a creature as the mare being abused by a cruel curb. The disgust must have shown in his face, because the nobleman’s blue eyes met his. Uther knew he had been a king too long, because their gazes locked and held, and the blue glance fell first.
The blond count checked the mare and guided her to where Uther stood, his back against the inn wall.
“Who are you?” the count asked. “Who dares show your dislike for the evidence of my success and power?”
Uther suddenly realized he was very much alone. A moment ago, he had been standing among others, watching the procession. Now they had suddenly vanished, even Eme.
It wasn’t in him to deny the challenge.
“A fair beauty,” Uther said, looking at the mare. “Too fine a beast to be ridden with so cruel a curb. And, my lord, I am not one of your people and was unhappily unaware my approval was to be demanded or even desired.”
With difficulty, Uther kept himself from flinching, because he was sure a blow from the nobleman’s whip or fist would end the matter right there.
But it didn’t come.
Instead, the blond god laughed. The laughter didn’t reach his eyes. They remained as cold as the enameled blue winter sky.
Then the man in the saddle leaned down close to him and spoke in a soft voice that included only the two of them.
“You aren’t afraid of me, are you? Amazing! Almost everyone is afraid of me. Certainly all who know me are. Such ignorance, my friend, my very dear friend. You are in need of instruction. It will give me the greatest of pleasure to undertake that task. In fact, that is how I derive my greatest joy in life, from this process of instruction. It pleases me greatly to find I have acquired a new subject for my attentions. I think I will find you among the most gratifying of my acquaintances.”
Then he eased the mare back to the center of the road, speaking softly as he did to one of his men.
Uther felt a queasiness in his belly. How much of that was bluff? And how much was real? Most of it, was his own bleak reply. Men like this count had almost unlimited control over their dependents. The rickety structure of Roman law, and sometimes Christian teaching, had in the past served as some sort of check on the cruelty and ambition of men like this. But both were conspicuously absent now, and horrific stories circulated about the savage punishments decreed by the great land-owning noblemen for even the slightest infractions. Most of them were drunk with power. But even among tyrants, this one seemed exceptionally bad.
Three Saxon mercenaries arrived, one on each side of Uther, one in front of him. None of them looked happy. None would meet Uther’s eyes.
“My lord asked that we escort you to the villa,” the best-dressed and obviously the highest ranking of the three told the king.
“Indeed,” Uther said, striving to look amused. “And suppose I decline to accompany you?”
“I wouldn’t do that, sir,” the young man replied. He was gazing at a spot somewhat to the right of Uther’s left shoulder.
Uther nodded. “Now?”
“Now!”
Uther nodded again, and without further comment, obeyed.
“Did you know?” Albe asked me somewhat accusingly.
“Yes,” I answered.
“How?”
“The Faun told me. I didn’t believe him, or rather, I couldn’t quite comprehend how it would be possible. But yes, I followed his orders.”
Albe blinked at me. I shifted the sword on my back into a more comfortable position and strode forward boldly, even as I explained myself—or tried to.
“He told me I must go to Arthur. But on no account could I allow myself to be captured by the King of the Summer Country, since I was one of the gates to power. I should die rather than allow myself to confer sovereignty on the wrong man. That’s your job, to kill me rather than allow me to be used in such a way. That’s why I took you with me.”
“No!” Albe cried.
“Yes!” I shouted even more loudly as I hurried along. “Before the sun sets tonight, you must give me your word of honor that you will take my head and return it to the rulers’ gathering place, in the north among the Picts.”
Albe didn’t speak again.
The strangeness of this world grew in my mind. The road along which we were walking was made of hexagonal stones, blue-gray in color, and it undulated over what I knew must have once been a coastline. In and of themselves, the stones were odd. They seemed connected. Not human-made but as though a comb from some giant beehive had been unrolled on a seashore just above the dunes.
Those dunes were thickly overgrown with tall, feather-headed grasses, each clump of grass surrounded by low-crawling vines bearing heart-shaped leaves and a profusion of butter-yellow flowers. The blue-gray stones that comprised the road had been in place so long . . . I found I didn’t care to think about it. In places they were half-buried by rocks falling from the barren slopes above us; in others, by windblown sand. But it seemed impossible to completely cover, because whatever shape the land took, they followed it. The piles from slides were slowly shoved aside as it tilted gently to remove, then climb over, them. Where mud and sand drifted, the surface was so smooth that as the mud dried, it and the sand would be blown away by the unending wind that blew swiftly still from the deep-gullied hills that sloped down. Hills that had once been covered by the sea.
“Why are you running, Guinevere?” Albe asked.
I realized I had been running, almost running, at least. So I slowed and let her catch up to me. The little road wasn’t very wide, but it easily held two walking abreast. Indeed, it would have been wide enough for a wagon or a war chariot.
“Why are you running?” she asked me again.
“Because I’m frightened,” I told her. “This is a very strange place, and I cannot imagine what my journey through here portends.”
Just as well I slowed, because we had come to a ravine. The hexagonal road pavers tilted themselves as they descended to form a shallow stair to the bottom. Here we were a bit sheltered from the wind, and I felt the flush a brisk wind raises in my exposed skin.
“What did the Faun tell you besides what you have said already?” Albe asked.
She didn’t seem even a little bit disturbed by the fact that I had in one morning led her into another world and then asked her to kill me. But then, we both knew the rules. As I had taken and enslaved Cymry, so could I be taken and enslaved; and before death, my body used to open the gates of power to another man besides Arthur. Albe was to see that didn’t happen.
All the great queens and kings have a follower sworn to kill them, take the head to return it to their followers so the king’s wisdom, power, and magic cannot be used against his or her own people. Because if the king is a priest, the lady who cradles him between her thighs is an even more sacred queen.
I had not bothered about it before, because Dugald, Ure, and the Gray Watcher knew well enough what I was, and so would have done their duty by me, had I fallen in battle. In truth, I thought that’s what Ure was doing when the evil spirits overpowered me after we destroyed the pirates. It was a very near thing, but Ure had been able to bluff them out. So I was alive.
But defeat or rape were not events I should be allowed to survive. If no one else was there to ensure I died uncontrolled and unpolluted, I must see to matters myself. So I brought Albe. As I said, she knew these things as well as I did.
We stood for a moment looking down into the dead sea bottoms. The ravine had once been a river, and it had shaped a delta, an estuary that led down and down. Somewhere underground there must have been water flowing, for the long downward-leaning sandbank was fertile still. Scattered bushes, grass, and trees flourished on the slopes, each large clump of grass, bush, or small trees protected, surrounded on all sides by the omnipresent, thorn-covered vines. The air was cool and dry.
I was a little surprised at the dryness, but then, I thought, a world without oceans must perforce be dry.
“I kill easily,” Albe said.
“I know. I saw you kill the two Saxons when they emerged from the swamp. Then the eyeless woman impaled on a post.”
“I didn’t once. I can barely remember. It hurts too much to remember how it was before . . . the pirates came.”