Web of Deceit (43 page)

Myrddion winced. His relationship with the High King was strained, not only because their characters were diametrically opposite, but also because Myrddion had been the only person to see Uther weep over his brother’s corpse. The king couldn’t tolerate the constant reminder of what he perceived as a gross weakness.

‘Botha has been wounded, highness,’ Myrddion answered for both of them. ‘I doubt you were even aware of it, but your servant’s blood could have been poisoned without treatment because of the mud in the wound. The decision to delay was mine, and I apologise for that error.’

Uther grunted, then threw himself grumpily into a folding chair among a scattering of scrolls and maps. His handsome face settled into lines of discontent, made ugly by something sly and disappointed behind his blue eyes.

‘We routed the bastards, but we still can’t break through to Petuaria. That son of a whore, Hengist, knew what he was about when he led his people to this godforsaken stretch of coastline. They breed like ticks in the marshes and all their battle plans are shaped by the landscape. I’ll learn to fly before we dislodge Hengist’s sons out of the old Parisi lands.’

Prudently, Botha and Myrddion remained silent.

‘We’ve lost too many men by playing the Saxons at their own game. The Roman-trained centuries don’t work effectively in marshland and the cavalry was wasted in the deep forests, except for night reconnaissance. As for
siege machines? Bah! All we need now is bad weather.’

Once again, he expected no reply. Myrddion recognised the king’s continual switching from one source of annoyance to another: Uther was fuelling his frustrations. The healer knew from painful experience that any sort of imprudence might yet follow.

‘Leonates of the Dobunni has seen fit to ignore me. And Gorlois has refused to send troops to assist us. He could have cost us the battle. I’ll not be mocked, Myrddion.’

The healer watched the mounting warning signs that he had come to dread. Under his thick yellow brows, Uther’s eyes were mere slits, obscuring the colour of the irises and giving his face a bestial appearance. His nostrils were flared as if he smelled something vile and his mouth had fallen in so that every word spat out of those almost invisible lips showed his teeth in a feral snarl. The High King was working himself up into a tantrum and only the gods knew what would be the result.

‘Gorlois has never failed to send troops to our campaigns in the south. Perhaps he deemed that this attack was better dealt with by the Brigante tribe. I cannot read the Boar’s mind, but he has always been loyal, my king. As for Leonates, he was ill throughout the winter with lung disease, so perhaps he has been unable to send levies to assist you. His son, Leodegran, is still in his teens and is probably overwhelmed by his father’s illness.’

‘No excuse. The boy is a sybaritic pup and if he wishes to rule one day, he should take care to maintain his alliance with me.’

Myrddion dropped his eyes and bowed respectfully. ‘Of course, my lord. I shall look into the matter of Leonates’s health.’

‘As for Gorlois, how dare he decide which campaigns he will fight and which he will not? He’s not the High King, although I’ve heard whispers that many of the tribal kings would be happy to see him take the crown of Maximus. Even his name irritates me. If he continues to decide when and
where he’ll send his levies, then he’ll discover that a dragon can burn a wild boar to a crisp.’

Myrddion almost laughed, although Uther’s expression was far from humorous. At times the High King’s intemperate words were ludicrous, but in other circumstances they were monstrous. The healer set to work to soothe his bad temper, while Botha tidied the disordered tent and hunted up some of the red Hispanic wines that Uther loved. Cosseted, coddled and placated, Uther’s mood improved so much that he demanded that his current woman be sent to his tent, and as the doe-eyed girl slipped through the flap to the sweet susurration of her robe, Botha and Myrddion sighed and departed.

But Myrddion could not rest peacefully. All his persuasion had failed to still the worm of suppressed rage that ate into the king’s brain because the Saxons had thwarted him, so instead of seeking his bed he went to the healers’ tents to check on the condition of Luka of the Brigante, who still lay like a dead man on his cot. He paused by the rolled-up side of the largest tent and stared down towards the swamp where little corpse lights seemed to flicker. During his journeys in the Middle Sea, Myrddion had been told that the phenomenon was caused by pockets of gas that escaped from deep underground, but even his rational understanding was jarred by the eerie flicker of coloured light where so many corpses still lay pressed into the mud.

Just as Myrddion began to turn away, a long ululating cry raised the hair on his arms as it rose over the sleeping camp like a night creature taking to the wing. The agonised sound didn’t belong to a golem or a wight that sought to terrify the living. A human throat had produced that high keening in an excess of pain.

Several fruitless moments were spent in trying to find his satchel, so panicked was Myrddion by the terrifying noise. Cadoc emerged from under a wagon half dressed and cursing. But the sound had been cut off abruptly as it
rose to an inhuman pitch, as if the lungs and vocal cords that produced it had been severed.

Cadoc and Myrddion hurried towards the camp, although neither man could place the origin of the scream. Where a tangle of warriors jostled in the circle of tents along the forest edge, the two healers skidded to a halt. Rudely wakened men grabbed their weapons and asked each other unanswerable questions, while the horses made their fear known with whinnies and stamping of feet from the picket lines hidden deep in the woods.

‘What in Hades was that?’ Cadoc muttered as his eyes scanned the partly dressed warriors who had boiled out of tents or from their sleeping blankets around the fire-pits.

‘I’ve no notion, but they . . . he . . . she . . . was in extremity. Someone needs us badly.’

‘We’ll be unlikely to find them in this crowd,’ Cadoc snapped, for his good humour had fled with the end of his comforting dreams.

Gradually, order was restored. Officers calmed their men and explained that a camp follower had experienced a bad dream and was now settled back to sleep. Disgruntled men cursed all women on campaign and returned to their slumbers around the dying fires. Finally, peace settled over the High King’s camp.

Myrddion and Cadoc had barely returned to the healers’ tents pitched on the rise above the swamps when Botha and two guardsmen appeared out of the darkness on silent feet.

‘You’re wanted, Myrddion,’ Botha ordered in a crisp whisper. ‘Come now, and bring your satchel with you.’ His face was particularly impassive, and the healer felt the shorter hairs on the back of his neck stir with apprehension. ‘No noise, hear?’

‘What’s amiss, Botha?’

The captain ignored Myrddion’s hissed question and skirted the camp on silent feet. Defiantly, Cadoc ignored a frown from one of the guards and hurried after
his master.

Pushing their way through thick underbrush, the small party approached the High King’s tent by the most indirect route, taking care to move as soundlessly as possible.

‘Is the High King taken ill?’ Myrddion tried again.

Botha stopped in his tracks, turned and hissed at him to keep his mouth shut. Myrddion’s eyebrows rose, for Botha rarely lost control or showed any emotion. Something must be very wrong if even his composure was fraying. The party moved forward once more, but both healers watched the dark and threatening shadows out of the corners of their eyes.

Uther’s tent was set on the highest point of a small hill in the forest and some clearing of trees had been necessary to assemble his tent within the allotted space. Smaller tents were placed in a semicircle that clustered around the High King’s skirts, and the main body of his force was bivouacked below him. This arrangement was unusual in that kings usually set up their bivouacs in the centre of their forces to ensure their security, but Uther always valued the high ground and Myrddion was never surprised at the risks he took.

What did surprise him was the route taken by Botha and the guards to reach the king’s tent. What were they trying to hide?

The tent loomed out of the shadows, and Botha stopped. ‘Go in, healer, and I’ll wait outside for your call,’ he said, a little shamefaced. Myrddion wondered why the captain was reluctant to accompany him.

The smell alerted the healer immediately, even before his eyes adjusted to the gloom within the tent. A single oil lamp burned on the sod floor near the camp bed, and the shadows seemed to be thick with something menacing and alien. Both healers advanced into the tent, and the coppery smell of fresh blood led them into the small halo of light.

Myrddion put his left hand on a chair
which had been upended in a violent struggle and recoiled at the feel of fresh blood across his palm. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he recognised the shape of Uther in the far corner of the tent, cleaning his hands on a scrap of cloth. Without pausing to think, Myrddion approached him.

‘Are you well, lord? Let me see your hands in case you’ve suffered some hurt.’

‘Stay away, damn you! If I’d wanted you, I’d have called for you.’

Uther’s voice was hoarse and ragged with the last traces of an explosion of temper. The king plunged his hands into a basin of water and Myrddion watched the liquid darken in the dim light. Without being told, the healer knew that the stain would glow red in the lamplight.

Shite, what has Uther done? Which poor soul has he harmed this time? Myrddion’s thoughts chased themselves in circles. Cadoc’s comforting presence at his back awoke the healer to another danger. His colleague would not survive knowledge of any misdeeds committed by the king.

I must get him out of here without alerting him any further than he already is. Gruffly, Myrddion ordered his assistant out of the tent, and when his friend opened his mouth to protest his temper began to fray and his voice became unusually curt.

‘Wait outside for me, I said,’ he hissed. ‘Don’t argue, for I’m trying to protect you! And ask Botha to come in.’

Without another word, but with a glance that spoke volumes, Cadoc left the tent.

As Botha entered the tent with downcast eyes, Myrddion turned back to the king. ‘You have blood on your arm, my lord. Show me the wound so I can assess the harm that has been done to you. Tell Botha to summon the guard. If an assassin is on the loose, we can’t afford another murder. The realm wouldn’t survive the instability that would arise were you to die.’

‘Stay where you are, fool. I’m not bleeding. The bitch bit
me, but it’s of no account.’

Shite! The curse skidded through Myrddion’s brain and his unwilling eyes scanned the tent for Uther’s woman. A small heap lay under a blanket in the darkest corner of the tent, and Myrddion felt his gorge rise.

‘Botha?’ Myrddion whispered as he turned his back on the king and picked his way through scattered and broken furniture towards the still form under the coarse wool. The tiny figure seemed smaller than a child, while a spreading black stain, darker than the shadows, seeped into the blanket.

Botha didn’t need any prompting. With a careful hand, he flicked the covering aside and stepped backward with a slow sigh. Practical to the end, he turned, approached Uther and helped him to remove a fine linen shirt that was spattered with blood, bundled it into a ball and disappeared out of the tent without a backward glance.

While Uther dressed himself with something approaching good humour, Myrddion knelt beside the small woman. Her long black hair was thick with blood, which still seeped sluggishly out of deep wounds on her forehead. There were indentations in her skull and shattered bones in her forearms and hands. As Myrddion pulled the blanket down lower, he saw that her small pert face was misshapen and swollen, as if she had been badly beaten. Her eyes were wide and gazed out at something very far away that no mortal would ever see until the shades came for him with flowers or whips of fire.

‘There, there, little one,’ Myrddion whispered as he stroked her bloody, broken palm where fine bones had pierced the skin, careless of her caking blood as it transferred to his hand. Although his fingers were sticky, he still felt for the large vein in her neck. He knew he would find no pulse, for he was certain that no life remained in the boneless, slack-mouthed little creature. The stink of urine and faeces almost overpowered
the reek of blood.

Beside the body, a heavy pottery flagon lay in pieces as if it had been dropped by careless fingers. The coarse shards were stained with blood and lees of red wine had soaked into the sod.

‘Is she dead?’ Uther asked conversationally, pouring himself a cup of wine. His voice was quite calm, almost jovial, as he picked up his chair, uttering a mild oath when he felt the blood on it. Casually, he wiped his soiled hand on his tunic. ‘She’s more of a problem dead than alive. Gods, that girl would try the patience of one of the Christian saints, and she could nag a man to his death.’

‘
Her
death, certainly, my king.’ Although Myrddion had tried hard to strip his voice of any censure, he knew he had failed. Uther looked up at him with narrowed eyes from under his golden eyebrows.

‘It’s not your place to comment on what I do with my property, healer. Moderate your tone or get out! Since you’ve meddled in my business, I’d prefer that you were of some assistance, but I can easily dispense with your services.’

The smile on Uther’s lips was particularly lupine, almost well fed, as if the frustrations of the previous day’s battle had been exorcised.

‘Where is Botha when I need him? This tent is a pigsty, and something has to be done with
that
before it starts to stink up my space. Shite . . . and now her father will be annoyed, I suppose. I knew that his plan to foist his daughter upon me was a mistake all round, so I don’t see how he can legitimately complain. She was a pretty little thing, but she had no more sense than a child.’

‘Who
is
her father, lord?’ Myrddion asked with a sinking feeling in his gut. He was sickeningly aware that the High King was beyond his control, and all he could do was try to protect him from the consequences of his actions. But, under his urgency, Myrddion wanted to scream and sob with a revulsion that was soul deep.