Page 3 of Warrior Queen

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Arthur stepped onto the rock. For a moment, he stood still, gazing around at the watching people. Then he drew the sword from his scabbard once again, and held it high for all to see. In one sweeping movement he plunged it back into the stone. That it went into solid rock at all must have surprised most of the watchers, even though they knew it had come out of there. It surprised me a bit, too. I’d been wondering if once drawn it might refuse to go back, which would have been awkward.

A gasp rose toward the sky.

“See,” Caninus said, voice raised to carry around the forum. “The sword goes back from whence it came.” He nodded to Arthur.

My hands fisted again, the nails digging into my palms, as Cei’s arm around my waist tightened. He must have been as tense as me. I glanced at Merlin. His battered face held no expression at all, and it wasn’t Arthur he was watching. It was Morgana, standing off to one side with Cadwy’s men, one hand on her flat belly as though to deliberately remind him she carried his child.Witch.

Arthur gripped the worn, leather-bound hilt, glanced slowly around, then pulled the sword out of the rock once more. He raised it above his head, half man, half glorious statue of a warrior king.

A cheer went up, but it died as Caw pushed his way forward, resplendent in his deep red robes. “Easy to pull it out once it’s been drawn,” he rumbled, like the lion of a man he was. “Any man could do that. Put it back, and let me take it out. Then we’ll see who’s High King here.”

Although not a tall man, his wide, muscled shoulders and chest suggested great strength. Had he ever tried to pull it out before? Most of the kings here had at some time had a go. Cadwy the most embarrassingly, announcing before his attempt that it had been put there especially for him.

Without a word, Arthur slid the sword back into the stone and stepped down, his face impassive. But his eyes, as they shot to meet mine, sparkled with mischief. My nervous heart responded with a leap of excitement.

Caw took Arthur’s place on the stone, settling his booted feet slightly apart. He glanced toward his followers, where some of the sandy-headed, thickset sons I’d seen last year stood watching with his men, and grinned, showing uneven, yellowed teeth. Wolf’s teeth. Then he set his right hand only on the sword hilt and pulled. Nothing happened.

I could probably have told him that.

Inside, I grinned with delight, but dared not show it. A small part of me had worried Caw would be right, and that once Arthur had loosened it, any man might have drawn it. This wasn’t a fairytale or legend– this was real life. I couldn’t rely on the stories I knew being true.

A frown making his brows heavier than ever, Caw set his other hand alongside the first, settled his grip more surely, and gave an enormous heave. The sword didn’t budge an inch. Undaunted, he heaved again. If the sword could have laughed at him, I swear it would have.

His frown turning into a scowl, Caw stepped down from the rock. “Let Pendragon try again. If it won’t move for me, it won’t for him.”

You think?

Still impassive, Arthur took the empty place on the rock, and with one hand drew the sword once more from the stone, as easily as from the scabbard on his hip.

A cheer went up again, then fizzled out as another king stepped forward. Owain White Tooth, king of Gwynedd, a distant cousin of Arthur’s through their joint descent from old king Cunedda of Guotodin. Since I’d been here, I’d become familiar with the internecine connections. Most of the kings here could boast Cunedda’s widespread bloodline to some degree.

Owain was a few years older than Arthur, shorter, more thickset, with a mane of chestnut hair and a beard streaked with auburn. A good-looking man, his abnormally white teeth, glinting as he grinned around at the other kings, gave him his nickname. “I’ll try this as well. Shove it back in the stone.”

Arthur slid the sword back into its strange rocky scabbard. The hilt stood up like a cross, plain but impressive. With a glance at Caninus, he stepped out of Owain’s way.

Owain tried and failed. A few more kings tried as well. Of course, all of them failed, but that didn’t stop others wanting to try their hands, convinced that because Arthur had succeeded, maybe one of them could as well. They couldn’t.

Then another man stepped forward.

I’d seen him at the table and not recognized him from the one Council I’d been to before. I’d assumed he was one of those rulers who didn’t always answer the call to attend. That, I’d been told, often happened with the more far-flung kingdoms.

A man of Arthur’s own build, he was slim and dark, his somewhat sallow face long and narrow with a prominent nose. Clear blue eyes gazed calmly out from beneath straight dark brows, and he wore his thick brown hair in a single braid to beneath his shoulder blades.

Merlin leaned toward me. “Cerdic of Caer Guinntguic,” he whispered in my ear.

My breath caught in my throat. A man for whom my husband had no love at all. The man who’d killed Arthur’s boyhood mentor at Llongborth and would have killed Arthur, too, had Merlin not intervened. And only this spring Arthur had met him in battle at Caer Guinntguic, when Cerdic had returned to claim the throne of that kingdom from his nephew Natanleod.

The fact that the childless Natanleod now lay dead, and Cerdic ruled in his place, and that Arthur had been forced to accept this as the only alternative to lawlessness, rankled my husband. If I’d known Cerdic’s identity earlier, I’d have been watching him more closely.

Cerdic nodded to Arthur and Caninus as though no enmity existed between them, as though most of the kings here on the council didn’t look on him with a suspicion born of his having a Saxon mother. As Cadwy also did, and no love was lost on him, either.

“Let me try,” Cerdic said, his accent guttural, but clear.

Arthur’s right hand shot to where his sword should have been hanging at his belt. Luckily, it wasn’t. Killing another king during the Council, or even raising a sword against him, would have been a terrible crime, and would probably have ensured he never became High King despite his possession of the sword.

Caninus nodded. “All are free to try.”

Cerdic stepped onto the rock. Caninus’s restraining hand went to Arthur’s arm, his fingers closing tightly about it above the elbow. He probably had a good idea of how his cousin felt about this new king on the Council.