"His two hundred men in Lugg Vale will stop us," Agricola insisted.
"They will vanish like the mist!" Arthur proclaimed confidently. "They are two hundred men who have never faced armoured horse in battle."
Agricola shook his head. "The vale is barred by a wall of felled trees. Armoured horse will be stopped' he paused to ram his fist into an upraised palm 'dead." He said the word flatly and the finality of his tone made Arthur sit. There was the smell of defeat in the hall. From outside the baths, where the blacksmiths worked day and night, I heard the hiss of a newly forged blade being quenched in water.
"Perhaps I might be permitted to speak?" The speaker was Meurig, Tewdric's son. He had a strangely high voice, almost petulant in its tone, and he was evidently short-sighted for he screwed up his eyes and cocked his head whenever he wanted to look at a man in the main part of the hall. "What I would like to ask," he said when his father had given him permission to address the council, 'is why we fight at all?" He blinked rapidly when the question was asked.
No one answered. Maybe we were all too astonished at the question.
"Let me, permit me, allow me to explain," Meurig said in a pedantic tone. He might have been young, but he possessed the confidence of a prince, though I found the false modesty with which he cloaked his pronouncements irritating. "We fight Gorfyd-dyd correct me if I am wrong out of our long-standing alliance with Dumnonia. That alliance has served us well, I doubt not, but Gorfyddyd, as I understand it, has no designs upon the Dumnonian throne."
A growl came from we Dumnonians, but Arthur held up his hand for silence, then gestured for Meurig to continue. Meurig blinked and tugged at his cross. "I just wonder why we fight? What, if I might phrase it thus, is our casus belli?
"Cow's belly?" Culhwch shouted. Culhwch had seen me when I arrived and had crossed the hall to welcome me. Now he put his mouth close to my ear. "Bastards have got thin shields, Derfel," he said, 'and they're looking for a way out."
Arthur stood again and spoke courteously to Meurig. "The cause of the war, Lord Prince, is your father's oath to preserve King Mordred's throne, and King Gorfyddyd's evident desire to take that throne from my King."
Meurig shrugged. "But correct me, please, I beg you but as I understand these things Gorfyddyd does not seek to dethrone King Mordred."
"You know that?" Culhwch shouted.
"There are indications," Meurig said irritably.
"Bastards have been talking to the enemy," Culhwch whispered in my ear. "Ever had a knife in the back, Derfel? Arthur's getting one now."
Arthur stayed calm. "What indications?" he asked mildly.
King Tewdric had stayed silent as his son spoke, evidence that he had given his permission for Meurig to suggest, however delicately, that Gorfyddyd should be appeased rather than confronted, but now, looking old and tired, the King took control of the hall. "There are no indications, Lord, upon which I would want to depend my strategy. Nevertheless' and when Tewdric pronounced that word so emphatically we all knew Arthur had lost the debate' nevertheless Lord, I am convinced that we need not provoke Powys unnecessarily. Let us see whether we cannot have peace." He paused, almost as if he feared the word would anger Arthur, but Arthur said nothing. Tewdric sighed. "Gorfyddyd fights," he said slowly and carefully, 'because of an insult done to his family." Again he paused, fearing that his bluntness might have offended Arthur, but Arthur was never a man to evade responsibility and he nodded his reluctant agreement with Tewdric's frankness. "While we," Tewdric continued, 'fight to keep the oath we gave to High King Uther. An oath by which we promised to preserve Mordred's throne. I, for one, will not break that oath."
"Nor I!" Arthur said loudly.
"But what, Lord Arthur, if King Gorfyddyd has no designs on that throne?" King Tewdric asked. "If he means to keep Mordred as King, then why do we fight?"
There was uproar in the hall. We Dumnonians smelled treachery, the men of Gwent smelled an escape from the war, and for a time we shouted at each other until at last Arthur regained order by slapping his hand on the table. "The last envoy I sent to Gorfyddyd," Arthur said, 'had his head sent back in a sack. Are you suggesting, Lord King, we send another?"
Tewdric shook his head. "Gorfyddyd is refusing to receive my envoys. They are turned back at the frontier. But if we wait here and let his army waste its efforts against our walls then I believe he will become discouraged and will then negotiate." His men murmured agreement.
Arthur tried one more time to dissuade Tewdric. He conjured a picture of our army rooted behind walls while Gorfyddyd's horde ravaged the newly harvested farms, but the men of Gwent would not be moved by his oratory or his passion. They only saw outflanked shield-walls and fields of dead men, and so they seized on their King's belief that peace would come if only they retreated into Magnis and let Gorfyddyd weary his men by battering its strong walls. They began to demand Arthur's agreement for their strategy and I saw the hurt on his face. He had lost. If he waited here then Gorfyddyd would demand his head. If he ran to Armorica he would live, but he would be abandoning Mordred and his own dream of a just, united Britain. The clamour in the hall grew louder, and it was then that Galahad stood and shouted for a chance to be heard.
Tewdric pointed at Galahad, who first introduced himself. "I am Galahad, Lord King," he said, 'a Prince of Benoic. If King Gorfyd-dyd will receive no envoys from Gwent or Dumnonia, then surely he will not refuse one from Armorica? Let me go, Lord King, to Caer Sws and enquire what Gorfyddyd intends to do with Mordred. And if I do go, Lord King, will you accept my word as to his verdict?"
Tewdric was happy to accept. He was happy with anything that might avert war, but he was still anxious for Arthur's agreement. "Suppose Gorfyddyd decrees that Mordred is safe," he suggested to Arthur. "What will you do then?"
Arthur stared at the table. He was losing his dream, but he could not tell a lie to save that dream and so he looked up with a rueful smile. "In that case, Lord King, I would leave Britain and I would entrust Mordred to your keeping."
Once again we Dumnonians shouted our protests, but this time Tewdric silenced us. "We do not know what answer Prince Galahad will bring," he said, 'but this I promise. If Mordred's throne is threatened then I, King Tewdric, will fight. If not? I see no reason to fight."
And with that promise we had to be content. The war, it seemed, hung on Gorfyddyd's answer. To find it, next morning, Galahad rode north.
I rode with Galahad. He had not wanted me to come, saying that my life would be in danger, but I argued with him as I had never argued before. I also pleaded with Arthur, saying that at least one Dumnonian should hear Gorfyddyd declare his intentions about our King, and Arthur pleaded my case with Galahad who at last relented. We were friends, after all, though for my own safety Galahad insisted that I travel as his servant and that I carry his symbol on my shield. "You have no symbol," I told him.
"I do now," he said, and ordered that our shields be painted with crosses. "Why not?" he asked me, "I'm a Christian."
"It looks wrong," I said. I was accustomed to warriors' shields being blazoned with bulls, eagles, dragons and stags, not with some desiccated piece of religious geometry.
"I like it," he said, 'and besides, you are now my humble servant,
Derfel, so your opinion is of no interest to me. None." He laughed and skipped away from a blow I aimed at his arm.
I was forced to ride to Caer Sws. In all my years with Arthur I never did accustom myself to sitting on a horse's back. To me it always seemed a natural thing to sit well back on a horse, but sitting thus it was impossible to grip the animal's flanks with your knees, for which you had to slide forward until you were perched just behind its neck with your feet dangling in the air behind its forelegs. In the end I used to tuck one foot into the saddle girth to give me an anchoring point, a shift that offended Galahad who was proud of his horsemanship. "Ride it properly!" he would say.
"But there's nowhere to put my feet!"
"The horse has got four. How many more do you want?"
We rode to Caer Lud, Gorfyddyd's major fortress in the border hills. The town stood on a hill in a river bend and we reckoned its sentries would be less wary than those who guarded the Roman road at Lugg Vale. Even so we did not state our real business in Powys, but simply declared ourselves as landless men from Ar-mo rica seeking entry into Gorfyddyd's country. The guards, discovering Galahad was a prince, insisted on escorting him to the town's commander and so led us through the town that was filled with armed men whose spears were stacked at every door and whose helmets were piled under all the tavern benches. The town commander was a harassed man who plainly hated the responsibilities of governing a garrison swollen by the imminence of war. "I knew you must be from Armorica when I saw your shields, Lord Prince," he told Galahad. "An outlandish symbol to our provincial eyes."
"An honoured one in mine," Galahad said gravely, not catching my eye.
"To be sure, to be sure," the commander said. His name was Halsyd. "And of course you are welcome, Lord Prince. Our High King is welcoming all..." He paused, embarrassed. He had been about to say that Gorfyddyd was welcoming all landless warriors, but that phrase cut too close to insult when uttered to a dispossessed prince of an Armorican kingdom. "All brave men," the commander said instead. "You were not thinking of staying here, by any chance?" He was worried that we would prove two more hungry mouths in a town already hard pressed to feed its existing garrison.
"I would ride to Caer Sws," Galahad announced. "With my servant." He gestured towards me.
"May the Gods speed your path, Lord Prince."
And thus we entered the enemy country. We rode through quiet valleys where newly stocked corn patterned the fields and orchards hung heavy with ripening apples. The next day we were among the hills, following an earth road that wound through great tracts of damp woodland until, at last, we climbed above the trees and crossed the pass that led down to Gorfyddyd's capital. I felt a shudder of nerves as I saw Caer Sws's raw earth walls. Gorfyddyd's army might be gathering in Branogenium, some forty miles away, but still the land around Caer Sws was thick with soldiers. The troops had thrown up crude shelters with walls of stone roofed with turf, and the shelters surrounded the fort that flew eight banners from its walls to show that the men of eight kingdoms served in Gorfyddyd's growing ranks. "Eight?" Galahad asked. "Powys, Siluria, Elmet, but who else?"
"Cornovia, Demetia, Gwynedd, Rheged and Demetia's Black-shields," I said, finishing off the grim list.
"No wonder Tewdric wants peace," Galahad said softly, marvelling at the host of men camped on either side of the river that ran beside the enemy's capital.
We rode down into that hive of iron. Children followed us, curious about our strange shields, while their mothers watched us suspiciously from the shadowed openings of their shelters. The men gave us brief glances, taking in our strange insignia and noting the quality of our weapons, but none challenged us until we reached the gates of Caer Sws where Gorfyddyd's royal guard barred our way with polished spearheads. "I am Galahad, Prince of Benoic," Galahad announced grandly, 'come to see my cousin the High King."
"Is he a cousin?" I whispered.
"It's how we royalty talk," he whispered back.
The scene inside the compound went some way to explaining why so many soldiers were gathered at Caer Sws. Three tall stakes had been driven into the earth and now waited for the formal ceremonies that preceded war. Powys was one of the least Christian kingdoms and the old rituals were done carefully here, and I suspected that many of the soldiers camped outside the walls had been fetched back from Branogenium specifically to witness the rites and so to inform their comrades that the Gods had been placated. There was to be nothing hasty about Gorfyddyd's invasion, everything would be done methodically, and Arthur, I thought, was probably right in thinking that such a pedestrian endeavour could be tipped off balance by a surprise attack.
Our horses were taken by servants, then, after a counsellor had questioned Galahad and determined that he was, indeed, who he claimed to be, we were ushered into the great feasting hall. The doorkeeper took our swords, shields and spears and added them to the stacks of similar weapons belonging to the men already gathered in Gorfyddyd's hall.
Over a hundred men were assembled between the squat oak pillars that were hung with human skulls to show that the kingdom was at war. The men beneath those grinning bones were the kings, princes, lords, chiefs and champions of the assembled armies. The only furniture in the hall was the row of thrones placed on a dais at the far dark end where Gorfyddyd sat beneath his symbol of the eagle, while next to him, but on a lower throne, sat Gundleus. The very sight of the Silurian King made the scar on my left hand pulse. Tanaburs squatted beside Gundleus, while Gorfyddyd had lorweth, his own Druid, at his right side. Cuneglas, Powys's Edling, sat on a third throne and was flanked by kings I did not recognize. No women were present. This was doubtless a council of war, or at least a chance for men to gloat over the victory that was about to be theirs. The men were dressed in mail coats and leather armour.
