Arthur followed Ector inside Caer Ligualid’s walls, and he waved greetings to familiar faces, stewards, foresters and a gaggle of warriors’ wives who sat in a circle, spinning yarn on wooden distaffs. Lunete came bounding from the stone fort and leapt at Arthur, hugging him as though he had been gone for years. He laughed and swung her around before setting her down.
‘You look radiant,’ he said, holding up her chin, and so she did. Her raven-black hair fell loose about her shoulders and her blue eyes shone like jewels. ‘I have missed you.’
‘You’ve changed,’ she said.
‘How have you been?’
‘Bored. And now Father is sending me to the Bear Fort to join King Urien’s court. He says he has a man in mind for me to marry, some coarse sheep lover from the northern mountains. I won’t stand for it, that cannot be my fate.’
‘It’s time to find you a husband, you are a grown woman now,’ Ector said, as he showed Arthur’s men where they could find food and mead. ‘A year in Urien’s hall and suitors will flock around you like…’
‘Flies around shit.’ She laughed as Ector frowned at her coarseness, and Lunete led Arthur into the old Roman fortress. Arthur let his fingers drag on the cold, dressed stone and there was a happy familiarity in the place. Though it had only been a year since he had left, Arthur had seen and done so much that his time in Caer Ligualid seemed like a different life, and he a different person. Arthur and Lunete walked the narrow streets inside the fort arm in arm, and she told him stories of the long winter, of how Ector had brought in an old widow to help Lunete prepare for her time at court, but how she had instead hunted and ridden in the forests around the town. Arthur laughed, and for a moment he forgot the weight of Saxons and war. But the moment was fleeting, because Kai awaited them by the hearth fire inside Ector’s great hall.
‘Brother,’ Arthur said, striding to Kai with his arms outstretched.
‘Arthur,’ Kai said, and he took Arthur’s wrist in the warrior’s grip. ‘You are just in time, for we march to war this very week. Urien had despatched a hundred men to our borders, and we must join them. Saxons have crossed the hills from Lloegyr.’
‘Balin is with me, and we bring seventy men. We shall march with you.’
‘Seventy spearmen?’ Kai said and folded his arms across his chest.
‘Aye, thirty of my own and forty sworn to Balin.’
‘And I thought you had returned to join us, not to gloat and boast of your time in the north.’
‘I have not come to boast.’
‘Whilst you were off wandering with Balin, I was here protecting our people.’
‘Oh please,’ Lunete interrupted. ‘There was no fighting last summer. The Saxons fought in the south, and we had peace. All you did was scout the borderlands, hunt deer and guard the walls. Can we not be friends, like old times?’
‘Come, brother,’ said Arthur and clapped Kai upon the shoulder. ‘Is there nothing to drink in this hall?’
Kai glowered at Arthur for a moment, and they both laughed as Lunete grabbed them around the neck and wrestled them to the ground. Arthur collapsed in a tangle of cloak, scabbard, seax and heavy chain mail. Ector found them rolling in the floor rushes and he bent double, laughing along with them. They spent the rest of that day drinking and eating and speaking of last year’s harvest, of a wild winter storm which had torn the roofs from some of the Caer’s homes, and then more sombrely of the increasing Saxon threat. They drank to Huell and remembered his deeds, and Ector lamented his lost captain.
Ector told the tale of Octha’s march south, and how the men of Elmet and Powys had defeated Octha, but at great cost to their kingdoms. So many of their warriors had perished in the fighting that over half their fighting men were dead, leaving the two mighty kingdoms almost unable to defend themselves should Octha attack again. Eventually, they had paid him off with a horde of silver and gold and Octha had sworn to a year of peace, instead marching north to winter with Ida in Bernicia. But Octha could not stay there forever. Three thousand men eat a lot of meat and grain and Octha must provide land, glory and wealth for his ferocious warriors or lose them. So there would be war in the north before the summer was over.
Balin and the remaining war band arrived at the Caer later that day, and Ector welcomed him warmly. The two old warriors sat together and spoke of the Great War, and of the friends and family they had lost in the never-ending conflict. Arthur asked for news of Merlin, but there was none. Ector had heard from King Urien that Merlin was in the south, and that Nimue was with him. Balin and Arthur told Ector of their plan to march south and look for help from Uther Pendragon, but Ector gave no opinion of their plan. He only said that Balin and Arthur should visit King Urien at the Bear Fort after driving out the Saxon raiders from Rheged and ask for his support if they were planning to raise an army.
Ector’s warriors marvelled at the sight of Excalibur, and Arthur passed the legendary blade around so that each man could hold and swing the famous sword. They rested at the Caer for two days, and then Ector led them west with thirty of his own warriors so that close to a hundred men left to meet the Saxon raiders. They spent a night camped by the old Roman villa where Kai had earned his first death ring, and Ector sat with Arthur as he ran a whetstone along Excalibur’s blade.
‘You have grand plans,’ said Ector, jutting his chin towards where Balin and Arthur’s warriors sat around a fire sharing a meal of hard bread and cheese. ‘To defeat the Saxons, the kingdoms of Britain must unite. In that, you are right. But you have not met Uther, and many of the old kings are jaded and cruel, like Urien. They have not forgotten how the Great War ended and what was lost.’
‘Somebody must try, spear-father. Merlin gave me Excalibur and his trust, and I must follow this road, no matter how hard or unlikely it may seem,’ Arthur replied.
‘Merlin’s cunning weaves and dances across the land, and perhaps he has the right of it. No king of Britain will take orders from or follow another. They are too proud and are reluctant to align after what happened before. The memory of how hard their great-grandfathers fought to win their lands in the bleak days when the Romans left us in darkness still burns strong, and they have much to lose. Perhaps warriors like you and Balin, not oathsworn to any king, could unite us. The Saxons have taken Balin’s home, and you were too young to swear an oath to me or King Urien before you left. But Uther could ignore you, or worse, he could see you and Balin as a threat and attack you. Without the Pendragon, you have nothing. Only the king of kings can muster an army of Britain.’
‘The last time the kingdoms came together, Vortigern, Hengist, Horsa and Ida won. It must be different this time.’
‘Aye, well. Things happened which drove a wedge between our last alliance. Love and betrayal cast us asunder, and men do not forget.’
‘Uther, Merlin and Gorlois of Kernow? Men rarely talk of the details of that betrayal, as though its truth is lost in a fog. You were once Uther’s man, Father, what happened?’
Ector sighed and placed his heavy hand on Arthur’s arm. ‘Now is not the time, son. But I will tell you the sorry tale one day. Of how we fought as one people and almost defeated Vortigern, and how lust and murder cost us everything, of how I left Dumnonia and came north with Igraine to serve King Urien.’
‘Why do men not talk of what happened, and why are you so reluctant to talk about it even now?’
‘Few know the truth, and for those who do, the wounds are still raw and bleeding, even after all this time. But I will tell you all, son, I swear it. But not now, we must sleep. Tomorrow, we hunt Saxons.’ Ector rose and took a step towards his cloak and the warm campfire, but then turned as an afterthought. ‘Do you still wear Igraine’s gift?’
Arthur lifted the bronze disc from behind his mail and its leather lining and showed the dragon-inlaid treasure to his foster father. Ector nodded and went to his bed. Arthur wanted to ask Ector the tale of his birth, and how Merlin knew who his parents were, but Ector looked tired and in no mood to speak further. Such conversations were awkward, and even the sparse details Ector had just provided on the Great War were spoken with a reluctant tone. Arthur spent that night in a fitful sleep, wondering how the Pendragon would receive him, and if the Britons could ever form a united army capable of defeating the marauding Saxons. He rose early the next morning to brush Llamrei down and as he fed the horse a handful of oats, a warrior approached him wearing a deep hood and carrying a bow.
‘Off to hunt for breakfast?’ Arthur said in greeting and then shook his head in disbelief when the warrior threw back the hood to reveal a head of long black hair and piercing blue eyes.
‘What?’ said Lunete. ‘I can’t let you men have all the glory.’
‘Father will lose his mind when he finds out.’
‘Why shouldn’t I march with you? I’m better with the bow than any of you, and better with the spear than half of these lackwits.’
Arthur laughed at that, not only because it was true, but because he had missed Lunete’s wildness. ‘Keep away from Ector,’ Arthur warned her. ‘Stay with my men if you wish, but watch them. They are rough men and not used to the company of women.’ She grinned at him, and Arthur shook at his head as she bounded away in delight. Ector would be furious when he found out that Lunete had come with the war band, but Arthur could hardly send her back alone. He would have to tell Ector of her presence but hoped that another man would notice her and do the job for him, for Lunete would never forgive the man who gave her away. All Lunete wanted was to live the life of a warrior like her brothers, hunting, riding, fighting and practising with weapons, but that was not the fate for a daughter of a warlord like Ector. Her fate was marriage and the lethal dangers of childbirth. She was the daughter of Britain’s champion, and a great prize for any ambitious man. King Urien would look for suitors for Lunete, to bring him an alliance, land or wealth, and her marriage would also bring honour and wealth to Ector. But not if she died fighting Saxon raiders disguised as a warrior.
The next day, when sunlight shone through clouds shifting on a warm breeze, they found the Saxon raiding party. Balin’s scouts picked up their trail from a burned-out farm, and Arthur’s stomach turned as he rode Llamrei through the still smoking debris. Two little bodies lay curled up in a corner, surrounded by ash and charred timbers. Fire had shrunk their corpses so that they looked like babies, and the warriors made the sign to ward off evil. The Christians amongst them, like Hywel and his men from Elmet, made the sign of the cross and the war band marched on in silence, past the slaughtered mother who lay in a pool of her own dark blood. Her skin, where not darkened with soot and dried blood, had the pale complexion of death. Kai would not leave the dead in the open, so he and three men stayed to bury the corpses beneath the scorched earth. Arthur forced himself to take in every grim part of that ruined farm and its slaughtered people. They were common folk, good people trying to eke out their lives, battling the land, the seasons, storms and blight. They paid render to Ector and Urien each year, one tenth of their farm’s surplus. It was a bleak and hard existence, but honest and simple, and now they were dead.
If Ector had more men, he would protect the entire border with Lloegyr, but that was not possible. So Arthur etched his mind deep with the memory of that farm and its burned, slaughtered family. That was the reason to fight the Saxons, if they had stayed in their own lands that family would still live in peace, the children would run and laugh in the meadows, the father would plough, reap and sow, and the wife would spin wool and care for her family. But the Saxons had come across the narrow sea with their weapons and their brutal malice, and Arthur must fight them before all of Britain fell to their blades.
A score of men marched lightly through Rheged as though they had not a care in the world. Saxons clad in leather and fur, carrying spears and goading a herd of twenty cows eastwards towards Lloegyr. Three of them rode small, swift ponies, and another sat atop of a mule wagon filled with plunder, behind which a line of five captured slaves trudged tied together by their necks and wrists. Their trail had been easy to follow, for they had not tried to disguise it. Llamrei crested a heather-topped rise, and Arthur watched as the Saxons marched down a rolling hill and away from Rheged. They laughed and joked and thought themselves great heroes, returning from Rheged with plunder and stories of raiding and slaughter.
Ector called Balin to him, and Arthur went too because he had thirty of his own warriors and had a right to be included in the plan of attack. Ector did not object to his foster son’s presence, and Kai had not yet returned from burying the dead to disapprove. This was no battle, not even on the scale of the skirmishes and small shield-wall fights Arthur had fought in the dark lands. These were raiders, not Ida or Octha’s picked warriors or champions.
