Surely Anglian raiders would be no less skilled than Pictish ones at stripping down a cow. They wouldn’t randomly rip and tear. One of the beasts had been cleaved clean in two, only the hindquarters left behind, the rest nowhere to be seen.
If this was the work of pirates, they were savage ones. Lance, on full alert now, began to make his way with more caution still, gesturing to Drusus to keep behind him. He hadn’t come this far to be ambushed in the shadow of Din Guardi itself. And yet, as they approached the dune meadows that rolled and gleamed to the south, he forgot his bewilderment and unease. There it was. The fort on the rock.
From this distance, it was hard to see that there was a fort there at all. The kings of the Old North had no desire to blazon out their strongholds. They hadn’t won; they didn’t own Britannia. They were under siege. The castle was only a group of single-storey halls, enclosed behind a wooden palisade. A couple of the buildings had a second floor, and the tower a precarious third, but that was all.
Lance loved it. He couldn’t define the sense of welcome that shone out from it. Arthur was there. A joyful conviction took hold of him: Art must still be alive. Once more he conquered his impulse to break cover and gallop on. He and Drusus had no guarantee that the stronghold remained in allied hands. In the time it had taken the messenger to reach him and return, Anglian raiders could have seized the place, and he knew the kind of welcome he could expect from them.
He trotted Balana into the lee of one of the dunes, gestured to Drusus to stay where he was, then dismounted and scrambled up onto a crest to take a better look. Stretching out in the prickly marram, he smiled. There were so many harebells you could almost hear them ringing in the wind. And all he could think about, looking at Din Guardi rock, was that he had come home.
No, not bells. The percussion of galloping hooves on wet sand. Two horsemen emerged from the dunes in the distance. They weren’t trying for concealment—to attract his attention, rather. Lance shifted to get a clear view. Then one of the men rode right out onto the beach, and hoisted a white flag adorned with a proud red dragon. He was waving it excitedly from side to side. Lance broke cover, Drusus following at a more sedate pace behind him.
Once the horses were within yards of one another he reined in hard, scattering sand. It was Gaius, all right—older and heavier, his homely visage not improved by a new scar that gaped down one cheek, but his old friend from Vindolanda still. “Guy!”
Gaius passed the Pendragon flag to his companion and heartily caught Lance’s outstretched hand. “Lance! I knew it was you. No-one else crosses open ground like a weasel chasing a snake. I laid a bet with that fool Garbonian that it was. And I’m short on cash. I staked my horse on you.”
“In that case, I’m doubly glad to be here. And... I can tell from your face that I needn’t have galloped quite so hard. Please tell me I’m right.”
“When my brother heard you’d been sent for, he got out of bed, told everyone he was fine and went back to work, knocking the warlords’ heads together in the debating hall.”
Lance lifted his face to the frail winter sun. Its light seemed to fill him. The fear that had driven him relentlessly across moor and dune fell away. “Thank God.”
“Yes. We had a sharp time with him, though. Forgive me for taking you away from your people.”
“You didn’t. At least—that problem’s been solved for me. I’ll tell you about it later.”
“You can stay?”
“For as long as I’m needed.”
Gaius nodded. He was smiling, but his eyes were shadowed. “That’s good. Drusus, ride on. You did well to bring our Lance home in one piece. I’ll see him the rest of the way.”
He waited until the messenger had set off down the beach. His own man fell back to a discreet distance, and he and Lance turned their horses’ heads toward the castle. “I have to tell you something,” he began, his voice unsteady for the first time since Lance had known him. “We lost Ector.”
Lance went cold with shock. He hadn’t known the old man for long, but he’d seemed as permanent as rocks and earth. “I grieve with you,” he said awkwardly. “What happened to him?”
“He was killed in a raid on our camp further south. It wasn’t the ending he’d have chosen for himself—they slew him in his sleep, his sword undrawn.” Guy negotiated the crest of a dune, and shot Lance a tired, anxious look. “I mourn for him, but my brother took it worse. I don’t know if he blames himself or the Saxons more.”
“Poor Ector.”
“I used to think sometimes that Art fought for the fun of it, or the principle—Britons versus Saxons, all that. Well, there’s blood on it now for him. He misses the old man, but he won’t talk about it, and other matters trouble him too...” He shook his head. “Never mind. Come along, and let’s get out of this cold.”
Lance rode on at his side, up through the last of the dunes and onto the meadows at the foot of Din Guardi rock. Now that he needn’t draw every breath in fear for Art’s life, he had to learn the story of his friend’s presence here, so that he could find his place and begin to make himself useful. “I’ll help in any way I can. How long have you been here?”
“Almost three months now. We came at the request of Coel the Elder—Coel Hen, in the old tongue. He used to rule over this whole land of Bryneich, from Din Guardi to the river Thuaigh in the north. The Romans even made him Dux Britanniarum, he was so useful to them.”
Lance knew about the coveted duces posts. Once the Romans could no longer spare their own men to hold them, they had begun to offer them as a reward to whichever of the brawling British kings would best support them, and Ban had held out hopes. “That’s a fine thing, isn’t it?”
“Certainly used to be. Coel’s losing his grip on his dukedom, though. He’s got Pictish raiders in the north, tribes pouring in from Hibernia in the west, and Anglian pirates washing up from the east every day. He’s got so many troubles, and his face is so long, that some of my lads made up a song about him. Old King Coel, they call it.”
Lance grinned. “I think I heard the children singing that in one of the villages we passed.”
“Well, he’s not a merry old soul, and he’s liable to prove it with an axe. When he heard that Arthur was travelling north with an army, he offered us shelter at Din Guardi and treated for talks with him. The trouble was, Coel thought Art was a potential recruit for his war, not vice versa.”
“Oh. What did Arthur do?”
“He summoned the lords of Ebrauc to the south—Eboracum, the Romans called it—and of Rheged, from the mountains and lakes in the west, to take part in the debate. Mor and Ceneu, their names are, and poor old Coel lies awake at night grinding his teeth at the thought of sharing his castle with them both. They’ve all been enemies since birth.”
“But Coel needs Arthur, so...”