Legacy: Arthurian Saga (41 page)

The officer showed a hand, palm up.
"When I said 'nothing,' sir, I meant only what you might expect.
These. And we got as near to the bottom as made no difference; you
could see down to the rock and the mud, but we dredged the last
bucket up, for good measure. The foreman will bear me
out."

The foreman stepped forward then, and
I saw he had a full bucket in his hand, the water slopping over the
brim.

"Sir, it's true, there's naught there.
You could see for yourself if you came up, sir, right to the
bottom. But better not try it, the tunnel's awash with mud now, and
not fit. But I brought the last pailful out, for you to see
yourself."

With the word, he tipped the full
bucket out, deluging the already sodden ground, and the water
sloshed down to fill the puddle round the base of the royal
standard. With the mud that had lain in the bottom came a few
broken fragments of stone, and a silver coin.

The King turned then to look at me. It
must be a measure of what had happened in the cavern yesterday that
the priests still kept silent, and the King was clearly waiting,
not for an excuse, but an explanation.

God knows I had had plenty of time to
think, all through that long, cold silent vigil, but I knew that
thinking would not help me. If he was with me, he would come now. I
looked down at the puddles where the last red light of sunset lay
like blood. I looked up across the crag where stars could be seen
already stabbing bright in the clear east. Another gust of wind was
coming; I could hear it tearing the tops of the oaks where Cadal
would be waiting.

"Well?" said Vortigern.

I took a step forward to the edge of
the platform. I felt empty still, but somehow I would have to
speak. As I moved, the gust struck the pavilion, sharp as a blow.
There came a crack, a flurry of sound like hounds worrying a deer,
and a cry from someone, bitten short. Above our heads the King's
banner whipped streaming out, then, caught in its ropes, bellied
like a sail holding the full weight of the wind. The shaft, jerked
sharply to and fro in soft ground loosened further by the thrown
bucketful of water, tore suddenly free of the grabbing hands, to
whirl over and down. It slapped flat on the sodden field at the
King's feet.

The wind fled past, and in its wake
was a lull. The banner lay flat, held heavy with water. The white
dragon on a green field. As we watched, it sagged slowly into a
pool, and the water washed over it. Some last faint ray from the
sunset bloodied the water. Someone said fearfully, "An omen," and
another voice, loudly,

"Great Thor, the Dragon is down!"
Others began to shout. The standard-bearer, his face ashen, was
already stooping, but I jumped off the platform in front of them
all and threw up my arms.

"Can any doubt the god has spoken?
Look up from the ground, and see where he speaks again!"

Across the dark east, burning white
hot with a trail like a young comet, went a shooting star, the star
men call the firedrake or dragon of fire.

"There it runs!" I shouted. "There it
runs! The Red Dragon of the West! I tell you, King Vortigern, waste
no more time here with these ignorant fools who babble of blood
sacrifice and build a wall of stone for you, a foot a day! What
wall will keep out the Dragon? I, Merlin, tell you, send these
priests away and gather your captains round you, and get you away
from the hills of Wales to your own country. King's Fort is not for
you. You have seen the Red Dragon come tonight, and the White
Dragon lie beneath him. And by God, you have seen the truth! Take
warning! Strike your tents now, and go to your own country, and
watch your borders lest the Dragon follow you and burn you out! You
brought me here to speak, and I have spoken. I tell you, the Dragon
is here!"

The king was on his feet, and men were
shouting. I pulled the black cloak round me, and without hurrying
turned away through the crowd of workmen and soldiers that milled
round the foot of the platform. They did not try to stop me. They
would as soon, I suppose, have touched a poisonous snake. Behind
me, through the hubbub, I heard Maugan's voice and thought for a
moment they were coming after me, but then men crowded off the
platform, and began thrusting their way through the mob of workmen,
on their way back to the encampment. Torches tossed. Someone
dragged the sodden standard up and I saw it rocking and dripping
where presumably his captains were clearing a path for the King. I
drew the black cloak closer and slipped into the shadows at the
edge of the crowd. Presently, unseen, I was able to step round
behind the pavilion.

The oaks were three hundred paces away
across the dark field. Under them the stream ran loud over smooth
stones.

Cadal's voice said, low and urgent:
"This way." A hoof sparked on stone. "I got you a quiet one," he
said, and put a hand under my foot to throw me into the
saddle.

I laughed a little. "I could ride the
firedrake itself tonight. You saw it?"

"Aye, my lord. And I saw you, and
heard you, too."

"Cadal, you swore you'd never be
afraid of me. It was only a shooting star."

"But it came when it came."

"Yes. And now we'd better go while we
can go. Timing is all that matters, Cadal."

"You shouldn't laugh at it, master
Merlin."

"By the god," I said, "I'm not
laughing." The horses pushed out from under the dripping trees and
went at a swift canter across the ridge. To our right a wooded hill
blocked out the west. Ahead was the narrow neck of valley between
hill and river. "Will they come after you?"

"I doubt it." But as we kicked the
beasts to a gallop between ridge and river a horseman loomed, and
our horses swerved and shied. Cadal's beast jumped forward under
the spur. Iron rasped. A voice, vaguely familiar, said clearly:
"Put up. Friend." The horses stamped and blew. I saw Cadal's hand
on the other's rein. He sat quietly. "Whose friend?"

"Ambrosius'." I said: "Wait, Cadal,
it's the greybeard. Your name sir? And your business with me?" He
cleared his throat harshly. "Gorlois is my name, of Cornwall." I
saw Cadal's movement of surprise, and heard the bits jingle. He
still had hold of the other's rein, and the drawn dagger gleamed.
The old warrior sat unmoving. There was no sound of following
hoofs. I said slowly: "Then, sir, I should rather ask you what your
business is with Vortigern?"

"The same as yours, Merlin Ambrosius."
I saw his teeth gleam in his beard. "I came north to see for
myself, and to send word back to him. The West has waited long
enough, and the time will be ripe, come spring. But you came early.
I could have saved myself the pains, it seems."

"You came alone?" He gave a short,
hard laugh, like a dog barking. "To Vortigern?

Hardly. My men will follow. But I had
to catch you. I want news." Then, harshly: "God's grief, man, do
you doubt me? I came alone to you."

"No, sir. Let him go, Cadal. My lord,
if you want to talk to me, you'll have to do it on the move. We
should go, and quickly."

"Willingly." We set the horses in
motion. As they struck into a gallop I said over my shoulder: "You
guessed when you saw the brooch?"

"Before that. You have a look of him,
Merlin Ambrosius." I heard him laugh again, deep in his throat.
"And by God, there are times when you have a look of your
devil-sire as well! Steady now, we're nearly at the ford. It'll be
deep. They say wizards can't cross water?"

I laughed. "I'm always
sick at sea, but I can manage this." The horses plunged across the
ford unhindered, and took the next
slope at
a gallop. Then we were on the paved road, plain to see in the
flying starlight, which leads straight across the high ground to
the south.

We rode all night, with no pursuit.
Three days later, in the early morning, Ambrosius came to
land.

BOOK IV THE RED DRAGON
1

The way the chronicles tell it, you
would think it took Ambrosius two months to get himself crowned
King and pacify Britain. In fact, it took more than two
years.

The first part was quick enough. It
was not for nothing that he had spent all those years in Less
Britain, he and Uther, developing an expert striking force the like
of which had not been seen in any part of Europe since the
disbanding nearly a hundred years ago of the force commanded by the
Count of the Saxon Shore. Ambrosius had, in fact, modeled his own
army on the force of the Saxon Shore, a marvelously mobile fighting
instrument which could live off the country and do everything at
twice the speed of the normal force. Caesar-speed, they still
called it when I was young.

He landed at Totnes
in Devon, with a fair wind and a quiet sea, and
he had hardly set up the Red Dragon when the whole West rose for
him. He was King of Cornwall and Devon before he even left the
shore, and everywhere, as he moved northwards, the chiefs and kings
crowded to swell his army. Eldol of Gloucester, a ferocious old man
who had fought with Constantine against Vortigern, with Vortigern
against Hengist, with Vortimer against both, and would fight
anywhere for the sheer hell of it, met him at Glastonbury and swore
faith. With him came a host of lesser leaders, not least his own
brother Eldad, a bishop whose devout Christianity made the pagan
wolves look like lambs by comparison, and set me wondering where he
spent the dark nights of the winter solstice. But he was powerful;
I had heard my mother speak of him with reverence; and once he had
declared for Ambrosius, all Christian Britain came with him, urgent
to drive back the pagan hordes moving steadily inland from their
landing-places in the south and east. Last came Gorlois of Tintagel
in Cornwall, straight from Vortigern's side with news of
Vortigern's hasty move out of the Welsh mountains, and ready to
ratify the oath of loyalty which, should Ambrosius be successful,
would add the whole kingdom of Cornwall for the first time to the
High Kingdom of Britain.

Ambrosius' main trouble, indeed, was
not lack of support but the nature of it. The native Britons, tired
of Vortigern, were fighting-mad to clear the Saxons out of their
country and get their homes and their own ways back, but a great
majority of them knew only guerrilla warfare, or the kind of
hit-and-ride-away tactics that do well enough to harass the enemy,
but will not hold him back for long if he means business. Moreover,
each troop came with its own leader, and it was as much as any
commander's authority was worth to suggest that they might regroup
and train under strangers. Since the last trained legion had
withdrawn from Britain almost a century before, we had fought (as
we had done before the Romans ever came) in tribes. And it was no
use suggesting that, for instance, the men of Devet might fight
beside the men of North Wales even with their own leaders; throats
would have been cut on both sides before the first trumpet ever
sounded.

Ambrosius here, as everywhere, showed
himself master. As ever he used each man for what that man's
strength was worth. He sowed his own officers broadcast among the
British -- for co-ordination, he said, no more -- and through them
quietly adapted the tactics of each force to suit his central plan,
with his own body of picked troops taking the main brunt of
attack.

All this I heard later, or could have
guessed from what I knew of him. I could have guessed, also, what
would happen the moment his forces assembled and declared him King.
His British allies clamored for him to go straight after Hengist
and drive the Saxons back to their own country. They were not
unduly concerned with Vortigern. Indeed, such power as Vortigern
had had was largely gone already, and it would have been simple
enough for Ambrosius to ignore him and concentrate on the
Saxons.

But he refused to give way to
pressure. The old wolf must be smoked out first, he said, and the
field cleared for the main work of battle. Besides, he pointed out,
Hengist and his Saxons were Northmen, and particularly amenable to
rumors and fear; let Ambrosius once unite the British to destroy
Vortigern, and the Saxons would begin to fear him as a force really
to be reckoned with. It was his guess that, given the time, they
would bring together one large force to face him, which might then
be broken at one blow.

They had a council about it, at the
fort near Gloucester where the first bridge crosses the Sefern
river. I could picture it, Ambrosius listening and weighing and
judging, and answering with that grave easy way of his, allowing
each man his say for pride; then taking at the end the decision he
had meant to take from the beginning, but giving way here and there
on the small things, so that each man thought he had made a bargain
and got, if not what he wanted, then something near it, in return
for a concession by his commander.

The upshot was that they marched
northwards within the week, and came on Vortigern at
Doward.

Doward is in the valley of the Guoy,
which the Saxons pronounce Way or Wye. This is a big river, which
runs deep and placid-seeming through a gorge whose high slopes are
hung with forests. Here and there the valley widens to green
pastures, but the tide runs many miles up river, and these low
meadows are often, in winter, awash under a roaring yellow flood,
for the great Wye is not so placid as it seems, and even in summer
there are deep pools where big fish lie and the currents are strong
enough to overturn a coracle and drown a man.