Chapter

12 December 537

Myrddin

King Arthur’s hands were tied in front of him, and his face was bloody and bruised. As he knelt in the snow, the king lifted his head to speak to someone behind Myrddin. Myrddin wanted to turn and look, but the dream wouldn’t let him, and then his attention was drawn to the woman crouched at the king’s feet. She turned slightly and raised her arm to protect her head, as if warding off a blow—and Myrddin saw that it was Nell.

“No!” Lost in the vision, his whole focus on protecting Nell from the man who was attacking her, Myrddin pulled his sword from its sheath and swung around, slicing the weapon through the air.

“Myrddin! What are you doing?”

Myrddin gasped, blinked, and his eyes cleared. King Arthur’s foremost captain, Geraint, had fallen backwards in the snow in his haste to escape Myrddin’s unexpected action, which could have severed Geraint’s arm at the elbow.

“I’m sorry!” Horrified at what he’d almost done, Myrddin dropped his sword and, in mimicry of King Arthur, fell to his knees.

Geraint was still staring at him, his face completely white. “You saw something, didn’t you? A vision. What did you see?” Recovering more quickly than Myrddin, he scrambled to his feet and crouched beside Myrddin, every line of his body intent on Myrddin’s response. Even at noon, it was cold enough that his breath fogged in front of him.

Myrddin passed a trembling hand over his eyes. The remnants of his vision remained, like a thin veil that hadn’t yet been pulled aside, and his soul was exposed. He could still see the pain and despair evident in Nell’s face as she begged him to save her.

With Geraint so close, Myrddin couldn’t lie. He had no intention of ever lying about his visions again. “I saw King Arthur bound and on his knees before an unknown captor. And Nell with him!”

To Myrddin’s surprise, Geraint let out a breath that was almost a laugh, and his intensity diminished. “Myrddin, the king is well. I spoke with him less than an hour ago—and your Nell is safe with Huw a few miles from here. Look there.” Geraint tipped his head to indicate a position on the other side of the Wye River, in the opposite direction from Buellt Castle, which lay behind them. “After we battered down the gate, I convinced King Arthur that Gawain and I had the siege well in hand, and we couldn’t afford to lose him to a stray arrow or a lucky blow. He’s in the command tent with Gareth, planning the next course of action. He asked that I send you to him when I found you. I believe that after you speak to the king of our victory, he will give you leave to go to Nell.”

Although the tent itself was pitched on a low hill, and thus screened from view by the trees growing along the river bank, the red dragon was just visible on its long pole above them. From now on, Myrddin would never be able to look upon Arthur’s banner with anything but utter joy. To see it flying, to know that his king lived for one more day, made the previous twenty years of dreaming worth every moment of lost sleep.

“Did he say what he wanted me for?” Myrddin said, trying to speak normally, even though he was finding the contrast between his vision and reality as impossible to reconcile as it always had been.

“Undoubtedly to bestow some new honor upon you.” Geraint smirked. Before the battle, he’d cropped his brown hair short to keep it out of his eyes, and the white slash of the old scar across his forehead stood out against his browner skin. He was taller and thinner than Myrddin. And, for all that they’d won the battle, Geraint looked older today than yesterday—and certainly older than his thirty-five years.

By contrast, until Myrddin had the vision, the knowledge that Nell waited for him—that he had a life to live when this was over—had him feeling younger than he’d felt in years.

Myrddin shook his head. “I didn’t do nearly enough, and what I did do was almost too late.”

“The king doesn’t see it that way.”

Myrddin curled his hands into fists, clenching them until the knuckles turned white. He didn’t know what was happening to him, but the power of his vision had been straight out of the ancient tales of Wales, which told of seers and saints who advised and admonished kings with their foretelling of the future. “I saw him, Geraint.”

It was one thing to have dreamt of King Arthur’s death for twenty years. At least it was the same dream every time. And because it had turned out to be a true seeing—and one that had brought him and Nell together—Myrddin had been grateful for it in the end.

It was quite another thing, however, to find himself overcome with a different vision entirely—and terrifying to think that more visions were in store for him. He knew the fate of those cursed with the sight. Eventually they lost the ability to distinguish between the dream world and the real one and retreated to a cave on Mt. Snowdon, to eke out the rest of their existence apart from the lives of men. He did not want that for himself.

“You’re tired.” Geraint picked up Myrddin’s discarded sword and handed it to him, hilt first. “When was the last time you slept?”

“Long enough ago that the castle Nell and I stayed at after leaving Brecon is a faint memory,” Myrddin admitted. “I am tired, but Geraint, this was a vision, just like before. You don’t have to believe me, but it was as real to me as you are right now.”

At Geraint’s pitying look, Myrddin turned his head away, and his eyes fell instead on the body of a fallen compatriot. He leaned over to pick up the tail of the dead man’s cloak and used it to clean the snow from his sword.

Then Myrddin gestured towards the castle. “Where are we with the defenders? Last I heard, a dozen Saxons had barricaded themselves in the guardroom.”

“The debate is whether to leave them to starve or to fire the door and haul them out. Gawain is waiting to hear of my conference with the king before deciding,” Geraint said.

“Let them rot,” Myrddin said. “They can’t get out, and why ruin a good door?”

“That’s what King Arthur said.” Geraint held out a hand to Myrddin, who’d remained kneeling in the snow to mask the weakness in his legs. “Your brother, Deiniol, is with him, by the way. He survived the battle too.”

Instead of correcting Geraint—Deiniol was Myrddin’s foster brother, not his blood brother—Myrddin took Geraint’s hand, grunting as he rose to his feet. He supposed he no longer wished death on Deiniol. He didn’t care enough about him for that. Last night he’d even pitied him a little.

Once on his feet, Myrddin gave Geraint a nod and set off towards Cadfarch, who was picketed by the ford that would take him across the Wye River. Geraint might pity him even more for his haste, but Myrddin had dallied in the snow long enough. He needed to see the king for himself, and he had come too far to be put off with easy assurances, even if they came from King Arthur’s right hand man.

“Myrddin—” This time when Geraint said Myrddin’s name there was exasperation in his voice, but then Geraint’s feet thudded in the packed snow behind Myrddin, and he fell into step beside him. “Before I speak to Gawain, I will come with you to see King Arthur.”

“I thought he was well-guarded, so I had nothing to worry about?” Myrddin picked up his pace.

“You just had a vision of the king’s capture. Obviously my instinct is to dismiss what you saw as the imaginations of an exhausted warrior. But given what happened yesterday and that you have the sight, I have thought better of it. Who am I to ignore the word of Myrddin?”

By contrast, now that he was moving, Myrddin was feeling steadier, and the vision was fading. If he hadn’t just related what he’d seen to Geraint, he might have been able to dismiss it outright as Geraint initially had. Still, Myrddin carried his sword bare in his hand, just in case.

They mounted their horses, trotted towards the small company of soldiers guarding the ford across the Wye, and passed through them with hardly more than another lifted hand from Geraint—though as Cadfarch entered the water, one of the men gave Myrddin a real bow and said, “My lord.”

Myrddin shivered. He could almost accommodate being a seer more easily than being a lord. He’d never been lord to anyone and hardly deserved the title now. He was a landless knight from an unknown house, risen to the station he now possessed by the strength of his arm and the grace of King Arthur. Another shiver went through him—this time from the cold. He was wet to his knees from kneeling in the melting snow, and from his sweaty undertunic, which had cooled around his torso under his armor, leaving him clammy.

“Is Lord Cedric’s young captain, Godfrid, about?” Myrddin said as Cadfarch picked his way across the rocks. The ford was a good one, but it was two hundred feet wide, and one misstep could break a horse’s fetlock.

Geraint guffawed. “He and his company took out an entire troop of Agravaine’s men all by themselves.”

“I thought I saw them over to the right,” Myrddin said. “I’m delighted Godric decided to join us, but I’m also glad he had sense enough not to fly Cedric’s banner.”

“Though he hated not flying the swans, he understood the step he was taking,” Geraint said. “Once he fought beside us under Cedric’s colors, there would be no going back for his lord, and that wasn’t his decision to make. I told him that if Lord Cedric was truly loyal to Arthur now, fighting under the king’s banner should be honor enough for him, as it is for all of us.”

Myrddin managed a mocking laugh. “I don’t see how Cedric could ever have fought for Modred. He may be more pragmatic than I’d like, but he has honor—enough to have won the loyalty of men like Godric.”

“And Huw,” Geraint said.

Myrddin’s eyes brightened at the mention of his son, though he was glad that neither Huw nor Nell had witnessed the battle and more glad than he could say that they hadn’t been here to participate in the grisly task he’d set himself before the vision—and Geraint—had overtaken him. He’d been looking for survivors among his own men and among the Saxons too. It was heart-breaking work, monotonous in its desperation as he looked into familiar face after familiar face that would never smile again. Had Nell been here, she would have insisted on searching with him. She was a more knowledgeable healer than he, and while he could have used her, she was well out of the fighting, safe at Edgar’s manor to the north of Buellt.

If King Arthur really gave him leave, Myrddin would set out to find them before dark, and when he did find them, all would be right with the world again. He just had to survive the next few hours first. It was the memory of Nell’s parting touch and the knowledge that he would be able to hold her again that was giving him the strength to carry on despite his fear for the wellbeing of everyone he loved.

And for all that the field behind him was full of dead men, the Welsh had suffered far fewer losses than the Saxons.

Myrddin had initially been concerned that Agravaine’s death would have excited the Saxons to greater heights of self-sacrifice, but it turned out that Myrddin had done the Saxons a favor. Although Cedric had insisted that Agravaine was unpopular, Myrddin hadn’t counted on how thoroughly Agravaine had been hated by those he led. For some, to lose Agravaine, even if he was Modred’s foremost commander, while at the same time murdering King Arthur (as they believed they had done), had piled good news on good news.

King Arthur’s scouts had reported that the subsequent celebrations had gone on well into the night. Buellt Castle was too small to hold the majority of Agravaine’s army, so many had camped between the castle and the river. Most had been asleep when the Welsh forces had attacked at first light, bypassing the castle in the first forays in favor of engaging the men outside who defended it.

Agravaine’s second-in-command led them, but with Agravaine himself dead, his men lacked the force of his will to keep them together. Because the Saxons truly believed they’d murdered King Arthur the night before, the dawn attack surprised them completely, and they struggled to raise an adequate defense. Myrddin had been in the forefront of the resurgent Welsh army and had been among the first to fall upon Agravaine’s men as they slept off their drunken revelry of the night before. It had felt almost dishonorable to kill them in cold blood.

Almost.

And then, in the heat of the fighting, King Arthur threw off his helmet and pointed his sword at the sky, calling his men to him. In that moment, the clouds parted, and a ray of sunlight shone down upon the king’s gray head, glinting off his mail and enveloping him and his sword in a halo of light. The heavens themselves were signaling their approval of his right to rule.

Welsh and Saxon had been stunned into momentary inaction. Then the sign from God spurred the Welsh to greater heights of bravery, and many (though not all) of the Saxons turned tail and ran. That single ray had been a precursor of what was to come. By noon, the clouds had cleared and the sun was bathing the Welsh victors in gossamer light, which followed Myrddin and Geraint now across the ford.

Geraint shrugged. “Cedric served Modred because he told himself it was foolish to win the battle only to lose the war. He’s been playing a long game, and I don’t pretend to understand his ultimate goal.”

“Cedric wants the power to care for his lands and people. I can respect him for that, even if I wish he’d been less accommodating of Modred up until now.”

Then they were up the opposite bank and heading towards King Arthur’s tent, located downstream and still screened from the ford by trees. Before they were halfway there, however, Myrddin frowned, and he urged Cadfarch faster, passing Geraint, who was only a heartbeat slower to realize that something had gone wrong.

When they entered the clearing at the bottom of the low hill where King Arthur’s men had pitched his tent, dead and wounded men greeted them, nearly a dozen, most struck with arrows. Whoever had shot them had planned the assault well, taking out the king’s men from a distance before moving in on the king himself.

Heedless of the possible threat to himself, fearful that the danger had passed, which would mean that they’d come too late, Myrddin urged Cadfarch up the hill. At the top, he threw himself from the horse without even reining in. Sword still in hand, he burst through the entrance to the tent.

One man with a gash on the side of his head lay face down in the wreckage of a table. It looked as if he’d been thrown on top of it.

Myrddin went to him and turned him so that he could see his face—and if he was alive. “Gareth!”

Gareth moaned and tried to sit up. “He’s gone. He’s gone.” The young lord was too handsome for his own good, which the new scars he would have on his right temple and on his chin would do nothing to diminish.

“How long ago?”

“I don’t know.”

Myrddin looked over at Geraint, who stood in the entrance to the tent, his face drawn and white. “Several remain alive outside, but only one can walk—he was just stunned like Gareth. I sent him for help tending to the wounded, though with the caution not to raise a general alarm until we know what we’re dealing with.”

“Good,” Myrddin said. “When exactly did you leave the king’s presence?”

“As I said earlier, it must have been nearly an hour ago,” Geraint said. “All was well then. I swear it!”

That Geraint would feel he had to justify his behavior to Myrddin revealed the true extent of his guilt at what had been done and left undone. For his part, Myrddin chastised himself for kneeling in the snow on the battlefield as long as he had, lamenting the delay it caused, and he told himself that the next time he had a vision, he wouldn’t question it nor allow anyone else to do so either.

He turned back to Gareth. “Who was it?”

“Modred’s lackey, Beorhtsige.” Gareth was crawling on his knees now and conscious enough not only to be articulate, but mocking as well. “There were more than a dozen of them and, once the arrows stopped flying, only a few of us remained to defend the king. I tried, but even I can’t fight off that many men at once.”

Not long ago, Myrddin might have questioned Gareth’s loyalty, but in recent weeks he’d proved himself a true son of Eryri—enough so that Myrddin merely held out a hand as Geraint had done to him earlier and helped Gareth to his feet.

He swayed at first, but then he steadied himself. “I’m not badly injured. I fear for the king, however, who could even now be dead.”

“No,” Myrddin said. “I saw him alive. That was what brought us here in haste.”

Gareth put a hand to his head. “It doesn’t make sense that they’d keep him alive. Only last night they had orders to kill him.”

Geraint let out burst of air. “I am as much at a loss in this as you.”

Myrddin stood looking between the two of them. “I can’t say what was in the minds of these Saxons, and I won’t pretend that the king’s abduction isn’t a disaster, but take comfort in my vision, for it seems it was a true seeing. King Arthur is a captive, not a casualty, and if he isn’t with Nell, he soon will be.”

Myrddin felt a surge of anger at the thought that the Saxons might hurt his wife, but her presence in the vision meant she was alive too.

All was not yet lost.