For King & Country (42 page)

Medraut stood glaring at their captors, shaking with visible rage as he pulled Morgana protectively to his side. For once, she was more than happy to lean against him. As her eyes adjusted to the torchlight, she made out Dallan mac Dalriada's thickset figure and beyond him, Keelin and Riona Damhnait. Keelin bit her lip when she saw the bruises and stains on their clothing from the seasickness.

Dallan mac Dalriada gave a rough-voiced order and they were prodded none too gently into a small boat which had been lowered over the ship's rail and bobbed on the water, making the task of entering it difficult—particularly with all her limbs still trembling. She and Medraut were herded into the bow, while Dallan mac Dalriada, his daughter, and his Druidess sat in the center, leaving the stern for the sailor who rowed them across black water toward an utterly silent town. Waning moonlight picked out the whitewashed walls of cottages, and gleamed ominously along the darkened watchtower of the fortress above the village.

The offshore wind carried a stench so foul, Morgana found herself swallowing convulsively over sharp nausea. She gripped the rough wood hard, trying to distract her senses from that hideous smell. Not a dog barked as their little boat scraped ashore and Medraut jumped out to steady her onto the strand. They waited silently on the beach while the boat went back for several of the ship's crew, who carried torches. Morgana bent to tear strips of cloth from her skirt, wetting them and tying them over her nose and mouth against the foulness on the air. She handed one to Medraut, who hastily copied her example. Even Riona and Keelin accepted the strips she offered, poor Keelin near to vomiting.

A dull anger burned in Morgana's breast that Dallan mac Dalriada would subject his daughter to the horror waiting in this village, where literally everyone she knew and loved lay rotting in the streets. Even from this distance, she could see bodies lying at grotesque angles, some of them visibly gnawed on by scavengers.

The moment the crewmen arrived with the torches, Dallan mac Dalriada prodded them into motion. They walked numbly through street after street, encountering at least a few graves already dug, where survivors from the outlying farmholds had begun the grim work of burying the dead. Keelin began to cry within a few short minutes, stumbling along in her father's wake as he stalked straight through the town and up the long ramp to the fortress gates. What Morgana could see of Medraut's face above the mask was ashen in the torchlight, with beads of cold sweat shining along his brow. Morgana steeled herself not to look too closely into the shadows as they passed open cottage doorways and narrow little alleyways between houses and shops.

When they finally reached the fortress gate, they found bloated dogs, horses with their legs stiffened, grotesque in the moonlight, and pathetic little bundles of fur that had once been pampered housecats. Keelin fell to her knees over one of the cats, sobbing beneath her makeshift mask and uttering a little cry of protest when Riona urged her back to her feet. Morgana's heart broke, watching the distraught girl, but dared not offer comfort; Medraut's eyes shone with unshed tears, even as his jaw muscles clenched in rhythm with the fists he tightened every few seconds. Staring at the charnel-house ruin of the great courtyard, Brenna McEgan whispered silently,
Lailoken and Banning must have poisoned every well in town, it couldn't have been anything else, to kill the animals as well as the people.

Morgana, lips trembling beneath her own mask, could not even reply, lost in an agony of grief. She could not even ask what sort of hatred Brenna's world bred, to create such men, when her own world and time had created the likes of Cutha. The Saxon prince had merely used a sword instead of poison. The devastation was just as bad, either way.

Inside the great hall, they found servants lying where they'd collapsed, trying to assist the noble ladies and lords of the royal household. As the torchlight revealed the scope of destruction, Keelin uttered a wild shriek and darted forward, cradling a child's body to her breast and weeping uncontrollably. Medraut's voice came out strangled over a string of curses as he dared Dallan mac Dalriada's wrath to rush to Keelin's side, gathering her close and stroking her hair, very gently prying the dead child from the girl's hands.

"We must bury her, Keelin," he choked out. "Please, you must let her go, there's nothing you can do for her and I would sooner die here and now than see you struck down by contagion from holding what is left of her."

The sobbing girl refused to loosen her hold on the child's body until Riona and Dallan mac Dalriada stepped in to separate them by force. One of the sailors carried the broken little body away, hurrying at the king's urgent gesture. Keelin uttered a wailing protest, then turned and collapsed. Not in her father's arms, but in Medraut's. Dallan mac Dalriada's eyes widened in shock as his child clung to her new husband, shuddering and weeping, moaning what must have been the child's name over and over.

Morgana saw the shift in the Irish king's eyes, that moment of stunned recognition when he realized his child truly did not believe the Britons responsible. And she saw the doubt come surging into his face as well, the first doubt that Keelin and Riona Damhnait just might be correct in that belief. Medraut was stroking his young wife's hair, rocking her gently, helpless in the face of her wild grief and weeping for that helplessness.

Dallan mac Dalriada stumbled toward the nearest chair, which happened to be his own throne, next to the hearth, and sank down onto the cold stone. Wetness shone on his own face, now. He choked out something in a low voice, speaking at some considerable length. When he had finished speaking, Riona touched Morgana's wrist.

"My king would have you know the depth of his regret for treating you so ill, this day. We captured a number of rats, forcing them to drink Lailoken's wine as you suggested, poured it down their throats while holding open their jaws. They
all
died, just at sunset. He pondered long and hard on this, during the final hours of our journey home, thinking if you had meant treachery against his life, you surely would not have come chasing after him with a warning. Why would you have brought such terrible news yourself, with your nephew in your company, if you had ordered the poisoning of Dunadd?

"Then he thought perhaps you are very clever, intending him to think these things, while plotting yet more destruction while he was distracted by grief. He begs forgiveness, begs you to understand all that he has lost, kinsmen and brave people who trusted him and his father before him, men and women who came to this wild new land, many of them only within the last year, trusting his word that they would be safe to build their homes and raise their families here. Your ship he restores freely, and the brave men who knew what they risked in bringing you with the warning. King Dallan mac Dalriada asks only one thing more of Queen Morgana and King Medraut."

"Name it," Morgana said quietly.

Riona's eyes were hard as flint in the firelight.

"Help him kill the Saxons."

Trevor Stirling was getting used to forced marches, short sleep, and foul weather.

The SAS should train half so hard,
he grumbled, although he did so with a fair dose of wry humor.

Aye, Ancelotis sighed, war is no business for the faint of heart, nor those weak of constitution.

It was an unexpected compliment and one Stirling valued, considering the source—Ancelotis' unhappily broad experience of warfare at a level and brutality which still had the power to raise the fine hairs on the nape of his borrowed neck. He and his host had ridden far ahead of Artorius and the bulk of the army rushing south as fast as their infantry could travel. Ancelotis and Stirling were accompanied by more than a hundred
cataphracti
from Ancelotis' own Gododdin, men headed south toward Caer-Badonicus in answer to the summons he'd sent out several days previously.

The Sarmatian bows most of them carried were heavy-pull compound bows made of horn in the Scythian style, perfect, deadly weapons for a force of heavy cavalry. The Romans had learned at great cost—an entire legion, slaughtered to the last man—what such bows could accomplish against infantry. Those bows gave Stirling ideas. Really nasty ideas. And he ought to arrive at Caer-Badonicus in plenty of time to implement them.

"Ride ahead with word that we are on the march," Artorius had told him shortly after finding Lailoken's abandoned packhorse. "We'll need some kind of signal to let you know when we've come close enough to Caer-Badonicus to break the Saxons' siege with our infantry as well as the rest of our cavalry."

Stirling considered the possibilities for a moment. He knew multiple ways to send coded signals, but which of them were most easily adapted to current conditions? "Have you any polished mirrors?" he asked thoughtfully.

Artorius' brows flicked upward in surprise. "Mirrors? I suppose I could lay hands on a polished bronze mirror, readily enough. Why?"

"Light flashing from a mirror travels a long way. You could devise a simple code and use sunlight on the mirror to send us the message you're close by."

Artorius tugged at his lower lip for a moment. "I seem to recall reading, many years ago, as a boy under Myrddin's tutelage, that one of the Roman emperors used a mirror to send long coded messages from the mainland to one of the islands, Sicily or Sardinia, I can't recall which, now. And the Visigoths who've taken over Rome use signal fires, it's said, occluded by some barrier like a blanket, to flash out numerical patterns. They keep codebooks to translate the number flashes into words."

"Perfect," Stirling nodded. "When you reach a point within a few miles of Caer-Badonicus, use the mirror flashes if it's by day or an occluded fire if by night." He couldn't help chuckling, thinking about Rudyard Kipling again, the poem about the young British officer stationed in India, using the heliograph to flash messages to his "darling poppsy-wop," warning his bride against General Banks, that "most immoral man"—a warning inadvertently seen and decoded by none other than the general himself.

"We'll use a simple numerical replacement system," Artorius decided with a grin. One flash is 'A,' two are 'B' and so on, through the Latin alphabet. Look for the signals from the highest of the Mendip Hills. Flashes from there will be seen easily from the summit of Caer-Badonicus. And you can signal back where the Saxons' greatest troop concentration is camped."

Stirling chuckled. "With pleasure."

"Watch the northern horizon for the signal then, and when it comes, you'll know relief is only a few miles away. Cadorius and Melwas must fight a holding action if the Saxons reach Caer-Badonicus ahead of our main force. Which I suspect they will. King Aelle of Sussex would be a fool to delay, once Cutha's brought news of our disarray in the north. God help us, two kings dead and a queen..." Artorius hesitated, spat to one side, then muttered, "Enough said about Morgana. God help us, even Ganhumara worries me less."

Stirling's host would have liked to say something comforting, but Ganhumara was trouble everywhere she turned her attention. Ancelotis of Gododdin was too honest a man to mouth platitudes nobody believed, so he and Stirling took their leave silently, to begin yet another body-numbing forced march. Stirling had no idea where Caer-Badonicus was—its location remained one of the twenty-first century's greatest Arthurian mysteries—nor how many horses he would have to change out along the way. Not too many, he hoped, for the armies moving ahead of them surely would have rounded up every stray cart horse and fat pony to be found.

I hope you have some idea where we're going,
Stirling groused, trying in vain to ease himself in the saddle, stiff and aching from sitting too long in one position.
"South" covers a lot of territory.

Stirling's attitude only amused Ancelotis, who was a well-educated man, by sixth-century standards. Don't fret, Ancelotis advised, we Britons know how to locate a place accurately enough, even if you don't. It's the roads, lad, the Roman roads, that tell us how far south or west or northeast to ride after a marked junction. Every man of us—and most of the women, for that matter—knows the maps of these wondrous roads, even if he learns nothing else from his priests or Druids. It's the roads that tie us together, bind us into one people. Without them, we couldn't hope to mass this kind of force on such short notice.

Stirling's brows twitched upward. He'd never thought of using roads in symbolic terms before, as a metaphor of power and unification. He was simply too accustomed to their presence as a network of tools to get a person where he wanted to go in the shortest amount of time possible, given the physical terrain and its obstacles. He felt a little foolish, particularly since a good officer took very careful account of such things as logistics, how to move men and war materiel from one point to another in the most efficient manner possible.

Ancelotis nodded. You've the right of that. It pays a man well to remember that the Romans, a people of very small physical stature, for the most part, still conquered a very large chunk of the known world and held it for centuries upon centuries, with fast and good roads to move their legions and supply trains. 'Tis the roads, right enough, that are the saving of Britain, as much as Artorius' skills at organizing a battle.

The idea that stole into Stirling's mind, unbidden and startling, was the abrupt connection he made between the "people of the dragon," as Myrddin had dubbed the Britons, and the long network of dragonlike scutes that comprised the top layer of Roman paving stones. Those "dragon's scales" stretched from the Antonine Wall south to Cerniw, from the western shores to the eastern lands now held by the Saxons of Sussex and Wessex. Having seen the might of Roman engineering in other cities and having studied military accounts like Caesar's
Gallic War
, Stirling appreciated with sudden, startling clarity precisely what such roads could mean to a people like the Britons, widely scattered and in desperate need of unity.

And Emrys Myrddin had seen it while still a child, warning Vortigern of the danger he was unleashing against the People of the Red Dragon. A proud people connected politically and culturally via
roads
, long stone dragons that wound through mountains, sailed across open plains, slipped silently through deep and treacherous forests, spanned gorges and lonely, echoing valleys.

The power of the British tutelary dragon did, indeed, lie in these roads, good military highways that a cavalcade could traverse at a fast and steady pace. Roads of war.
Red
roads. Red dragons. Emrys Myrddin had named the dragon the tutelary beast of Britain's rightful kings—or, more accurately—her war leaders: Ambrosius Aurelianus, the last Roman among them, Uthyr Pendragon the Sarmatian, and his son Artorius.

In a very real sense, the men and women who had built the Roman roads under the direction of Roman engineers and Roman officers had not only built the blood-red dragon, they had been born from it. Born as one unified people who understood themselves to be Britons, a far-flung but important portion of the Roman empire, the last civilized bastion in the West. It was a psychological shift that lifted them out of tribalism and re-created them as one nation, regardless of tribe of birth. The dragon of Britain—the blazing emblem of Artorius—the half-Sarmatian Dux Bellorum, was nothing less than the mighty Roman roads of war.

Emrys Myrddin's genius in tying the symbolism—and the Britons—together left Stirling in awe. Ancelotis, who had never given the matter much thought, either, marveled.
You're sure it's not a Druid you are, from the Otherworld? 'Tis certain you think like one, Stirling of Caer-Iudeu.

Huh. I'm no more a Druid than this horse we're riding. But I do know a thing or two about psychology and symbolism. Let's just agree to name Emrys Myrddin the genius he is, eh?

Ancelotis agreed as they raced along the back of Emrys Myrddin's dragon, accompanied by the
cataphracti
who had joined Ancelotis, traveling in a thunder of hooves against the ancient Roman paving stones. As they rode, Stirling tried to reconcile the sixth century's appalling lack of exactitude with his twenty-first-century desire for laser pin-point accuracies and satellite image-mapping systems, literally accurate down to the fraction of a millimeter. He mourned the loss of technology so precise that it was used, among other things, to map the rate of continental drift across the tectonic plates. With one decent satellite photo, Stirling could have pinpointed the exact location of the Saxon army boiling up from Sussex and Wessex toward the southwest of England, using that knowledge to gauge their speed, their likeliest route, and their numerical strength. He would have been content with something as relatively primitive as aerial reconnaissance from a hot-air balloon.

You're sure you can't pinpoint Caer-Badonicus more precisely? he fretted silently.

Ancelotis tried to come up with landmarks his twenty-first-century guest might recognize. I've never been there, understand, but I'm told it's near the border between Glastenning and Caer-Durnac, farther south than Roman Bath. It's west of Stonehenge, Ancelotis added, but a good way east from the Cheddar Caves. As Stirling listened, he pinned imaginary flags into his mental map of the south of England, triangulating from those three points and coming up with Salisbury Plain. Where in that broad sweep of flat land would one put a critically strategic hill fort? Then he saw it, a probable location that elicited a startled grunt. Cadbury Hill?

As he thought about it, Stirling's smile faded, replaced with a thoughtful frown. Such a location for Caer-Badonicus made sense. An army trying to take—or hold—the southwestern portion of England would be forced to guard against any detachment of troops camped on that hilltop. Failure to do so would result in lightning attacks from the ancient hill fort's summit, requiring a full-scale siege to dislodge, and a siege of that magnitude would tie up resources the kings of Sussex and Wessex could ill afford for any length of time beyond a few days.

What he could have done with gunpowder and a few small mortars on that hilltop didn't bear thinking about, since there was no time to locate the ingredients and experiment with the formula, never mind cast the mortars—or even a few hand cannons—from iron or bronze. Of course, if they survived the battle at Badon Hill, there would be ample time to experiment, provided he could obtain the ingredients. Charcoal was easy and saltpeter could be found at the bottom of manure and compost piles, crystallizing out of the muck, but what about sulphur? Wasn't that found in association with hot springs and volcanic vents? Were there any sulphur deposits in Britain? The only hot springs in Britain were at Bath—and Stirling had never heard mention of sulphur deposits associated with the springs. What he needed was a nice, cooperative volcano. And that was one thing Britain simply didn't have.

Thoughts of volcanoes triggered another whisper at the back of his memory, something important he couldn't quite put his finger on. Something important to British history, linked oddly with Arthurian lore, and he couldn't remember now what it was. Stirling frowned, while Ancelotis puzzled over the tantalizing glimpses into the future resident in Stirling's memories. Ancelotis knew virtually nothing about volcanoes, outside of their connection with ancient Greek and Roman myth, things like Vulcan at his forge deep in the heart of Mt. Etna or Pliny the Younger's eyewitness account of Vesuvius, the day it erupted to bury Pompeii and Herculaneum. Why was he remembering a connection between volcanos and Arthurian legend?

Well, if Stirling couldn't figure
that
out, what did he know about volcanoes in general? They tended to cluster along the edges of tectonic plates grinding past or diving under one another—he knew that much at least—and they appeared along the midoceanic ridges, as well, which were tectonic plates pulling apart, stirring up a froth of magma from the mantle, which spewed up periodically in spectacular volcanic eruptions. The mid-Atlantic ridge had produced Iceland and the mid-Pacific ridge had produced a whole necklace of volcanic islands, like Hawaii in the northern hemisphere and Easter Island in the southern hemisphere.

The rim of the Pacific Ocean had been dubbed the Ring of Fire, with volcanoes from the western shores of South America and the grand volcanoes of Chile and Peru, north to the Pacific Northwest of North America and volcanoes like Mt. St. Helens, across to Japan with its highly active volcanoes and earthquakes, south past China and down into Indonesia, where the world-famous nineteenth-century blast from Krakatoa had blown an entire island into oblivion.

That particular eruption had been heard halfway across the Pacific by the admiral of the British fleet stationed in India, who'd thought the fleet was under attack by naval guns. The explosion which had destroyed most of the island had also blasted so much rock and dust into the atmosphere, there had been a literal "volcanic winter" that year—a whole year with no summer, with dark skies and snow on the ground even in temperate and warm southern zones, and crop failures turning productive agricultural belts into wastelands—