Page 35 of The Quest for Excalibur
I folded my arms across my chest, my lips making a thin line of resignation. What had I set in motion? It seemed that no matter what I did the road to Camlann kept on unrolling before my eyes like some sort of fateful Yellow Brick Road. Could I even have made matters worse? The nugget of fear that constantly inhabited my stomach blossomed, and my heart began to thunder.
Chapter Seventeen
As we wereonly delivering Medraut and the three boys he’d chosen as his companions to Dinas Brent, Arthur decided not to take a large force with him. Withus. I’d persuaded him to let me come too. It was quite some time since I’d journeyed far from Din Cadan, and I had a morbid interest in seeing what remained of the fortress I’d been imprisoned in all those years ago.
Amhar wanted to come as well, but Arthur put his foot down about that, and I reinforced his decision, a little more tactfully. Medraut had tried to choose Amhar as one of his alloted companions, but Arthur calmly told him no, that as his heir, Amhar had to stay at Din Cadan and learn statesmanship and how to one day become a good king.
He hadn’t seen the look of furious jealousy in Medraut’s eyes as he turned away, but I had, and it chilled me to the core.
All of this caused a scene when Amhar found out he wasn’t even to be allowed to escort his cousin to his new home.
“Why can’t I come too?” Amhar demanded, beligerence, possibly fueled by some expert behind-the-scenes prompting from Medraut, oozing from every pore. Fortunately for him, this happened in the privacy of our private chamber. “I’m nearly as old as he is. And one day I’ll be king. He’s my friend, and he wants me to come.”
“Because I don’t want you to,” Arthur said, leaning back against the table with his arms folded across his chest, while Amhar stood in front of him, willow thin, face flushed with fury and fists balled at his sides.
“That’s not a good reason,” Amhar retorted, his voice rising in frustration. “Mother’s going. I can fight as well as she can.” He shot me an angry glance. “Better.”
Arthur’s brows lowered in the start of a frown, which should have warned our son. “There’ll be no fighting. We’re not riding into enemy territory. We’re just visiting one of my forts. And your mother is an adult and will not be a hindrance to me.”
Small lie. When had I ever not been a hindrance?
Amhar made to stamp his foot, his leg twitching. I knew him well enough to guess his intent, and stifled a smile. Luckily, he thought better of crossing his father even further. “But I want to see where Medraut’s being posted.” Now he sounded downright sulky.
“Well, you can’t,” Arthur snapped. “And that’s all there is to it. Merlin wants you here, working at your lessons. Medraut is older than you and ahead of you in everything. You need to do some catching up before you’ll be ready for a posting.”
I frowned. If I had my way, he’d never be sent to a remote frontier fortress, especially not one where he’d be with Medraut and out of my supervision and care. But I’d have to cross that bridge when I came to it.
Amhar’s dark eyes filled with a mixture of fury and unhappiness, tears sparkling in their corners. “But, Father, that’s so unfair!” His voice rose to a plaintive whine. A child’s protest.
“Unfairness is something you need to learn to deal with,” Arthur said, pushing himself off the table and straightening up. “Life is never fair, so you’d better get used to it. Now, get out of here before I decide to punish your rudeness with a beating. Go on. Back to sword practice which is where you’re meant to be right now.”
When he wanted to, Arthur had a very intimidating presence. Although tall, he wasn’t a big man, but he had about him an aura of strength, of animal power that could be interpreted as threatening. It exuded from him now in waves.
“Yes, sir,” Amhar muttered, and fled.
“Thank you,” I said when he’d gone, banging the door behind him in temper. Merlin and I had decided that Amhar should not be allowed to go with his cousin. The sooner they were parted, the better. But I’d asked Merlin, who knew my reasons, to suggest it to Arthur. However, Arthur didn’t seem to have handled it in quite the tactful way I’d been hoping for. Implying Amhar wasn’t as good as Medraut might not have been the best thing to say, under the circumstances.
Amhar sulked like the child he was for the next few days, while Medraut strutted around the fortress like a young cockerel, boasting to any who would listen that he’d been singled out for special treatment and been allowed to choose the boys who’d share the honor with him. Amhar, looking more and more dejected, skulked on the periphery of the little group of chosen ones who were to accompany his cousin.
“I’m glad he’s going,” Llacheu said to me, on Medraut’s final day as we sat on the fence watching the boys practise their sword fighting. “He’s an arse.”
Eighteen now, and very much a young man and not a boy, he closely resembled his father in almost every way, apart from the fact that he’d had his dark curly hair cut so short by Coventina I could only describe it as a buzz cut. His excuse had been that it was too hot for long hair now summer had arrived. It gave him an edgy look of toughness that his lovely curls had hidden.
I grinned at him. “You may well be right about that.” I loved Llacheu like my own, and seeing him now, such a well-rounded adult, brought a glow of pride to my heart.
He swung his long legs. “Amhar’s in a right bad mood about it, though.”
I nodded. “He wanted to go too.”
Out on the practice field, Amhar swung his wooden sword with gusto, paired up with a boy half a head taller than he was. Wham. The sword struck his opponent’s simple shield a mighty blow. He wasn’t bad at sword fighting– just younger and not so strong as his big cousin. He would have a long, lithe horseman’s build, like Llacheu and his father, not the solid squareness of Medraut. Although Arthur had never allowed his own lack of bulk to affect his fighting skills.
“And I’m glad Amhar’snotgoing.” Llacheu glanced across the fortress toward the gatehouse where a laden wagon of hay was lumbering in. “I don’t like the way Medraut is with him.”
Their cousin was hammering his own sword against the shield of a boy I thought might be Iestyn, a good three years older than Medraut but not much taller.
Boys can be secretive. Maybe Llacheu saw more than I did. More than Merlin had seen. I raised my eyebrows in invitation for him to go on.
“Medraut thinks he can boss all the other boys about,” Llacheu said, kicking the fence with his heels. “No, that’s wrong. He doesn’t think it. He knows it. You’ll notice he’s chosen only older boys to go with him?”
