Three

Things were somehow different after that. My mother taught me nothing but more Latin, Agravain “helped” me in weapons practice and I grimly accepted his help, laboring with the rough wood and heavy metal that was so light and flashing in his hands; I rode about the island, practiced my own style of fighting, sometimes on horseback. Agravain quarrelled with me over this, saying that I was ruining myself as a warrior, and that I ought to listen to him—life seemed to have settled into its usual pattern. But there was a difference, a shadow that made all the familiar things seem strange. I had made a pact and was bound to it. A seed had been planted, and I waited sometimes, awake in my bed at night with the soft sleeping breath of the other boys about me in the dark, waited for the plant to grow and blossom with some fantastic black flower.

Agravain noticed nothing. He beat me less hard when we fought, but this was only because I did not fight as hard. I no longer wished to defend an honor I could not understand. Honor belonged to Lot’s world, Agravain’s world. My world had no room for such things.

Medraut, however, noticed almost immediately. I began to catch him staring at me with confused eyes in the middle of some talk or game. He would ask the question plainly some time, I guessed. I wondered how I would answer.

On Medraut’s eighth birthday Lot gave him his choice of any pony in the royal stables. I went with my brother to help him choose one. When Lot named the gift Medraut had been very excited, but on the walk to the stables he calmed down. Together we looked at the ponies—they were all the small shaggy breed common to the northern islands—and discussed the merits of each of them. Medraut listened to my horse-talk in his grave intent way, then, quite suddenly, as I was checking one of the animals’ legs, asked, “Is there something wrong, Gwalchmai?”

I started and looked up from the pony, twisting about on my knees to face him, “No. Not with his legs, but he has no withers at all…”

“No, no, not with the pony. Is there something wrong for you?”

For me? No. What makes you think so?”

He stood facing me in the cold dusty sunlight of the stable, drably dressed, his grey eyes wide and anxious. The light glinted palely on his hair, the only touch of brightness in the place. He looked vulnerable, and very innocent.

“You’ve been so strange,” my brother said nervously. “You go away...”

I smiled. “Well, I’ve always liked to go riding. Now that you have your own horse you can come with me more often.”

“That’s not what I mean.” Medraut’s voice was sharp. “All summer, you’ve been here. You were here, with everyone. You used to go away with Agravain and Lot, but you were here this summer. But now…” Medraut bit his lip and looked away from me. “Now you’re gone. I can’t talk to you any more. You even go away with me.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, though in truth I had a very good idea of what he meant.

“You had a big fight with Agravain,” said Medraut unhappily.

I looked away, shrugged.

“After that, something happened. You went away from everyone after that.”

I had felt, on some of those days, that I watched the world from a great distance behind the mask that had been my face. Went away…

“And you haven’t gone to Llyn Gwalch.”

I thought of Llyn Gwalch, the seaweed gleaming on the rocks, the drops of mist and seaspray on the mossy boulders. Such places have no bearing on the world, I told myself. One must live in the world which is real. “That was a childish game,” I said. “I’m too old for it now.”

“But what happened?” Medraut crossed the space between us and caught my arm. “You must tell me!”

“Why?” I glared at him, aloof as the hawk of my name.

He stared at me for a long moment, then put his arms round me and buried his face in my shoulder. It hurt. I had never deserved his love and trust, and now that I had failed in the path he would follow, now that I would never be a warrior and one that a brave man could honor, now I deserved it less than ever. I could not go on lying to him.

Indeed, I suddenly felt that for too long I had been living a pretence. I had told no one of what had happened, and I had been alone, training and eating and sleeping next to other boys, pretending to be one of them, but alone. The feeling grew in me until I could not bear it. I would tell Medraut, who trusted me, who, alone, might understand.

“I went to Morgawse and asked her to teach me sorcery.” I whispered.

He lifted his head from my shoulder, eyes wide, and went still. I put my arm round his shoulder and we were quiet.

“Why?” he asked at last.

“Because I can never be a warrior.”

He thought for a while. “I wonder…do you think I could learn sorcery?” he asked, finally.

I felt the shock as physically as if someone had kicked me in the belly. Not Medraut. Not the young warrior, the child of light, who was everything I wished I could be: proud without being arrogant, fierce without cruelty, sunlight with the searing heat of Lot or Agravain. He could not follow me into failure and darkness. He must not become too close to Morgawse. I thought of her light-drinking eyes.

“No,” I said.

“Why not?”

“It is wrong for you. Very wrong, mo chroidh, my heart.”

“But Mother is a sorcerer, and you will be. Why shouldn’t I know something about it too?”

“Morgawse is Morgawse. I am only myself. You are Medraut.”

“Why couldn’t I learn it? I am clever enough…”

“That isn’t the point! It is wrong.”

“Is Mother wrong, then? Are you?”

I stopped in the middle of my reply. Medraut had always trusted and admired me. Still…

“It is wrong for you. You can be a warrior and fight in the sunlight. I can’t, and Mother can’t, and that is why we used this path.”

He argued further, but I argued against him, hard and fast. Eventually he abandoned the subject, cheered up, and chose for his pony a grey with a white mane and tail. He called it Liath Macha, “Grey of Battle,” after CuChulainn’s horse, and was happy.

Spring came slowly, barely noticeable after the mild winter of the Orcades. But the days grew slowly warmer, the sky was occasionally blue, and the great cold grey sea-fogs rolled less frequently up from the west.

Agravain and I had yet another quarrel over my habit of practicing with my weapons on horseback. Lot, however, who happened to be nearby and inquired into the reason for the difference, looked thoughtful.

“Perhaps you are doing ill to punish Gwalchmai for this,” he told Agravain. “True, we do most of our fighting on foot, and to be able to ‘jump about a horse’s back like a juggler at a fair,’ as you were pleased to put it, is no great use to a warrior now. But Arthur the war-leader has taught all his men to fight from horseback, and they say that his victories over the Saxons spring from the strength of his cavalry. Let Gwalchmai be.”

Agravain frowned uncomfortably. He had no liking for the idea of the styles of warfare changing, and less for being told that he was wrong. He found a pretext for another quarrel later that day. But he left me more, though not entirely, alone afterwards, and sometimes watched me with a frown. I think that even he was beginning to notice the change in me, and it puzzled him.

By that time Morgawse was beginning to teach me, as she had promised. Not the important things, the summonings and dark spells, but the basic things: the characteristics of that universe that exists alongside of and within our own. I do not know all the law that governs it; neither did Morgawse. But some of it I learned, and many things that before I had not seen became apparent to me.

Once Medraut adjusted to the change in me, we were as close as ever, perhaps closer, though he gave me occasional measuring looks I did not like. But I took him with me on my rides about the island, told him more and more stories, and played the harp for him. I was becoming very good at singing. Any bard, of course, did far better, but I have some small gift for it. I no longer cared that my father considered it shameful for me to spend time harping. I no longer cared what anyone found shameful.

April arrived, a bright month, and my father still had not left for Britain. The war was late in starting. All the labored-over alliances of the winter fell apart again with the spring, and the British kings scurried to build new ones. Several blood feuds had started, and some old ones reopened, and a war had begun between two of our enemies who had formerly been staunch allies, springing from a quarrel over some plundered cattle. This catastrophe disrupted all the old alliances and added a new faction to the civil war.

All that summer the war wore on without anything becoming clearer, and Lot made ready to invade, fumed, and waited for an invitation. Agravain, sixteen years old and considering himself a man, polished his weapons and hoped.

In early August, Gwynedd’s old enemy Dyfed and our one constant ally Gododdin decided to attack Gwynedd. It was a sensible idea, but ill-timed, and our allies finally made the long-awaited step of calling for my father to join them. It was nearing harvest time, and my father knew he could not raise his army, but he summoned his subject kings and their warbands, and sailed by night past Dalriada to attack Strathclyde, and proceed from there to join his allies.

Morgawse rejoiced in her husband’s departure. She ruled the Orcades absolutely while he was gone, and she loved the power. She spent very little time with me. There were two reasons for this. The first was simply that, unlike the summer before, there was a great deal for her to do. Most of the men remained in the Orcades to bring in the harvest, and from the harvest she must see that the king’s tribute was exacted and collected and stored. But the more forceful reason probably was that she no longer needed to draw me to her. I had come, and been trapped. She did not think that I could escape.

Knowledge of sorcery had not brought me happiness, as I had thought it would. It gave me a secret place, and a secret cause for pride, yes, but I was never entirely certain whether what I felt was pride or whether it was shame. The burdens were heavy. I would see things that no other saw, and they frightened me. Sometimes I heard overhead, the baying of the Hounds of Yffern, which hunt the souls of the damned to Hell, and the clear silver sound of the huntsman’s horn. I puzzled at the meaning of this, and it always meant death. I came to realize that I would die, and I feared this. Morgawse also feared it, but she had done something to keep the hunter from her back, something she would not explain, and this gave her security. I envied her. I sought to know more, to cure my fear, to lighten the burden, but I only succeeded in deepening the fear and loading my heart until it sank into the black sea which sometimes possessed me. And I did not think I could escape, either. Nor did I truly want to. There was nowhere else to go.

It was a hard winter. It does not usually snow in the Orcades, but it snowed that winter. In northern Britain, where the war had by then settled, the cold clasped the mountains with a brutal hand, casting great drifts and barriers before the path of any warband hardy enough to plow through them. Usually, most kings allow their warbands to rest in the winter, and most of the warriors scatter to their own households, to gather again when the leaves first begin to bud. That winter was different.

In the east, the Saxons were restless. They had by no means been altogether neutral in the war, but had enthusiastically taken part in the plotting and politicking, and taken what advantage they could from the fighting. They made small border raids which grew into larger ones, driving further and further across the boundaries which had been established in blood in the last major war against them. Arthur, the war-leader of the old Pendragon, tried to fight them. But he was a clanless man, and relied on Constantius, the king of Dumnonia, for his support. Constantius had his own warband as well as Arthur’s to pay for, and could not spare tribute enough to keep the whole royal warband, for which the whole of Britain had paid taxes when there was a High King. Many warriors followed Arthur by preference, giving up much of the wealth a good warrior expects, but still there were not enough to protect even a part of the border.

The Saxons are a fierce people, young, vigorous, wholly barbarian, overflowing with brutal energy. They seem, however, to have an ability to keep peace among themselves which British kings have never learned. Some of the Saxon kingdoms were officially tributary to the British High King, since they were founded as colonies by the Romans under the last emperors, and sworn to protect the empire. But they are always land hungry, for their numbers increase more and more as other Saxons come over the sea, and the newer kingdoms acknowledged no ancient oaths. Only the strength of the High King, and his warband keeps them from overrunning Britain altogether. Like wolves about a stick stag, they watched the British kings at war.

We did not fear the Saxons in the Orcades, of course, nor did we have to worry about the other menace to Britain, the Scotti, who came from Erin in their long war-curraghs to plunder all the western shores of Britain. There was no peace between the Scotti and the Orcades—my father had left Erin because of a quarrel with the kings who led them—but the raiders would not brave the long journey to our islands, where they would be met with the cliffs and walls of Dun Fionn.

There were no raiding ships so foolhardy as to brave the Irish Sea in winter, but the Saxons and, most of all, the winter itself, made the British kings cautious, highly unwilling to leave their fortresses. Only my father, faced with no domestic enemies, felt free to travel. Our warband went the length and breadth of Britain, winning rich plunder and supplying themselves from the goods of their enemies.

Medraut was always full of talk of the war, though even more full of talk of how Morgawse was governing. She controlled the realm in a way which made my father’s grip seem light. My father required supplies: my mother commanded his subject kings to ship their portion of the yearly tribute they paid directly to Gododdin, using their own ships to do so. They were reluctant, for the journey was long and costly, as well as dangerous, as the North Sea in winter is treacherous and cruel. They asked, at least, for a reduction of the tribute. She refused, and threatened to raise the tribute if they did not comply. One ship making the journey was lost, with all its crew. She told the king concerned that another shipload of tribute must be sent to replace it, saying, “You must pay for your carelessness.” Justice she administered severely, commanding always the harshest penalties without compromise, and no clan was permitted to conceal a quarrel or offence from her: somehow she discovered their most secret concerns, and summoned them to give her an account of them.

One subject king attempted to stint her on the tribute, and denied any “mistake” when questioned on the matter. Morgawse seized his emissaries as hostages, and kept one of these hostages even after the king had paid what was due and more. The king of one of the Western Islands, a land only recently won over by my father, was discovered to have been entertaining emissaries from the king of the Dalriada, a great kingdom to the south. She summoned him to Dun Fionn; he refused to come. She took one of the hostages he had given my father, had him killed, and sent his head back to his lord on a spear. Then the king did come to Dun Fionn. She pretended to believe his oaths that it was all a mistake, and she paid him the blood-price for his servant, but she took his own son as a hostage to supply the place of the one she had killed.

All that she wished for was done, over all my father’s kingdom, and if the subject kings hated her—well, they also feared her, and obeyed, Medraut and I also feared her, and adored.

She worked magic, too, that winter, in her room. Usually she was alone, but sometimes she let me watch. Whatever she was doing, it strengthened her. Every day she seemed more beautiful. She went bare-armed in the cold, her long dark cloak flapping from her shoulder, fastened with a brooch set with stones as red as blood. No blood, though, showed in her white skin, and the gaze of her eyes was softer than darkness. Any room she entered seemed to dim, and others, beside her, seemed faint and unreal.

Medraut still said nothing more about learning sorcery, but I could tell that he often thought of it. There were pauses in our closeness when he watched me, thinking, perhaps envying, or wondering what it was I saw which made me swerve about the empty air. But such times were of short duration, and he would come back near to me, asking me about the day’s depression or telling me his thoughts. We often rode out together on our ponies, thundering along at full gallop in the low hills, scattering the sheep and trailing plumes of steam, or stopping to throw snowballs. I was most nearly happy when I was with Medraut.

He had his ninth birthday that winter, and entered the Boys’ House to begin learning the proper use of weapons. He excelled among the boys of his age, as I had expected. He was quick, nimble, intelligent, and he learned rapidly. He was so much better than the others at riding that he had nothing to learn from his teachers. He was deficient only in skill in composing on the harp, but he made up for this with his speed in learning a song, and his enthusiasm for the music. Being together in the Boys’ House we were with each other most of the day, but we shared everything and never quarrelled.

When Morgawse asked me about Medraut, I found myself evading her questions. She was beautiful, she seemed to me perfect, she ruled the Darkness—but I did not want Medraut to follow her.

In March Lot and the warband returned, but only briefly.

I saw Agravain, and was shocked at the change in him. He had now completed his growing spurt—he was nearly eighteen—and seemed entirely a young warrior, and more like Lot than ever. He was tall, and his gold hair, which he wore long, to his shoulders, glowed in the sun. The whole warband was in fine condition. Though the winter fighting had been difficult, the plunder had been rich, and there had been plenty of time to rest—but my brother stood out among them. He had a fine bright cloak, jewelry won from the men of Gwynedd and Strathclyde, Elmet and Rheged, where he had fought; he had mail-coat, and his weapons gleamed. He rode up to the gates of Dun Fionn behind our father on a high-stepping horse, carrying the standard. The people of Dun Fionn, and the clansmen from the surrounding countryside who had come to watch, cheered to see their king and his son together, so splendid they were. Agravain grinned and raised the standard, the warband laughed and shouted the war-cry as one, and the people cheered even louder.

Agravain was once more pleased to be home, to see Medraut and me again. He told us about the war, about the long series of carefully planned and successful raids, about how he had killed his first man in a border clash in Strathclyde, how he had travelled over all Britain, and once even fought with a Saxon raiding party in Gododdin. He had become what he had been destined to be: a warrior prince, a someday king of the Orcades. He no longer resented my few small talents, but accepted my gains in skill with a good-humored laugh and some praise, glad to see me, eager to be friendly. He was confident, and had no more need of pettiness. Medraut was very impressed, and held Agravain’s great spear while Agravain talked, stroking the worn shaft. I listened, but mainly I watched Agravain. Splendid sun-descended hero, knowing nothing of Morgawse’s “greatest power,” of the strength that lies in Darkness. I envied him.

He did not stay for long. After checking the state of the islands and collecting more warriors, Lot sailed off again. The war was going well. The young men were as anxious to return to it as to a mistress they found beautiful.

By May, when I had my fourteenth birthday and left the Boys’ House, the situation in Britain seemed to have taken a definite shape at last. My father stood firmly in our old alliance with Gododdin and Dyfed; Powys and Brycheiniog opposed him uncertainly and Ebrauc squarely—the middle kingdoms of Britain, all anxious to have a Romanized, anti-Saxon king—and finally Gwynedd, the first claimant to the High Kingship, in a shaky alliance with Rheged and Strathclyde—the anti-Irish, anti-Roman party. In the balance was the kingdom of the East Angles, a Saxon kingdom which had sent envoys to both Dyfed and Gwynedd during the winter, and Dumnonia, the most Romanized British kingdom, resolutely neutral. It appeared as though a few pitched battles would decide the war.

But, in June, all plans were swept away together.

The Saxons, as I have said, were restless. Those who had been settled longest raided the most widely, killing, looting, carrying off men, women, and children as thralls, but chiefly seizing lands. They needed it. Since the borders were last determined more Saxons had come to Britain: relations, fellow clansmen, fellow tribesmen, new families drawn by the promise of better land, families, ousted from old lands by new invaders, and single men drawn by the desire for war and adventure. They all wanted land to farm, to own, to build their squat, smoky villages on. They had much of the best already. The old land of the Cantii, the gentle hills and woodland about the old heart and capital of Britain; the fenlands that had belonged to the ancient tribe of the Icenii, and formed another province; the oldest Saxon kingdoms, Deira and Bernicia, given by the Roman High Kings to their Saxon mercenaries—all these were theirs, and it was not enough. They were officially subject to the British High King, successor of the Roman High Kings, and they had sworn him the same oath the British kings swore, but they never thought of keeping it. They resented the British who kept them back, when Rome itself had fallen before their kind. They needed only a small excuse to start them on a full-scale invasion of Britain.

And, in June, a great force of Saxons landed on the southwest coast, the Saxon Shore, taking the Roman fort of Anderida, allying themselves with the South Saxons and sweeping into eastern Dumnonia, crushing all before them. Their leader was a man named Cerdic, and they said that he was a king such as men would follow to the gates of Hell. They certainly followed him into Dumnonia. And what Cerdic and his tribe began was continued by the other Saxon tribes. First the South Saxons, then the East Saxons, then the tribes of the Angles, the Jutes, the Franks, the Frisians, and Swabians all swept into their neighboring British kingdoms, not just to raid but to settle there.

Despite this, the British did not turn their attention to fighting the Saxons. The civil war had gained momentum now. There were blood feuds involved in it, and honor, and many ancient hatreds. A man will not suddenly drop so old an enmity for a new one. The Saxons had been defeated before and could be defeated again. So the civil war continued, and the Saxons were allowed to seize portions of the eastern marches, while Cerdic began forging a kingdom. The western lands, such as Gwynedd, which did not have a border with the Saxons, were pleased that their British enemies were in difficulties; and everyone agreed that Dumnonia had been too large before, nearly the whole of an old province; and that it was well that the principal sufferer from the invasion was the one neutral kingdom. My father was annoyed at the Saxons and with this Cerdic, but he was confident that, when the war was over, he could see that the Saxons got some of the land they wanted and that Cerdic, after acquiring honor and a kingdom, was conveniently assassinated (it is not safe to allow great leaders to live among the enemy). Then a Britain slightly reduced in size would be ruled from Dun Fionn.

So, after some dislocation, the war might have continued, had the invasion not elicited another claim to the High Kingship.

Uther’s war-leader had been the lord Arthur, from the time that Arthur was twenty-one, and Uther could have chosen many others for the position than this one of his many illegitimate sons. Arthur was twenty-five when Cerdic invaded, and had been fighting the Saxons throughout the civil war, supported only by Dumnonia, of all the British kingdoms. All acknowledged that he was a brilliant war-leader, the most innovative and successful since Ambrosius Aurelianus, who was the first High King after the legions left. And yet, no one had expected that Arthur would take sides in the struggle, or, indeed, that he would do anything but fight the Saxons. But when he saw the Saxons invading on a large scale and realized that the Britons were not going to drop the civil war to fight their common enemy (he thought half like a Roman, when it came to such matters) he was apparently “provoked,” the circumstance my mother had warned against.

He rode with the royal warband to Camlann, the royal fortress of Britain, abandoning his lonely and massively outnumbered position against the Saxons. There he met Constantius, king of Dumnonia, and there he declared himself High King, Augustus, and Pendragon of Britain.

This produced more effect on the kings of Britain than Cerdic’s invasion had. But Arthur ab Uther did not leave them any length of time for their shrieks of protest at usurping bastards. He raised the largest army he could and attacked first Brycheiniog and then Dyfed. He took the royal fortresses of each land after subduing and dispersing the warbands, each time defeating forces larger than his own. The kings of both countries were forced to swear him the Threefold Oath of allegiance, and to provide supplies for Arthur’s forces. This accomplished, he proceeded to conquer Gwynedd.

Docmail king of Gwynedd never swore allegiance to Arthur, but proudly took poison in his own fortress of Caer Segeint, cursing Uther’s bastard son, three hours before Arthur arrived there on the tail of Docmail’s defeated warband. Docmail’s son, Maelgwn, who was only a year or so older than myself, had been designated by Docmail as his successor. He swore fealty to Arthur without protest.

It was not yet July, and no other king had even had a chance to prepare to fight the man who claimed the Pendragonship. Arthur moved very fast. By the time Docmail died, however, the new claimant to the title found all the nations in Britain allied against him, foremost among them Urien of Rheged and, with our allies, my father. The simple reason for this sudden concord was this: it looked as though Arthur could win.

Arthur was not caught unprepared by this new alliance. It was discovered that, before claiming the title, he had made an alliance of his own with a king in Less Britain. Less Britain is in Gaul, a rich and powerful land. It was first begun as a colony by the High King Maximus when Rome still stood, and it increased in size as the legions withdrew, and men made landless by the Saxons went there for lack of a better place. When Arthur made his alliance Less Britain was not defending itself against the Saxons or the Goths or the Huns, and there was a civil struggle brewing between the two sons of the old king over who would succeed. The dispute had not reached the point of war, but this was inevitable once the old king died. Bran, the younger brother, had once fought beside Arthur, and had leapt at the chance of an alliance. He sailed from Gaul with his warband and a large army besides, landed at Caer Uisc in Dumnonia, and joined Arthur in Caer Segeint a few days after it fell. From there he was immediately rushed to Dinas Powys, which Arthur wanted to take before the other kings could unite their forces against him. There was a brief, fierce struggle in Powys, and Arthur was again victorious. He rode into the fortress in triumph, accepted the fealty of Rhydderch Hael of Powys, and dispersed Rhydderch’s warband.

The other British kings finally managed to unite. They were by no means one army, and by no means ready to fight in unison, but their strength was very great. There were Gwlgawd king of Gododdin, and the king of Elmet, and Caradoc king of Ebrauc, and March Ship-owner of Strathclyde, and Urien of Rheged, called the Lion of Britain—and my father, Lot of Orcade, the strongest king of Caledon, the sun’s descendant.

Arthur had the royal warband of Uther, which had followed him faithfully during the preceding two years of civil war, and he had his allies Constantius, King of Dumnoia, and Bran of Less Britain, together with sworn and enforced neutrality from Gwynedd, Dyfed, Brycheiniog, and Powys.

The story of the battle between these two forces is one often told, and more often sung, in the halls of all the kings of Britain, Erin, and the Saxon lands. In the Orcades we heard of it two weeks before Lot himself returned with the warband.

It was late in July, a hot day, with the air heavy enough to cut with a knife. The messenger came riding up from the harbor on the east coast at a trot, too hot and tired to go faster. Morgawse received the man in her chambers, gave him the obligatory cup of wine, and impatiently asked his news. I sat on the bed, watching.

The messenger drank the wine eagerly, mixing it with about half water. His clothes were stained and dusty and soaked with sweat. He was one of my father’s warband, though not a kinsman of mine, as half the warband was, but a Dalriad attracted to us by my father’s fame and generosity. His name was Connall.

He began by telling us what the last messenger had said: Arthur, impatient for battle, had ridden north and west with his men, and the armies of the kings of Britain had drifted from various directions to encounter him. Morgawse nodded impatiently, and the messenger hurried to continue. The armies had met east of the upper part of the river Saefern, by one of its tributaries, the Dubhglas. It is hilly country there, and Arthur had had time to place his forces carefully.

Morgawse frowned. From the condition of the messenger it was already obvious that there had been some kind of defeat, and she began to suspect that it had been a severe one. Arthur was famed as a war-leader.

“It was about three weeks ago,” continued Connall. “We stood about and they stood about, waiting to fight. It was hot—stinking hot. We stood there in our leather jerkins and mail and sweated and waited for Arthur to make up his mind what to do. We could see the standards of Bran and Constantius down the valley from us, but not Arthur’s. We cursed the lazy bastard for making us wait, but he was the great enemy, and we had no choice.

“About mid-morning, someone came up carrying the Red Dragon standard, and the enemy all cheered. We became very angry. It seemed a piece of impudence for him to declare himself High King and use the Pendragon standard, and he without a clan. Lot commanded us to charge, and we were ready enough. We raised the war-cry splendidly and ran at them. All the other kings in the valley—for we were all in the valley, the hills being too steep to fight on properly...”

“Fool!” snapped Morgawse. Connall stared at her uncomfortably. “What idiocy, to allow himself to be trapped by such a…continue.”

Realizing that she had been addressing Lot, not himself, Connall went on. “At all events, we attacked. They put up a good fight. They are strong men in the shield-wall, those men of Less Britain. But there were more of us, and we are no weaklings ourselves. Your son and your husband, Lady, fought gloriously, side by side, thrusting with their spears almost as one, their shields locked together, laughing. They carried everyone before them. And that Urien of Rheged is a fine war-hound, a lion indeed. The men of Rheged…”

“I said, continue!” said Morgawse intensely. Her dark eyes narrowed on the messenger. Connall swallowed, looked away from her, and continued.

“Arthur’s forces retreated, slowly. We pressed after them down the valley. It was a hard struggle. About noon, though, they began to falter—at least they seemed to—and we redoubled our attack. They broke. Their shield-wall collapsed inward, and they started running as fast as they could.

“We cheered as loudly as we had the breath for—which wasn’t very loud, for we were wearied by such fighting in that miserable heat—and ran after them.” Connall’s face lit a little as he recalled the elation of the moment, then shadowed suddenly. “And then Arthur brought out his horsemen.”

Morgawse groaned, threw away her wine-glass. “From the hills.”

“From the hills. They came down, so fast…on horses. One does not ride horses into battle, not against spearmen. They can be spitted so fast that…well, no matter. They rode the horses down, hurling their throwing spears, breaking the shield-wall before they reached it—it was breached along the flanks anyway because of our haste after the rest of the army. And then they were among us on those horses, riding us down, stabbing with spears and striking with swords. We had spent all our throwing spears long before, and we did not know how to fight them. We could not reform our shield-wall, because they were inside it. Arthur was with them—he had only sent someone else to the others with his standard—and he was laughing and shouting the war-cry of the High Kings. The men of Less Britain and Dumnonia, who had been fleeing from us, picked up the cry and rushed back at us. We couldn’t hold them, for the horsemen broke our shield-wall and the horses were trampling us underfoot. We broke. Lot kept shouting at us to hold, to regroup about him, but we couldn’t. We couldn’t. We went running away. Our shield-wall was broken, and we threw away our shields to run faster. Lot stood, Lady, weeping for rage, and your son with him. Some of us remembered our vows to him, and the mead he gave us in this Hall, and we returned to preserve our honor. We tried to retreat slowly, and some others joined us, or came back—but we couldn’t hold, even for a little while. Our shields were hacked to pieces, and we were retreating across the bodies of our comrades who were killed while they fled. Lot said—I was by him—“‘I will die, then, fighting with my warband.’”

Morgawse laughed harshly. “Die! Would that you had. But Arthur had no desire for your death, Lot of Orcade. He wished no more war with the Orcades.”

Connall nodded miserably. “Constantius came up with his warband and asked us to surrender. I…I…”

“And you surrendered!” shouted Morgawse. Her face was flushed with anger. “You surrendered and swore the Threefold Oath never to fight Arthur or any whom Arthur supported, ever again!”

Connall dropped his head. “It is so. We had no choice. It was surrender or die. And Arthur was not, after all, to be our king.”

Morgawse moved as in pain and covered her face with her hands.

Connall hesitated, then went on. “The rest of the warband had fled with the armies of the kings of Britain, and was caught with them. They were driven like cattle up the valley into the Dubhglas. There had been rains, and the river was high. It is swift there, too, and there was no crossing it, not in that press. They surrendered, they all surrendered—Arthur had given orders that no one was to kill the kings—and they swore the Threefold Oath of allegiance to Arthur. The next day he gave himself some Roman title and said there would be a council at Camlann. But he told Lot to take us and go home, or he would burn out our ships and have us killed. But he is keeping your son, Lady, for a hostage. He saw that Lot loved Agravain.

“So we went back to Gododdin at great speed. I went ahead, Lady, to bring you this news…”

“Arthur Pendragon,” whispered Morgawse, without moving. Her eyes were fixed on something infinitely far away. I shivered, for I knew that the hate she had borne for Uther had been conferred in double measure on Uther’s son. “Artorius, Insularis Draco, Augustus, Imperator Britanniarum. That is his Roman title, man. Arthur, Pendragon, High King of Britain. Arthur…” Morgawse dropped her hands, glared at Connall and beyond him. Her face was twisted with a fury and hatred beyond human comprehension. Hate was a black fire in her eyes, deep as the inner black ocean which I knew had swallowed her. “Arthur!” she screamed. “Arthur! Oh, this battle is yours, brother, but the war is not over, I swear, I, Morgawse, rightful and legitimate daughter of a High King! Death, death upon you, death upon your seed, that it will rise against you, for all your new gods and empire and sorceries. Death and eternal agony! Be secure now in your new power and glory, you whom Uther loved, but my curse will find you out and give you to damnation for ever, I swear the oath of my people, and may the earth swallow me, may the sky fall on me, may the sea overwhelm me if you do not die by your son’s hand!”

Morgawse had risen and lifted her hands. To my eyes, darkness blazed in a corona about her, and she was more beautiful than ever any mortal woman was, and I was blinded by her darkness and beauty and worshipped her in terror with all my heart. Connall, as terrified as I, cringed, unable to mutter a prayer, staring at her with wide eyes. As the final syllables of the binding Threefold Oath fell on the shocked air, she remembered him, and turned on him. She was angry that he had seen her rage, angry as a goddess. But she laughed, and her control was back, veiling but not hiding the splendor beneath it.

“So, you believe that I am terrible,” she said. “You do not know how terrible, man, Connall of the Dalriada. Shall I show you?”

He collapsed away from her, cringed towards the door. Morgawse’s hands rose and she wove a spell. My eyes saw it as the black strength came together like threads on a loom, into a strange pattern.

“My power makes no great show of warriors, as Lot’s does, or Arthur’s,” she whispered. “It is subtle, working in the dark, in the places beyond your sight, hidden in fear in your own mind. No man is free from me. No man, not even Arthur. Certainly not you, Dalriad…shall I show you, Connall?”

He shook his head, licking his lips. His back was flat against the door, his fingers spread against it. The leather bolt was not fastened, but he was as incapable of opening it as if it had been locked with chains of steel. Morgawse approached him and, beside her, he seemed as pale and unreal as a ghost.

“Do not, Mor Riga, Great Queen,” he muttered.

“You do not wish to know your Queen’s power?”

He shook his head, shuddering.

Morgawse stepped back, relaxed her hands. The darkness that had nestled there dissipated into the air. The coldness of the room suddenly vanished. I became aware that it was still July.

“Mention nothing of what I have said to anyone,” said Morgawse, “and you never will see that power. Leave here.”

Connall fumbled, found the door-bolt, and fled. Just as he left the room, his eyes touched me and widened only a little.

As the door closed and Morgawse sank once more on to the bed and began to laugh, I realized that I, too, was gaining a reputation for witchcraft.