Shadow of Stone (The Pendragon Chronicles) (12 page)

"There they are!" came a shout from the walls. Moments later, more arrows rained down on their shields, and there was another scream and another man fallen.

Kustennin could not simultaneously help batter the fortress gate and protect his fellow warriors. But leaving their ranks could be interpreted as an act of cowardice, typical for a youth who had not yet reached the age of choice, a young man unbled, without serious battle experience.

It didn't matter. He swung his shield to the right, loosened his hold on the battering ram, dropped to his knees and rolled a short distance away. Luckily, as he expected, the rest of the troops took up the slack, as they had before when comrades fell.

Free of the need to expend his energy on breaking down the fortress doors, Kustennin crouched underneath his shield and repeated his attempt at cloaking his comrades in illusion.

"They have disappeared again!"

"What is going on?"

"There are demons among us!"

Kustennin watched Kurvenal and the rest of their troop ram the thick wooden doors again and again. The panicked northern pirates ran along the ramparts, shooting in the direction of whatever they thought they heard rather than what they saw, with resulting inaccuracy.

The wood began to splinter under the repeated force of the battering ram, giving way in a tearing crack and rumble of pulling and breaking. Kurvenal and his men poured through the opening, still invisible to the enemy, and Kustennin followed. He had drawn his sword, but rather than attempt to take part in the fighting, he pressed his back against the wall, concentrating on maintaining the illusion.

Then, behind him, he heard the war cry of Arthur's companions, "Britannia patria!"

Mounted British soldiers streamed through the shattered gate and began fighting next to Kurvenal and the others. The air was full of the ring of steel on steel, the grunts and screams of fighting men, the neighing of horses. The detail of Picts keeping guard in the mainland fortress was soon outnumbered.

They'd done it.

* * * *

From the edges of the British camp, Yseult peered into the night, trying to see what was going on. All was quiet on the walls of the fortress; her illusion held.

But then she could feel her control slipping. Perhaps it was too far away or too many people for her — or both.

She turned to Ricca. "I have to get closer; I can't continue to protect them otherwise."

"No. We cannot put you at risk, Lady."

Why not?
she wanted to yell.
My son is allowed to put himself at risk!

But of course she did no such thing.

And then they heard a warning cry go up from the walls.

"We will go to his aid, Lady Yseult."

Ricca barked out orders to the rest of her men-at-arms and then addressed Illtud. "Make sure she stays here and doesn't do anything rash."

In the distance, Yseult could distinguish the men on the ramparts shooting at the party with the battering ram. There was activity above the gate as well — perhaps they were preparing vats of boiling liquid? She had to get closer; she couldn't just stand here and watch.

"Fetch my gelding," she told one of the guards.

The man looked confused. "Ricca said you were to stay here."

"And he is under my orders, not I under his."

Illtud touched her elbow. "None of the men out there would want to see you at risk, Yseult."

"And I do not want to see them at risk either. I need to get closer, Illtud. The farther away I am, the weaker my powers. I need to help."

Illtud sighed. "They will not thank me if I let you go."

"You have little choice. But you can come along for my protection."

Yseult could barely make out his smile in the dark. "Excellent idea."

"Then perhaps you should change out of your priest's robes."

She heard him chuckle as she hurried off to her tent to change into breeches herself.

* * * *

As their small band rode for the mainland fortress, Yseult could feel the magic. A dip in the landscape obscured her view of the gate, but someone had taken over when her own powers grew too weak.

Who could it be but Kustennin? While she had often felt a hint of power in him, he had always blocked any attempt on her part to talk about it, let alone train him in controlling it.

On the other hand, it might also be someone on the Pictish side.

Yseult kicked her heels into her horse's flanks. All along the wall of the mainland fortress, groups of warriors were throwing up ladders and climbing over, but the fighting was heaviest near the shattered wood of the entrance.

While Illtud and the others joined the fray, Yseult sought the source of magic. There it was, a wall near what was left of the gate. She whirled her gelding around to see Kustennin, his back against the stones and sword drawn, but not involved in the fighting. Instead, he had an expression of intense concentration on his nearly beardless face as he continued to cloak as many of his comrades as possible in illusion.

Yseult drew in a deep breath, amazed at what her son had accomplished. But this was no time for giving in to motherly pride; while they had gained the mainland fortress, it was not yet theirs — and Dyn Tagell itself was still to be retaken.

She pulled up next to her son and slid off her horse, sword in hand. "Excellent work, Kustennin."

Around them, swords clashed, blood flowed, and men died — but mostly the enemy. Kustennin turned to her slowly, and in his eyes she recognized the fatigue of someone who had been implementing a power of the Old Race too long. But there was nothing for it; if they were to retake Dyn Tagell, he would have to make use of his new-found ability a little longer.

"Mother," he said. "You shouldn't be here."

She shrugged. "Well, I am. I'm sorry I couldn't keep up the illusion long enough. But you did as well as I could have."

Kustennin rubbed his eyes. "I had to make sure that Kurvenal would live to see Judual reach the age of choice."

Yseult blinked, wishing she could embrace her son. But there was still much to be done. "I need your help," she said, laying a hand on his shoulder. "If you and I work together, I think we can take the Rock itself this night."

He turned his head to gaze at her more closely, his eyes slowly refocusing. "What do you want me to do?"

"We need to examine the Pictish dead, gather as many men as can be spared, and make our way to the Neck."

* * * *

Yseult and Kustennin fought their way towards the land bridge to the promontory of Dyn Tagell, two dozen men at their backs. But in the illusion they had created, they were less than a dozen, all men who wore the faces and colors of the northern tribes. Dead men — fleeing from certain defeat.

As they neared the Neck, Gawain, a man of the north himself, called out to the guards in his old dialect, his voice hoarse and distorted by what sounded like pain. "Let us through! The mainland fortress is lost!"

Seeing comrades they recognized before them, the guards stepped aside, and the British forces ran through. The guards were then promptly slaughtered by the men they'd thought to save.

A loud whistle, and more men poured forward to cross the land bridge.

Finally the Picts realized the deception, and Yseult and Kustennin were forced to defend themselves. Staying alive demanded every fighting skill Yseult had been relearning in the past weeks. She parried a blow that could well have sliced into the flesh of her upper arm, disabling her. Magic was impossible when she was so far beyond her abilities in battle, expending all her energy and concentration on mere survival. Perhaps if she could extricate herself from the fighting, she could help the British forces as Kustennin had done after the gate was breached.

She ducked under a renewed attack and danced between a handful of one-on-one sword fights in the direction of the lower hall, searching for a place to hide.

Only to come face to face with Gurles.

Before she could react, he grabbed her wrist, wrested the sword out of her hand, and twisted her arm up behind her back. Forcing her around in front of him, he whispered in her ear, "You may keep the shield."

"What do I need it for now?"

"For us, Lady. You will be my safe passage out of here."

Of course
. She did as he said and kept the shield up as they crept back towards the land bridge. No one attacked them. Not everyone recognized them immediately in the faint light of a few stars and the occasional torch, but when Gurles barked out his warnings, his short sword pointing at Yseult's jugular, warriors backed away, Pict and British both.

"Don't you want to know why I betrayed you?" Gurles asked once they had made it over the Neck.

Although she felt the edge of the blade against her skin as they stole their way out of the battle; although she could hardly remember the last time she had been this close to death; although she could smell the fear in her sweat and knew that despite everything she had lost, she still hoped she would live to become a grandmother; despite all of that — and the fact that she was curious — she did not want to give Gurles the satisfaction of begging for anything.

Yseult shrugged against his chest. "I assume it is the usual, greed for power or greed for riches. Probably both."

She felt a ripple of anger go through him before his thoughts were closed to her again. Perhaps that should have made her suspicious long ago, that she could not read him the way she could most people. But there were always exceptions; those with some of the powers of the Old Race, or those with a relative or lover to teach them the way of protecting their thoughts.

"Dyn Tagell should have been mine," Gurles hissed in her ear. "I was to marry Ygerna, and then I would have been named Protector of Dumnonia rather than Marcus Cunomorus, who only married the second daughter. But Uthyr raped her before she even reached the age of choice. She was little more than a child."

Yseult understood his bitterness, but he too had done Ygerna a wrong. "You could still have married her."

He let out an angry laugh. "With a bastard in her belly?"

They reached the mainland fortress. The fighting here was over, bodies strewn across the flagstones, the walls blackened, the stench of death everywhere, blood and piss and excrement. Here and there a moan, or hysterical babbling, or desperate prayers indicated someone still clung to life, but with a short sword at her throat, Yseult could not follow her instincts and go to the injured.

"The bastard who has become the Dux Bellorum," she said, her voice cold. "You could have been father to the most powerful man in Britain."

"Father? What a joke!"

Was it? Would Arthur have become the brilliant strategist and military leader he was if Ambrosius Aurelianus had not taken him under his wing?

"No answer, bitch?" Gurles asked as they neared the shards and splinters that had once been the gate of the mainland fortress.

"No, no answer," Yseult said quietly. How could she have been so wrong as to trust this man enough to make him one of her generals, this man with so much bitterness in his soul?

Then Gurles whirled around, still holding her in front of his chest. "I feel you, young king! Show yourself!"

Kustennin stepped out of the shadows, shield up and sword drawn. "How did you know I was there?"

"You could say I have something of a sensitivity to magic. I want to see the others as well."

Slowly, half a dozen more men came forward to stand beside Kustennin, including Kurvenal and old King Gwythyr.

"Where did you learn it?" Kustennin asked. "Very few possess such powers, and many deny they even exist."

Gurles held Yseult's arm doubled-up painfully behind her back while the tip of his dagger flirted with her throat; nonetheless, she felt a surge of pride at the way her son was trying to keep Gurles talking to gain time. Hopefully others would soon be here.

"I may have no powers myself," Gurles said. "But my grandmother taught me to recognize when they are in play; a different feeling in the air, a heightened sensitivity, a prickling at the back of the neck."

Interesting — she had never known magic felt that way to those who had no powers themselves.
A little like love
. For her, the awareness of magic was like another mind touching hers — or hiding from hers, as the case might be.

"Even if you have no powers, that is a useful talent to have," Kustennin said. "You cannot be surprised by magic with such an awareness."

"Precisely." Gurles moved the tip of the dagger closer to her throat, and Yseult closed her eyes briefly, gathering her courage. "That is why you and your men are now going to go out of this ruined gate ahead of me and inform any warriors you still have stationed there that I need a horse strong enough to carry two," Gurles demanded. "Queen Yseult will come with me to ensure my safe passage out of your camp."

Kustennin shook his head. "I cannot agree to those terms. What guarantee do I have that you will release my mother once you are away?"

Gurles pricked her skin just below the jawbone and dragged the dagger forward far and deep enough that she could feel blood dripping down her neck, thicker than rain, surely visible in the torchlight.