Warrior of the West (15 page)

‘A large force of Celts has moved up the coast under the banner of Artor’s dragon, my lord’, the courier reported. ‘They wear dull black so they are easily seen in the daylight, although the night conceals them.’

The courier was an impressive-looking man. He wasn’t particularly tall but he was slender and well-made, with hair that was very dark for a Saxon. Glamdring’s eyes registered contempt for his visitor, whose blue eyes were the only clue to his northern blood. Even with all the dirt that caked his red hair, Bedwyr seemed more of a Saxon than this proud warrior.

‘What are their numbers?’ he asked in a cold voice, and the courier flushed.

‘There are over five hundred cavalry, plus archers and foot soldiers, my lord. The baggage train is huge and they travel very slowly. They are prepared for a long campaign.’

‘So many? Artor is taking a risk, for his borders must have been picked clean.’

‘I saw the standard of Lot within the column. Your ally has broken his oath.’

Glamdring chuckled quietly, and his courier took heart from his leader’s indifference to the size of the host. For his part, Glamdring was pleased, for a large force was difficult to co-ordinate and was nearly impossible to manoeuvre. Artor would be impeded by the sheer size of his forces.

‘The boy Gaheris assured me that Artor would come to exact his revenge, and that Lot wouldn’t tolerate the death of his son. You bring me good news, very good news. Artor intends to fight us on our ground, and therefore on our terms. It’s time we discovered for ourselves if this bastard is really the Warrior of the West.’ Glamdring had longed for the moment when he could finally test the might of Artor and his Celtic warriors.

While the courier and his master conversed, Bedwyr’s concentration appeared to be wholly centred on his mundane domestic task.

‘Call Nils Redbeard to me. You’ve done well, Cadall, and you may eat at our cooking fires. Afterwards, you will return to your post, and make sure that our scouts are ready to send me news of any changes in Artor’s tactics. I expect to be told of all changes, no matter how minor. Artor is a successful leader and a skilled warrior, so he will have devised an effective battle plan.’

‘My life is pledged to serve you, my master,’ the courier vowed, and padded off to find the captain of the fortress.

Bedwyr collected his baskets and moved silently out of the hall. Quickly and thoroughly, he scrubbed the dirty plates in water drawn from the well and held in a large, roughly chiselled stone trough. The Saxons had grown careless of basic cleanliness, and no one noticed that Bedwyr used clean drinking water for his labours. He returned the slops back into the trough. The Saxons never seemed to sicken from drinking the polluted water, but Bedwyr permitted himself the enjoyment of this trifling triumph.

Bearing a leather bucket of clean water, he re-entered the hall. The guards yawned and honed their weapons, ignoring his shambling presence. Bedwyr continued to clean down the tabletops while a litter of puppies charged his filthy toes and attempted to worry his bedraggled tunic hem.

Nils Redbeard entered the hall with a swagger.

The new arrival took his name from his fiery red hair and his potent temper. His ancestors were Jute, but he had been raised to hate the Celtic standard and Glamdring Ironfist offered the only resistance to Artor’s hold on the kingdom. Redbeard had embraced his master’s viciousness and ambitions, and had quickly carved out a respected place for himself among Glamdring’s warriors.

When he entered the hall, his pale eyes were hot and impatient. The time for battle had arrived and he was eager to wade through Celtic corpses.

‘You called for me, my lord?’

Glamdring glanced up, his crafty eyes intent on the eager face of his officer. ‘You have heard?’

‘Aye. Our warriors are impatient to blood their weapons. When do we march, master?’

‘When I tell you! Call in the warriors from the outposts. If Artor turns his eye on Caer Fyrddin, we must have troops to hold the fortress.’ Glamdring grinned like a fox. ‘And tell Valdemar to form an extra company to patrol the approaches to the caer. Their purpose is to nip at Artor’s heels if he moves towards us.’

Bedwyr dropped a small wooden cup which hit the edge of the table with a loud clatter. Both Glamdring and Redbeard looked at him.

‘Isn’t that right, Dog?’ Glamdring demanded. ‘Dogs are useful animals to help us herd dumb beasts. That’s right, nod back at me, Dog. Your friends among the Celts are dumb beasts if they think they can keep me penned up here in Caer Fyrddin.’

Bedwyr grinned vacuously, and nodded so eagerly that his filthy hair shed dust and wisps of straw into the yellow light.

Both Saxon warriors laughed contemptuously and ignored the idiot.

Glamdring turned his attention back to Redbeard, and Bedwyr continued to mop and wipe, his open lips drooling thin strings of spittle.

‘Lot’s brat said we are incapable of learning from our enemies,’ Glamdring sneered, ‘but he was wrong, and now he’s the one who’s dead. The Celts use horses and are very dangerous where they can manoeuvre, but these hills are no help to his warriors. We’ll borrow Artor’s methods, and we’ll use our young, unblooded warriors to make surprise attacks on his baggage train. You can choose those youngsters who show the most promise. Perhaps we can starve the bastards out so Artor will be the one to make the first mistake. Don’t fail me, Redbeard.’

‘I’ll not fail you, master.’

‘Then leave, for you have much to do.’

Glamdring loved to talk to a captive audience, even if his bravado was only for the ears of a witless slave. With vile invective the master described how his warriors would take great joy in crushing Artor. He described in vicious detail how they would dine on the fruits of hit-and-run attacks against the baggage train, and how his archers, although Glamdring had but few, would use their longbows to pin down the fierce Artor.

‘Are you afraid, Dog? You are nodding your head, so you are being a good dog. Now, bring Wyrr to me.’

As Bedwyr hurried to find Glamdring’s soothsayer, his heart rejoiced at the secret knowledge he now possessed. The Celts were coming at last. If his gods were kind, he would discover some way to reach them, and his long hatred could be slaked in full.

Bedwyr hurried through the muddy pathways of Caer Fyrddin to a small wooden hut that was isolated from the rest of the fortress dwellings. Although the structure was a simple construction of logs and bulrushes, it was rendered memorable by a series of severed, mummified hands, bound together with bronze wire, that hung, fingers downwards, before the doorway. In the mountain breeze, the hands clicked with the odd rattle of dried twigs. Avoiding the grisly totems, Bedwyr edged through the doorway of the sorcerer’s lair.

Within the hut, the air was thick, sweet and smoke-filled, for Wyrr was always cold. Dried bundles of herbs and other, less savoury ingredients hung from the hazy ceiling, while pottery jars held oils and medicines. Other than an oddly carved chest and a simple pallet for sleeping, the over-warm hut was bare of any furnishings.

Like a ghost or a malevolent spirit, Wyrr loomed whitely out of the hut’s darkness.

Glamdring’s sorcerer was an aberration of nature in that he gave the physical impression of pale, wizened youth. His features seemed young, but when viewed closely, the preternatural wrinkles of old age were visible around his boyish eyes and on his cheeks. According to the whispers of the Saxon warriors, Wyrr had been born somewhere on the western coast of Cymru some twenty-six years before. Local folklore insisted that Wyrr’s young mother had been struck dumb when she first beheld the silent infant, although no one remembered where this rumour had started. At any rate, the paths of Wyrr and Glamdring Ironfist had crossed when the Saxon warrior was still an impressionable youth. Glamdring’s women swore, in nervous whispers, that Wyrr had assisted his master to gain control of the western Saxon imagination and, in time, the position of thane. Certainly, Glamdring had manipulated the superstitions of his people and advantaged his leadership by shamelessly using Wyrr’s influence. Men chose to step aside when the shadow of the little man fell across their path.

Wyrr had been fifteen when Glamdring first saw him, and the youth’s face was young, unfinished in appearance and sexually ambiguous. But, even then, Wyrr’s skin showed a fine network of lines and blue veins. Wyrr’s short stature was aggravated by swollen joints and bowed legs. From a distance, Wyrr appeared to be no older than ten years of age, but at close quarters he looked like an old man of ninety.

To add to the horrible fascination of his physical appearance, Wyrr was an albino. His skin was the luminous, fish-belly white associated with beautiful women and sickly old men. His hair was long and colourless. It was as if the gods had leached the vitality out of his tiny body before he was born, leaving behind a juiceless husk that was neither young nor old. His pale eyelashes and brows were barely visible, he grew no beard and his small nubs of milk teeth gave his face a peculiar, half-finished look.

Whenever he walked in the daylight, Wyrr was forced to shade his eyes within the shadow of a thick cloak, for his irises were the same colour as blood washed thin with water.

But if Wyrr lacked bodily strength or vigour, the gods had compensated him with superior force of will and a charismatic power that could be exerted over other, frailer minds. Doubtless, the child Wyrr would not have grown to his perversion of manhood without the temperament of a warrior and the cold cunning of an assassin. Although fate had decreed that the albino was born to be a figure of fun, Wyrr was Glamdring’s brain; he curbed the rashness and viciousness of the thane’s behaviour and replaced these flaws with a chilly intelligence. Wyrr and Glamdring, between them, made one formidable man.

Now, with fussy, childish steps, Wyrr preceded Bedwyr into the draughty, smoke-filled hall. His white robes scarcely stirred with either breath or movement. Unlike the hall and its master, the boy-man was unnaturally clean for a Saxon, as if his health depended on an enforced regimen of hygiene. Bedwyr swore the little creature wore perfumed oils, for he trailed a reek of attar and costly nard.

‘Come here, my friend, and share a cup of ale with me,’ Glamdring requested, his tone more conciliatory than the thane used with any other man or woman in the fortress. Glamdring was always careful of Wyrr’s feelings and comfort, for the albino was the thane’s most valued tool.

‘Of course, master,’ Wyrr responded, in a voice that had the thin, piping treble of a child.

‘I go to war, exactly as we planned, Wyrr. And now I need your counsel.’

‘Of course, master,’ Wyrr repeated, seating himself carefully on the cleanest bench beside Glamdring.

‘Will you throw the bones for me?’

This request, put almost humbly by the arrogant Saxon, was immediately obeyed. While Glamdring ignored Bedwyr’s silent presence, Wyrr sensed the slave’s interest, and watched the Celt under lowered, pouched eyelids with the flat scrutiny of a snake. Wyrr’s lips parted in a sweet boyish smile, rendered chilling by his darting, purple-tinted tongue.

His heart pounding with fear, Bedwyr moved the litter of puppies into a quiet corner, then swept the soiled straw into a pile on the sod floor, ready for replacement.

‘More ale, Dog,’ Glamdring ordered.

Bedwyr nodded.

When he returned, Wyrr was muttering under his breath and swaying in time to unheard rhythms. Whether the sorcerer’s trance-like state was natural or feigned, Bedwyr had no way of knowing.

Wyrr cast the bones.

His crooning rose to a high crescendo, and then stopped as if a blade had sliced through the sound. Theatrically, Wyrr’s eyes snapped open.

‘Danger is close!’ The childish voice hissed the sibilant and drew it out into a thin, chilling glissade. ‘Too close! Much too close! Beware!’

You’re a fraud, Bedwyr thought to himself. Unless you’re referring to me, you devil-spawned beast. In which case the danger to you is, I swear, much too close!

The peculiar eyes widened until the pink irises were completely surrounded with white. His indrawn breath quivered.

‘Glamdring, my brother, everything depends upon your nerve and your heart. Artor has come to kill you, and he gambles for high stakes. You must match his will. You must match the man, or he will have you at his mercy. If you would become High King, then you must act like a High King.’

‘I don’t understand, Wyrr.’ Glamdring’s words were softly spoken and, in Bedwyr’s experience, uncharacteristically cautious.

‘I see a shield wall, and a tall leader within the wall. The Saxon way! I see it, master! The waves batter against the shield wall. And if it fails, then all is lost. Fear is so thick that I can taste it. When the morning comes, the fear will be finished and the fate of Glamdring will be set, like the knife that cuts through the wall. I can see the blade, where the forest twines on its hilt. And the blade is the key. You must keep the Arden Knife close by your side.’

Glamdring recoiled in surprise. So also did Bedwyr. Both men knew of a knife with a design of trees carved deeply into a handle of bone.

‘The blade is the key?’ Glamdring repeated. ‘I own such a blade.’

‘Then keep it securely upon your person. Loosened, and free of your hand, it will strike you a killing blow.’ Wyrr collapsed in a tidy heap of white robes and hair.

Turning to Bedwyr, Glamdring issued his orders in a voice that was hoarse with urgency.

‘Dog, go to my women. I gave one of them a knife with a tree motif on the handle. Filla has it. I want it back - and I want it now! And don’t consider damaging it, Dog,’ Glamdring added with a cunning leer. ‘Nor would it be wise to bury it in my chest. It’s mine, and mine alone!’

As Bedwyr left the hall, Glamdring was already lifting the comatose Wyrr, holding him close to his breast like a beloved child, and raising a beaker of red wine to the sorcerer’s pallid lips.