Lance’s hand fastened in his hair. He drew him back, close to Balana’s warm flank, and Art, who had manfully faced as much for one day as he could, turned and rested his brow against Lance’s thigh.
Still he saw the boat approaching. It didn’t come naturally through the water, but formed itself out of black cloud and floated just over the surface. Art knew the shape of it. In Ector’s Christian world, the dead were buried safely out of sight, but Art’s Kernowek ancestors had given them back to the waves. He knew this, just as he knew so much more about Pendragon and the wild Cerniw shores than he’d ever been taught. He knew he was looking at a black-sailed funeral barge.
Cold terror seized him. The ship was no vessel of timbers and pitch, but a hole cut out of the universe. He would not die peacefully. He would disappear into that hole and be dissolved into its nothingness. On the prow, straight and still, a hooded figure stood, long robes unruffled by the gale. The old man, Arthur knew. The shadow that had dogged his life, come now in his last minutes to ensure that not even his spirit would escape the howling dark, come to bear him forever away from the sun. “No,” he said wearily. “No.”
Lance’s grip tightened. “No,” he agreed, drawing him closer. “This is some illness, surely. You’ve had too much weight laid upon you too soon.”
“Do you think so?” Art raised his head. “Perhaps you’re right. Why should it be this way?”
“Maybe it doesn’t have to. Maybe it’s only a warning, or... or a dream. I wish we could ask Viviana.”
“Oh, damn Viviana!” Art yelled suddenly back, making Lance and the horses jump. “Damn her, and damn the Merlin. Father Ector and his prophecies, too.” He seized Hengroen’s reins and leapt effortlessly into the saddle. He grinned at Lance like a well-favoured demon. “Blast all whispering in corners, all flapping robes and Celtic mysteries. I’m a Roman and a Briton, and so are you. Neither of us believes in this nonsense. I can see Guy right up on the crest, beside the old Wall. Come on, Lance o’lough—I’ll race you!”
For an instant, Lance wondered where they were going. As far away, he guessed, from the dark visions as Arthur could possibly get. Then he lost all thought in the excitement of the chase.
They tore along the shore of the lough in a rainbow of hoof-shattered spray, Art always a few yards ahead. Lance had never dared ride his borrowed mount hard, but now that caution was hurled to the winds, how sweetly she responded! When Hengroen got some distance on her, she snorted and lengthened her stride without urging, seeming to take joy in their bounding dash across the moor.
Lance laughed aloud between deep gasps for air. The turf and the heather were deadly, pitted all over with badger holes, scattered with grassed-over rocks, but he felt immortal. Arthur had loved him, had saidgive me your skin and your bone, your seed, and when Lance had given and done all that, had surged up on top of him and given him all those things too.
Far up ahead on the crag by the Wall he saw Guy gesturing frantically, his voice reaching them in tatters on the wind.Probably wants us to slow down, Lance thought distantly.Poor fellow. He felt sorry for everyone not privileged to be as he was now, for everyone earthbound, everyone not flying into the sun on the heels of the future king.
He saw their destination just as Art changed course and set a full-pelt dash towards it. The very crest of the dragon’s spine. All his life, it had been Lance’s landmark, that heartlifting shape on the sky. It had risen above the mists in the valley when he was making his way back from a day-long hunt, telling him that he was nearly home. It had haunted his sleep, a shape he had never recognised until Viviana had shown his dreaming mind the dragon. He had gone there often, to escape the scuffling chaos of his family, seeking refuge in its bareness, its bleak calm. It was like a mighty scale projecting from the earth, a ragged upthrust of rock where even the gorse struggled to find a niche for growth. The highest point for miles around. Lance smiled, wheeling the mare to follow in Art’s wake.Of course.
The way to the crest from beneath the crags was up a steep and twisting path. Lance thought Art must have seen it, perhaps on their way down: it was invisible from here.
Then he realised that the prince had no intention of following any path at all. He had set his horse’s head direct at the cliff face. At this point, before the walls of black rock leapt up sheer, the route was impossible.
“Art!” he yelled. “Not here!” But if Arthur heard him, he gave no sign. He set Hengroen’s head at the last few yards of level ground, covered them at a flat-out dash.
Lance understood. Thoughts that should have unfolded slowly flashed at him in lightning blades.You are outrunning your fate. Riding for your life, and you don’t care how short that life might be, if only you can choose its ending yourself.
Then, as certainly as he’d grasped that truth, he knew that his own fate was inextricably tangled with Art’s. The distance between them increased, and he felt a physical tugging inside him. Where Art went, he had to follow. On the heels of his fright came a wild exultation. There were certainly worse ways to die. Throwing aside everything he’d ever learned about the care of himself and his horse, the brute common sense of survival, he turned the mare’s head and rode her straight after Hengroen.
They made the climb somehow, in terrible wrenching leaps and bounds. If Lance slackened momentum for a second, the earth would pull him down. Under the thud of his heart, the percussive breathing of the horse, he could hear poor Gaius, shouting in what sounded like despair.
They broached the crest together, in a clatter of hooves on rock. Sparks flew as they reined in, both doing their best to pull up the snorting, wheeling horses before they shot off the crevasse on the far side. They came to a halt at the same instant, and faced one another, eyes wide with questions.
Lance got his breath back first. “What was that supposed to be?”
“What did it look like? A race!”
Lance hesitated. If he denied it—accused the prince of trying to destroy himself in a fit of half-insane terror—many things would be over. Was it his duty anyway? Surely Arthur needed friends who were too wise to accompany him into his madness… But, Lance knew, that was what he had just done. “A race,” he repeated unsteadily. “Well, who won it?”
“We were equal,” Art said, then added with absurd solemnity, “which means that I must fight you for it.”
“I don’t want to fight you.”
“It’s a challenge. You must. To show me your allegiance!”
“That makes no sense at all. Anyway, haven’t I...” He paused, trying to make him smile. “Haven’t I shown you more or less everything today already?”
A broad, loving grin rewarded him. But wild forces were whirling about the crag still, a storm with Art at its eye. “Nonetheless.”
The wildness was catching. Lance didn’t want to be Art’s conscience, his counterpoise. He had Gaius and Ector for that. And if Art could only purge this strange mood through combat, better it be with a friend. “Very well, then. Foot or horse?”
“Horse, I think. They’re all right. We just gave them a bit of a scare.”
“Gavethema scare?” Lance said it for form’s sake: at no point in the chase had he been afraid. There was no reason, he thought, unsheathing Excalibur. Harm couldn’t reach him in Arthur’s wake until Arthur’s time had come. “Have at you, then, if you must. On your guard!”
