Arthur Imperator (5 page)

X Yr Wyddfa

Myrddin
Emrys, son of no father, sired by a spirit, Druid, sorcerer and reincarnation of generations of Celtic religious power brought to Britain from far Dalmatia, was struggling with his vegetable garden.

Although
he had built his small home of good squarecut stone high on a blustery Welsh pass, the magician had sited it well. A spur of mountain protected it from the east and north winds, its aspect was southerly, and the garden, with its high wall, caught every bit of sun that the mist-shrouded land could offer. Myrddin could have lived in warmer climates, but he wanted to be close to the power of the great mountain Yr Wyddfa, to communicate better with his gods. “I could as well be living in a dark cave,” he grumbled to himself as he tended the cabbage, onions and parsnips that lay in weed-free beds. Those crops were doing well, the cause of his irritation was that for the fourth, or was it now the fifth? year in succession he had been unable to persuade his grapevine to flourish. 

He’d
consulted his scrolls and he’d done all that the Romans could advise, but the vines simply would not bear fruit, and his plans to make a syrup of defrutum for sauces and as a condiment were again frustrated. “It will be nettle or damson wine and rowan syrup again this winter, too,” he muttered. “I haven’t the magic trick for these grapes. Some cambion I am!”

Tall,
hawk-nosed, with long plaited dark hair and shaggy dark brows, Myrddin by repute was the offspring of an incubus and a king’s daughter, but what demon and what king, nobody knew, although it was said he had been deliberately sired, to restore the ancient gods’ hold on Britain. He walked in high places, was aloof with the mighty and carried with him an aura of overwhelming power that could crackle to life at a glance from his startling, crystal-blue eyes. When he wished, his swift and graceful athlete’s movements could become the shuffle of an old and insignificant ancient, a useful act in a crowd that added to his reputation of being able to vanish and reappear at will.

Myrddin
was young for a Druid and did not favour the shaven tonsure that was a uniform of the sect, but his influence as an adept of the sea god Manannan mac Lir and his acknowledged skill at looking into the future discouraged even elders among the Druids from mentioning the matter. When Myrddin came down the twisting mountain pass to the sea strait across which was Mona, home of the sacred groves of his religion, the Druids’ ferryman had always been informed by dream of the sorcerer’s arrival and would be respectfully waiting. 

It
was on Mona, called Ynys Mon by the Britons, that the Roman governor Suetonius had trapped and slaughtered hundreds of the sect that was the wellspring of resistance to Roman rule. The act had led to the Boadicean uprising in which the queen of the Iceni had put a Roman legion to the sword and had destroyed Londinium, St Albans and Colchester. The queen was later defeated, but took poison rather than be captured.

Suicide
made her ghost restless, and Myrddin had used that vulnerability to call on her. At his demand, her shade had raced in its ghostly chariot alongside the forces of Arthur when the Britons again defeated the Romans, just weeks ago, on the shore at Dungeness. Myrddin took responsibility for calling on the dead queen’s help, which he did both for Britain and for his own protégé, Guinevia, although he knew there could one day be a fierce price to pay for that help…

But
for now, his concern was with his garden. Should he, he debated, give over that sunny wall he had dedicated to the grape vine to something else, maybe mulberries? Or to prosaic beans? He muttered again, and went outside the walled garden to talk to the two slaves who worked his pheasantry. Should he hang a few pheasants now, to mature for a future dinner? He studied the gardeners, both of them going grey. “How old are you?” he asked Pattia, a small, busy woman of the Parisi tribe, who had come to him as a captive after Arthur’s raid on their Humberside settlement. She was nearing two score years of age, like her husband, she told him, smiling. She had, Myrddin knew, one or two children. It was uneconomic to keep older slaves and the sorcerer thought it might be time to give her freedom. Of course, under Roman law and by his own inclination, for no Roman magistrate would be coming near this Welsh wilderness, he thought ironically, the children would become freemen when their mother received her manumission. They’d probably keep working his garden anyway, he thought, they seemed content. Just so long as they didn’t keep stealing too much of his asparagus… Yes, he’d free her and her husband. 

His thoughts came back to the present. Guinevia was coming in the near future, and he supposed he had better make some arrangements for her stay. She could have that small, sunny chamber on the west side. Then, there would be meals. Oh, the pheasant, that was why all this had started. Maybe duck, or chicken might be better. Would Guinevia eat duck, he wondered vaguely? Anyway, it would be pleasant to have company for a while, and to ponder on things other than wars and oblivion, storms and treachery, the gods and magic. Pheasant would be an excellent choice, he thought. Yes, pheasant. 

Company was exactly what Grimr and his stranded Suehan crew did not want, and the five galleys closing on their sandy island of dunes were an unwelcome sight. The stranger vessels were a powerful Danish or Jute raiding party, to judge by the gleam of weapons and the ridged, stitched leather helmets showing above the gunwales, and Grimr’s swift estimate put their numbers at about three times his own halved force. He scanned the south horizon in hopes of seeing his own ship returning. Nothing. He had to decide and quickly.

If
he were to fight, with his overmatched men weakened by hunger and unfortified by the hallucinogenic mushrooms that usually fuelled their fighting berserker madness, he’d lose. He would not surrender, not the prideful son of Grimr the Cruel, whose longboats had ravaged Germania’s coasts for decades. But, he had no real defensive position to hold, the islands were low-lying drifts of treeless sand; he had no bullion to buy them off because he had only recently started his expedition. His value to them was as slaves, and as donors of their weapons and armour. So, Grimr reasoned, his only real defence was to make the enemy blanch at the bloody butcher’s bill they would have to pay to capture him. 

“Shields
up,” he ordered his crew, mindful that a shower of arrows could be coming. “Hold your position.” Three of the galleys were closing fast, the other two were moving east, to land further up the beach and encircle the Suehans. He scabbarded his sword, dropped his shield, and walked forward to meet the incomers.

The first vessel crunched its keel on the sand and several Jutes, for that is who they were, slipped over the side to haul her bows higher ashore. Only then did an imposing figure in a silver war helm drop down from the ship onto the sand. Grimr stood still, hands carefully kept away from his sword hilt, thumbs hooked in his belt.

The
Jute straightened the sword that hung at his hip, glanced back to where two of his small fleet were riding the gentle surf, and strode up the beach to the waiting Grimr. “I am Alaric of the Cimbri tribe of the Jutes,” he said. “Who are you, and why are you on our islands?”

Inwardly,
Grimr heaved a sigh of relief. No open hostility. He could talk their way out of this one without bloodshed. He explained that he and his crews had heard the Danes and Jutes were to invade Britain, and were on their way to join them when they had been overcome by a storm. “I have sent two of my ships,” he gestured, “that way to seek you.”

Alaric’s
eyes flickered to the southwest, where Grimr had gestured. “That is not a direction in which to find us,” he said suspiciously. “We were preparing to take this ship the other way,” said Grimr smoothly. “We have no knowledge of your country.”

Alaric
took in the lined rank of the Suehans waiting patiently under the rain on the sloping beach. Disciplined, useful. He considered Grimr’s claim of having two more ships’ crews. He weighed the likely losses involved if he tried to take these men as well as their companions who were somewhere over the horizon, and he reached a swift decision. “You and a dozen of your men will come with us. I shall leave one crew and its ship here against the return of the rest of your men, and they will bring all of them to our settlement. You can join us on our voyage to Britain once you have sworn fealty to our king. Make your dispositions and join me in my ship within the hour.”

Grimr
acted fast. He told off the dozen who would accompany him as hostages, for that is what they would be until all had sworn their new oath of loyalty. He gave careful instructions to the crew who would wait for their companions, stressing that they had sent two ships not one in search of their new allies. If those idiots don’t come back with a captured merchantman, there could be trouble, he thought, so, Odin help us. And he gave whispered instruction to his most trusted lieutenant to assess the chance of capturing the Jutes and their vessel once he and the hostages had departed. They might turn the tables, take the Jutes’ ship, find Grimr and the hostages and release them. If that happened, well and good. If the rescue went wrong, at least Grimr would be in the feasting halls of Valhalla sooner rather than later. And if no recapture and rescue came about, Grimr would look for his chance to slip away from his new lord when they reached Britain. It was in the gods’ hands.

So,
the Suehan hostages were subdued as they gathered their weapons and effects and trekked under the mocking scream of sea birds and fall of drizzling rain to be disposed between the Jutes’ ships. They were captives, about to sail to meet whatever the Fates had in store for them. It was out of their control, for now.

XI
Frisia

Loading
the two Frisian stallions onto the galley had taken three hours. First, the work party had swum the horses out one by one, alongside two small boats, then had attempted to secure belly bands under them and haul them over the gunwales by sheer manpower. One thrashing horse had stove in the sheer strake, the topmost plank of the ship’s side; the other had wrestled free of its restraints and swum away. By the time the exasperated Britons had rounded them both up and returned the beasts, shivering, snorting and belligerent, to the beach – doing so while the carpenters cursed and repaired their ship – nobody had any real hope the horses and the galley would ever come together.

It
was the tribune Lycaon, sand-chafed, bedraggled and irritable, who had finally solved the problem. Arthur had not sent one of his most favoured officers to do this important task without thought, and resourceful Lycaon had risen to the challenge, as he had met every other test on this expedition to the land of the Belgae. He had already come ashore quietly on a shelving beach north of Bononia, away from any hostile Roman eyes, and avoiding the small ports of that coast in case word went to the authorities. Lycaon was mindful that the last time he had been in this region he had been captured, flogged and crucified. Only swift action by a handful of friends had saved his flickering life, and he had been shipped out of the country unconscious. This time, he vowed he would not be taken, and he had exercised every caution. 

He’d
hauled up ashore and concealed one galley and arranged a rendezvous with the other, marched a squad inland and located a horse dealer. That worthy’s eyes had widened at the leather pouch of gold he was being offered. In two days, the dealer, the Briton and their escort were leading two fine, strong stallions back to the concealed galley, the other vessel was standing offshore, and Lycaon was facing the task of getting both horses on board and the galley afloat. Swimming them out had failed. 

“Rollers,
five rollers,” he ordered, wanting smoothed logs laid on the beach. “Pull the bows of the damn galley up on them,” he said, waving off an energetic centurion to organize ropes, men and tackle. With the vessel beached and steady, it was a relatively easy task to create a ramp and lead the blindfolded stallions to opposite ends of the ship where they would not be tempted to contest mastery. For Lycaon, as the galley was heaved back afloat and under the shelter of its escort warship, a tiresome task was ending only its first phase.

Now,
he had to take the two stallions back, offload them - and he thought gloomily of that task - then move them to the plains around the ancient standing stones of southern Britain where wild horses grazed and he could capture a herd to be broken. There, he hoped, his subordinates would already be moving ahead with their duties and there could be a raw wood and stone new castrum raised for men and horses, both of which should start arriving soon.

Lycaon’s
minimal orders were to raise a horse herd that would be the core of a new British cavalry. He was grateful that his king trusted him not to detail all he should do, but the tribune had deduced that along the way to fulfilling his brief, he must find warriors for his horses, gather weapons, shields, fodder and equipment, create housing and horse pens, and find horse copers, halter trainers, herd managers and a breeder, he gloomed, who knew how to create better bloodstock. There was also this question of getting his men to use these new stirrups. Myrddin had told Arthur about the triangular things that meant his men could stand on a stable, firm platform however bumpy the ride was. It made a fine fighting footing, but the men needed educating away from the old knee-gripping technique they knew. And then, with his fine new steeds, he had to train the whole mass of horses and men into cohesive coordination to fight and win battles. Myrddin, thought Lycaon, could not have had to make more difficult magic, but first he would deliver these two steeds to Arthur. 

Both horses were magnificent. I had rushed with unseemly haste from hearing petitions and delivering judgements on which peasant had stolen what small strip of pasture, or which youth had impregnated which daughter and who owed a bride price to whom. I had closed my meet abruptly to go outside and view the horses, pretending urgent business. The beasts were exactly what I had wanted, a pair of three year old Frisian stallions. I winced when I heard what Lycaon had paid the horse trader, but he had successfully slipped into Gaul, located and bought the horses, and spirited them out again, right under the Romans’ noses in my occupied onetime citadel of Bononia. With these horses at stud, within three years I could have the beginnings of a cavalry force like none the world had ever seen. One of the horses especially was all I had ever imagined, and I vowed to become a cavalry king, on his back. Inwardly, I grinned. I had been a foot soldier, then a sailor and now I would be a horseman. Life gets better.

A
barbarian had hacked off some of my foot and part of my face when I was campaigning across the Rhine in Germania. I had survived the injuries, killed the man and had learned to ignore my limping disability. After I healed, my duties changed. My knowledge of ships and war meant I had become an admiral, so had no longer needed to make long marches, and as an emperor, few expected me to walk any distance at all.

Of
course, I had taken my place at the centre of the shield wall on the day we had crushed the Roman invasion of Britain, but that was hardly a role where fleetness of foot – half foot, I reminded myself darkly – was important. Now, with a suitable war-trained horse, I could be the warrior I was once, and more. My deficiency, concealed from my soldiers, would not undermine their confidence. Give me the horse, I told myself, and I will be the emperor and lord of war that none can resist. And now, that horse was standing before me inside the stone walls of our Dover fortress. 

He
was tall. I am a big man but his shoulders came up to my chest. He was black as charcoal, with a dense tail and mane and sturdy, feathered legs. He had an arched neck, broad chest, bright eyes, and sloping hindquarters; was wide in the hoof and possessed a powerful, muscled body. His companion, kept a discreet distance away to prevent them fighting, looked similar, but there was something in the eye of this stallion that drew me. I nodded to Lycaon, who looked drawn and tired.

“An
excellent job, tribune,” I said. “Put these fellows at stud, and work with them to make them into war horses, this one for me. I want a courageous and agile steed that will slash and bite, trample and turn to my commands in battle, and I want his seed to make a crop of foals.

“
I shall call this fellow Corvus, or Raven, because, like winged battlefield scavengers, we shall make a feast of our dead enemies. That one will be Nonios, after Pluto’s night-black horse. Fine stallions deserve fine names.” 

Lycaon
saluted and turned to begin the next phase of his duties, to establish a military horse farm in southern Britain. I called him back. I had received reports of the new barracks alongside a huge Roman grain farm and was able to relay the news from my tribune Cragus. Lycaon, who would be sharing responsibility for recruiting men and training horses heard to his evident relief, that construction was going well, that Cragus had gathered a corps of two centuries of volunteer legionaries, some of whom claimed experience with horses, and that already more than 60 wild horses had been gathered and penned.

“It
will take a month or so, sir,” he told me, “to break the plains horses and some more time to train them for warfare, and we’re likely still seeking a proper
archippus
, a horse master. Then, we’ll have to drill and equip the men, too. Then there will be the brood mares…the next generation of horses… you can’t really ride horses much before they are two or three years old, when the cartilage of their knees and back are closed. We’ll have trained the older, wild horses much sooner, of course, but creating a heavy cavalry might take years...” his voice trailed off. 

He looked anxious, as well he might. Creating a cavalry force was one of my priorities, and he knew it. I made no effort to reassure him. Without sympathy, I grated: “Just get it done.”

I
had plenty of other concerns and most of them were armed, murderous and coming my way.