Page 30 of Warrior Queen

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He shook his head. “I returned to you when I discovered he’d struck north, pursuing a great army of Irish raiders heading inland. Perhaps toward Viroconium itself.”

Merlin’s eyebrows shot up into his hairline. “They dare to take their army inland? To the very heart of Britain?”

The young man nodded. “It’s a huge army, so I was told. Perhaps they think their numbers make them safe. I returned as fast as I could to warn you.”

I stared at Merlin. “Viroconium? Arthur’s gone to helpCadwy?” For a moment the thought that my husband had gone mad occurred to me. Then common sense cut in. It wasn’t Cadwy he’d be helping– it would be the people of Powys. He couldn’t let an army of foreign invaders strike at the beating heart of Britain. Even if it did mean helping, or even saving, the brother he hated.

I swallowed. “We need to march north to find him. He’s going to need our reinforcements. And we have that message to give him.”

Caninus transferred his gaze from the two young men to Merlin and me. “I can furnish you with extra men to take to my cousin, but I can’t leave my town undefended. For all I know there could be more raiders waiting out to sea, ready to land their currachs on our foreshore.”

I stood up. “I understand. Thank you for this news and for sending scouts. And for the offer of your men, which I accept.” My eyes met Merlin’s. “We should march north for Powys tomorrow and try to join up with Arthur.”

Merlin didn’t rise, but sat very still, his dark eyes unreadable. Viroconium. And Morgana. Was that where we were headed?

*

We set offnorth the next morning at first light, following a road I’d ridden before, on both occasions heading south and leaving Viroconium and everything I hated about it safely behind. I wasn’t happy to be taking this road again, but at least it was roughly in the direction Arthur had gone in. If we were lucky, we might catch him up and turn out to be of some use before he met the Irish army. We now had a sizeable force of sixty warriors, a small army by the standards of the day.

We made good time. The branch of the minor Roman road we had to follow remained in good condition. Our cavalry spread out to the rough ground on either side whenever they could, as we followed the rising hills north into what would one day be the Forest of Dean. We crossed the river by a sturdy bridge at Blestium, a small industrial township that reeked of the fires required for smelting the iron ore brought in from the mines in the forest.

From Blestium, the road north descended into sprawling river valleys, where marshy ground frequently surrounded the road on both sides. Only the surviving agger lifted us safely above swamps made worse by the persistent summer rain. Horse flies and mosquitoes plagued us in these damp lowlands, biting animals and people without discrimination.

However, no sign appeared of the passing of any other large force of men. No burnt-out farms. No churned-up tracks. No dead bodies. No droppings on the road. If either the Irish raiders or Arthur and his army had come this way, they’d left nothing to show for it, and I couldn’t help but worry in case we were on a wild goose chase.

In one of the drier valleys, we made camp for the night in a deserted farmstead, the crumbling walls of the house still standing to shoulder height. This wasn’t the work of invaders, though. The growth of stunted saplings and tall weeds pushing between the tumbled stones indicated its inhabitants had been gone a long time. An air of loneliness hung over the ruins, making me wonder at the fate of the people who’d once lived here.

But I didn’t have time to speculate. Merlin stood back and left it to me to organize the rota for the night watches. Then the men lit fires and cooked themselves tasty stew with the dried meat Caninus had supplied. Darkness fell, and the sky above us spangled with a myriad of stars hanging above the sleeping world.

I sat on a large rock looted from the farmyard wall, eating the hunk of black bread I’d used to wipe out my stew bowl, while the men passed around a skin of cider. On the far side of the fire Rhiwallon took a long slug from the skin, then, with a grin, passed it on to his friends.

A boy become a man. He even had a few wisps of ginger beard breaking the surface of his spotty chin. How different he now seemed to Llacheu. He’d left his boyhood friend far behind him on this expedition, his journey into manhood. Not long now until Llacheu was the same. A sobering thought. And Medraut and Amhar wouldn’t be far behind.

Time was not my friend.

The flames of the fire crackled and leapt as one of the men added wood to it, and motes of red-hot ashes leapt towards the dark sky.

“How far now to Viroconium?” I asked Merlin, trying to distract myself from my sobering thoughts.

He’d perched on the rock beside mine, with his long legs stretched out straight in front of him. He stifled a yawn. “Forty miles, maybe a bit more. I hope we’ll catch up with Arthur before we get that far.”

I sighed. “If he’s even going this way. We only have the word of one messenger that he is. We might be headed in quite the wrong direction.” Oh, for cellphones, so I could have just called him. How much easier would that have been? The further we rode, the more Britain seemed to stretch larger, with Arthur ever more distant. My heart ached with an intense longing to see his handsome face again, to have him take me in his arms, to curl naked in bed with him…

Merlin interrupted my reverie, holding out the skin of cider. “Such is life.”

Irritated, I took the cider, and putting it to my lips, swallowed a few long gulps. That was better. I passed the skin back to Merlin. “I don’t know how you can accept this lack of communication. It makes life so much more difficult than it needs to be. Surely there ought to be some way we can get news from all over Britain a bit quicker?”

Merlin pulled a maybe sort of a face, but didn’t say anything.

I frowned, an idea forming. If we set up a messaging network, news of danger would permeate about Britain much faster than it did now, which had to be a good thing. Coel had been forced to send a troop of half a dozen men, old, yes, but armed, to take his message to the High King. Now, because Arthur was away fighting, I was wasting time chasing him around when he should have been heading north to support Coel against the Saxons.

“What about beacons?” I said to Merlin. “Could we set up beacons that are visible one from the next? To light when danger threatens and help’s needed?”

Merlin passed on the cider to the next man. “That’s an idea. But how would we know what the beacons meant? A light is a light. It can only mean one thing. And it might not always be the message we wanted to convey.”

True. I screwed up my face in concentration and waved away the offer of the next skin of cider. Caninus had sent riders out to the east, and they’d swapped tired horses for fresh ones, making their journey faster. What if that extended all over Britain? What if a man could mount a horse in Ebrauc and gallop to the next station, where he could take another fast horse. He’d be able to ride the two hundred plus miles from Ebrauc to Din Cadan at twenty miles an hour. Ten hours or less. Half a day. And one man wouldn’t have to do it all. There could be relief riders posted at intervals along with the horses so a message could be carried and passed on from man to man. Like the Old West’s Pony Express. That had been superseded very swiftly by the railway, but that wasn’t going to happen here.

I turned to Merlin, and began to outline my plan.