Legacy: Arthurian Saga (231 page)

The gang were all dead within seconds
of emerging from the tower. Then the Companions stood back to watch
the execution of the leader.

To their trained eyes it seemed
obvious that he had himself had some kind of training in the past.
A brute he was, but a brave brute. He rushed on Arthur, club
against sword, and with the first tremendous swipe of the club
outreached the shorter man's sword with a blow that sent the King
reeling, and dinted the metal of his shield. The heavy club,
sliding across the metal, took the giant for a moment with its
impetus, and in that moment Arthur, recovering his balance, cut
past club and arm, straight for the unprotected throat above the
thick leather jerkin. The giant, for all his size, was quick on his
feet. He jumped back, the club beating upward again and striking
the sword out of line. But Arthur's arm and body went with the
thrust, taking the blow higher, over the club and straight at the
giant's face. The point just scraped his forehead, a short cut but
a deep one, right above the eyes. The man yelled, and Arthur jumped
back as the great club flailed round again. Blood spurted and
flowed down the giant's face. It blinded him, but the very
blindness almost proved Arthur's undoing, for the man, maddened by
the sting of the wound, hurled himself straight at the King,
ignoring the ready sword, and with the surprise of his rashness
getting past it so that he came breast to breast with his opponent,
and with his great weight and wrestling grip began to bear Arthur
backward to the ground.

Perhaps Mordred was the only one there
to appreciate the swift and very foul blow with which the King
extricated himself. He wrenched out of the monster's grip, dodged
the club again with apparent ease, and cut the man across the back
of the knees. Yelling, the giant fell with a crash like a tree,
thrashing about him as he went. The King waited, poised like a
dancer, till the club's head thudded into the turf, then cut the
wrist that held it. The club lay where it had struck. Before the
giant could even feel the pain of the fresh wound the King stepped
past through the gush of blood and stabbed him cleanly through the
throat.

They recovered the princess's jewels
from the tower, threw the bodies into it, and set fire to it. Then
the troop rode back to catch up with their companions, and carry
their heavy news to King Hoel.

5

One positive good came out of the
tragedy of the Princess Elen. It was certain that Hoel's Prankish
neighbors had had nothing to do with the rape, and, when it was
known that the "giant" and his ruffianly companions were dead, the
villagers and the forest folk who had suffered from the robbers'
depredations dared speak out at last, making it quickly apparent
that the recent raids and harassments had all been the work of the
same robber band.

Accordingly, as soon as the funeral
was done with, but before the time of mourning was past, Hoel and
Arthur were able to sit down and discuss the demand made by the
consul Quintilianus Hiberus. They decided to send an embassy to
him, ostensibly to discuss the Roman emperor's proposals, but in
reality to see for themselves what his strength was. Hoel had
already sent to King Childebert and his brothers to find out if
they had encountered the same demands, and if so, what stand they
were prepared to take.

"It will take a little time," said
Hoel, stretching his feet nearer the fire, and rubbing a hand over
an arthritic knee, "but you'll stay, I trust, cousin?"

"To deploy my troops with yours in
full sight, while your embassy goes to nose out Hiberus'
intentions? Willingly," said Arthur.

"I'd hoped that you might lend some
weight to the embassy, too," said Hoel. "I'm sending Guerin. He's
as wily an old fox as ever wasted a council's time. They'll never
understand half he says, let alone what his proposals mean. He'll
make time for us, and meanwhile we'll get an answer from the
Franks. Well, cousin?"

"Of course. For me, then, Bors. He has
no wiles at all, but his honesty is patent, and therefore
disarming. We can instruct him to leave the politics to Guerin. I'd
like Valerius to command the escort."

Hoel nodded approvingly. They were in
his private apartments in the palace at Kerrec. The old king was
now free of his bedchamber, but spent the days sitting, wrapped in
furs, over a blazing fire. His muscular bulk had run, with age, to
overweight, and this had brought with it the usual attendant ills;
his bones, as he put it, creaked in the draughts of his
old-fashioned and relatively comfortless stronghold.

Arthur, with Mordred, and two or three
of Hoel's own lords, had supped with the king, and now sat over a
bowl of mulled and spicy wine. Bedwyr was not with them. He had
gone back at his own request to his lands in the north of Brittany.
The reason he gave was his young bride's health. He had confided to
Mordred, on the ride south with the body of the murdered princess,
that his own Elen, being subject to the fears of her condition, had
dreamed of death, and could not rest until her husband returned to
her in safety. So, the funeral once over, Bedwyr had ridden north,
leaving those of the Young Celts' faction who were present with
Arthur's forces to whisper that he had gone sooner than come face
to face with Gawain.

For Gawain was on his way to Brittany.
Arthur had judged it wise to invite his nephew, now back in the
ranks of the Companions, to follow him and share such action as
might ensue. The expected fighting had proved to be merely a
punitive skirmish with a robber gang, and for this Gawain had
sailed too late. So now, discussing with Hoel the composition of
the joint embassy, Arthur suggested that Gawain should be part of
it. Since Hoel could not go, and Arthur judged it better that he
himself should not, some representative of the royal house ought to
be present to lend the right dignity to the occasion.

Hoel, humming and huffing in his
beard, cast a look at Mordred, misinterpreted the frown he saw
there, and cleared his throat to speak, but Arthur, catching the
exchange of glances, said quickly: "Not Mordred, no. He is the
obvious choice, but I need him elsewhere. If I am to stay here till
this is settled then he must go back to Greater Britain in my
place. The Queen and Council make a stopgap government, but that is
all it is, and there are matters outstanding that must be dealt
with, with more authority than I have left with them."

He turned to his son. "After all my
talk, eh? Re-training, indeed! Rowing a boat on a lagoon, and
killing a robber or two. I'm sorry, Mordred, but a dispatch I had
today makes it necessary. Will you go?"

"Whatever you bid me, sir. Of
course."

"Then we'll talk later," said the
King, and turned back to the discussion.

Mordred, half disappointed and half
elated, was nevertheless wholly puzzled. What could be the urgent
business that was forcing the King to change his plans? Only
yesterday he had spoken of sending Mordred with the embassy. Now it
was to be Gawain. And Mordred doubted the wisdom of that choice.
His half-brother would be sailing over with the hope of some sort
of action; he would be disappointed, not to say angry, to find
himself taking part in a peaceable deputation. But Arthur seemed
sure. Speaking now in answer to some question of Hoel's, he was
declaring that recently, over the affair of Queen Morgan, and
during the past months in Orkney, and finally in the moderate tone
he was now taking over Gareth's killer, Bedwyr, Gawain had shown
himself to have acquired a certain steadiness, and would find the
adventure on foreign soil, though it might prove merely to be a
diplomatic mission, a rewarding experience.

In which Arthur, as seemed his fate
whenever he had to deal with Morgause's blood and brood, was
mistaken. Even as he spoke, Gawain and his young cronies, while
their ship neared the Breton coast, were busily burnishing up their
war weapons, and talking eagerly of the fighting to
come.

Later Arthur, having bidden Hoel good
night, bore Mordred off with him to his own apartments for the
promised talk.

It was a long talk, lasting well into
the night. The King spoke first of the message that had caused his
change of plan. It was a letter from the Queen. She gave no
details, but confessed herself far from happy in her increasingly
precarious role. She reported that Duke Constantine, having removed
to Caerleon with his train of knights, had announced his intention
of proceeding to Camelot "as more fitting for one ruling the High
Kingdom." The Queen had sent begging him to hold to what Arthur had
bidden, but his reply had been "eager and intemperate."

"I fear what may happen," she had
written. "Already I have had reports that in Caerleon, far from
holding his force there at the disposal of the Council, he acts and
speaks like one already ruling in his own right, or as sole and
rightful deputy of the High King. My lord Arthur, I look daily for
your return. And I live in fear of what may come if some ill should
befall you or your son."

Reading the letter, Mordred was eager
to go. He did not pause, did not want, to analyze his feelings
towards Duke Constantine. Enough that the man still acted as if
Arthur had no son of his body, let alone the blood-kin of his
half-sister's son Gawain. And as Arthur had said, the stories of
some of Constantine's doings augured ill for the kingdom. He was a
stark ruler and a cruel man, and the note of fear in Guinevere's
letter was easy to interpret.

Any regret Mordred might have felt at
leaving the King's side vanished. This regency, brief though it
might be, was the time he had wanted, a trial period when he would
rule alone with full authority. He had no fear that Constantine,
once he, Mordred, was back in Camelot and at the head of the royal
bodyguard there, would persist in his arrogant pretensions.
Mordred's return, with the King's authority and the King's seal,
should be enough. "And you will find there," said the King,
touching the pouch of letters that bore his seal, "my mandate to
raise whatever force you may think needful, to keep the peace at
home, and to make ready in case of trouble here."

So, in mutual trust, they talked,
while the night wore away, and the future seemed set as fair behind
the clouded present as the dawn that slowly gilded the sea's edge
beyond the windows. If Morgause's ghost had drifted across the
chamber in the hazy light and whispered to them of the doom
foretold so many years ago, they would have laughed, and watched
for the phantasm to blow away on their laughter. But it was the
last time that they would ever meet, except as enemies.

At length the King came back to the
subject of the coming embassy. Hoel had high hopes of its success,
but Arthur, though he had concealed it from his cousin, was less
sanguine.

"It may come to a fight yet," he said.
"Quintilianus is serving a new master, and is himself on trial, and
though I know little enough about those surrounding him, I have a
suspicion that he will be afraid to lose credit with that master by
treating with us. He, too, needs to make a show of
strength."

"A dangerous situation. Why do you not
go yourself, sir?"

Arthur smiled. "You might say that
that, too, is a question of credit. If I go as an ambassador I
cannot take my troops, and if the embassy should fail, then I am
seen to fail. I am here in Brittany as a deterrent, not as a
weapon...I dare not be seen to lose, Mordred."

"You cannot lose."

"That is the belief that will subdue
Quintilianus and the hopefuls of the new Rome."

Mordred hesitated, then said frankly:
"Forgive me, but there's something else. Let me speak now as your
deputy, if not your son. Can you trust Gawain and the young men on
a mission of this kind? If they go with Valerius and Bors, I think
there may be fighting."

"You may be right. But we shall lose
little by it. Sooner or later there must be fighting, and I would
rather fight here, against an enemy not yet fully prepared, than on
my own borders the other side of the Narrow Sea. If the Franks hold
the line with us, then we may well succeed in deterring this
emperor. If they do not, then for the present the worst that can
happen is that we lose Brittany. In that case we take our people,
those who are left, back to their homeland, and find ourselves once
again embattled behind our blessed seas." He looked away, staring
into the heart of the fire, and his eyes were grave. "But in the
end it will all come again, Mordred. Not in my time, nor, please
God, in yours, but before your sons are old men it will come. It
will not be an easy task, whoever attempts it. First the Narrow
Sea, and then the ramparts of the Saxon and English kingdoms,
manned by men fighting for their own lands. Why do you think I have
been determined to let the Saxons own their settled lands? Men
fight for what is theirs. And by the time our shores are seriously
threatened, I shall have Cerdic on my side."

"I see. I wondered why you did not
seem more worried about the embassy."

"We need the time it may buy for us.
If it fails we fight now. As simple as that. Now it grows late, so
to finish our business." He reached a hand towards the table where
a letter lay, sealed with the dragon seal. "Invincible or not, I
have given thought to the chance of my death. Here is a letter,
which in that event you are to use. In it I have informed the
Council that you are my heir. Duke Constantine knows well that my
oath to his father was only valid in default of a son of my body.
Like it or not, he must accept it. I have written to him, too, a
letter that he cannot gainsay. With it comes a grant of land; his
dukedom will include the lands that came to me with my first wife,
Guenever of Cornwall. I hope he will be content. If he is not" -- a
glint in the King's eyes as he glanced up at his son -- "then that
will be your affair, not mine. Watch him, Mordred. If I live, then
I myself will call the Council as soon as I return to Camelot, and
all this will be settled publicly once and for all."