Legacy: Arthurian Saga (95 page)

The ten men sat round the fire, while
Llyd and I, a little apart from them, talked.

"These soldiers," I said, "who wanted
me followed. What sort of men were they?"

"Five men, soldiers fully armed, but
with no blazon."

"Five? One of them red-haired, big, in
a brown jerkin and a blue cloak? And another on a pied horse?" This
was the only horse recognizable to Stilicho, who had glimpsed its
white patches in the murk of the grove. They must have had a fifth
man, left on watch at the foot of the valley. "What did they say to
you?"

But Llyd was shaking his head. "There
was no man such as you describe, nor any such horse. The leader was
a fair man, thin as a hayfork, with a beard. They asked us only to
watch for a man on a strawberry roan mare, who rode alone, on
business that they had no knowledge of. But they said their master
would pay well to know where he went."

He threw the bone he had been gnawing
over his shoulder, wiped his mouth, and met my eyes straightly. "I
said I would not ask your business, but tell me this much, Myrddin
Emrys. Why is the son of the High King Ambrosius and the kin of
Uther Pendragon hiding alone in the forest while Urien's men hunt
him, wishing him ill?"

"Urien's men?"

There was deep satisfaction in his
voice. "Ah. Some things your magic will not tell you. But in these
valleys, no one moves but we know of it. No one comes here but he
is marked and followed until we know his business. We know Urien of
Gore. These men were his, and spoke the tongue of his
country."

"Then you can tell me about Urien," I
said. "I know of him; a small king of a small country, brother by
marriage to Lot of Lothian. There is no reason that I know why he
should hunt me. I am on King's business, and Urien has no quarrel
with me or with the King. He and his brother of Lothian are allies
of Rheged and of the King. Has Urien, then, become the creature of
some other man? Duke Cador?"

"No. Only of King Lot."

I was silent. The fire roared and
above us the forest stirred and ruffled. The wind was dying. I was
thinking savagely. That Crinas and his gang were Cador's I had no
doubt; now it seemed that there had been other spies from the
north, watching and waiting, and that somehow they had stumbled
across my trail. Urien, Lot's jackal. And Cador. Two of Uther's
most powerful allies, his right hand and his left; and the moment
the King began to fail they had spies out looking for the
prince...The pattern broke and reformed as a reflection in a pool
reforms after a rock has been thrown into it; but not the same
pattern; the rock is there in the center, changing everything. King
Lot, the betrothed of Morgian the High King's daughter. King
Lot.

I said at length: "I heard you say
these men had ridden on north. Were they going straight to report
to Urien, or still trying to find and follow me?"

"To follow you. They said they would
cast farther north to find some trace of you. If they find none
they will seek us out at a place we arranged with them."

"And will you meet them
there?"

He spat sideways, not troubling to
answer.

I smiled. "I shall go on tomorrow.
Will you guide me to a path that the troopers will not
know?"

"Willingly, but to do that I must know
where you are making for."

"I am following a dream I had," I told
him. He nodded. These folk of the hills find this reasonable. They
work by instinct like animals, and they read the skies and wait for
portents. I thought for a minute, then asked him: "You spoke of
Macsen Wledig. When he left these islands to go to Rome, did any of
your people go with him?"

"Yes. My own great-grandfather led
them under Macsen."

"And came back?"

"Indeed."

"I told you I had had a dream. I
dreamed that a dead king spoke to me, and told me that before I
could raise the living one I had a quest to fulfill. Did you ever
hear what became of Macsen's sword?"

He threw up a hand in a sign I had
never seen before. But I recognized what it was, a strong sign
against strong magic. He muttered to himself, some rune in words I
did not know, then, hoarsely, to me: "So. It has come. Arawn be
praised, and Bilis, and Myrddin of the heights. I knew these were
great matters. I felt it on my skin as a man feels the rain
falling. So this is what you seek, Myrddin Emrys?"

"This is what I seek. I have been
East, and was told there that the sword, with the best of the
Emperor's treasure, came back to the West. I think I have been led
here. Can you help me further?"

He shook his head slowly. "No. Of that
matter I knew nothing. But there are those in the forest who can
help you. The word was handed down. That is all I can tell
you."

"Your great-grandfather said
nothing?"

"I did not say that. I will tell you
what he said." He dropped into the singsong voice that the
tale-tellers use, I knew he would give me the exact words; these
people hand words down from generation to generation, changeless
and as precisely worked as the chasing on a cup. "The sword was
laid down by a dead Emperor, and shall be lifted by a living one.
It was brought home by water and by land, with blood and with fire,
and by land and water shall it go home, and lie hidden in the
floating stone until by fire it shall be raised again. It shall not
be lifted except by a man rightwise born of the seed of
Britain."

The chanting stopped. The others round
the fire had stopped their talking to listen; I saw eyes glint
white, and hands move in the ancient sign. Llyd cleared his throat,
spat again, and said gruffly: "That's all. I told you it would be
no help."

"If I am to find the sword," I said,
"help will come, no fear of that. And now I know I am getting near
to it. Where the song is, the sword cannot be far away. And after I
have found it...I think you know where I am going."

"Where else should Myrddin Emrys be
going, secretly and on a winter journey, except to the Prince's
side?"

I nodded. "He is beyond your
territory, Llyd, but not beyond the eyes of your people. Do you
know where he is?"

"No. But we will."

"I'm content that you should. Watch me
if you wish, and when you see where I am going, watch him for me.
This is a king, Llyd, who will deal as justly with the Old Ones of
the hills as ever he does with the kings and bishops who meet in
Winchester."

"We will watch him for
you."

"Then I shall go north, as I was going
before, and wait for guidance. Now, with your permission, I should
like to sleep."

"You will be safe," said Llyd. "At
first light we will see you on your way."

9

The way they showed me was a path no
better and no worse than I had followed hitherto, but it was easier
to follow by the secret signs they told me of, and it was shorter
even than keeping to the road. There were sudden twists and ascents
to narrow passes which, without the signs, I would not have
suspected of holding a way through. I would ride up some narrow,
tree-filled gorge with an apparently solid wall of mountain
straight ahead, and the sound of a torrent swelling and echoing
between the rocks; but always, when I reached it, there was the
pass, narrow and often dangerous, but clear, leading through some
(till now) invisible cleft into the steep descent beyond. So for
two days more I journeyed, seeing no one, resting little, and
keeping myself and the mare alive on what the Old Ones had given
me.

On the morning of the third day the
mare cast a shoe. As luck would have it we were in easy ground, a
ridge of smooth sheepturf between valley and valley, deserted at
this season, but smooth going. I dismounted, and led Strawberry
along the ridge, scanning the valleys below me for signs of a road,
or the smoke of a settlement. I knew roughly where I was now;
though mist and snowstorms veiled the higher crests, I had seen,
when they lifted, the white top of the great Snow Hill which holds
up the winter sky. I had ridden this way before by the road, and
recognized the shape of some of the nearer hills. I was sure that I
had not far to travel to find a road, and a smith.

I had considered trying, myself, to
remove Strawberry's other three shoes, but the going had been hard
as iron, and if I had not kept her shod, she would have been lame
long since. Besides, we were running out of food, and there was
none to find in the winter ways. I must take the risk of being seen
and recognized.

It was a still clear day of frost. At
about noon I saw the smoke of a village, and a few minutes later
the gleam of water in the valley below it. I turned the mare's head
downhill. We went gently down under the shelter of sparsely set
oaks, whose boughs still held a rustle of dead leaves. Soon I could
see, below ahead of us through the bare trunks, the grey glitter of
the river sliding between its banks.

Just above it I halted the mare at the
edge of the oak wood. No movement, no sound, except the noisy river
which drowned even the distant sound of barking dogs that marked
the village.

I was certain that I was now not far
from the course of the road. My best hope for a forge was where
road and river met. Such places are generally near a ford or a
bridge. Keeping just within the edge of the oak wood, I led
Strawberry gently on towards the north.

So we journeyed for another hour or
so, when suddenly the valley took a turn to the north-west, and
there ahead of me, joining it from a neighbor valley, ran the open
belt of green that spoke of a road. And I could hear, clear on the
winter's stillness, the metallic clang of a hammer.

There was no sign of the settlement,
but where the road met the river the woods were very thick, and I
knew that any village in these parts would be built on some hillock
or rising ground from which men might defend themselves. The smith,
in his solitary forge down by the water, need have no such fears.
Such men are too useful, and have nothing worth the taking, and
besides, there is still about them some of the old awe that hangs
over the places where roads and waters meet.

The smith himself might indeed have
been another of the Old Ones. He was a small man, bent by his
trade, but immensely broad of shoulder, with arms knotted with
muscle and covered with a pelt as thick as a bear's. His hands,
broad and cracked, were almost as black as his hair.

He looked up from his work as my
shadow fell across the doorway. I greeted him, then tied the mare
to a ring by the door and sat down to wait, glad of the heat of the
fire which was being blown to a blaze by a boy in a leather apron.
The smith answered my greeting, with a sharp stare from under his
brows, then without pausing in the rhythm of his work, went back to
his hammering. He was making a share. With a hiss of steam and the
gradual dulling of the strokes, the share slowly greyed and cooled
to its cutting edge. The smith muttered something to the boy at the
bellows, who let the air run out, then, picking up the water
bucket, left the forge. The smith, setting down his hammer,
straightened and stretched. He hooked a wine skin down from the
wall and drank, then wiped his mouth. The expert eyes ran over the
mare. "Did you bring the shoe?" I had half expected him to speak
the Old Tongue, but it was plain Welsh. "Otherwise it'll take more
time than you like to spare, I dare say. Or will I just take the
other three off?"

I grinned. "And pay me for
them?"

"I'd do it for nothing," said the
smith, showing a black-toothed grin.

I handed him the cast shoe. "Put this
back on and there's a penny in it for you."

He took the thing and examined it,
turning it slowly in those horny hands. Then he nodded, and picked
up the mare's foot.

"Going far?"

Part of a smith's payment was, of
course, whatever news his customers could give him. I had expected
this, and had a story ready. He rasped and listened, while the mare
stood quietly between us, head down and ears slack. After a while
the boy came back with a full bucket and tipped water into the tub.
He had taken a long time, and he breathed as if he had been
hurrying. If I thought about it at all, I imagined that he had
seized, boy-like, the opportunity to spend as long over the errand
as he could, and had had to hurry back. The smith made no comment,
other than to grunt at him to get back to his bellows, and soon the
fire roared up, and the shoe began to glow to red heat.

I suppose I should have been more
alert, though to be here at all was a risk I had had to take. And
there had been a chance that the troopers asking for the rider with
the strawberry mare had not passed this way. But it seemed that
they had.

What with the roar of the furnace and
the clanging hammer I heard nothing of any approach, just saw,
suddenly, the shadows between me and the doorway, then the four men
standing there. They were all armed, and they all held their
weapons ready, as if they were fully prepared to use them. Two of
them held spears, none the less deadly for being homemade, one had
a woodsman's hacking knife, its blade honed to a bright edge that
would go through living oak, and the fourth held, with some
expertness, a Roman short sword.