“More than I can possibly say.”
Arthur broke into laughter. “Come for a gallop, then! She might be past her prime, but she’ll carry you like the wind.”
“Won’t Sir Ectorius mind?”
“Maybe. I’m expected to be young and foolish at present, though, and we can say I egged you on.” He put a hand back to clap the rump of his sturdy black stallion, which capered and snorted in response. “Hengroen wants a run, too. Hold on—you can ride, can’t you?”
“Of course. What do you mean?”
“Just that you don’t seem too steady in your seat. Ector will skin me if you fall off and get hurt again.”
Lance did his best to find purchase on the slippery leather beneath him. He was used to a broad, hairy back, mud and burrs providing traction. Once again, honesty broke through his pride. “It’s this Roman saddle. I can’t get a grip.”
“Ah. You have to ease down into it. Let the horns at the front hold you in, and lean back against the cantle. That’s it.” Arthur watched in approval while Lance did his best to obey. “Don’t be concerned. Father Ector says a man who learned to ride bareback will always be a better soldier than a spoiled brat like me. Saddles can get lost or stolen, but a horse will always have a spine. Are you settled?”
Lance could hardly breathe for excitement. “Yes!”
“Come along, then. Away!”
Gaius watched his foster brother and the ragged prince tear off down the valley. “That lad’s giving ours a run for his money,” he observed.
Ector grunted. “About time somebody did.”
“Either that, or Bear will break his neck for him.”
“Hah. Our moorland prince die happy, if so.”
Gaius glanced at him in surprise. Ector was perceptive, but usually quite blind to this one trait in his ward. “Aye,” he said cautiously. “It’s a dangerous gift, though, isn’t it—to make men love you?”
“What?”
“Er... nothing. Only the wind.”
“I’ll wager he’s never sat a horse like my Balana. Look at the two idiots go!”
Well-hidden fear behind the smile in the old man’s voice. Gaius sought to reassure him. A prosaic soul, he had found his place in life as his father’s firm right hand, his practical support when the demands of caring for the prophesied king had worn him down. For himself, Gaius was still not convinced they were raising anything other than dangerous old Pendragon’s unwanted brat. He had married again since poor Ygraine, Gaius had heard, and had sons whose claims were based on something better than their mother’s abduction and rape. “I wouldn’t worry about this sword. He’s supposed to find it for himself, isn’t he? In a stone, too, if I remember aright.”
Ectorius scratched his head, still habitually short-cropped from his years in the Roman army. “Well, he has. The swordfromthe lake, remember—notinit. In a stone, from a lake... The old sorcerer spoke in riddles. And look at the thing, Gaius! It has to be the one.”
“But it belongs to this boy Lance,” Gaius said thoughtfully. “That’s an inconvenience, isn’t it? Unless…”
He shot a sideways glance at his father, and saw that Ectorius was half amused, half appalled by what he read there. “No, son,” he said. “You’re my good lad always. But there’ll be no forcing of events, and we’re this boy’s guests now. Let’s watch and let things happen as they will.”
Gaius followed on obediently.The sword from the lake—words heard so long ago that they had merged with the background of the firelit kitchen in which first he’d heard the story. He had been five, and still frightened by the old man who had emerged from the storm a few hours before. His father, too kindly a soul to turn away a wanderer on such a night, had bidden him welcome. Then the old man had stepped close, opened his robes and revealed a baby nestled in the crook of one skinny arm, and he’d spoken words to poor Ectorius that had made that worthy Roman noble pale to grey, and follow the old man down to the kitchen as if usurped in his own stronghold.
Once there, installed by the fire, the visitor had refused all offers of food and drink, and had begun to tell a story of the dragon of the south, and a mighty king whose lust for a woman had started a war so terrible that the land was not safe for his heir. Gaius hadn’t understood the half of it. Surely a baby—beside all the annoyance his adoption would cause Gaius, his father’s only son—could not be the means of saving the whole realm of Britannia.
Saving it from what, Gaius had failed to gather, watching jealously from beside Ector’s knee, aware that his father’s hand on his head was distracted, oblivious to whether he was petting his son or a dog. The child must be protected, and brought up to be a king. Certain things must happen. He must find something called agraal. He must discover a weapon that would be a sign of his reign’s beginning and its ending, his power and his death.
Nonsense, perhaps. An old man’s ramblings, a baby stolen from some poor cottager’s cradle. Ector had never spoken of the strange visitation again, nor complained of the burden laid upon him. Gaius’s mother was dead, and Ector had simply stepped into the breach once again, clucking over the bundle in his arms as it began to wail from hunger. And the night had turned cold, in the swish of the departing sorcerer’s robes, and words had hung in the air like snowflakes to Gaius’s dazzled vision:the sword from the lake...
***
And so it was that Lance, Prince of Nowhere, returned to Vindolanda at the head of a troop of Roman dignitaries, mounted on a horse fit for a king. His pulse was still thumping from his race with Arthur across the flats: what a creature Balana was! He’d watched the cavalry beasts wheeling and stamping about when he’d been barely tall enough to touch their shining bellies, but never thought to ride one, let alone in the company of a future king, before whom it was somehow all right to let his joy at this new experience show.
He’s generous, Lance thought suddenly, reining Balana back to a trot on the outskirts of the village.He likes to make people happy.This conviction too filled Lance with a depthless, incomprehensible joy, like seeing white swans take off from the surface of Broomlee Lough. It shouldn’t have mattered to him. Arthur would be here for one night only, gone in the morning, his kindness or otherwise no more to Lance than a passing gleam of the sun.
But Arthur flashed him a conspiratorial grin as he drew level on the flagstone road outside the praetor’s house. Lance’s throat tightened in a mix of pleasure and pain. “Here we are,” he said, glad he had the excuse of their recent gallop for the unsteady rasp in his voice. “We don’t have much after this long winter, but my people will shelter and feed you.”
