There was something infinitely distressing to Lance in the sight of the young man’s abasement. Nobody like that should ever have to kneel. “Please get up,” he said. “If there was ever cause of offence between us, it’s forgiven.”
This time Arthur took the hand extended to him graciously. “That’s very noble of you, Prince of... What did you say it was called?”
“Vindolanda. It meansfair meadows.Nowhere.”
Arthur’s grip tightened warmly. He surged to his feet like water-weighted barley after rain. “Then, as Father Ector says—heaven reward you, Prince of Nowhere. Oh, wait—I’m forgetting something.”
Ector watched in satisfaction while his ward went to fetch the sword with his own hands. Having been pardoned for his crimes by his new friend, he was shining again, although Ector could see the experience had changed him: that, outside battle, he’d never attack an unready man again.
He picked the weapon up in a casual soldier’s grip. Ector had taught him swordsmanship since he was tall enough to lift a wooden facsimile, on his feet and from horseback, carefully pitting him against the older, bigger Gaius, whose infuriating calm in victory and defeat had also taught him something. To the old man’s surprise, he suddenly let the blade drop from his grasp. “What ails you now?” Ector demanded, striding over to help him. “Don’t throw that about. It’s a good one.”
“Yes, I... I know. Father Ector,” he whispered, going pale. “Do you hear that?”
Ector could hear nothing but the purr of the wind. He shook his head. “What do you hear, boy?”
“A kind of drumming, like the sound your heart makes in your ears at night. But deeper than that, slower...” Gently Art hefted the blade, turned it in the sunlight. “The hilt seems to warm in my hand. I don’t feel as if there’s any difference anymore, between...”
“Between what?” Ector glanced apprehensively at Gaius, who was giving Lance a leg-up onto a lead-rein horse. Ever since Arthur had been placed into his care, the boy had been subject to headaches and visions, sometimes so extreme that he would fall into a kind of seizure, an empty-eyed waking dream. It definitely wasn’t convenient for him to start one now. Ector shook his shoulder. “Bear!”
“Between my insides and my outsides. If I close my eyes, I could merge with the earth and the air and disappear.”
“Keep them open, then,” Ector brusquely advised. “This young prince has offered us shelter. It’s for you to lead our party there and honour his trust.”
Arthur returned to himself with an effort. He stepped forward, reached up and placed the sword reverently back into Lance’s hands. “It’s a fine thing,” he said. “Did you have it from your father?”
Lance drew a breath. Ector, after raising two sons, knew very well the look of a child considering a story, and a tall one, usually to cover a stranger truth. Then the boy’s expression cleared. “No,” he said frankly. “I found it in a lake.”
Arthur smiled, as if this absurdity was just what he’d expected to hear. Now it was Ector’s turn to shiver in the wing-shadow of a vision, and he looked away, pretending to wonder at the beautiful sweep of the land, the ridge where the legendary Hadrian had built his wall.
Gaius left Lance and came to stand beside him, concerned. “What’s wrong, Father?”
“By God, Gaius! The sword from the lake!”
Chapter Seven
Arthur and Lance rode side by side down the track. Lance was speechless. He was twice as high off the ground as his old pony had ever carried him, and the beast beneath him now was a long-boned, fine-skinned chestnut dream by contrast. His knee bumped off the prince of Cerniw’s, and he gasped and flinched away, for all he’d willingly tried to kill him not half an hour before.
Arthur shot him an amused glance. “All right, Your Majesty?”
“Don’t call me that. My father ruled a village, not a nation. My boast was a vain one, made in anger—I’d be grateful if you would forget it.”
“All right, then, Lance?”
He swallowed hard. The sound of his name—the simple question—from this stranger’s mouth... His head was full of echoes from a past he’d never had. His bruised skull throbbed and his empty belly reminded him that half a fish in the wilderness, however magical, didn’t make up for months of starvation. “I am fine,” he said stoutly. “I’ve never ridden a horse like this, that’s all.”
“Really? What do you ride at home?”
“A pony. Or I did, at any rate. There was a famine, and...”
Arthur’s jaw dropped. “You didn’t.”
“Of course we did. There’s no room for petty affections when children are starving.”
“I meant, did you personally...”
Lance wanted to lie. But some mix of horror and sympathy in the grey gaze fixed on him drew the truth out of his mouth, like a thorn from a wound. “Actually I hid in a barn and wept. But I was just a boy then.”
“I see.” Arthur rode on for a few paces. Once more his knee bumped against Lance’s, this time deliberate, companionable. “This horse belongs to my foster father. She’s served him well for ten years or so now, so he brings her as a spare, not his battle mount. Her name is Balana. Do you like her?”
