Page 32 of The Dragon Ring
For such a young boy, Llacheu was a ferocious warrior. He rained blows down on Drem, who must have been a year or two older than him, and took those Drem inflicted on him as though he hardly noticed them. After a few minutes, he got in a blow to the stomach while Drem had his shield arm back, pulling his pony to the left. With a gasp of pain Drem toppled sideways and landed with a thud on the ground.
I clapped my hands as the victorious Prince Geraint trotted over to us, his face pink with exertion. Drem picked himself up and went to catch his pony.
“D’you think I’m going to be a great warrior?” Llacheu asked boldly.
I laughed.
“A great warrior should never openly seek praise,” his father scolded and turned to me. “Don’t answer him. He’s getting too big-headed as it is.”
I laughed again. If I imagined we were standing on the lines of a football match the boys had been playing, we could have been in my world. That we had just watched a rehearsal for the deadly reality of adulthood that awaited these small boys sent a cold trickle of apprehension running down my spine. My laugh died away as I had a momentary mental image of them fighting with real swords, and how that blow to the stomach would have run Drem through if it had been real, and his entrails would have come spilling out onto the muddy turf. Envisioning the violence of this way of life sobered me.
Arthur took my arm. “She’s mine now,” he said to his son. “Behave yourselves and don’t fight without your shields. Remember.”
He steered me across the muddy riding track toward the wall, and we climbed up the steps that led to the walkway where I’d stood the day before with Merlin. Behind us, the four boys kicked their ponies into a race, small hooves thundering across the turf, howls of encouragement to their mounts rending the air.
To my right and left, guards stood along the wall at intervals, gazing out across the surrounding farmlands. I turned away from Arthur to look down the steep slope of the hill. Was that the wooden spire of a church nestled amongst a small thicket of trees at the hill’s foot? Arthur came and stood next to me.
“Your son’s very charming,” I said.
He smiled. “And very cheeky. I can see he’s taken to you.”
“He’s very much like you.”
“So I’m told.” His dark eyes regarded me. “Does that mean you think I, too, am charming?” He was teasing me. Wasn’t he?
I’d fallen into that one. “I mean, he looks like you. Who’s his mother? Have I seen her?” I could feel my cheeks reddening.
“Tangwyn.” He leaned against the crenelated parapet, the wind ruffling his hair. “She was in the Hall last night. A red-haired woman with eyes like a cat.”
I couldn’t remember anyone like that.
“Are there more children? Yours, I mean?”
He shook his head. “No. Tangwyn had two others but neither lived.” His face was suddenly serious. Was he thinking of his dead children? The death of babies was pretty much to be expected, I supposed. Infant mortality would be high in the Dark Ages. I didn’t press him.
“Nothing since the last one,” he said, “I’ve been away a lot. She’d like another, I know, but these things don’t always happen. She knows it. She has Llacheu. He’s strong and brave and past the age when he might be carried off by illness.”
“He’s a son to be proud of.”
The smile came back, lighting up his face. “I know.”
He turned his head and looked northwards. On the horizon clouds were gathering in grey tatters. Was more rain coming? I hoped not. Din Cadan was almost pleasant in the winter sunshine.
He lifted a hand and pointed. “Riders from the North.”
I looked. At first, I couldn’t see them, and he had to lean nearer to me so that I could look down his pointing arm. His breath was warm on my cheek. I felt myself flush, which was silly. And then I saw them, tiny specks emerging from the forest on the rough road. Riders. I counted ten.
“Who are they?”
He shrugged. “No idea. But whatever they’re about, it must be important for them to be abroad in winter when the roads are this bad. They’ll be headed here. There’s nowhere else they could be going.”
“How d’you know they’re not your enemies?”
He gave a short laugh. “They’re on horseback. The Saxons are foot soldiers. Plus, there are only ten of them. The Saxons would never send out so small a war party, and they would never attack us here in Din Cadan. We’re too well defended for that.” He took my arm again and started around the wall-walk. “Come, we’ll go to the gates and see what it is they want.”
At the gates we climbed the ladder to the top viewing platform and watched the progress of the riders along the road and around the base of the hill between the farmsteads. As they began the climb toward the gates, they dipped out of sight until they emerged onto the plateau and wove their way between the offset entrance banks, their horses’ hooves clattering on the cobbles. Every one of them was an armed warrior.
“Theodoric!” Arthur called out as the lead rider came into view. The rider, a big man on a solid black cob, raised his hand and took off his round helmet, letting a mane of dark blond hair blow out in the wind. He was mustached, but not bearded, and nearly as big a man as Cei, long legs dangling below his sweaty horse’s girth.
