Ashes of Time (The After Cilmeri Series) (35 page)

That was Harlech’s main weakness and the
reason for the massive gatehouse with three portcullises, as well
as the tricky twisting entrance that prevented an enemy force from
bringing a siege weapon to bear on the door. Even as a stone
castle, it was also vulnerable to fire arrows launched from beyond
its curtain wall that could burn the wooden structures within.

All of this David knew before he arrived at
Harlech. The initial journey to Maentwrog had taken a few hours on
horseback. The village was located at the ford of a river that
became an estuary farther west. Therefore, they had to ride east
from Beddgelert in order to go west to Harlech.

Gratifyingly, especially since this country
had once belonged to Madog’s father, a thousand men had gathered,
mostly spearman and bowman from the surrounding countryside. A few
herdsmen were less well-armed with axes and farming implements.
Many fathers had brought their teenage sons. War had become rare
here since King Edward had died, but that didn’t mean the citizens
wouldn’t come when Dad called.

David had sent scouts ahead in a wide swath,
needing to know what they were walking into before they walked into
it. If it had been summer, he might have rested his men through the
night, in order to take advantage of the sun rising behind them as
they approached Harlech. But while the fog of the morning had
burned off, clouds had moved in, and the temperature hovered around
freezing. They were due for snow or very cold rain by tomorrow.
Because the men they’d picked up at Maentwrog were fresh, David
decided it was better to keep moving and march the nine miles to
Harlech before the sun set.

From Maentwrog, they followed the coastal
road west along the south side of the estuary and then headed
southwest to Harlech along the cliff edge upon which Harlech
perched. The sea frothed below them, another sign that a storm was
coming, as if the dark clouds that squatted on the western horizon
weren’t warning enough. The sun—such as it was—was close to setting
by the time they came to the edge of the plateau upon which they’d
been traveling. There, they formed a line half a mile from the
castle, looking down on it from four hundred feet above. Madog’s
pavilions lay below on the plain that had been cleared of
trees.

Carew blew out a breath. “It isn’t taken.”
Smoke curled into the air from inside the castle but David saw no
flames. In fact, he didn’t see much in the way of activity
anywhere.

“
They’ve hunkered down for
the night,” Math said. “The scouts’ reports were
accurate.”

“
I never believe them until
I can see what they say with my own eyes,” Carew said, reflecting a
sentiment after David’s own heart. “Whoever Madog has left in
charge hasn’t made an attempt to take the castle.”

William rubbed his chin in mimicry of Math
and said sagely, “Surely he knows that Madog is dead, his forces
defeated, and that you are coming, my lord? Why is he not better
prepared for our arrival?”

“
We didn’t encounter any
scouts on our journey here,” Justin said. “Maybe the leader down
there doesn’t know.”

Carew barked a laugh. “If that’s true, I
can’t decide if Madog was so confident in his overwhelming numbers
and in his strategy that he didn’t think he needed them, or if he
was merely sloppy.”

“
The scouts could have seen
our numbers and abandoned their companions rather than share their
fate,” Ieuan said.

While they spoke, a groundswell of murmurs
came from the men. They’d known as much as David about what they
might face, since he’d shared with them the scouts’ reports, but no
one had dared believe it.

“
Unfurl the banners,” David
said.

Justin repeated the order, more loudly than
David had given it, and his dragon banner rose above his head and
caught the wind. The banners of the other lords who rode with him
appeared a moment later. David put the binoculars to his eyes and
focused on a group of men clustered near one of the tents. In the
growing darkness, he’d nearly missed seeing them. They seemed to be
conferring, and then a lone man broke away from the group and
strode in David’s direction. He followed a well-worn pathway that
led straight up the hill to their position.

David focused the binoculars on his face.
“Madog.”

“
Madog is dead,” Ieuan said
from beside David. “You killed him.”

David handed Ieuan the binoculars, knowing
he would recognize the man’s face. “Not that Madog.” It would have
been easier to keep everyone straight if the Welsh didn’t insist on
choosing baby names from the same pool of ten. Of course, the
English did the same with their Toms and Harrys. Those names were
just easier for native English speakers to pronounce.

Ieuan looked through the binoculars for a
few seconds without speaking, and then he dropped his hands to his
chest. “Huh.”

“
Your orders, sir?” Justin
said.

David could feel the unreleased tension
behind him. The thousand men who’d marched from Maentwrog hadn’t
come all this way to stand around. Though that was exactly what
David viewed as the best-case scenario, and what he’d made clear to
them before they started. He glanced down the line. The bowmen were
ready; some had arrows resting in their bows, but none of the bows
had been drawn.

“
Ieuan, you’re with me.”
David dismounted to a tsk of disgust that Justin couldn’t suppress.
Justin hated it when David exposed himself to the enemy. The Kevlar
vest underneath David’s mail wouldn’t help him if an archer aimed
at his eye.

“
Who is Madog?” Math
said.

“
You’ll recognize him when
he gets closer. He was the leader of our bowmen at the battle of
Painscastle, back when I was sixteen,” David said.

That didn’t sit too well with anyone within
earshot. David had liked Madog, the little he’d spoken with him,
and he was, quite frankly, surprised to see him leading Madog ap
Llywelyn’s siege of Harlech.

As they’d been talking Madog had covered all
but the last hundred yards to David’s army. Ieuan and David walked
the rest of the way to meet him.

Madog stopped and bowed a few paces before
he reached David. “My lord.”

“
I would not have expected
to find you here,” David said.

Madog’s eyes went to dragon banner on the
bluff. “How many have you brought?”

“
Over a thousand. What
happened to your scouts?”

“
I wouldn’t know,” he said.
“I have two hundred bowmen. They could cause you
damage.”

“
They could,” David said.
“But I have bowmen too, and I imagine that my man, Evan, who
defends Harlech, has seen our banners.”

“
Every commander knows that
he can’t maintain a siege when the enemy comes behind him,” Madog
said.

David’s shoulders relaxed slightly. Every
commander did know that, and for Madog to state it boldly gave
David hope that he was looking for a way out. “Until this moment, I
would not have said that I was your enemy. Nor my father.”

Madog stared down at his boots and didn’t
answer.

“
How came you to fight for
Madog ap Llywelyn?” David said.

“
My father and his father
before him served Rhys ap Maredudd,” Madog said. “He called us to
him, my brothers and me. They went, and I followed to protect
them.”

This had always been the way of it for the
common man. He fought for his lord without question. The idea that
a man’s lord and his country were not the same thing was foreign to
David.

But it was David’s problem today—maybe his
most important problem. Back at Rhuddlan, Bronwen had enumerated
the barriers thrown up by the Church, Ireland, or David’s own
barons that would divert his quest to form a united and peaceful
Britain. But it was Madog’s heart and mind that David really needed
to win—not for himself—not because he was Madog’s lord, prince, or
king—but for Wales, and ultimately, Britain. And if David had them,
he had everything.

“
It is hard to accuse a man
of treason when he fights beside his brother,” David
said.

Madog lifted his head. David saw hope in his
eyes—and he hoped that Madog saw understanding in David’s.

“
What of Lord Madog and the
sons of Rhys?” Madog said.

“
Madog is dead,” David
said. “We have not seen Rhys or Maredudd.”

Madog nodded at this, accepting their
disappearance, as he had his scouts’, without comment and as one of
the realities of war. “If I surrender to you, what of my men?”

“
If they lay down their
arms, they walk free,” David said.

“
Most serve because they
always have,” he said. “None of us have an argument with King
Llywelyn.”

When David didn’t answer right away, Madog
nodded, taking his silence as meaningful, though David had been
thinking again about what it meant to be a patriot. “I will speak
to the men. We surrender. You may do with us as you will.” Madog
bowed and turned away.

Unlike the other Madog, this Madog hadn’t
even asked about himself.

David returned to his men. “We have won.” He
kept on walking, past where Math and Justin waited for him, into
the ranks of men who’d come when Dad had called.

The men bowed and gave way before him. As
David approached each man, however, he raised him up, grasping the
arm of whoever would take his (everyone) and thanking him for his
offer of service. It may have been that the offer was to David
personally or to his father, and not to Wales. David had heard his
mother refer to such loyalty as the ‘cult of personality’. She
hadn’t meant David to overhear her, because she’d been talking
about him.

“
What about Lord Rhys, my
lord?” one man said, and David recognized him as one of the men
he’d spoken to at the earlier encampment. He must have appropriated
a horse for himself in order to finish what he’d started. “He won’t
be so easy to defeat.”

“
No, he won’t,” David said.
“But we won’t be fighting him—or anyone else—today.” David had been
about to keep walking, but then he had another thought. “You are
Cadoc, yes?”

“
Yes, my lord.”

“
Who represents your
village at Brecon, Cadoc?” David was referring to the meeting of
the Welsh Parliament, the most recent congregation of which had
taken place during the summer.

Cadoc smiled and thumped his chest. “I do,
my lord.”

David nodded, not at all surprised, given
how outspoken Cadoc was. “If my father were to call you to vote
rather than to battle, would you come?”

“
Every time, my
lord.”

“
What if you were given the
opportunity to elect your leader, as happened in Scotland two years
ago? Would you take it?”

Cadoc looked taken aback. He lowered his
voice. “The king—he is well isn’t he?”

David hadn’t expected that to be the result
of his query. “He is. I ask this hypothetically.”

Cadoc chewed on his lower lip. David had
taken a chance in asking him, and he was really putting him on the
spot. Cadoc was outspoken, but he was talking to the King of
England, the Prince of Wales—and the man who under the old system
would inherit the throne after his father. But David really did
want an answer. He could feel the intense interest of the men
around them.

“
I would take it,” he said
finally. “Though it is our tradition to divide a kingdom among all
of a man’s sons.”

“
Wales needs a single
ruler,” a man beside Cadoc said. Men around him nodded. Despite
tradition, they could see as well as David how keeping Wales
undivided had benefitted all of them.

“
That would mean choosing
between Padrig and me,” David said, knowing that today such a
choice would be no contest, and Padrig would lose. “I know what I’m
asking. And it’s hardly a fair question so you don’t have to
answer. I do want you to think about it, however.” David raised his
voice. “I want you all to think about it. God willing, there will
come a day when you will be given the chance to choose the one who
leads you. If I have my way, that man will not be the one with the
most land or wealth.”

David bent his gaze on Cadoc again. “Or whom
tradition says should lead. When that time comes, I expect you to
vote for the one you believe most worthy.”

“
Yes, my lord,” Cadoc
said.

As David returned to his horse, Math leaned
in to say, “You might as well ask them to fly to the moon. It would
be as likely.”

David shook his head. “That’s just it. The
men of Avalon have visited the moon and lived to tell the tale.
Nothing is impossible anymore.”

Chapter
Twenty-four

November 1291

Callum

A
s
the hour approached midnight, Callum had checked in with all the
sentries, conferred with the scouts who’d returned, and sent out
new ones. In perhaps the greatest triumph of the evening, he had
even talked sense into Cadwallon. Under normal circumstances, the
organization of the camp would have fallen to Llywelyn’s young
captain, but Callum had convinced him that delegating his
responsibilities to Callum so he could focus exclusively on
Llywelyn’s well-being was in the king’s best interests.

Even now, Cadwallon stood
sentry outside Llywelyn’s tent, glaring at anyone who passed by who
might even
think
about disturbing his lord’s rest. Callum would leave to Meg
the prospect of convincing Cadwallon that even he had the right to
sleep.