Page 60 of Warrior Queen
Did it? My instinct was to blurt out a hurried no. But that wasn’t true. I thought of the young men who’d died in Afghanistan and Iraq, and all the other wars that still were fought in my old world. Needless deaths, all of them. Was any death in war truly necessary? Why were men so aggressive and acquisitive? If women ruled, would we be like this? Always coveting what our neighbor had?
I gave myself a shake. “Sort of. The world is bigger in some ways. More people. More pressures. And smaller in others.” I sought for words. “Here, this feels like we’re the only people in the world. That outside of Dumnonia and Britain, nothing else matters. But in my world, everywhere is connected, and people fight needless wars between far-apart countries.” I frowned, thinking of the nuclear threat most powers thought they needed, worse by far than the hand-to-hand combat I saw here. I couldn’t explain any of that to Merlin. Instead, I managed a watery smile, setting my hand on his arm. “I much prefer it like this.”
“With all this death?”
I nodded. “It’s a part of your world. Of my world now. I see that every king has to defend his territory and his people. But our armies don’t take the fighting across the sea to the Saxon homelands. We just fight them off right here. It’s defense, not aggression. We don’t want to share any more land than we’ve already ceded to them. But they– they want more than we’re prepared to give.”
Merlin nodded. “You have it right there. I’ve tried to look, but I don’t see the end of this. Man’s nature is to fight. When I do look, I see rivers of blood and dying men. So I don’t look anymore.” He gave himself a little shake. “It frightens me.”
I moved closer to him and put my other hand on his where it rested on one of the horns of his saddle. “Me too. I have so little knowledge, and yet I also have so much. This is my past I’m living in, but it’s a past about which no one in my old world knows much at all. Everything is garbled, confused, uncertain. There’s little written down apart from a long list of moans written in forty years’ time. Then nothing. The only things we have about these battles, and about Arthur, are books written hundreds of years from now. And no one knows if what’s in them was made up, or stolen from some other source, or could possibly be true.”
He turned his hand over and took mine in his. “Knowing the future is a burden, not a blessing. If you would share it?”
The calluses on his palm felt rough on my skin, but the contact with another human being warmed my heart. “My friend,” I said, keeping my voice down low. “You don’t want to know what I know. I couldn’t burden you with that.”
Outside in the stable yard, one of the men had begun a song– a sad and lilting lament, about a long-ago battle, the words rising toward the star-sprinkled sky. When he reached the chorus, the other men joined in, their low, melancholy chant echoing in my heart.
We stood, handfasted, listening to the melody.
Merlin shook himself like a dog. “We need to eat. Come with me to the camp. The men have fires lit and stews cooking. Arthur and Cei will be there. With the men.”
“How is it I’m hungry when I’m so sad?” I asked, wiping the tears from my eyes. “I feel I shouldn’t be. It’s wrong. Disrespectful of our dead. Disrespectful of Rhiwallon.”
Merlin put an arm around my shoulders, the comfort of his touch wrapping itself around me like a warm blanket. “Life goes on. You and I know that. The dead are dead a long time, and we have but a short time on this Earth. You need to eat, and so do I. Come.”
Chapter Twenty
Arthur’s men hadmade their camp in the eastern quarter of the city in fields sandwiched between the high walls and the riverbank. Their tired horses stood tethered to rope picket lines set up under the walls, and small fires dotted across the dark fields shone like stars.
Groups of men huddled around each fire, their heads turning as Merlin and I passed. Did they still think of me as their luck bringer? Maybe. They had won, and still lived. But at what cost? I hadn’t brought luck to Rhiwallon, had I? Nor to the other dead lying waiting to be buried.
“They’re with the dead,” young Drustans of Caer Dore, a bloody bandage around his head, told us, when we came upon him sitting beside a fire, eating a plate of brown stew. “Cei wanted to sit up with his son until morning. There are feral dogs about… and wolves…”
At least the wolves wouldn’t be able to get inside the city walls, though.
I nodded, my eyes seeking Merlin’s face. “Should I go to them?”
He shook his head. “Leave them to their grief. It’s best. A warrior grieves in his own way. Cei needs to mourn and Arthur with him. Tomorrow there’s work to be done.” He indicated some empty seats, just lumps of wood, pulled near to the fire. “Sit down and eat. You’re good for nothing without food inside you. Can’t have you fainting.”
The bread and cheese felt a long time ago. I sank down beside Drustans. He set his plate of food on the ground and leaned forward to fill a couple more plates from the cauldron hanging on a trivet over the fire. The stew was thick and meaty, its aroma setting my guilty saliva running. He passed the plates to Merlin and me, and picked up his own again.
We sat and ate the savory stew in silence for a while. On the far side of the fire, Bedwyr, Anwyll, Gwalchmei, and a few other warriors, watched us from across the flames, eyes wary. Gwalchmei had his left arm in a rough sling. None of them looked clean– no baths of hot water out here for our men. Maybe tomorrow they could bathe in the river. Maybe some of them already had.
The sound of the wind rustling the willows down by the water’s edge carried over the crackle of flames and the muted voices from around the other fires.
Hunger made us scrape our plates, and left my shrunken belly feeling bloated. Bedwyr passed round a skin of wine, and we all drank too much of it. Maybe I was hoping it would make me forget Rhiwallon for a moment and push aside all thoughts of how to tell his mother about his death. Burying him here with the other warriors would mean she’d never even have a grave to mourn beside. The thought had tears running down my cheeks again, unstoppable.
The flames died down. “Time we all slept,” Anwyll said, his voice so gruff, I suspected he, too, might have been near to crying. Perhaps not just for Rhiwallon. Many men had died in the battle– brothers, sons, fathers, friends. I’d always thought that after a battle the victors would feel– what? Celebratory? Happy? Victorious? Proud? But in reality, after a battle the result is often as bad for the victors as the losers. Men have died on both sides, men who would never wield sword nor shield again.
Why, then, did men continue to fight? Why did they seem to enjoy riding off to war? Eternal optimism that they and their loved ones would not die, perhaps. Pride in what they did. The urge to defend and protect their homes and families. Probably a multitude of reasons. At least here they weren’t interfering in far-off overseas wars.
Merlin interrupted my philosophical musings. “I’ve spread your blankets beside mine. Come and lie down.”
I had a bed in the palace, but I didn’t want it. I couldn’t bring myself to be near Ystradwel and her grief. Not even kicking off my boots, I lay down on the blanket beside Merlin, under the starry sky.
With a sigh, Merlin pulled another blanket up over his legs. The night was growing chilly. All around us the other warriors spread out their bed rolls.
Wiping my watering eyes, I rolled over to look at Merlin where he lay on his back, showing me his profile. “I hate war,” I whispered, trying not to disturb the other men.
