King Arthur: Warrior of the West: Book Two Read online

  King Arthur: Warrior of the West

  M. K. HUME

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  Copyright © 2009 M. K. Hume

  The right of M. K. Hume to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  All characters - other than the obvious historical figures - in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

  eISBN : 978 0 7553 4967 8

  This Ebook produced by Jouve Digitalisation des Informations

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  CHAPTER I - BLOOD GUILT

  CHAPTER II - THE LOST CHILD

  CHAPTER III - INTO THE WEST

  CHAPTER IV - MORGAUSE

  CHAPTER V - MORIDUNUM

  CHAPTER VI - THE ARDEN KNIFE

  CHAPTER VII - GLAMDRING’S BANE

  CHAPTER VIII - THE RIVER WALL

  CHAPTER IX - A SEASON IN HADES

  CHAPTER X - CAER FYRDDIN

  CHAPTER XI - THE WOMAN WITH YELLOW HAIR

  CHAPTER XII - THE MAID AND THE MISTRESS

  CHAPTER XIII - THE MAID AND THE MISTRESS

  CHAPTER XIV - THE WORM HOLE IN THE APPLE

  CHAPTER XV - A MATTER OF TRUST

  CHAPTER XVI - CONTAGION

  CHAPTER XVII - A SUMMER OF MADNESS

  CHAPTER XVIII - THE NAKED EYE

  CHAPTER XIX - ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS

  CHAPTER XX - THE HOLLOW TREE

  EPILOGUE

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Warrior of the West is dedicated to my parents, Ronald Henry Smith (1920-1980) and Edna Katrina Ellis Smith (1920-2004). These two extraordinary people raised three children to believe that the only limitations that exist in this world are those that we build for ourselves, stone by stone.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  A number of acquaintances, men and women, read Dragon’s Child, Volume One of this trilogy, as a ‘taste test’, and as a means for me to discover if I had the capacity to write historical fiction that was suitable for public consumption.

  In particular, I would like to mention David Hall, Guy Ogden and the family and friends of David and Jolene Hill. Their kind words of encouragement have been a great fillip to my confidence, and their positive comments were the spurs that kept me writing, especially during the boring times when the work was hard and creative thoughts got lost in the muddle. I have never thanked them. But I do so now.

  Still other acquaintances, like my beautiful friend, Pauline Reckentin, never wavered in their unshaken belief that I would make the grade as a writer. At times, Pauline embarrassed me with her faith, but whenever my spirits flagged, there was Pauline (who herself leaps tall buildings with a single bound) telling me that I was unstoppable. Such friends are beyond price.

  Finally, how can I find the words to thank those who are nearest to me - Michael, hard taskmaster and savage critic; Damian, my highly intelligent son, who is the prototype for several of the characters in my Arthurian legends; and Brendan, my prodigal son, whose work habits, courage in impossible situations, and absolute dedication to his children forced me to understand the difficult choices that confront Artor. I am blessed with extraordinary kin.

  Writers write, but publishers polish and turn our thoughts and words into the books that readers crave. I consider myself to be a journeyman wordsmith, hammering my ideas out of my imagination and my experiences. The people of Headline Publishing, therefore, who are warm, talented and very professional, made these books as complete as they are. Thank you, every one of you.

  Finally, I wish to thank my agent of agents, Dorie Simmonds, who is a friend, a lifesaver and a genius in her chosen field. She is lovely in every way that matters.

  Life is a cruel teacher and we all learn, like Artor, that only by facing the great beauty and the suffering of life can we become that which makes us strong. Ultimately, facing ourselves is the lesson that we learn and carry with us until we go to whatever fate awaits us in the Great Unknown.

  I hope Arthur will forgive me for the liberties I have taken with his life when eventually we meet.

  DRAMATiS PERSONAE

  PROLOGUE

  Horses whickered nervously, and the skittering of their hooves on the flinty scree was the only sound of discord in the still morning. Within the nearby wood, the rooks, ravens and crows waited silently with their blue-black plumage almost lost in the shadows of the old trees. Only the bright eyes of the birds glinted with signs of life, and they were malicious and hungry.

  Weaponless and wary, the six envoys waited impatiently, even though their armed guards ringed them, ill at ease, a little way from the nobles. Twenty in number, the guards rolled their eyes expressively, and were inclined to jump at every shadow. Here, where Saxon hands held the reins of governance, a Celt was unwise to ride incautiously through woods where every tree could hide a Saxon with a battleaxe.

  ‘I don’t like this place,’ one warrior hissed at his neighbour. ‘It’s too damn quiet for my liking.’

  His companion tried to peer into the impenetrable woods, but the darkness was absolute.

  The envoys of Artor had chosen a large patch of open ground where they could wait for the planned parley. Above their heads, the white flag of truce snapped and curled in the wind. Their escort waited five spear shafts from their masters, looking outward at the dense trees that surrounded this bare, grey knoll.

  As the proposed meeting place was deep within enemy territory, their guards were fully armed but had been ordered by King Artor to keep their weapons sheathed unless the envoys were under direct attack. Only their loyalty and impassioned devotion to the High King kept these veterans calm in the face of brooding menace and the threat of impending attack.

  The Celtic emissaries had come to this parley at the express wish of the High King in a last attempt to reason with the newest war chief of the western Saxons. For well over fifty years, these barbarian tribesmen had been a thorn in the Celtic heel.

  Artor had sickened of death over twelve years of brutal battles. He had smashed the eastern Saxons again and again, but his enemy was implacable, and every summer brought new, leaf-shaped ships across Litus Saxonicus or the huge, grey seas of Oceanus Germanicus. Although Artor struggled with a growing dread that his wars achieved only minor gains, battle by battle the High King began to stop the Saxon advance. But he sought a better solution than brute force, and he had sent six of his most loyal noblemen to Saxon country to broker a truce.

  Now, his envoys and their warrior escort doubted the good faith of the barbarians.

  ‘It’s a cold morning,’ Gaheris murmured quietly, more to calm his nerves and to break the eerie silence than to begin a conversation. ‘Spring seems so far away.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought you’d notice,’ Cerdic ap Cerdyn muttered sarcastically. ‘You Otadini like the cold in the north. The eastern Saxons must enjoy i
t well enough too . . . since they’re so cosy with your father.’

  Cerdic ap Cerdyn was a blunt man, thick in neck, chest and thighs, and possessing red hair and a temper to match. Artor trusted him completely as a young son of the king of the Silures, for Cerdic had followed the High King from the first desperate forays out of Cadbury Tor at a time when the Celts had struggled to stop the Saxon advance. Focused and rigid in his thinking, Cerdic would follow Artor’s orders to the letter, but he lacked his master’s quick empathy and cold reasoning.

  The insults that Cerdic chose were sufficiently offensive to warrant a challenge to armed combat. Gaheris bit his lip until he tasted the salt of blood. He was the younger brother of Prince Gawayne, Artor’s most ardent champion, and shared a familial tendency to sudden, searing explosions of temper. But Gaheris acknowledged that the Silures warrior spoke the truth, albeit with unforgivable lack of courtesy. King Lot, Gaheris’s father, was an ally of the western Saxons of Caer Fyrddin.

  Gaheris breathed the frigid air deeply into his lungs to avoid the temptation to snarl an offensive retort. What would be the gain?

  Gaheris was Queen Morgause’s youngest legitimate son and, undoubtedly, the most beloved. Sunny-tempered, with tawny hair, pale green eyes and a rich, golden tan deepened from months in the saddle, Gaheris had a face and a form that drew the swift interest of women and the easy camaraderie of men. But, for all his maturity, Gaheris was young - not yet nineteen - and ardent to prove that he was loyal to the High King rather than to the treasonous dictates of family.

  ‘You’re very quiet, Gaheris,’ Cerdic taunted. ‘Why did you come, unless you intend to betray us to your friends? Or perhaps you’re afraid.’

  Cerdic even refused to use Gaheris’s rightful title, but the young prince knew the surly noble only spoke aloud what other warriors were thinking. Unlike his brother Gawayne, Gaheris had an agile brain that was nearly the match of the High King’s, and he refused to take offence at Cerdic’s slurs.

  ‘I travel along my own road, Cerdic, and my path follows that of Gawayne and the High King,’ Gaheris said patiently. ‘My father may be my liege and my tribal lord, but he has decided on an alliance of his own choosing. Like you, I wait here in the open and will parley with these Saxon animals - for I obey the orders of the High King and I follow the loyalties of my brother, Prince Gawayne.’

  ‘Give the lad a rest, Cerdic,’ one of the other warriors interjected. ‘Gawayne has been killing those fools who ally themselves with King Lot up and down the mountains for years. Fair is as fair does!’

  The warrior who spoke was a bastard Roman, born in the lands to the north of Aquae Sulis in settlements that were close to the Saxon hive in the old Roman forts, so Cerdic bit off an acerbic retort. But the other envoys lowered their eyes so that Gaheris would not see the distrust that lurked in the lines of their faces.

  A horse shied violently, and the startled men tugged on their reins to prevent their own horses from following suit.

  ‘Can’t you control that sodding animal, Ulf?’ Cerdic snapped, his nerves taut with the strain of waiting.

  ‘Someone, or something, approaches,’ Ulf warned, his eyes darting from side to side in alarm. ‘My mare always knows.’

  The captain of the escort rolled his brown eyes as Ulf ’s horse shied again, sending pebbles rolling and clattering.

  ‘Keep the beast quiet then, so we can hear for ourselves.’

  An eerie silence descended.

  A hawk circled high above the ridge line, its wings spread wide as it hovered on the wind. Even the crows in the ancient oak trees were silent and waiting. The whole world seemed to be still, except for the gelid air that the men heaved into their straining lungs.

  Through the strange blood of his mother, Gaheris felt the weight of his approaching death come upon him like dark, implacable wings. He was not afraid, precisely, but his senses were heightened as if his body knew that it would soon cease to breathe and think.

  Then, as if they had sprung from the aching, icy earth, the Saxons, dozens of warriors, armed and eager for combat, appeared before them on the open ground. These men were the children and grandchildren of the warriors led by Vortimer and Hengist, shaggy barbarians who had been brutally decimated into near extinction by the forces of Uther Pendragon and his fearsome son. They had been born on British soil in one of the few bastions of the west that the Saxons had been able to hold, and their hatred for all things Celt knew no limits.

  Greasy, oiled hair was bound with silver and bronze wire, and clothing that was once brightly dyed was now dun with dirt and hard use. Although their bodies were comely and heavily muscled, their furs and leathers made them look like hulking creatures born out of nightmares. The Roman crossed himself, and several warriors of the guard clutched stone amulets and muttered prayers. In response, Ulf began to draw his sword out of its sheath, and the hiss of sharp, well-oiled metal was shocking and loud, but Cerdic raised one hand to still the warrior’s instinctive response. He lifted the flag of truce so that it could be clearly seen by the Saxons.

  Wheeling, Cerdic waved the banner again, shouting in Celt, Saxon and Latin that this meeting was to broker a truce, but the Saxons were oblivious to everything this flag meant. They loathed the very air that Celts breathed. Cerdic carried the words of Artor, but the message was as arid to Saxons as dry leaves in the northern wind. Approaching in a loping, mile-devouring run, the Saxons surrounded the Celts in a ring of steel and, even for warriors on horseback, there would be no easy way out of this circle of death.

  One huge man, well over six feet four inches in height, moved casually to face Cerdic’s horse and, with blinding speed, buried his axe in the brain of the animal. As he expertly twisted the blade free, and the horse collapsed at his feet, the Saxon snatched up the white banner, spat on it, and then trampled it into the bloody earth.

  Cerdic struggled to rise, but one leg was trapped beneath the body of his stallion. The men-at-arms wheeled their horses and tried to free their weapons, but the Saxons thrust spears at the undefended chests of Artor’s emissaries. Cursing, Cerdic’s warriors dropped their hands, for they were outnumbered, ten to one.

  The Saxon leader was fair-complexioned, as were most of his race, but his hair was greased to the colour of old honey and his nails were black with grime. Gaheris registered all these small details as if he was caught in a nightmare, but he was preternaturally calm.

  The Saxon pointed to Ulf and two other warriors in the guard at random. With a jerk of his head, the brute indicated that the rest of the troop should move to his right and dismount. Gaheris was surprised. The Celts stood with their horses’ reins held loosely in their hands, but the Saxons had presented no threat to the animals so far. He had not expected the Saxons to appreciate horses for their usefulness. For all their wild and brutal appearance, perhaps these hulking warriors would still allow Artor’s emissaries to go free.

  ‘I am Glamdring Ironfist, the Thane of Caer Fyrddin. I reject your pitiful flag of truce, as I reject all those horse lords who fought against Katigern Oakheart.’

  Gaheris stared at the white flag of truce, ripped haphazardly across its length and muddy from the Saxon’s feet, and he was reminded that no mercy had been shown to Cerdic’s horse, now only so much meat that would be smoked for food during the next winter.

  Then the leader of the Saxons grinned widely - and made the universally understood action of throat-cutting.

  The Celtic warriors on the right were slain before they could defend themselves, and death came slowly to them as their bodies were hacked and stabbed to prolong their suffering. The men bled to death in front of the envoys, while begging for help with mute, bewildered eyes.

  The terrified horses were led away from the bodies and then slaughtered, but at least the beasts merited clean, killing blows. Several Saxons immediately applied themselves to the task of carving horseflesh into slabs of bloody meat for easy transport.

  These Saxons are truly barbarians, Gaheris t
hought with odd, calm detachment as he assessed the carnage. They will never learn.

  He shook his head in confusion at the knowledge that his father, King Lot, had allied himself with the savage Saxon invaders rather than pursue his original dream of achieving power within the Celtic tribes. Gaheris knew that wild things could never be trusted, and he could only conclude that his father had been a fool - and a fool he would always remain.

  Glamdring cleaned his axe of blood and brain matter on a fold of his woollen cloak. The blade was well-oiled and very sharp.

  He pointed a huge finger at Gaheris.

  ‘You! You are the son of King Lot, a man who is a friend to the Saxon peoples. You have my permission to ride away to join your father. The fate of these others will convey my message to your High King.’

  Glamdring’s last words were so scornful that they cut through Gaheris’s passive calm and released him from its thrall. He forced himself to breathe normally, and once again he felt like a man.

  ‘I don’t wish to die, Glamdring Ironfist, but I have sworn an oath - a blood oath - that I will serve no king but Artor, he to whom the gods have given the sword and crown of Uther Pendragon. Even if I wished to save my life, I cannot do so. Nay! I will not do so!’

  He looked directly into the cynical, smouldering eyes of Glamdring.

  ‘Do as you choose, Glamdring,’ he said to the Saxon. ‘My death will bring you no advantage, but it might bring you much harm - for I am defenceless.’

  Glamdring Ironfist returned the open gaze of the boy, who was barely beyond his first blooding.

  ‘Well spoken, lad. You have my permission to die like a man as you wish - but I will kill you last for your impertinence.’