The Book of Mordred (31 page)

Once again, people were running.

A second pair of arms plucked Kiera off the ground, away from her mother. Mordred held her while he called directions for the setting up of an infirmary for the wounded, then impatiently, as if he had asked before, demanded where the horses were. There was still no sign of Arthur, and the people seemed to instinctively acknowledge Mordred as being in charge.

"I'm not hurt," Kiera said as soon as she could speak without interrupting him. "I can stand."

Mordred set her down. He had been supporting her weight mostly with his left, uninjured arm and didn't look as if he could have done so for much longer. But still, he looked at her closely before turning away. "Gawain, go see if you can find out what the delay is at the stable. They will be half the way to France before we ever get started." He raised his voice to carry into the crowd. "Has anybody seen Gareth or Gaheris? And would somebody please get that fool to stop ringing the bell? Sir Lucan..."

Kiera felt her mother's arms around her again, and realized she had swayed, almost fallen. "Mordred," Kiera said, unable to get much louder than a whisper.

He had hold of her other elbow. "Can somebody—"

Several people were yelling all at once. "The horses. They've gone and killed the horses."

Two squires tried to force their way through the crowd to Mordred's side.

"Move!" Gawain, behind them, pushed one insistent man out of the way, intimidated the rest with his voice and sheer bulk. He grabbed Mordred's arm, which made his younger brother wince. "Lancelot's men," Gawain panted. "They've killed the stable master and his assistants. A good quarter of the horses are dead or cut up. Much of the equipment is slashed and unusable. They tried to get a fire going, but thank God our people caught it before it spread too far."

Mordred swore. "Get together what you can..." Mercifully, the clamor from the bell cut off abruptly. "See what you can salvage—"

"Done, it's done. They'll be out as soon as they can, but good Lord, Mordred, the horses! There was no need for that."

"Did you see Gareth or Gaheris?"

Gawain shook his head. "I had trouble convincing Arthur to stay inside. Maybe they're with him."

"Mordred," Kiera said, still not much more than a whisper. "Gawain." She noted the quick looks behind their backs and knew she wasn't the only one who had seen. Why were they leaving this to her? Why didn't one of the adults tell them? Somebody had hold of Mordred's arm, was asking about the Channel crossing should Lancelot's men get that far.

Kiera tugged on his shirt, despite Alayna's continued fretting. "Mordred."

He gestured for her to wait, and she repeated his name much more loudly. He turned, even though the squires had started to bring out the surviving horses, accoutered in what remained of saddles and bridles. Gawain, asking something of one of the squires, realized he was suddenly the only one in the vicinity talking, and stopped midsentence.

Mordred's dark gray eyes surveyed the crowd. Perhaps he recognized the hunger, the way their eyes expectantly flicked from him to Kiera.

Vultures,
she thought again.
They're waiting to feed on him.

She searched for the right words, but there were none.

"He didn't see them," she blurted out, not any reasonable way to start, but the silence could go on no longer. "Mordred, he didn't mean it."

Mordred's eyes narrowed.

"Lancelot," Kiera said, and in that moment, he knew. She could see he knew. She said, "There were so many people, armed knights and townsfolk throwing stones."

Mordred turned to face the platform, the stake.

How had she come to this, that she was defending Lancelot, who was destroying the people she loved most? She insisted, "He didn't recognize them!"

People moved out of his way faster than they had done earlier for Gawain. Gawain was fighting comprehension, obviously trying to fit a different meaning to Kiera's words, but his face was pale above his beard. "Not Gareth," he said, laying his large hand on her shoulder. "He would never have hurt young Gareth."

But a path had opened from them to the platform, and his keen eyes would have been able to sort out the sprawled forms at the foot of the stake. His hand fell from her shoulder and he walked woodenly after Mordred.

Kiera ran after them.

Mordred had knelt next to Gareth, but looked up at the clatter they made mounting the platform. "They weren't armed," he said—though everyone could already see that.

"Apparently that don't matter to Sir Lancelot," somebody yelled up. "My neighbor's boy, Kent, warn't armed neither."

The crowd murmured, sympathy or impatience. Several of the knights hesitantly mounted the readied horses.

Gawain sat down heavily between his two dead brothers and looked from one to the other.

"They weren't armed," Mordred repeated.

"No," Gawain agreed numbly. He ran both hands over his face, covered his mouth.

Kiera felt icy fingers brush against her heart. For as long as she had known him, Gawain had always had a beard—the only one of the five brothers who did. Now, with it momentarily hidden, Kiera saw that his resemblance to Agravaine was greater than she had ever realized. An image of Agravaine, dead in the Queen's chambers, forced itself into her mind.

Gawain let his hands drop, and he was suddenly just Gawain again. "It could
not
have been Lancelot," he said. "He was always a friend to the boys, especially Gareth. For God's sake, he
knighted
Gareth."

"It was Lancelot," someone called out. "I seen it."

"Me too," another voice said.

"Aye, he never saw who it was," a third added, grudging concession, "but it was him."

"I told them it was madness." Mordred seemed oblivious to the crowd that closed in. "Honor guard. I told them to keep out of it."

"I never thought..." Gawain started. "Lancelot has never ... Oh, God,
they weren't armed.
"

Mordred sat back on his heels. He pulled something from his shirt. For some reason, the gesture gave Kiera a rush of unexpected panic, an echo of a recurrent though never quite recalled nightmare. But it was only Nimue's ring, held around Mordred's neck by a thin strip of leather. He held the gold band in his fist, his eyes closed, his face tipped back toward the evening sky. Gawain, on the other hand, bent over Gaheris so that his hair—dark shot through with gray, much the same as Lancelot's—fell forward and hid his face. Yet his shoulders shook. Everyone could tell that he was crying.

And they approved, Kiera could sense it. Tears for a dead brother were something they could understand. Mordred's control, however tenuous, was
not.

Alayna took Gawain by the shoulders. "Gawain," she told him, "he couldn't have meant to do it..."

He pulled away. Stood up.

Kiera reached for his hand, but he didn't see, or chose to ignore. He jumped down from the platform, then stooped to pick up one of the swords that had been dropped during the fighting. "Mordred," Alayna said sharply, urgently.

Mordred turned, and saw that Gawain had taken the reins of one of the horses. "What are you doing?" he asked.

"Going to Joyous Gard, if need be," Gawain answered, which was Lancelot's castle in Brittany. The crowd of knights and half-armed townspeople began to show signs of life at this. Blood feud was something else they could understand. Somebody started a cheer, which was caught up by others. They suddenly had a leader.

"Hurry with the rest of those horses," one of the knights shouted toward the stable, for all the first group was suddenly taken.

Mordred got to his feet—didn't anybody else see how much that cost him?—and strode to Gawain.

Alayna and Kiera followed before the crowd closed in again. They were right behind when Mordred rested his arm across the saddle so that Gawain couldn't mount. His voice was quiet, but it had always had a tendency to carry. "Gawain, this isn't the time—"

"Isn't the time?" Gawain could barely get the words out. "Mordred, Gareth loved him. All Lancelot had to do was ask, and he would have gone against anybody for him. He would have chosen him above King Arthur ... Mordred, he would have chosen him above us.
You
wanted this; you pushed for it. You and Agravaine against Gareth and Gaheris, with me in the middle. Well, now I am on your side. I admit you were right about Lancelot all along." He swung onto the horse, and Mordred had to move his hand lest his brother sit on it.

"This ... this is not what I wanted." Mordred raised his voice, playing to the courtyard. "We are
not
riding out tonight with only a few score of horses. That would just get more men killed. We are going to pull in horses and equipment from the countryside, and when we ride out we will be organized and under King Arthur's direction."

Gawain made a move as though to hit him across the face, and only refrained at the last instant. He spoke in a shaky whisper. "You have always been good at calculations: This is three-fifths of the family gone, you..." He bit off the rest of what he'd planned to say. He dug his heels into the horse's sides, but Mordred grabbed the reins. That, and the closeness of the crowd, confused the steed enough that it stopped, pacing restively.

Mordred winced at the jarring on his hand. "Whatever King Arthur's feelings are," he said, still loud enough for everybody to hear, "Lancelot has treacherously attacked people under the protection of Camelot and wrongfully killed knights bound by oaths of fealty to the King and performing their duty under his law."

This was an appeal to reason that the people could understand. They murmured and muttered, knowing that Mordred was right, yet perhaps distrusting him still for being level-headed at a time like this.

"Gawain..." Mordred's voice dropped so that only those standing nearest could discern his words. "Gawain, please. I can make out the mathematics of it, too." His eyes were bright, whether from tears, or the last vestiges of fever, or reflected starlight—Kiera couldn't tell. He was pale and shivering.

Gawain rested his hand on Mordred's head. "All right," he whispered. "All right." He turned to the crowd. "We wait for King Arthur to lead us." He was crying, and the words were just about indistinguishable, but it was all they needed.

They gave a subdued cheer.

Very tasteful for the circumstances, Kiera thought.

Stop it,
she told herself. Amiable Gareth and the stormy but kind-hearted Gaheris were dead, as was Agravaine, who had always been able to make her laugh; and all she could do was fall back into distant mocking. But with that thought, the distance was gone, and she began to cry. For she suddenly realized what she had seen on that hillside with her mother and Nimue and Mordred and Agravaine. She had seen all the brothers from Orkney dead: Agravaine, Gareth, Gaheris—and Gawain, too. Mordred mortally wounded. King Arthur dying. Nothing left of Camelot: a puff of smoke, a pile of ash, sated buzzards. The knights and ladies and all their dreams forgotten. The towers dismantled, their stones used to shore up a peasant's wall. The Round Table burned piece by piece in a shepherd's cook fire.
Oh, Mordred, don't do it,
she thought.

But she didn't know what it was he shouldn't do.

Kiera missed much of the turmoil of the days that followed. Servants and nobles alike scurried to prepare and pack wagonloads of food, clothing, medical supplies, and extra military equipment. Craftsmen worked late into the night making swords, saddles, harnesses, barrels, anything that might be needed for the siege on Lancelot in his castle at Joyous Gard. Horses throughout the countryside were requisitioned.

Arthur, gaunt and silent, seemed everywhere at once, and Mordred was always at his side. Somewhere during that time, the last of those who had persisted in calling Mordred Arthur's nephew began to acknowledge him as Arthur's son.

Even before the army left, peasants from the surrounding land started to drift in, to throw together hasty shelters or find dry corners within the outer walls. Those who lived in the outlying regions knew that without the protection of Camelots knights they would make easy targets for the kind of men who were always there to take advantage of unsettled, unvigilant times; and they drew in, a closing spiral, each wave taking over the cottages and holdings abandoned by those who had moved on before them.

Kiera caught glimpses of the preparations, but she spent most of her time helping Alayna in the rooms that had been set aside as an infirmary. There had been enough people wounded in what was already being called the Courtyard Massacre that at first they weren't particular about who tended them.

But the day the army moved out, with Arthur at its head, and Mordred left behind as regent, Kiera and her mother were thanked for their help in tending the wounded and were asked to keep away from the sick room.

"Stupid, ungrateful, superstitious..." Alayna crammed her things—powders and ointments and tinctures—into a bag, muttering loudly so that Padraic, standing close to make sure she took nothing of his, could hear.