Arthur Imperator (8 page)

XVI Bolted

We
had lost the men we hunted. I sent out patrols along all the likely lines they may have used, sent them plodding through the dark, seeking the telltale spark of a fire that would lead us to Guinevia and Milo. At dawn, the tired men scoured the sky for hints of smoke, eye-scanned the land for the gleam of metal or giveaway movement of men and horses, but found nothing. I rode my horse to foam-flecked exhaustion, and gave Axis and Javelin scent of Guinevia’s scarf so they quartered the ground for miles, all without success.

We
crossed the last spur of the sacred mountain Yr Wyddfa to arrive at Myrddin’s stone house, a square, courtyarded place with high, sheltering walls that under other circumstances I would have been delighted to sight, as a haven and source of regal power. This day, with no tethered pack horses or men of my livery to be seen, it was obvious even from a distance that Guinevia was not there.

But
Myrddin was. He stood imposing outside the threshold, grey-robed, bearded, and holding his lignum vitae staff of office. He nodded as I rode up. “I saw you were coming, and you know there is bad news.” My mouth was dry. “But,” he gestured a flick of his fingers, “matters are improving. Turn your horse down that pass and go to Menai. I shall see Guinevia here in a week or so.” The wizard nodded again, showed his back to me and walked inside his home. I turned my horse’s head and headed him down the pass, towards the sea and the holy island. 

The three Jutish ships came up the strait in line astern. The sacred island of Mona was on their left side, the landmass of Wales on the right, the walls of Roman Segontium just ahead. Web viewed the fortifications intently. Guards were on the walls, which seemed in good repair. He did not have the force to take a place of this size and power, so there would be no raiding this day, but they would go ashore and view matters, maybe take a slave or two, or trade some of the Baltic amber he had brought.

The
crews beached their longships and, on orders from town watchmen, left their weapons except for personal daggers under guard on the vessels. They walked into the town, paying a toll at the gate, where the guards eyed the strangers suspiciously and warned them against violence. One nodded to a rotting torso impaled above the gate. “That one thought he could come here and steal,” the hard-faced soldier informed them. “He won’t be trying that twice.”

Web
swallowed the implied insult. “Ale, mead, maybe slaves, that’s all we want. We’re just traders,” he said.

The
guard nodded. “Slave pens are over there.”

Web
chose to live up to his role, and walked that way. He was in time to see the brigand Moel ride in with his few men, an infant and two swaying, heavy-lidded women who shared the other horse.

“Want
to buy a couple of women and a kid?” Moel called out. Web, curious, walked over.

“Are
they all right?”

“Ah,
just had a little something to calm them down, they were, you know, excited at coming here,” the brigand shrugged.

Web
looked at the drugged women. Both were attractive. Could bring a good price, and an infant could sell well, too. “How about some amber?” he said, taking a small leather pouch from his belt. 

The
deal was struck quickly, away from the auctioneer’s eyes and the commission he would have wanted. Web desired to leave the town and its soldiery, Moel was eager to hand over Guinevia before she could start talking. A quarter hour later, most of the shore party had found the green bush over the door that signalled one of the town’s several taverns and they were occupied inside. Web was back at his vessel, where Grimr had been left among the guards. He was escorting the near-comatose women and the child. “Get these on board, under wraps and silent,” he said brusquely. “I don’t want them talking to anyone before we leave.” Grimr resented the tone, but held his tongue. He helped the half-conscious nurse off the horse and carried her to the gunwale. Another guard, one of Grimr’s old crew, took the infant and Web carried Guinevia. 

As
he slid her across the ship’s side, her dress fell open and he licked his lips as he saw one perfect breast. “Maybe there’s time before I go for that beer,” he said quietly, and clambered from the sand and over the gunwale, fumbling at his trews. As he did, he bumped against the infant Milo, who had fouled his small clothes, was hungry and irritable from lack of sleep. The child began to wail loudly. Web reached out and cuffed the baby, hard, shocking it into breath-holding silence.

Grimr
saw the act as he was reaching under his bench. The baby caught his breath and yelled again, louder. Web slapped him again. Grimr acted on pure instinct. He reached under the oarsman’s bench and pulled out his crossbow. Web had dropped his trews and was raising the semi-conscious woman’s shift. 

The
bolt went straight through Web’s scrotum, pinning him to the bench. He howled in agony and jerked to free himself, causing him to whimper at the added pain, but the bolt was fast in the woodwork and he could not move it. He eased himself sideways, to be able to grasp the quarrel’s shaft, still unsure what had happened. 

Grimr
automatically slotted another and with a practised movement cranked the crossbow cocked again. He hardly needed to sight it in, at that close range. The second quarrel took the Jute as he turned his head. It slammed through his left carotid and through the man’s voicebox, cutting off his screams, then lodged in his right armpit, the point just emerging from the skin. Blood spurted in a thin jet, pulsing with the dying man’s heart. 

For
the second time, Grimr reloaded. He glanced around. By chance, three of the four guards left with the ships were his own old crewmen. The fourth was scrambling over the side of the second ship, and Grimr knew he was on his way to bring Web’s men. 

The
third bolt pinned the man to the top strake of the ship, going clear through his rib cage, lungs and spine. The man stood, held like a pinned butterfly. Grimr nodded to his crewman on the ship. That villain, a cheerful long-haired rogue with a back scarred from floggings, nodded back, pulled out a slender leaf-bladed knife, yanked the man’s head back by the hair and casually slashed his throat from behind.

“Not
a drop on me, boss,” he called.

“Time
we did some travelling,” the big Suehan called back.

At
a command, two of the crew trotted up to the town to quietly alert their old comrades while Grimr and the knife artist slashed the halyards and rigging and holed the hulls of two of the three Jutes’ ships to cripple them and slow any pursuit. They relieved Web’s body of a purse heavy with amber and silver, and dumped him into the outgoing tide, but left the impaled Jute where he was. He looked as if he was standing there dozing, except for the blood. 

The
two Suehans had loaded aboard the best weapons of the Jutes who were still drinking at the tavern, dropped the rest of the spears and shields into the water and were preparing their own ship for sea when their crewmates trickled back quietly from the taverns and down the beach. Together they heaved their vessel into the straits and made a largely-unnoticed exit. 

Not
a bad day altogether, Grimr thought. Disposed of a weasel, got my ship back, made a profit, got some new swords and met a couple of nice-looking women. Didn’t that fellow once say something about having me killed? It must have been self-defence, then.

XVII Rescue

We
rode into Segontium lathered and straggling, and the city guard snapped to attention without a challenge, as well they might, for I was their Imperator, with blood in my eye and menace in my bearing. If the misbegotten bastard who had taken Guinevia was in this city I would tear down the walls to find him. I reined in at the guardhouse and barked at the sloppy gateman to bring me the captain. Yes lord, he was fidgeting and eyeing my magnificent silver and amber jarl’s badge and Exalter with equal unease. Yes lord, men with packhorses and two women had arrived earlier. Yes lord, they had a mewling infant. The women looked drugged.

I
was off the horse and shaking him, an act that had his guard unhappily considering whether they should lower their spears, but wisely none acted. They were aware of my troopers who growled and drew down on them.

“Where
are they now?” I demanded.

The
buffoon shook his head. “They asked for the slave pens,” his eyes rolling sideways in their direction.

“That
way. With me,” I was swinging astride my horse as I shouted.

We
found the brigand Moel trying to hide in the crowd gathered on the beach, where the impaled Jute and broken ships had attracted half the town. The questions took only a few minutes. He denied taking Guinevia captive, denied misusing her, denied killing my men. I simply waved at the stolen packhorses tethered nearby. He’d found them wandering. Disgusted, I turned to where his men stood, sullen and afraid.

“
What do you say?” I asked the nearest.

He
nodded his head. “It was a robbery, lord. I never hurt the women.” The others looked away as my gaze travelled over them. Guilty. I gave Moel the same chance he’d given my men from ambush: none.

“Kneel,
you cowardly, lying bastard,” I told him. Then I hacked off his head with Exalter. Three blows. It must have hurt. 

With
that sight to encourage them and concentrate their minds, the other brigands could not wait to tell what they knew, but the only knowledge I craved was where were Guinevia, my son and the nurse? From the eager babble it came clear. Some Suehans had bought the women and child, had taken a boat and had sailed north. The next question was where were the bodies of my soldiers? They described the ambush site poorly, and I thought grimly that the ravens would probably have to be our guides. The beach had emptied of onlookers by then, so we executed three of the other four kidnappers mercifully, each with a single upward thrust under the ribs, with the simple wrist-twist that guarantees the kill. We spared one to take us to the place where our soldiers had died, bound him and tied him on a horse. Then we moved on. There was no time to waste, I had to find a ship in which to sail after the fugitives. Had I known it, I need not have bothered. Grimr and his crew were coming ashore a mere handful of miles up the coast. 

The
Suehans had launched their ship, rowing past the floating body of Web, at which Grimr spat contemptuously, and had hardly cleared a line of sandbanks when it all began to go wrong. The outgoing tide was falling from the north, but the flow around the big offshore island made opposing currents in the strait, creating a clash of overfalls and whirlpools. The ship was barely under way into the stream, with many of the crew still fumbling to make room with the cargo and weapons, and only a few at the oars to give it steerage way. There were just two of the crew attempting to put up a sail and the steersman could not see clearly past the half-hoisted sheet.

It
had to happen, and it did. The contra-flowing currents caught the ship and ran it broadside onto rocks hidden just below the surface of the falling tide. Holed at once below the waterline, the ship began filling as if someone had diverted a mountain torrent into it.

Grimr
cursed, bullied his men to the oars and ordered the steersman to head for the beach before they all drowned. The mainland was less than a quarter mile away, and he turned in that direction. An alert sailor grabbed a couple of cloaks and leaned over the ship’s side to fother them across the broken strakes, partly plugging the hole and successfully reducing the incoming torrent.

Other
crew men frantically bailed with helmets, pots and anything to hand, and the current, which was flowing at the pace of a trotting horse, was kind and carried them inshore before they swamped. The Suehans gratefully waded the last 20 yards ashore, gasping and relieved, then began to drag their ship up onto the rippled sand after them.

And
I saw them do it.

When
we left the disabled ships of the Jutes, I had ridden to the town gates and questioned the frightened guard captain again. The nearest boats for pursuit, he said, would be that way, where some fishermen lived. North. I shouted for outriders, and set off, with my big hounds Axel and Javelin loping alongside as if we were going hunting, which we were.

After
only a few miles, we rode up a bluff and had a fine view of the strait, right to the vast sandbanks that guard it from the open sea. There below us was the half-hoisted sail of a longship whose belly was alive with frantic men, and the vessel was sluggishly heading for shore. ‘Mithras!” I muttered. “There will be justice and a red blade again, today.” And we galloped our horses to deliver that fate.

Arthur’s 40 horsemen were too much for the staggering Suehans. They’d been drinking, were half-drowned and they were now exhausted from their frantic efforts to row their sinking ship to safety. They had dragged the vessel partly up the sand, but few had retrieved their weapons from it, nor had they seen the Britons galloping in from the shelter of the dunes until they were almost on them. It would not even be a contest, Grimr thought bitterly as he spotted the oncoming cohort. He was busy carrying to shore the semi-conscious nurse he so shortly before had loaded onto his ship when the horsemen encircled his band.

“Down,
bloody well kneel down!” he yelled at his confused crew. Twice, fucking twice, he thought. He’d be a captive again. He looked up into the sun as he put the nurse onto the sand. The big, bearded soldier with the heavily-scarred cheek, badge of office and a massive long sword in his fist was off his horse and moving at him, but the man ignored the Suehan to peer down at the girl. 

“Where’s the other one, and the child?” I said. My mood was such that if this pirate had blinked the wrong way he’d have empty shoulders. He looked up at me from the sand, dislike and disappointment shading across his face. He jerked his head at the half-foundered ship. “Still in there. We didn’t get the ‘Welcome Back’ greetings yet.” I was in the shallows, crippled foot or not, and over the side into the hull. Guinevia was there, unconscious but alive. I paused to take it in. She was laid comfortably on some packs, with a nested cloak alongside, and I could see Milo there, open-eyed, snug and contentedly quiet.

It
was the work of minutes to lift them out and carry them to the windbreak of the dunes, to herd the Suehans under guard and to secure the area. When I was convinced by the nurse that the still-sleeping Guinevia was in no critical state, I walked over to our captives. Grimr stood up, causing a sentry to twitch his spear point in threat, but I waved the man away.

“You
are the lord of these men.” It was a statement, though it could have been a question, because the Suehan was not wearing any accoutrements of note. The fellow nodded. “You bought my wife from a slaver.” Another statement. Another nod. “What did you plan?”

He
shrugged. “She was a purchase. I may have sold her, I might have ransomed her, had I known about you.”

Honest
at least. “Who placed her in your boat? Who wrapped the child?”

Another
shrug. “Not me,” he said. “I carried the other one.”

I
thought for a moment. “You did not abuse them, someone cared for them.”

He
squared his shoulders. “We are not Gauls. We do not wage war on children. I may have sold them on, but I did not set out to steal them and we did not abuse them.”

It
made me chew my lip. He had done neither more nor less than I would have done.

I’d
decapitated the brigand who stole my lover and child, and who had killed my men; this man had no part of that. And, he and his men could be useful.

“I
shall buy her back from you for what you paid,” I said, then corrected myself. “The three of them. And, I am reclaiming my goods from the pack horses. I will not take your lives if you swear allegiance to me. I will keep my word. I am Arthur Britannicus, I am imperator of Britain and you will join my force honourably if you swear to it. You will have to fight, but at least you will live. And, I shall reward you and your men with land and silver for your service.” 

The
Suehan sighed. “My name is Iacco Grimr,” he said heavily. “It seems I have a new lord, and I shall be your man.” There on the beach, he knelt to put his hands between mine, to kiss the hilt of Exalter and to swear fealty. And there on the beach, I promised to have his ship rebuilt and to send him to sail it freely, but at my command. Then I took my troopers back to Segontium to capture the disarmed Jutish raiders who had been stranded. Some would join our ranks, the rest could be sold as slaves. Grimr and his men got very drunk that night.