Arthur: Book Three of the Pendragon Cycle Page 6

  That this test should come so early was not the most fortuitous event one could have imagined, but Arthur was undaunted. Indeed, he welcomed it. “That toothless old lion has roared once too often, I tell you,” he said. “We will go and shear him for a sheep, aye?”

  With no more concern, and scarcely more preparation, the warriors rode at once to Morcant’s stronghold.

  * * *

  The Belgae are an old, old people whose tribal seat is at Venta Belgarum. Owing to an early peace with Rome, the Belgae established themselves preeminent in the region and Uintan Caestir became an important civitas. The Belgae and their city prospered and grew powerful serving the Legions.

  When the Legions left, the city shrank in upon itself—as all cities did—and the Belgae returned to the land and their former ways. But bits of the city still remained, and it was here that Morcant held his power.

  Caer Uintan had once possessed a public forum and a basilica. These had long ago been taken over by the lords of the Belgae for private use: the forum became a palace, the basilica a hall. For all his British blood, Lord Morcant styled himself a ruler of the Roman stamp.

  To walk into his palace was to enter again another time, now long past. A time more and more recalled—by those who had never seen it—with impossible grandeur and glory, a great golden age of order, prosperity, peace, and learning.

  Certainly, Morcant revelled in such belief. He lived surrounded by objects of the past, attended by ranks of servants who maintained for him the semblance of that faded era. He lived like an emperor…but an emperor in exile from his beloved empire.

  Like Londinium, Caer Uintan boasted a rampart of stone around its perimeter. In recent years a deep ditch had been dug below the wall to make it higher still. However much it had declined from its former glory, Caer Uintan was still the fortress of a powerful king.

  But its king was not there.

  Morcant was with his warband, harrying the settlements on Madoc’s borders a small distance away. By the time the rapacious lord heard about Arthur’s intervention and returned to his palace, the young Duke and his few men were already manning the ramparts of Morcant’s stronghold against him.

  In this Arthur showed the first glimmer of that martial genius that he was to exhibit time and time again in the years to come. The maneuver took Morcant completely by surprise. Well, did he really expect Arthur to meet him on the field?

  Morcant’s forces outnumbered Arthur’s fifteen to one. The young Duke’s forces could not have withstood Morcant’s in pitched combat. Though keen and determined, and lacking nothing in courage, they were green and unseasoned. And Arthur had no experience leading untried men. Indeed, young Arthur had little enough experience leading a warband of any size or description.

  Morcant hoped, I think, to belittle Arthur and defame him. He knew Arthur could not ignore the challenge, so the old lion should have expected Arthur to use what few weapons he possessed. But Morcant was the fool, truth to tell; and his foolishness had already cost the lives of more than a few good men. That folly had to be put down once for all.

  This is the way of it:

  Arthur made for Caer Uintan and found it, as he expected, virtually unprotected. Such was Morcant’s arrogance, he did not deem it a danger to leave his stronghold unguarded when he raided.

  “Oh, we had no trouble getting in,” Cai told me, delighting in every detail of the events he described. “We simply ride up as if we were expected, and, ‘What is that you say? Morcant not here? Is this any way to greet the Duke of Britain? Why, yes, go and fetch your lord. We will wait for him inside.’

  “Once inside we gather everyone—it’s mostly women and children anyway—and bring them to the hall. And Bedwyr tells them it is an offense to Morcant’s good name if they do not receive the Duke with a feast. This throws them all in a fluster, so they scurry around preparing a feast for us. It is such confusion that no one even notices Arthur has sealed the gates.”

  Cai chuckled, savoring every detail. “When Morcant learns that Arthur has come, back he storms to his fortress. But it is too late. The gates are secured and the walls manned against him. He rages for the better part of a day, but the Duke will not speak to him.

  “He would scream. Oh, how he could scream! And that son of his, Cerdic, has a mouth on him as well. But Arthur would not answer them. Instead, my lord bade me deal with them. So, I called down to him from his own walls:

  “ ‘Hail, Morcant! Hail, Cerdic! How is it that we come to you and find no one to receive us?’ I ask him. ‘As it is, we have had to prepare our own feast of welcome.’

  “And the roaring old lion answers me; he says, ‘By whose authority do you overrun my palace and stronghold?’

  “ ‘By authority of the Duke of Britain,’ I answer, ‘the very same who now sits in your chair at meat.’ Oh, he does not like this; he does not. He calls me no end of names to prove it, and he has even more for Arthur. But I pretend to ignore him.

  “ ‘Tell me, great king,’ I say to him, ‘explain to me if you can, how it is that you have come to be locked outside your own gates at your own feast? This is a wonder I would hear told throughout all Logres.’ Well, this makes him even angrier. Up he puffs, just like an adder about to strike—but there is nothing to bite. So, he begins shouting some more.

  “Cerdic is beside himself. ‘Come out and fight!’ he cries. ‘Cowards! Thieves! Let us settle this with swords!’ It is all he knows, you see. But again I make no reply.

  “Well, this goes on until sunset. I go to Arthur and ask if he means this to continue all night. ‘Yes,’ he tells me, ‘we have ridden hard and need our rest. Tell Morcant we are going to sleep now, and not to make so much noise.’ ” Cai chortled at the audacity of it.

  “So back to the rampart I go and tell Morcant what the Duke has said. Does this make him happy, Pelleas? No, it does not. He screams like a pig when the knife goes in. He is all alather, and his men are beginning to laugh—which only makes it worse for him, you see.

  “But what does Morcant expect? So, we leave him there for the night and next morning I go to see what he is about. There he is, red-eyed and temper-twisted; I believe he spent the night in the saddle cursing! ‘You have given me no choice,’ he cries. ‘I have laid siege to my own stronghold.’ And indeed, his men are ranged without the walls as if to keep us from escaping.

  “He thinks he is being clever with this, but when I tell Arthur what Morcant has done, Arthur only laughs and calls for someone to bring him a torch. Out into the yard we march, and there the Duke sets fire to one of the storehouses. Do you believe it? Pelleas, it is God’s truth I am telling!

  “And when the flames are set, says Arthur, ‘Now let us go see if Morcant will speak more civilly to his servant, or whether his sharp tongue will cost him his fine palace.’ So that is what we do.

  “On the wall, up speaks Arthur, ‘Greetings, my king. I hear that you have been calling for me. Forgive me, but I have had many things on my mind, what with one thing and another.’ This he says as sweet as you please—the right innocent is Arthur.

  “ ‘Do not think you can escape punishment, boy!’ So bellows Morcant. ‘Aurelius’ bastard or no, I mean to have your head on a spike where you stand.’

  “The old fool is foaming mad, and I am beginning to think we have made a grave mistake. Some of the men are clasping their swords and muttering to one another—they can be forgiven, because they do not know Arthur. Still, it is a tight place and no mistake.

  “ ‘Is this the hospitality you are so widely renowned for?’ asks Arthur. Ha! It is and well he knows it!” Cai crowed. Then, rubbing his hands in glee, he continued, “Well, by now smoke is starting to rise in plumes from the yard behind. Morcant sees it, and sees the torch in Arthur’s hand—Arthur is still holding it, you see. ‘What have you done!’ the king demands. ‘What is burning?’

  “ ‘Someone appears to have been rather careless with this torch,’ says Arthur. ‘A shame, too, for now I do not know where
I shall sleep tonight,’ he tells him—for all it is barely daylight! You should have seen Morcant’s face—a rare sight, I tell you.

  “ ‘My palace!’ screams Morcant. His face is blue-black with venom now; he is bloated with it. ‘You are burning my palace!’ His eyes bulge as he stares at the smoke.

  “ ‘Yes,’ says Arthur in a voice hard as cold steel, ‘I am burning your palace. There is but one way to save it: end your war with Madoc and Bedegran, and pay me tribute.’

  “ ‘The devil take you!’ cries Morcant. ‘No one dictates terms to me!’

  “Arthur turns and hands the torch to Bedwyr and says, ‘Take this to the stables and stores. See if they leap as quick to the flame as Morcant’s hall.’ So Bedwyr obliges,” laughed Cai. “He is only too eager to please.

  “Morcant hears this, of course. And he cannot believe his ears. ‘No! No!’ he screams, just like that, losing all command.

  “But Arthur heeds him not.” Cai shook his head in admiration. “He is fearless, Arthur is.”

  “What happened next?” I asked, relishing his story immensely.

  “Well…” Cai took a long draught of his beer. “…Morcant orders his men to attack. Cerdic leads them. But what can they do? They beat on the gates with the pommels of their swords. Some of them have cut down a small tree, and they try with that to break in. But their hearts are not in it.

  “Arthur knows this, so he tells us not to stone them. ‘Let be,’ he says. ‘Our sword brothers are confused. Do not hurt them.’

  “Betimes, the smoke is rolling thick and black now. Bedwyr has not actually set fire to the stores, but has dumped a quantity of grain into the yard and is burning that, you see, so it makes a deal of smoke. They have put a wagon or two full of hay into it as well, I think, and…!” Cai broke off to laugh. “…he has brought some horses to stand nearby. The horses are afraid of the fire, of course, and they start raising a fearful din.

  “Morcant hears this—how can he help it? ‘Stop! Stop!’ he cries. ‘I will do as you ask. Name your tribute,’ he roars; he can hardly spit out the words, he is so raged. Cerdic howls like a dog gone mad.

  “ ‘Thirty of your warriors,’ Arthur tells him.

  “ ‘Never!’ King Morcant bellows.

  “ ‘Fifty then,’ the Duke replies.

  “ ‘Go you to the pit, whore spawn!’ is Morcant’s answer.

  “ ‘Cai, I do not think Lord Morcant believes that we are in earnest. Take you a torch to his chambers and treasury,’ Arthur orders. He gazes down upon the writhing snake below and says, ‘Fortunately, we find no end of things to burn.’

  “And I make ready to do as I am bid. Well, Morcant is hearing this with his mouth open. He cannot believe what his ears are telling him. Still, he does not say anything, so I am beginning to think that he is stubborn enough to let it all go up in flames just to spite Arthur.

  “But just as I leave the wall, I hear him shouting again. ‘Stop! Stop!’ he cries. ‘I will do it!’

  “I know better than to trust Morcant. I imagine him letting us think we are safe away and then turning on us the moment we show our backs. But Arthur has already thought of this, you see. So he says to Morcant, ‘Very well, you had better come in and tend to this fire before your palace is a heap of ashes.’ And he orders a gate to be opened.”

  “How did he keep Morcant from overwhelming you all when they came in?” I asked, thinking that this was precisely what Morcant would do.

  Cai threw back his head and laughed. “We let them in but one at a time and took their arms as they came through,” Cai replied. “Oh, he was canny, was Arthur. He took sword and spear, and issued jug and jar—to fight the fire, you see. By the time Morcant gains entrance, his men are busy fighting the flames, and their weapons lie in a heap in the yard.

  “Morcant was mad enough to bite the heads off snakes, but even he saw the futility of attacking Arthur alone. He boiled about like a caldron left on the hearth too long, but he did not raise blade against us. I think he hoped to catch us in a mistake later on.” Cai’s voice lowered to a tone approaching reverence. “But Arthur was Morcant’s master long before Caer Uintan’s flames sprouted.”

  “How did you get out alive?” I wondered. “It was a dangerous game Arthur played.”

  “Oh, it is a marvel indeed,” Cai agreed. “In the end we simply rode out the way we rode in—but there were more of us by fifty, mind. For the Duke took his tribute from Morcant’s best warriors.

  “ ‘Cai,’ he says to me, ‘you and Bedwyr choose out the best from among them. But mark you well: take only young men who have no kinsmen among those we leave behind.’ And this we did.”

  I too marvelled at the shrewdness of it, as incisive as it was brazen. It took courage, yes, but it also took a rare and ready wit. Fifteen years old and well along to becoming a tactician the likes of the legendary Macsen Wledig. Arthur had ridden out with twenty-two and returned with seventy-two. He had increased the size of his warband threefold and more—and not a drop of blood spilled!

  “See, by taking only the younger men—men with no ties of kinship to any of Morcant’s,” Cai explained, “the Duke gained men he could command as his alone. They would not be looking to return to Morcant, and would not hesitate to fight against Morcant if pressed to it at need.” He paused and added, “Though truth be told, Arthur could have had them all. Any man among them would have followed him without so much as a backward glance. I am telling you the warriors did not love Morcant.”

  All this Cai related upon their triumphant return. And the same tale was told Merlin in turn. “Well done,” said Merlin. “Oh, very well done, indeed. Mark me, Pelleas, Arthur has won more than renown with this deed. With this he has won as many men as have ears to hear it!”

  Perhaps. But for the present, Arthur had a problem housing and feeding the men he already had. Whatever else, tripling his warband was a costly maneuver. In summer they could hunt, of course, but during the long winter—when there was nothing to be done but repair weapons and wait for spring—the food would simply vanish. Little wonder we wasted not a moment sending out demands for tribute to the kings who had promised to support us.

  That summer was heady and hectic: a hall to raise, stores and granaries to erect, enclosures to build for cattle and horses, walls and earthworks to secure, food and supplies to collect. Fortunate indeed that Arthur had so many men; there was so much to be done that every hand was busy from dawn’s crack to dusk’s last light, and still much went undone.

  As summer faded to autumn, we waited for the wagons bearing the tribute. For with each passing day our need grew more acute, and we knew that we could not last the winter without the promised supplies. We had cattle pens, yes, and we had storehouses—but nothing to put in them. We had a hall, but not enough skins to sleep on, nor cloaks enough to keep us all warm.

  As I say, all the kings had pledged tribute for the maintenance of Britain’s warband. But when the first wagons began arriving—half-empty most of them, and the little they carried hardly worth transporting in the first place—we saw where the next battle would be fought.

  “Why are they doing this?” Arthur gestured hopelessly at the meager cargo being unloaded and trundled into the stores.

  “Keep the Dux needy and they can control him. Control him and they can rule him,” Merlin answered. “Men do not follow whom they rule.”

  “Curse them!” Arthur grew instantly livid. “I could take by force what was promised me.”

  “That would avail nothing,” Merlin soothed.

  “Then are we to starve because of them?”

  “No one will starve. Custennin and Meurig will see us through the winter, never fear.”

  “And after that? It will be long before we can get crops sown and harvested.”

  “Please!” cried Merlin. “One worry at a time, Arthur. Do not borrow tomorrow’s troubles today.”

  “We have to think about these things.”

  “Agreed, which is why I have alr
eady decided what to do.”

  Arthur kicked at the dirt with his boot. “Then why do you let me take on so? Do you enjoy watching me work myself into a sweat?”

  “If you will stop raving for a moment, I will tell you what is to be done.”

  Which is how I came to find myself aboard a ship sailing across the sea called Muir Nicht on my way to Armorica.

  6

  I had never been on a ship before, and discovered sea travel most unnerving and disagreeable. Though the sea remained calm, the ceaseless motion—rising, falling, rolling side to side—made me feel as if I were wine-drunk and riding an unbroken colt. The crossing took the whole of one day and most of another, and never was a man more happy to espy those dust-brown hills of Armorica than I.

  Gleaming darkly in the ruddy dusk, bold red-gray banks of clouds towered high above and twilight stars already showed overhead. I saw those hills and I felt as if I had spent all my life on that cramped boat and knew land only as a rumored thing contrived by seafarers. The miracle—Great Light, the relief!—of that landfall brought the mist to my eyes, I tell you.

  Merlin bore the journey without difficulty. He talked to the ship’s pilot and crew, gleaning all he could from them. In this way he learned how affairs stood in Armorica, so that we should not be surprised at our reception there.

  Upon making landfall, Merlin hired a messenger to take word of our arrival to the lord of the realm—a land called Benowyc. We stayed the night in the seaside settlement favored by the ship’s men. The people of this port were friendly, and well disposed to serving the needs of travelers. Hence, we were well provided with good food and better wine than I had tasted before. They talked freely of the events of Gaul, though they considered themselves apart from it—more a part of Britain, as the likeness of our shared tongue confirmed.