Yseult: A Tale of Love in the Age of King Arthur (45 page)

Aircol wiped the rain out of his eyes, nodding. "I'm afraid it might be a trap for him."

Drystan stopped and took the other man's elbow. "Do you have any reason to believe that's the case?"

"No, but the timing was too good. The attack on Glevum could well have been planned to draw him off."

He could only hope Aircol was wrong or Arthur too clever to fall into such a trap, if trap it was. "True. And it is unlike the Erainn to fight like this. Usually they raid and retreat, taking whatever riches they can find."

Aircol gave him a humorless smile. "You must remember, I would not be here if that was the only way the Erainn fought. That is part of what makes me uneasy. My own ancestors used the same tactics when they conquered Demetia: repeated raids to weaken defenses and make the populace feel insecure, and then a concerted effort to take over key locations. The region was weak and the opportunity there. But I think the Erainn have underestimated our strength with Ambrosius on the continent."

Drystan was silent for a moment. "We are truly weak with so many trained soldiers gone."

"Not as weak as they think us," Aircol said angrily.

Drystan looked back at the wharves in the harbor, counting the ships. "Six galleys and two merchant ships here now. And Kurvenal should arrive with his patrol before evening. How many men do you think we can transport in those?"

"Probably more than we have here in Moridunum."

"Good. We can pick up reinforcements on the way. But first we need to send another courier to Arthur to tell him what we suspect and what we have planned."

* * * *

It was night and it was raining. Drystan, Kurvenal and Aircol were huddled beneath the stone archway of one of the entrances to the old Roman amphitheater of Caer Leon. They leaned on their spears as they gazed across at the fortress where the Erainn now patrolled. Occasionally, the light of a lamp bobbed into view and flickered away again.

Drystan pulled his cape tighter at the throat. "Shouldn't it be Samhain right about now?" he asked Aircol.

The prince of Demetia glanced over at him as if he had lost his mind. "Samhain? Only heathens celebrate Samhain."

Like the woman of the Feadh Ree who you remind me of
.

"We in Demetia are Christian," Aircol continued. "Our ancestors left such practices behind when they left Eriu."

Drystan gazed back out at the wall of water between him and his sometime-home filled with his sometime-enemy. He doubted if the leaving had been quite as simple as Aircol suggested. During the time of Niall of the Nine hostages, it had been Aircol's grandfather who had taken key sites in the peninsula west of them after the Roman legions had left Britain. And Aircol still wore a torc like the nobles of Eriu.

Like Yseult.

Unfortunately, Drystan had too much time to think about his father's wife. The battle for Caer Leon was going the way the battles all summer had gone: no winner, only losers, and much too long.

Perhaps the only good thing was that Arthur had avoided a trap. A combination of their warning messages, the talents of his scouts, and Arthur's own innate caution had allowed him to elude an ambush on the road from Glevum to Caer Leon and defeat the enemy. With the fleet led by Drystan and Aircol, they had then retaken the wharf of Caer Leon. When Arthur's nephew Owain arrived with a war band from Glevum, the besiegers had been forced to give up their positions to the north and west of the fortress. But as the defenders within the walls had streamed out of the city of Caer Leon to the north, the Erainn had streamed in from the south and were now securely ensconced behind masterful Roman masonry, built to last.

Somehow they had not planned for all eventualities.

Now the Erainn were inside and the British troops were besieging their own fortress. Drystan had the feeling he had been here before.

Kurvenal echoed his thoughts. "It's like at Portus Adurni."

"Except the weather is worse."

Kurvenal chuckled.

Drystan sighed. "It's times like this when I really miss all those men Ambrosius took with him to Gaul."

"I think you have said that before, my friend."

He didn't want to be disloyal to the high king, but he found it hard to understand that saving some vague ideal of
"romanitas"
on the continent was worth the risk of endangering a tentative peace on their own soil. If anyone had asked him how much his father's treaty with the Erainn was worth, he would have gladly told them. But no one did.

And now here they stood outside while the Erainn were in.

"I don't understand why Arthur won't allow us to attack," Aircol said, turning away from the dismal wall of rain impatiently.

Drystan gave him a long look. "We have to come up with a way to get the rest of the civilians out first."

The Demetian prince spat. "All that's left are a bunch of whores."

Kurvenal and Drystan glanced at each other, not answering for a moment. "You might want to be careful voicing that opinion in Arthur's presence," Kurvenal suggested quietly. "I believe one of the whores trapped in Caer Leon is his mistress Indeg. And his son Anir is with her."

Aircol turned away. "I didn't know," he mumbled.

The flap of the lean-to built against the wall of the amphitheater was pulled aside, and Arthur entered, Cai and Bedwyr in his wake. In the flickering torchlight, the young general's eyes were hollow.

"Cousin, how good is your command of the Erainn dialect?" Arthur asked.

Drystan stood straight, leaning his spear against the stone wall behind him. "I speak it and understand it well enough, but so do most here. What do you mean?"

"Can you pass for Erainn if need be?"

"I don't know. On my flight from Ard Ladrann, I was sometimes taken for Erainn, but more often for Armorican."

Arthur began to pace the entranceway of the amphitheater. "If you can do better than that, we may have a way to end this siege more quickly. Bedwyr recently was organizing repair work throughout the city, and he had a chance to inspect the hypocausts of the baths inside and outside the fortress walls."

Bedwyr nodded. "I think we could tunnel between the two and break through. But getting inside would be more effective if we had someone among us who could pass for Erainn."

"If it is only short encounters, I'm fairly sure I could do it." Drystan gestured down at his mix of Roman and British clothes and armor, his leather tunic and coat of mail. "But I will need clothing more appropriate for an Erainn warrior."

Arthur glanced at Cai. "I assume we have captured such with the men we have taken?"

Cai nodded. "I think I can find armor of stiffened hide and a helmet to match that will fit the Armorican."

The Dux Bellorum was visibly relieved when he turned back to Drystan. Drystan could hardly imagine what it would be like to have a woman he shared a bed with and the child they had conceived together behind enemy lines.

"Good," Arthur said. "It shouldn't be hard to take control of the external baths, and then we can get a crew started. When the tunnel is far enough along, we attack barracks in the southeast corner to provide a distraction. The troop that goes with Drystan will try to make it to the southern gates and open them for the forces outside."

Drystan nodded, even though he knew the northern gates might be more practical, since they were closer to the baths within the fortress walls. But the southern gates were closer to the former barracks — which had been taken over by the women plying the trade most in demand with the soldiers.

Where Indeg lived with Arthur's son Anir.

Chapter 20

Then rolled his way the battle's furious flood;

Squadrons charged on him blindly; blows and blood

Showered down like hail and water; vainly drew

The whole war round him; still his broadsword's gleam

Flashed in death's front, and still, as wrapped in dream

He fought and slew, witting not whom he slew...

Paul Hamilton Hayne, "Tristram of the Wood"

The first challenge was in getting to the external baths, which were situated close to the eastern fortress wall. Drystan and the others came from the river side, using the cover of darkness and their own shields to protect them from the Erainn patrolling the walls, but no one noticed them.

Once inside the baths building, they made their way with torches and lanterns to the underground heating system, Bedwyr leading them through the stone maze in the direction of the fortress. All too soon, they were forced to tear down a wall and begin digging. Soon, Drystan's arms were sore and water was seeping into his shoes.

"We're not as close to the fortress baths as I had hoped," Bedwyr said behind him. "Why don't you take a rest and let Gormant take over."

Drystan was more than happy to do so.

The digging went on for the better part of a week, Arthur becoming increasingly short-tempered with each day. In the meantime, they had begun building a catapult, the west within sight of the fortress walls but too far away for arrows to reach. Warriors had become carpenters, felling trees, splitting wet, unaged logs, sawing planks to size, and drilling and chiseling the joints. The trained carpenters among their ranks became the leaders for a time, while others tunneled like moles beneath the ground, hoping their blind aim was true. The distance was more than Bedwyr had at first thought, and it was necessary to shore up the tunnel as they dug, otherwise it would fall and suffocate them in a muddy grave. The rain had let up, but the soil was still damp. This made digging easier but the danger greater.

At the end of each day, Drystan felt as if he would never be clean again. The smell of mud and dirt permeated every waking hour, the feel of it between his fingers and seeping into his clothes, the darkness barely relieved by the lanterns they carried with them. When he came out into the courtyard of the baths complex, night was brighter than his days.

Carpenters and builders were the leaders among those of them working on the tunnel; it was they who constructed the frameworks to keep the earth from collapsing and burying them while they worked. The tunnel did not have to be large — at first only Drystan was to crawl through. It would have to hold for more men, however; according to their plan, once Drystan gave the signal that the southern gate was free, the men on digging detail in the external baths would also try to gain access to the fortress through the secret entrance and give the Erainn an unexpected front within the walls of Caer Leon.

On the sixth day, Drystan had seen so much mud and dirt that his outlook was as dark as the makeshift and treacherous walls around him. He had seen only a few minutes of sunlight each day, and with each spade of dirt they moved forward, it seemed clearer to him that they would never reach the fortress hypocausts.

And then came the sound of metal striking stone.

On their knees in the dirt, he and Bedwyr looked at each other in the flickering light of the lamp. Bedwyr nodded, and Drystan thought he detected a grin. "Let's try."

Together, they scraped and shoveled to lay bare a stone wall.

Drystan let out a sigh of relief. "The hypocaust."

They had made it through to the wall, but now they had to break out a hole without causing the underground heating system to cave in. They crawled out of the tennel, and Bedwyr sent for Gethin, one of the trained builders in their ranks. Finally, Drystan would have time to wash himself from head to foot and see something other than dirt for a change.

He blinked as he came out into courtyard of the external baths. It was a gray, cloud-covered November day — and the sun seemed brighter than any day he had ever seen.

Kurvenal was at the pump near one wall, and Drystan joined him.

"Finally," Kurvenal said, splashing water over his naked arms and chest.

Drystan nodded. He pulled his tunic over his head and stepped out of his breeches. "I was starting to feel like I would be crawling in mud for the rest of my life."

Kurvenal grimaced. "Come night, you'll have to crawl in it again."

Drystan rubbed his arms beneath the spout. "What kind of a friend are you?"

Kurvenal grabbed him around the neck and dunked his head underneath the pump. "The best!"