Art had to agree that it kept the peace. Wouldn’t the settlers be more inclined to do as they were told, for a price, if the Britons entered into their way of thinking, and rewarded and punished them as rigidly as they regulated themselves? Paid mercenaries… Yes, it could work. Art could see that Vortigern’s failure had largely been down to mismanagement.
His own army followed him from loyalty. He could be certain of that, he said, because although he paid them what he could afford, that sum was so tiny, they could have no other reason. He would trade glances with Coel, who was in his turn visibly remembering his own campaigns, his glory days beneath the golden standards of Rome, and the pair of them would look almost as grim as each other.
Nevertheless, Arthur summoned Garbonian, who had been keeping a discreet distance since his diplomatic triumph. Garb, delighted at his promotion from traitor to ambassador, eagerly set forth his plans to organise the militia. His father’s gaze on him was heavy with reproof, but there was nothing the old man could do, not while Garb had Art’s authority to speak. Garb tried, and failed, to conceal his enjoyment.
Lance watched it all, for the most part in silence. He spoke only when Arthur questioned him directly, or when he thought he saw flaws in Garb’s ideas of tactics or defence. For all he’d tried to divert Art’s blind rage against the settlers, he was uneasy about using them as soldiers on home turf. Perhaps, he reflected with shame, he was as bigoted as anyone else. He recalled his own childhood hatred for the whole race, his readiness to rush down a hill and kill the strangers approaching Vindolanda simply because they’d been fair-headed, not been Roman-Celtic dark.
Peace had to be a better way. During the week that followed, a deep winter cold set in. The shortest day was approaching, and the dragon was heard of no more. As soon as Lance could be spared from the debates, he went down and found for himself a place among Arthur’s soldiers, glad to be away from the swirling political tides within the castle. The men were leery of him at first—this new favourite of the king’s—but Art’s favourites were renowned for being useful, and if Lance was a prince in his own land, he was also no more than a farmer’s son. He proved himself on the archery field, knocked a few major players off their horses with a blunted spear, and at the end of the week had the ordinary number of friends and rivals amongst the troops.
He and Arthur slept in the bright eastern chamber that overlooked the sea. Art’s quarters were better, but the king seemed to understand without words Lance’s love for the place: that he felt at home there as he never had in his father’s house, or even on the northern moors. As night after starry, entwined night went by, their exchanges in the sturdy wooden bed became less frantic, the passions of men arising like deep sea currents through the wild waters of boyhood. In after years, Lance would remember the breaking of light on tumbled bedclothes, the shape of his king’s worn-out profile, as the dearest and best of scenes. If anyone—Guy, the Merlin, the ladies and lads of the court who might have fancied their chances with Art until his prophesied bride arrived—noticed that the king’s rooms stood vacant, none of them spoke.
***
Lance slept profoundly after love. He was exhausted anyway, from drilling or sitting up at all hours round the fire while Art wrestled with some new twist of the peace process. He never knew what woke him, deep in the night of the dark moon. He’d been dreaming of the dragon—not the twisted worm of Spindlestone Heughs, but the dragon of the ridge, a creature huge as the sky, who danced among the stars. In this dream, her dance was urgent, and he opened his eyes on thick darkness, his mind resounding with her fear.
He turned back his blanket and slipped out of bed. The darkness seemed to press on his eyes. Still drenched in sleep, it took him a few seconds to realise the profound difference between this night and all his others within Din Guardi’s walls: no torchlight painted the courtyard below him. The cressets were out. Heart pounding, he found his way by fingertip touch to the door, where he unhooked his shirt and breeches and Art’s. Their sword belts and scabbards hung in their accustomed place by the bed. By the time he got back to Art’s side, he was calm again, his pulse down to a cool steady throb.
Art was sleeping flat-out on his belly, pillow as usual impatiently cast to the floor. He rolled over, and Lance planted a hand on his mouth. “Trouble,” he whispered, when Art’s eyes focussed on his, and he smiled at the soldierly swiftness with which the king’s dreams dissolved to bright purpose. Peace might be the way, but getting there could be a tremendous bore. “Here’s your clothes. Get dressed!”
Chapter Fifteen
The lights were out all over Din Guardi. A guard lay slain in the corridor outside their room, corpse still warm. Taking the steps one at a time, cat’s-whisker fingers extended in the pitch black, Art and Lance made their way down towards the courtyard. On their way they found other corpses, and kept between them a grim silent count. Six. The whole watch. Someone had come here and silently pulled the castle’s teeth. Hard-trained soldiers - who could get close enough to them? Perhaps to come up to them, bid them good night and good watch, engage them in talk? Their throats had been slit or less expertly slashed, wounds meant to hush the first cry. The work of several hands. Only their friends could have done this...
Or Garbonian and his. Lance felt the thought flash between him and Arthur as surely as if he’d spoken it. He shot out a hand and grabbed Art’s wrist, held him locked still until his first shock of rage and horror passed.
By now the smallest distinctions between light and dark were bright to them. They paused, poised and listening, beneath the tower’s arch. The courtyard was full of the pale blue radiance of stars—and, down by the gate, the glow of a single lantern. The portcullis was raised. Coel’s fortress had been breached.
Three dozen or so Anglians, filing in silence through the gate. The time for silence was past. Art’s first yell, a full-blooded battle cry, would bring Coel’s surviving soldiers and his own to startled waking in their beds around the castle. He and Lance ploughed into the stealthily moving line, using to its full extent their one brief advantage of surprise.
They would only have to hold on here for a minute before Guy had the guard out in force. Lance began his soldier’s task, calmly dispatching his first man then the next. His mind cleared to the crystal lucidity of combat, and he swung round with a backhand thrust to bury his dagger in a third.
Then Oesa sprang at Arthur out of the crowd, face bestial in the lamplight, and Lance had all his work cut out to protect Art’s back. The king and the Anglian met like the predestined foes they were. Uther Pendragon’s blood-lust awoke in Art’s veins, Excalibur’s magic in his hands, with a roar Lance could almost hear. Lights were flaring in the tower and royal quarters. A horseman was flying out through the gates to alert the army. If Lance could only hold on…
Oesa fought bravely and well, and with every sign of enjoyment. “So much for your hostage wife,” Art yelled at him over the clash of bronze on steel.
“Ah, but you don’t take women hostage, do you?”
“I might bloody start, after you. What of your children?”
“Slay the brats. I’ve half a dozen more. As for my Aedilthryd—she did it well. Meek little mouse-wife! She was flashing her teats at the nightwatch while Garb’s men killed the guards.”
Lance glimpsed Art’s nod of acknowledgment from the corner of his eye. This had been, in his way, a noble enemy. Excalibur flashed, faster than hand or mind could account for, and Oesa, still grinning, crashed down.
Behind him were twenty more. Art turned his back to Lance. Lance mirrored his movement, and they stood spine to spine, swords ready, facing the oncoming horde.
***
Gaius and the guard arrived, not an instant too soon, and such a battle ensued as would echo down the ages at Din Guardi. The numbers stood more or less even until Art’s soldiers began to pour in through the gate. Some of Coel’s men had switched sides: the fight became sharper as their comrades discovered which. Excalibur moved like a scythe through harvest, and Lance continued his methodical dispatch of anyone who entered sword or dagger’s reach.
Prince Garb was nowhere to be seen, but must have been watching from somewhere—when the army began to turn the tide, he appeared on the far edge of the melee, ducked down and started to run low along the courtyard wall. Catching sight of him, Art made a grab at Lance’s shirt. “There he is, the weasel. Get him! I’ve got my hands full.”
“Leave him to me,” Lance said grimly, thinking of the butchered guards, and the poor old king whose heart would surely be broken by this. He dodged out of the fray and ran.
Garb was hard to follow. Born and raised within Din Guardi’s walls, he knew its every bolt-hole, and terror had made him swift. Lance tailed him as he would have done a deer in a deep hungry winter—single-minded, remorseless, not dismayed at losing sight of him, every sense alert for the marks of his passage. A door left ajar, a dying patter of feet, a scrap of rich fabric left torn on a nail... Skidding into a wine vault, Lance cornered him, desperately trying to raise a trap-door by its iron ring.
As soon as he saw the game was up, he left off his efforts and straightened, backing away, both hands held in front of him. “Ah, it’s you, Lance! Don’t hurt me!”
