Sword at Sunset (70 page)

‘Eh?’ He looked up, shaking his head as though to clear it. ‘Na na, maybe a little tired, that’s all. Sometimes I think I’m getting old.’

‘You’re ten years younger than I am.’

‘I daresay I’ll last a few years more,’ Gwalchmai said, and limped serenely to the door – his limp had worsened in the last few years.

I never saw him again.

I had regained just enough strength to crawl from the bed place to my chair beside the hearth, and sit there muffled in rugs, generally with a couple of hounds at my feet (but no hound of mine
was ever called Cabal again) when there came to me a certain dispatch from Cei. My lieutenant’s writing was never overeasy to decipher, oddly small and cramped for such a big tempestuous
writer, and I pored over it, holding it to the flickering light of the fire, for though it must be still daylight outside, the shutters were closed over the small ragged windows in the thatch, to
keep out wind and rain. Moreover, the letter deserved careful reading, for at last there was something to report; the Saxons brought to action at last, and a full-scale battle on the Cloven Way,
almost half distance between Venta and Cerdic’s landing beach. Cei had written me the plain account of it, move by countermove and phase by phase, together with certain facts or seeming facts
concerning the left cavalry wing which made ugly reading. I could imagine how he would have bitten at his quill and glared in trouble at the lines as he set them down. And in the end, though the
Sea Wolves had indeed been halted and even turned back, at cost of bitter man-loss to ourselves, no decisive victory to report; little gained from the whole summer’s campaigning, save that
Cerdic was still penned to the south side of the Forest. And the first of the equinoctial gales was beating its wings against the rattling shutters as I read, and I knew that the campaigning season
was over for that year.

When I had reached the cramped signature, I sat for a long time holding the unrolled parchment in my hand. Then I called up the Minnow, who was squatting between the hounds burnishing a shield,
and sent him for one of the clerks to take down a letter in my turn. But mine was to Medraut. I don’t know quite what purpose I hoped to serve by summoning him; I suppose I had some idea that
if I confronted him with the thing face to face, I might know whether my almost formless suspicions of him were just or not.

A few days later, sleeping before the fire – I slept a great deal at that time – I dreamed of Coed Gwyn, the White Wood, dreamed of the struck notes of a harp, and Guenhumara combing
her hair beside a peat fire and Bedwyr sitting with his head against her knees; and great wings that beat me back when I cried out and would have gone to them ... And woke with the wet feel of tears
on my face, to the wings of another storm drubbing at the shutters and driving the smoke down from the fire hole, and Medraut standing by the hearth.

The rain was still dark on the shoulders of his flung-back cloak, and he stood with one foot on the warm hearthstone, staring into the red eye of the fire, and stripping and stripping his riding
gloves between his fingers; the look on him, as always when one saw him suddenly and alone, of having stood there, quite patiently waiting, for a very long time. His cloak was clasped at the
shoulder by a new brooch, a black opal set in braided gold wires, that had the look of a gift from some woman. Generally he had something of the sort about him, for I have seen that often an aging
woman with a young lover will make him such gifts, and Medraut picked and handled his loves with care, always older women, and those that would dance the man-and-woman dance charmingly with him and
raise little trouble when the dance was over. And yet, lightly and cynically as he turned from one woman to another, I think that some part of him was seeking always his mother. It was that that
made his womanizing both foul and oddly piteous.

For an instant, I saw him without his being aware of any eye upon him save those of the hounds at my feet, yet his face betrayed no more than it would have done had he known himself under
scrutiny. He had grown a shell of cool assurance that he had not possessed ten years ago, and looking at him it was easy to believe that he was a magnificent cavalry commander – but it would
have been as easy to believe that he was anything else, in the empty chamber behind his eyes. As he could blend into the surroundings of his life, so it seemed that he could take on the color of
one’s own thoughts, so that I could never be quite sure whether I saw Medraut, or only what I imagined Medraut to be. Only in the opal on his shoulder, the flame and peacock colors woke and
shimmered and died again, and I had the strange fancy that in the dark fires of the jewel one might read what never showed behind his eyes.

Then one of the hounds stirred, growling very softly – most dogs disliked Medraut – and he looked my way and saw that I was awake and watching him and stopped playing with his wet
riding gloves. ‘God’s greeting to you, Artos my father. You are better, they tell me.’

‘God’s greeting to you, Medraut my son; I grow stronger each day.’ It was the first time in ten years that he had stood before me in my own quarters.

‘You sent for me,’ he said at last.

‘I sent for you – in the first place that you may explain to me why this summer’s campaigning against Cerdic and his followers has had no better success.’

He stiffened for a moment and then said quickly, ‘At least we halted their northward advance, and thrust them back into the lower forest and the marshes.’

‘But not back to the coast – and that by the loss, it seems, of many men to our war host and few to theirs.’

‘My father knows that the fever has thinned our own ranks; and also what like of country that is to fight over.’

‘A land blurred between land and water, swamp and forest. A country, more than any other part of our coastline, well nigh impossible to clear of an enemy, once they have made good their
landing.’

‘Well?’ he said softly and on the faintest note of challenge.

‘I have been thinking it something strange that Cerdic should know so well where the soft belly lies most open to the knife. I have been thinking it fortunate for him that he should choose
a summer when the Yellow Hag is rife among the war host ranged against him.’

I wondered if it was possible, remembering the night we made the East Coast treaty, that this son of mine, who had come to me eaten with jealousy of Cerdic my enemy, should have common cause
with him now. I had a sick feeling that it was perfectly possible. Christos! If only I could look just once behind his eyes ...

‘Doubtless Cerdic has his scouting parties – and alas! there are traitors in every camp.’

‘Not in every camp,’ I said, ‘but undoubtedly in some.’ I pulled myself up in the great chair, thrusting back the dark warm wolf furs, for suddenly I seemed suffocating,
and reached for the narrow parchment roll that lay on the table beside me, but I did not open it, I knew the contents by heart. ‘Your arguments are unanswerable. See if you can do as well
with the final engagement on the Cloven Way.’

He dropped his gaze for an instant to the letter I held, then raised it again blandly to my face. ‘Cei will have given you a better and fuller account of that than I can do.’

‘Better, doubtless, but not so detailed at certain points. There is, for instance, a curious lack of detail in his account of the breakup of the left wing that robbed us of a fully
decisive victory.’

‘The left wing being my command,’ Medraut said, and began again to play with his gloves. ‘The detail is very easily supplied. Cei failed to second me at the crucial
moment.’

‘Cei states that you were in no need of seconding, and he had sharper call for the reserves elsewhere, until the whole center of the wing crumpled without warning.’

‘But then, Cei has always hated me,’ he said.

‘Cei doesn’t know how to hate – not as we understand the word,’ I said. ‘He’s too like a Saxon. It takes the Celtic blood to know truly how to
hate.’

And we looked at each other, eye to eye, in a small and powerful stillness in the heart of the storm that battered the shutters and drove the white rain hushing across the thatch. But the opal
at his shoulder caught fire from an infinitesimal movement and for an instant was an eye opened on some strange and beautiful half-hell.

Then Medraut retreated a little. ‘In battle it is not always easy to choose – even to know – where lies the sharpest need.
I
know that my need of seconding was as the
need of lifeblood, but it seemed that Cei did not. Let my father believe I fought the best action that I could without.’

‘Cei states here that you wheeled your charge-back on too close a curve, so that the formation became clogged and ragged, and consequently the impact lost its force.’

‘It seems that the account was
not
so lacking in detail!’

‘There is no more to it than that,’ I said. ‘But Name of Names! That is the mistake of a raw squadron captain on his first maneuvers; you are among the most able of cavalry
commanders, Medraut; that kind of mistake is not for you!’

He gave me a small bow; his face had drained of color so that in the light of the fat-lamp, the faint discoloration of the lids made his eyes seem painted like a woman’s. ‘My father
is overlavish with his praise ... There is always, of course, the question of land shape to be considered; this has been a wet summer, and the valley turned oversoft for horses a short distance below
our fighting ground. Unfortunately even the most able of your cavalry commanders cannot command a countryside to give him sufficient elbow room.’

I had the sense of trying to hold a marsh light between finger and thumb that one always felt when dealing with Medraut, and knew that whatever purpose I had hoped to serve by this interview, I
had served none; none in the world. ‘So.’ I laid Cei’s letter back on the table beside me. ‘You have accounted for all things most nobly,’ and my voice sounded old and
hopeless in my own ears.

‘That was all my father wished to say to me?’

‘Yes. No, one thing more.’ I struggled to clear my mind from the gray cloud of weariness that still descended upon me so easily. ‘I have said that you are among the most able
of my cavalry commanders, and that is no more than the truth; you also have the trick of drawing good fortune to you in battle, and so you have a large following. But men do not follow you for
love, any more than you lead them for love. If you make more mistakes of that kind you will begin to lose your reputation not only for skill, but for luck, and if you lose that, you will lose your
following.’

He smiled, a smile that was light and sweet as honey smeared on aloes leaves. ‘My father has no need to warn me, I know to the thumbnail’s breadth what I can afford, and I shall not
afford more. I never gamble beyond my means.’

‘See that you don’t,’ I said, ‘only see that you don’t, Medraut.’

The smile became yet sweeter, but he still played with his gloves and maybe that was to hide that his hands were shaking. ‘I have my father’s leave to go? I made great haste to
answer his summons, and I am something wet.’

In the doorway, his hand on the golden Ophir rug that hung across the ill-fitting door, he checked and turned once more. ‘Has any news come to my father lately out of Arfon?’

‘What news should there be out of Arfon?’

‘Only women’s news, to be sure. They say that Maelgwn has taken a second bride.’

I was surprised, not at the news (for Maelgwn’s first wife had died the previous year, and he was not one to sleep long alone), but that Medraut should trouble with it.

‘And begun to build another oratory,’ added Medraut.

‘So? Is there some connection?’

‘The bride was his nephew’s wife – not his half sister, I grant you, but still, his nephew’s wife – Gwen Alarch, they call her.’ He was as malicious as a
gossiping old woman with a young one’s name in her hands. ‘The boy was killed hunting, and some say not by accident, but I doubt if Maelgwn loses as much sleep over
that
as for
another cause ... Maybe he’ll get him a son yet, and I’d not count too much on his faith-keeping hereafter, if that happens.’

‘Na?’ I said.

He shook his head. ‘Na. After all, the Saxon flood will not rise far into the mountains; and with a son to follow him, it must seem the more desirable to make sure of the Lordship of Arfon
after you.’

And noticing that he set himself aside from all claim to Arfon, I knew well enough the reason – that he flew at higher game. And again it crossed my mind that it was as well that I had
never allowed Constantine to be openly named as my heir. Medraut must know clearly enough where the choice must fall, but as long as nothing was said, he would be in no hurry. There was a deadly
patience about him, as there had been about his mother.

The golden rug swung back into place and his light step was swallowed instantly by the wind and the rain – unless he was still standing outside, smiling that light swift sweet smile that
made one’s blood feel thin.

Gwalchmai died about that same time, as quietly and suddenly as a tired man falling asleep by the fire after a hard day’s work, Cei told me, weeping for him, when a few days later the
first of the Company returned to winter quarters.

The ranks were thinning fast.

chapter thirty-five

N
EXT SPRING
I
WAS PREPARED FOR ANOTHER THRUST OF THE
Sea Wolves, but though we heard of more of the long war boats following in
the wake of last year’s, and others with women and even children, the thrust never came; and when we moved against them in our turn, they simply melted among the forest and marshlands like a
mist.

And so as the years passed, the thing settled into a fitful border warfare which has served to keep the Sea Wolves penned within some kind of frontier, but no more. It seems strange, when one
comes to think of it, that we have not been able to drive them back into the sea. And yet – I don’t know – there is Pictish blood in the folk of those parts, left over from the
great Pict Wars of Maximus’s day; the Picts are second only to the Little Dark People for knowing the secret possibilities of their own countryside, and they do not love the smell of
Rome.