Legacy: Arthurian Saga (221 page)

She caught up the basket of eggs, and
ran. He dashed water over face and hands at the trough, then threw
saddle and bridle on his horse, and, leaving it tethered, ran back
into the tower. The girl had set bread and meat on the table by the
cold ashes of the fire. She was crying as she poured wine for
him.

He drank quickly, and chewed bread,
washing it down with more of the wine.

"Now, quickly. What happened? What
more did you hear?"

The threat to Gaheris had loosened her
tongue. She told him readily: "After you'd gone up last night, sir,
they were talking. I was in bed. I went to sleep, then when my lord
did not come to bed, I woke, and I heard..."

"Well?"

"He was speaking of this Lamorak, who
was coming to Caer Mord. My lord was full of joy because he has
sworn to kill him, and now his brother had come, just at the right
moment to go with him. He said--my lord said--that it was the work
of the Goddess who had brought his brother to help him avenge his
mother's death. He had sworn on his mother's blood..." She faltered
and stopped.

"Yes? Did he tell you who shed his
mother's blood?"

"Why, the evil knight! Was it not so,
lord?"

"Go on."

"So he was overjoyed, and they planned
to ride straight away, together, without telling you. They did not
come to bed at all. They thought I was asleep, and they went out
very quietly. I -- I did not dare let them know I had heard what
was said, but I was afraid, so I lied to you. My lord talked as
if--" she gulped, "--as if he were mad."

"So he is," said Mordred. "All right.
This is what I feared. Now tell me which way they have taken."
Then, as she hesitated again: "This is an innocent man, Brigit. If
your lord Gaheris kills him, he will have to answer to the High
King Arthur. Now, don't weep, girl. The ship may not be in yet, nor
Lamorak on the road. If you tell me the way, I may well catch them
before the harm is done. My horse is rested, where Agravain's is
not." He thought, with a thread of pity running through the
desperate need for haste, that whatever happened the girl had
probably seen the last of her lover, but there was nothing he could
do about that. She was just another innocent to add to the toll
that Morgause had taken through her life and death.

He poured some of the wine for her,
and pushed the cup into her hand. "Come, drink. It will make you
feel better. Quickly now. The way to Caer Mord."

Even this small act of kindness seemed
to overset her. She drank, and gulped back her tears. "I am not
sure, lord. But if you ride to the village -- that way -- and down
to the river, you will find a forge there, and the smith will tell
you. He knows all the ways." And then, sobbing afresh: "He will not
come back, will he? He will be killed, or else he will leave me,
and go south to the great court, and I have nothing, and how will I
care for the child?"

Mordred laid three gold pieces on the
table. "These will keep you. And as for the child--" He stopped. He
did not add: "You will do well to drown it at birth." That went too
close for comfort. He merely said goodbye, and went out into the
grey dawning.

By the time he reached the village the
sky was whitening, and here and there folk were stirring to their
work. The tavern doors were shut, but a hundred paces on, where the
roadway forded a shallow stream, the forge fires were lit, and the
smith stretched himself, yawning, with a cup of ale in his
hand.

"The road to Caer Mord? Why, this
road, master. A matter of a day's ride. Go as far as the god-stone,
then take the eastward track for the sea."

"Did you hear horsemen going this way
in the night?"

"Nay, master. When I sleep, I sleep
sound," said the smith.

"And the god-stone? How
far?"

The smith ran his expert's eye over
Mordred's horse. "Yon's a good beast you've got there, master, but
you've come a long ways, maybe? I thought so. Well, then, not
pressing him, say by sunset? And from there, a short half hour to
the sea. It is a good road. You'll be safe at Caer Mord, and no
mishaps, well before dark."

"That I doubt," said Mordred, setting
spurs to his horse, and leaving the smith staring.

3

To Mordred the Orkney man the
god-stone, standing alone on the rolling moor, was a familiar
sight. And yet not quite familiar. It was a tall standing stone,
set in the lonely center of the moor. He had passed its mate many a
time, single, or standing with others in a wide ring, on the Orkney
moors; but there the stones were thinly slabbed and very high,
toothed or jagged as they had been broken from the living cliff.
This stone was massive, of some thick grey whinstone carefully
shaped into a thick, tapering pillar. There was a flat altar-like
slab at its base, with a dark mark on it that might be dried
blood.

He reached it at dusk, as the sun, low
and red, threw its long shadow across the black heather. He trotted
the tired horse up to it. At its base the track forked, and he
turned the beast's head to the south-east. From the pale wild look
of the sky ahead, and something more than familiar in the air that
met him, he knew that the sea could not be far away. Ahead, on the
edge of the heather moor, was a thick belt of woodland.

Soon he was among the trees, and the
horse's hoofs fell silently on the thick felt of pinedrift and dead
leaves. Mordred allowed it to drop to a walk. He himself was weary,
and the horse, which had gone bravely through the day, was close to
exhaustion. But they had travelled fast, and there was a chance
that he might still be in time.

Behind him the clouds, piling up,
stifled the colors of sunset. With the approach of evening, a wind
got up. The trees rustled and sighed. Sooner than he expected, the
forest began to thin, and lighter sky showed beyond the trunks.
There was a gap there; the gap, perhaps, where the road
ran?

He was answered almost immediately.
There must have been other sounds, of hoofs and clashing metal, but
the wind had carried them away from him, and the sighing of the
trees had drowned them. But now, from almost straight ahead, there
came a cry. Not of warning, or of fear, or anger, but a cry of joy,
followed by a shout of triumph, and then a yell of laughter, so
wild as to sound half mad. The horse's ears pricked, then went flat
back to its skull, and its eyes rolled whitely. Mordred struck the
spurs in, and the tired beast lurched into a heavy
canter.

In the forest's darkness he missed the
narrow track. The horse was soon blundering through a thicket of
undergrowth, bramble and hazel twined with honeysuckle, and
fly-ridden ferns belly high. The canter slowed, became a trot, a
walk, a thrusting progress, then stopped as Mordred sharply drew
rein.

From here, hidden from sight in the
deep shadow of the trees, he could see the level heath that
stretched between the woodland and the sea, and, dividing it, the
white line of the roadway. On this lay Lamorak, dead. Not far off
his horse stood with heaving sides and drooping head. Beside the
body, their arms flung round one another, laughing and pounding
each other's shoulders, were Agravain and Gaheris. Their horses
grazed nearby unheeded.

At that moment, in a lull of the wind,
came the sound of horses. The brothers stiffened, loosened one
another, ran for their own beasts and mounted hastily. For a moment
Mordred thought they might ride for cover into the wood where he
stood watching, but already it was too late.

Four horsemen appeared, approaching at
a gallop from the north. The leader was a big man, armed, on a
splendid horse. Straining his eyes in the twilight, Mordred
recognized the leader's device: It was Drustan himself, come riding
with a couple of troopers to meet the expected guest.

And beside him, of all men in the
world, rode Gareth, youngest of Lot's sons.

Drustan had seen the body. With a
ringing shout, he whipped his sword out and rode down upon the
killers.

The two brothers whirled to face him,
dressing themselves to fight, but Drustan, appearing suddenly to
recognize the two assassins, dragged his horse to a halt and put up
his sword. Mordred stayed still in shadow, waiting. The matter was
out of his hands. He had failed, and if he rode forward now,
nothing he, could say would persuade the newcomers that he had had
no part in Lamorak's murder, nor any knowledge of it. Arthur would
know the truth, but Arthur and his justice were a long way
away.

It seemed, though, that Arthur's
justice ran even here.

Drustan, spurring forward with his
troopers at his back, was questioning the brothers. Gareth had
jumped from his horse and was kneeling in the dust beside Lamorak's
body. Then he ran back to the group of horse men, and grabbed
Gaheris's rein, gesticulating wildly, trying to talk to
him.

The brothers were shouting. Words and
phrases could be heard above the intermittent rushing of the wind
in the branches. Gaheris had shaken Gareth off, and he and Agravain
were apparently challenging Drustan to fight. And Drustan was
refusing. His voice rang out in snatches, clear and hard and
high.

"I shall not fight you. You know the
King's orders. Now I shall take this body to the castle yonder and
give it burial...Be assured that the next royal courier will take
this news to Camelot...As for you..."

"Coward! Afraid to fight us!" The
yells of rage came back on the wind. "We are not afraid of the High
King! He is our kinsman!"

"And shame it is that you come of such
blood!" said Drustan, roundly. "Young though you are, you are
already murderers, and destroyers of good men. This man that you
have killed was a better knight than you could ever be. If I had
been here--"

"Then you would have gone the same
way!" shouted Gaheris. "Even with your men here to protect
you--"

"Even without them, it would have
taken more than you two younglings," said Drustan with contempt. He
sheathed his sword and turned his back on the brothers. He signaled
to the men-at-arms, who took up Lamorak's body, and started back
with it the way they had come. Then, hanging on the rein, Drustan
spoke to Gareth, who, mounted once more, was hesitating, looking
from Drustan to his brothers and back again. Even at that distance
it could be seen that his body was rigid with distress. Drustan,
nodding to him, and without another glance at Gaheris and Agravain,
swung round to follow his men-at-arms.

Mordred turned his horse softly back
into the wood. It was over. Agravain, seemingly sober now, had
caught at his brother's arm and was holding him, apparently
reasoning with him. The shadows were lengthening across the
roadway. The men-at-arms were out of sight. Gareth was on Gaheris's
other side, talking across him to Agravain.

Then, suddenly, Gaheris flung off his
brother's hand, and spurred his horse. He galloped up the road
after Drustan's retreating back. His over-ready sword gleamed in
his hand. Agravain, after a second's hesitation, spurred after him,
his sword, too, whipping from its sheath.

Gareth snatched for Agravain's bridle,
and missed. He yelled a warning, high and clear: "My lord, watch!
My lord Drustan, your back!"

Before the words were done Drustan had
wheeled his horse. He met the two of them together. Agravain struck
first. The older knight smashed the blow to one side and cut him
across the head. The sword's edge sliced deep into metal and
leather, and bit into the neck between shoulder and throat.
Agravain fell, blood spurting. Gaheris yelled and drove his horse
in, his sword hacking down as Drustan stooped from the saddle to
withdraw his blade. But Drustan's horse reared back. Its armed
hoofs caught Gaheris's mount on the chest. It squealed and swerved,
and the blow missed. Drustan drove his own horse in, striking
straight at Gaheris's shield, and sent him, off-balance as he was,
crashing to the ground, where he lay still.

Gareth was there at the gallop.
Drustan, swinging to face him, saw that his sword was still in its
sheath, and put his own weapon up.

Here the men-at-arms, having left
their burden, came hastening back. At their master's orders, they
roughly bound Agravain's wound, helped Gaheris, giddy but unharmed,
to his feet, then caught the brothers' horses for them. Drustan,
coldly formal, offered the hospitality of the castle "until your
brother shall be healed of his hurt," but Gaheris, as ungracious as
he had been treacherous, merely cursed and turned away. Drustan
signed to the troopers, who closed in. Gaheris, shouting again
about "my kinsman the High King," tried to resist, but was
overpowered. The invitation had become an arrest. At length the
troopers rode off at walking pace, with Gaheris between them, his
brother's unconscious body propped against him.

Gareth watched them go, making no move
to follow. He had not stirred a hand to help Gaheris.

"Gareth?" said Drustan. His sword was
clean and sheathed. "Gareth, what choice have I?"

"None," said Gareth. He shook the
reins and brought his horse round alongside Drustan's. They rode
together towards Caer Mord.

The roadway was empty in the growing
dusk. A thin moon rose over the sea. Mordred, emerging at last from
the shadow, rode south.