Shadow of the King (32 page)

to blood their blades, answered him. They sought adventure, manhood, and

a chance to swagger their achievement before the maids. Glory would not be

found behind the ox and plough.

Initially, it was planned well. Vitolinus had realised, perhaps belated, and

on Cille’s advice, that he had to work with others of his kind to gain what he

wanted. His uncle, Aesc, would not take part in the foolery of young men—yet

neither would he condemn nor put firm end to it. A youth’s blood ran with the

urge to prove his brave hearted strength by the spilling of blood on the field of

battle. So it was with the male of whatever species. Who were the older and

the wiser to interfere?

Fortunate for Vitolinus, another Saxon had the cry of the battle-blood in

his heart. The South Saxon, Aelle, was waiting for his chance to extend his

borders, waiting patiently to claw for himself more than those few, small,

scattered settlements that he held along the southeastern coast. And Vitolinus

wanted to strike at Ambrosius. Despite their earlier differences, it became an

easy matter for the two to secretly put aside judgmental words, call truce, and

S h a d o w o f t h e k i n g 1 9 3

negotiate their plan through the long winter. The one with his battle-scars and

experience and with bold, firm-muscled sons; the other eager, sharp.

The Shore Fort of Anderida, slightly eastward of the island of Vectis, was a

bastion of dogged Romanised perseverance. An irritating itch that lay beyond

the stretch of Aelle’s finger reach. It would fall to him one day, but that day

seemed too distant along the horizon. He wanted it destroyed, needed it gone.

With no Anderida to heckle his warriors, to burn his steadings, slaughter

his cattle, he could concentrate on dominating this stretch of the southern

coast, could build on his strength and achieve his aim, his hope. Gain power,

credence, and wealth. None could be his while British Anderida stood, defiant

at the corner of the land Aelle intended to make solely his.

When more ships came, he could do it; when many more men carried arms

beneath his banner, he could rid himself of the pestilence that fortress entailed.

Vitolinus was a boy, a piddling whelp, but he was easy to manipulate. A setting

aside of previous misunderstandings, a few crooned suggestions, some flattering

praise—the occasional, idly slipped-in propositions—and he was trapped like an

eel! However uneasy, such a temporary alliance could form a mutual benefit for

two ambitious men. Aelle had no concern whether Vitolinus succeeded against

Ambrosius. If not, the Governor of Britain would last well enough for Aelle

to fight on another day. Once the coast was secured as the Saxon’s own, then

Aelle—or his sons—could see to him. If Vitolinus was, by some unexpected

hand of help from the gods, successful—
ja
, it could now prove useful to Aelle

to be united, for a while, with the half-bred whelp, Vitolinus.

The plan was simple enough. Using two of his uncle’s long ships, Vitolinus

sailed into the harbour at Anderida two days before the spring month

ended, fire-arrowing the craft moored there, and attacking the sea ward wall.

Simultaneously, Aelle and his men marched on the western side of the fortress,

battered at the gateway beneath the spanning arch of the main entrance, and

scaled the massive stone walls that soared high beyond the twenty feet. The

Pendragon had seen well to his coastal and border forts, but neglect and rot

had set in rapidly once his demand of discipline and authority had wavered.

Undermanned, underequipped, attacked on both sides together, the place

fell—the fight valiant but brief. Within the passing of two hours, the might of

what once had been a proud Roman fortress was ended, its defenders dragged,

some wounded, still alive, to burn in the victory fires piled high with gathered

timber and dead bracken. An inglorious end to such a noble place.

Aelle was well satisfied. He had won his eastern boundary. And Vitolinus,

1 9 4 H e l e n H o l l i c k

cheering and laughing with the South Saxons, had a foothold in the south, from

where he could march, undetected, unexpected, into firm-held British territory.

He would move north, taking Ambrosius’s defence from the south. A few

settlements burnt along the way, but the march must move swiftly, no time to

delay, to tarry. Later, they could return and leisurely settle accrued accounts.

For another reason, then, had Vitolinus so wanted to approach the British

territories from the south. After settling with Ambrosius, he would march on

Venta Bulgarium. Would visit his murder-minded sister, Winifred.

Thirteen

Unlike Arthur, Ambrosius had few cavalry. He fought in his own

style, with ranked, disciplined infantry. He had ensured Vitolinus had

been watched through most the winter—the shabby steading of the warrior

Cille was no difficult place to observe, with its tumbled dwelling-place, poorly

tended fences, and encroaching woodland. But Ambrosius’s spies were paid

men, not loyal comrades of the Artoriani. Paid men worked only as well as

the gold clinked in their waist pouch. And when rain fell heavy or a cold wind

blew, they were inclined to prefer huddling around the warmth of a camp-fire

rather than stand in the shadows watching the closed door of a small, rough-

made, Saxon dwelling-place.

Cille was an ageing man. There would be no more fighting for him this side

of the Otherworld, but though his joints were stiff and cramped, his mind was

active, his senses alert. He knew well enough that Ambrosius’s poor excuse for

spies were watching him and the lad. Knew when to send Vitolinus out, secret,

under cover of darkness and rain-scudding clouds.

When word came that Vitolinus was gathering the young warriors to Cille’s

hearth, Ambrosius made ready. There would be a fight, that was certain—and

he greeted the prospect with enthusiasm, now that it was upon him. One

victory, one good, well-fought victory, and he would gain the respect, the

kudos, that he needed to put the memory of Arthur aside.

Inadequately informed, he had not calculated the unexpected. Unable to move

as swiftly and precise as the Artoriani had, the British found little time to move

into a suitable position, so unexpected and unpredicted was Vitolinus’s coming

at them from the southward. A few, a very few, of Arthur’s men had survived

the massacre in Gaul and had struggled homeward. Four complete turmae of

cavalry, one hundred and twenty men of the old Artoriani, were encompassed

now into an effective cavalry wing of the Ambrosiani. Experienced, battle-

hardened men who knew what it was to face a rampaging enemy, who knew

1 9 6 H e l e n H o l l i c k

how to deal with a mewling cub which had not yet learnt what it was to face

the spilling of blood in battle.

There were a few who whispered, of course, that Ambrosius had never taken

the responsibility to lead men into battle. He had fought himself, once, with

Arthur in the north, but he was a man of book-learning, not raw experience.

He knew the theory of how a battle ought be deployed, knew the tactics and

logistics of war, and below his authority he had those experienced officers,

men like Bedwyr and old Mabon who had fought beneath Arthur’s command.

Experience counted for much, but so too did a cool head and a determination

to prove capability. Ambrosius would show that he was as good as ever his

elder brother or younger nephew had been! Vitolinus, the son of Vortigern and

that Saxon whore-witch Rowena, was a stabbing thorn that needed plucking.

Chance to achieve both aims may not come again for Ambrosius.

It was a shabby, shambling affair, the fight, when it began. A young man no

more than a boy with an arrogance the width of the Tamesis estuary, leading

an ill-prepared rabble—the young Saxon Cantii warriors, for all their numbers

of several hundred and their surprise appearance from the south, could never

boast the title of army. And these, arrayed against a man who followed the rules

of war as written by the book. A man who had taken no account of the bloody

mess that was the reality of battle.

It was not a battle, this ill-thought, ill-timed yearning for a fight, that

happened at the place called Guoloph, along the Roman road northwest of

Venta Bulgarium. It was not how the scribes had written the glories of battle

to be. This was a bloodied scramble, a muddle of snarled oaths and wounding

blades, of hand-to-hand mauling and killing. Feet kicking, teeth biting, fists

punching. When the rain, threatening for most the morning, finally dropped

from grey, hard-packed clouds, and the ground beneath their feet turned treach-

erous from churned mud and spilt blood, the two sides fell apart, breathing

hard, growling, and cursing, teeth bared, hackles high. Dogs squabbling over

the same mouldering bone.

Only later did men give it the grand title of battle. Later, when, in retro-

spect, British harpers told of Ambrosius’s first-led fight, and English story-tellers

recounted the inglorious ending of Vitolinus.

Fourteen

Winifred had not dared admit, even to herself, the extent of her

fear when first she heard that her brother was marching up through the

forests of the south, up from the coast, swinging out along the Roman road

heading for a battle with Ambrosius. He had come too close to her wealthy

steading outside Venta Bulgarium—and the fear ran high through all those who

dwelt on her land. Many knew there was no love between brother and sister,

as many could too readily make guess at the prospect should Vitolinus take the

victory over the British.

Winifred’s fear had rapidly turned to anger when word came, back along that

same Roman road, that the fighting was over. The British—Ambrosius—had

won. The anger swelled, now that she was safe; her brother, that toad-faced,

poxed, weed-stunted, shrub should dare,
dare
, to threaten her…indirectly maybe,

but she knew well her danger had the outcome at Guoloph proved different.

The anger became scathing derision when, through the storm of rain and

thunder that had persisted across the night and into the next day, a few tattered,

blood-smeared Saxons came stumbling into her steading. Breath-panting,

sweat-pocked, they huddled behind a young man, face bruised, arm torn and

bleeding. The man they had, but yesterdawn, hailed as a son of Woden.

The torn and battered young man fell to his knees before the steps of Winifred’s

grand Mead Hall, and with tear-impassioned voice, begged for her aid. Vitolinus

knelt before his elder sister, hands clenched, begging her protection.

“My army is scattered or slaughtered,” he sobbed. “They were untried and

untested boys, yet the British hacked them to pieces. Where was the mercy

your Christian kind so often extol?” Pleading, he looked into his sister’s blank,

hardened face. “Ambrosius will be hard at my heel,” he stammered. “He will

string me up by my balls for this.” He choked, the full rein of cowardliness

after failure unleashed. “Talk with him, Winifred! He will listen to you. Offer

anything. Save me, for the love of our lady mother, I beg you!”

1 9 8 H e l e n H o l l i c k

Winifred stood on the top step of her Hall, her cloak held tight around her

throat against the damp chill of the evening. A pathetic creature, her brother.

Her father, too, beneath his mask of greed for power, had been naught but a

bullying coward. At least, for all his faults, Arthur had never been one to plead

or beg.

“For our mother?” she sneered, answering him. “My mother once pushed

me back into the flood-waters of Caer Gloui, would have let me drown—unless

the Pendragon had caught me, and then I would have hanged. Why did she do

this, to her only daughter?” She narrowed her eyes, looked with loathing at the

thing that ought to be a man, grovelling before her in the mud. “Why? So that

she could save you, a snivelling, cheating heap of cow-dung.”

She descended the steps regally, her cloak swishing behind her. She was not

alone, for those of the Hall were gathered in the door-place, watching; others

from the steading were grouped at a discreet distance behind the shabby bunch

of defeated young men.

Winifred reached the last step. Whimpering, Vitolinus crawled to her,

fastened his hands to her ankles.

“Come, brother,” she said, her voice less harsh, less judging. “Things be not

so bad. As you rightly say, I have influence with my lord Ambrosius.”

A hesitant smile flickered over Vitolinus’s face. He began to rise, tentative,

embraced his sister for her generous forgiveness. The dagger went into his

stomach easily, but she twisted the blade, pushing it in deeper, her arm holding

him around the neck, choking off his breath and voice.

Killed in such a manner, it took Vitolinus a while to die.

One death Winifred would openly own to. No regrets for the way it was