Arthur Imperator (12 page)

XXIV Hemlock

Guinevia
was almost insane. Myrddin knew it, but had ignored it, instead plunging into his mission to placate and recall the gods of Britain. He was occupied working with his sorcerer’s tools of vision-inducing mushrooms, mirrors of all kinds in which he might view glimpses of a road to power, a hypnotic device of dangling chimes and a heaped pile of stinking sheepskins inked with formulae, spells and charms. He had seen Guinevia’s reaction to her vision of her father’s death and had known that her mind was snapping, but had shrugged it off. 

Every
Druid had to suffer to be a conduit for the gods, he knew. This was part of the price she must pay. When she faced the debt for which her witch goddess Nicevenn would demand payment, she’d know real suffering, he thought grimly. An adept’s powers did not come cheaply…

So
he was almost indifferent when his student announced that Arthur needed her, and she must return to Chester. The nurse had gathered up their possessions, prepared the child for the journey and hired guards. Guinevia had been spending most of her time gazing into the obsidian block, seeking images as if she too was on a mission. Which, had Myrddin known it, she was. The seer was looking into the past, and viewing her own capture and trauma at the hands of the brigands. She was seeking the face of the one survivor who had led Arthur to his village. And she found it. For the first time in weeks, she smiled. The journey suddenly became urgent, and the small group had left the next day, moved by Guinevia’s pressing need to begin. All, except Myrddin, were heartened by her enthusiasm, thinking it was eagerness to see Arthur. Myrddin guessed at the truth.

Guinevia
insisted on returning to Chester by the inland route on which she had been ambushed and kidnapped, saying she wished to visit the graves of the two murdered soldiers. The truth was, she wanted to travel close to the abductors’ village. She had psychically seen the lone surviving brigand living near it, existing in a stone bothy despite the winter, and she had a plan for him.

The escort soldiers found the brigand sleeping under several old sheepskins and dragged him out shivering and half naked. Guinevia smiled at him. “Do you remember me?” she said, “Do you recall taking me when I was protecting my baby? Do you remember my pleas for mercy?”

The
man shook his head. “No lady, I did not do anything.”

Guinevia
smiled again. “Oh, but you did,” she murmured. “Tie him to that,” she ordered, waving to a nearby conifer. She fished in her saddlebag, and gestured to the nurse to move herself and the toddler Milo away a short distance. “He should not watch this,” she said casually.

The
brigand was fastened. “Hold back his head,” she commanded, and a guard yanked the man painfully by his lank hair. “Open his mouth, keep it open.” It took a couple of broken teeth before the wretch was secured, head tilted up, a stick of wood jammed between his jaws and lashed behind his neck. Guinevia held up two small flagons of Roman glass, stoppered with silver. “This one,” she explained, “comes from a purple-belled flower, a pretty thing called ‘Witch’s Gloves,’ or in your case ‘Dead Man’s Bells.’ It will make your heart beat faster and you will see haloes around the objects you view, but it will not kill you quickly. You will have great pains in your gut, you will perhaps vomit and foul yourself. You will suffer.”

She
held up the other flask of delicate green glass. “This is an element found in volcanoes, a poison from gold, and I have added essences from almonds and apple seeds to its pretty crystals. It will stop your heart in moments, and you will pray to receive it, to take away the agony of the first of your fatal drinks.”

She
passed the second flask to a nervous soldier, who held it gingerly. “Time for you to try on a witch’s glove,” she said quietly, as she poured the hemlock solution down the captive’s throat. He choked and gagged, but the mixture went down. Guinevia watched with satisfaction. “Let me help you breathe better,” she said, slipping a small knife into his nostril and slicing outwards. The man screamed at the pain, then screamed again as she slit the other nostril. “Just so you can experience the feelings of pain and helplessness,” she said amiably. “It’s an education for you. We’ve all had to undergo it.” The man writhed, sobbing through his fastened jaws.

The
seer stepped back to watch. Blood from his mutilated nose ran down the victim’s chin and chest, and his abdomen heaved with cramps. He groaned and struggled against his bonds but was held fast, and gradually his efforts weakened. Suddenly, Guinevia seemed to tire of the spectacle. Briskly, she took the second flask, the arsenic solution, from the guard. “Time for you to go,” she said conversationally to the dying man, and held the flask over his upturned face to tip its contents down his throat. In just moments, his face and hands went blue, his tongue seemed to balloon past the wooden stick that held his jaws open, and his destroyed nose bubbled fresh blood. The man gave out great shuddering gasps and slowly buckled into limp lifelessness. 

“Leave
him there for the crows,” the seer commanded. “They can eat him. The next one is the one whose heart I will take.” She moved to where the nurse played with Milo, picked him up, buried her face in the child’s soft neck and sobbed great, aching sobs.

“They
took so very much,” she whispered. “So much that I might never recover it.” Then she shook herself into composure. The guards, visibly frightened of their mistress, were gathered together in a loose knot. She handed the boy back to his nurse and paced to the rocky ground in front of the bothy. She ignored the suspended body and her guards and raised her face to the low, grey clouds. “Nicevenn, I have sent one of them to you. I will also send you a heart.”

Her
eyes were closed, so she did not see it, but the awed guards did. The pentagram ring on her finger pulsed with a glowing light, once, twice, five times, then faded out. The witch of the Wild Hunt had responded to her adept. Evil was present, and with it came power. Now Guinevia would take that power to Arthur.

XXV Parthian

Seasons
and years slid by as smoothly as the great rivers of my youth, and my grip on Britain was slipping away just as fast. The Saxons were growing in numbers and in the spread of territory they had over-run. They now held swathes of the hinterland behind Dover, which once was my headquarters for the fleet, but was now an isolated fortress sustained only from the sea.

I
had been forced to move the fleet away to the safety of Portus Chester, where my Saxon Shore fortifications were strong, but which I reinforced still more with constructions from the great heaps of squared stone, kiln-fired brick and the CLBR-stamped red tiles that showed they were abandoned Roman property, carrying as they did the ‘Classis Britannica Romana’ indent. They were there because like us, the Romans had made Portus their main naval base. They recognised that an effect of the sheltering island of Vectis on the surge of the Atlantic through the Narrow Sea gave the benefit of double tides each day, highly useful for ships entering and leaving. 

Additionally,
this naval centre was readily defensible, and our fleet was growing again, so I clung to the place, hoping for matters to improve. Although we kept the coast of the straits patrolled and clear, there was near-free passage further east for the Saxons to sail from Germania to the estuary of the Thames or anywhere along the eastern seaboard, and it meant that inland, all was not well with Britain. 

I
felt gloomy as I surveyed the fortress at the harbour’s head. A deep ditch and moat surrounded a square enclosure of flint and limestone, with walls twice the thickness of the height of a man and nearly four times as tall as one. The fort had bastions along each wall, and projecting corner turrets to allow archery or catapult fire down their lengths. Should enemies cross the moat, the gateways would not easily be stormed, indented as they were to trap attackers in high, three-sided stone boxes. The place was a stronghold, but I had been forced to retreat into it. This was not the way to drive out invaders.

My
withdrawal from Dover had come despite successes in battles with the incomers, but it was like struggling to hold back the sea with a single wooden bucket. In the three years since we had scrambled south to save Londinium and force the Saxons to wither in the cold for the winter, it had been one grinding campaign after another. We had lost land, men and horses, and the enemy had even tortured and murdered my captured tribune Lycaon, hanging him over a fire and roasting him to death, an act which made me swear vengeance on his killers. 

Worse,
the hatred that burned my soul was also in once-gentle Guinevia’s, since she had vowed to take the heart out of Allectus for his part in the cruel death of her own father. Privately, I considered that she might have to wait behind me for that privilege, as the man who had once been my treasurer had treacherously bid for my throne and raised the Picts against me. They were a thorn in my side, and a growing threat in the north. I had to find allies against them and their coalition with the Gael and Hibernian raiders who plagued our northern shores.

One
bright spot in my defence plans was in the development of our cavalry. The tribune Cragus had raised a force of pony soldiers and even an elite squadron of dragoons mounted on heavy horses. That herd was sired by two Frisian stallions spirited out of Belgica four years before, and I would use one of the stallions as my own warhorse. The threat of sea raiders had forced us to move Cragus’ horse corrals and training camps north, away from the plains of the great stone dances of Avebury and Stonehenge, and close to the old Roman city of Aquae Sulis, but the coming spring campaigns should see us for the first time with an effective heavy cavalry to hurl against the Saxons.

I
had been studying their battle tactics, observing them in our many skirmishes, and had seen the pattern of their fighting. They did not use archers, and they were ineffective cavalrymen who relied on captured horses, as they did not bring many steeds with them across the sea.

Their
strength was their infantry, and they were personally led in battle by their kings, each of whom was surrounded by his hearth warriors and nobles, who were oath-bound to him. The kings led by their own example of courage, which was a weakness if we could kill those figureheads and dishearten their followers. They were not a disciplined army. Their best warriors were trained in individual combat, and for set-piece battles they did adopt the shield wall of the Romans, preferably with the tactical protection of a river or other geographical feature as a defence, but generally they relied on a surprise attack at dawn. That usually was fuelled by mead or forest mushrooms to inspire the men to bare-chested fighting madness, and then they would throw their shields over their backs and fight two-handed and drunk.

The
majority of their army was a militia called a ‘fyrd,’ comprised of men who worked the land, reinforced by some Jute or Dane mercenaries. Their equipment generally was not of a professional standard: a basic helmet of horn and leather, cone-shaped to deflect blows, a small round shield of about two handspans’ width, the seax long knife from which they took their name, barbed javelins, and their main weapon, a long thrusting spear with slender leaf-shaped blade. 

Only
the wealthy house warriors had swords, and they also used the two-handed ‘broad axe,’ the skeggox that was very effective in battle but required much training of its user, so was a relatively rare thing to see facing us. I thought ruefully that there was one skeggox I’d rather not have seen, the one wielded by a big Saxon years before that had taken half of my foot and a big slice out of my face. That man had died on the blade of my gladius sword, but I had limped ever since…

My
thoughts snapped back to the problem. The Saxons’ obvious weakness was against archers and cavalry, and Cragus had been given his orders, and had earned his salt. He had trained squadrons of horse archers to race in, turn and deliver volleys of arrows from short range, mostly the bodkin-tipped arrows that would pierce even a coat of mail, and he had worked hard on our secret weapon, for the tribune had also been training my elite knights of the Chevron.

The
red wool chevron had begun as an award from me to those soldiers who had been with me at the recovery of the lost Eagle of the Ninth Spanish Legion, an icon that showed the gods’ support for me when I took the title of Britain’s Imperator. The red cloak of the long-dead Roman who had wrapped it around the hidden Eagle was made into insignia to be worn proudly by the companions who found it with me. Most of that small cadre of soldiers were now dead, but I had appointed other warriors to the elite and they had trained as heavy cavalrymen. Mounted on our valuable big horses, armoured and equipped to the highest standards, they should be capable of crashing through any shield wall to break it for our foot soldiers, and to deal death and destruction themselves from the backs of their chargers. 

I
would lead them personally, on my war horse Corvus, who was named for the raven that was his colour. I considered the horse soldiers’ equipment the best any professional could own. Not for them the heavy mail coat of the legions. Instead each knight wore around his upper body expensive segmented armour that was much lighter than mail. Its hoops of iron overlapped like a lobster’s shell, and all was held together by internal leather straps, laced tightly. Above the torso armour, the rider’s shoulders were sheltered under hinged iron plates and the whole carapace was worn over a padded leather jerkin. This was liberally greased with lanolin taken from fresh fleeces, which let the armour move freely over it. In the spots where the iron was more exposed, a coating of bees’ wax both lubricated and protected it from the constant British rain.

The
body armour was augmented by a Roman cavalry helmet with a protective face mask, cheekpieces and nape shield. The knights carried lances as long as the height of two men, a longsword at the hip, a small shield strapped to the left forearm and a short bow made of horn and wood, fastened together with cattle sinews and hoof glue.

The
dragoons used a wood and leather saddle with four horns and they controlled their horses with their knees and reins, but could stand in the newly-issued stirrups to fight. Cragus trained the lighter cavalry, the horse archers, in the Parthian shot. They would race in, turning their mounts by knee pressure on the horse’s ribs, then fire facing backwards, left arm extended over the horse’s rump, arrow drawn back with the right over the braided mane. The horse archers would gallop in, turn, fire their volleys and circle back to their lines.

As
they did, another squadron of archers would gallop at the enemy and repeat the punishing volleys, always keeping out of range of the javelins and axes the Saxons might throw. Under such sustained pressure, the undisciplined Saxons would often break ranks and charge, and then we had the advantage. That was the time when we could use our heavy cavalry, and our disciplined shield wall, and then our lesser numbers would not matter so much. But my real hope for success lay with those big horses, those long lances and heavy swords.…

The
cavalry were trained to do much and in a very short time we would test them against the Saxons. It would be crucial. If they failed that test, we might well lose Britain to the invaders. I shook off the gloom. Blue sails were approaching from the east. My fleet patrols might have news, and I hurried down the rampart steps to head for the harbour.