Page 87 of The Road to Avalon
My eyes widened. I’d rarely heard Coventina use language like that.
She grinned, a twinkle of satisfaction in her eyes.
I turned back to our visitor. “Arthur took all the experienced warriors with him– except you, Llawfrodedd, because you were at Dinas Badan. Thank goodness you were there.”
Color rose to the young man’s cheeks. “The King gave me a future here, when all I had were the clothes on my back, and they were rags not worth mentioning. He put me with the other boys, the sons of warriors, and taught me how to fight. And now I want to fight for him.” He put his hand to his heart. “I’m ready to die for him if he asks me to.”
I caught his hand. “Good. We don’t need you to die, but we want you to do something for us and him.”
“Anything, Milady. Anything.”
“Can you get out of the fortress tomorrow do you think? Is there a chance you can? On horseback?”
He rubbed his chin. “I don’t know. Medraut’s got his own guards who’re all loyal to him on the gates. They’d see me approaching and might stop me. Since he brought you and the Sword of Destiny back from Ynys Witrin, things’ve got a lot tighter at the gates. It’s like he doesn’t trust any of us. Not even the ones who’ve sworn allegiance to him.”
Like any bad leader.
“What about if you went over the wall at night?” Coventina asked. “You could take a horse from the village. They have a few down there. Horses for wagons and work– and there are some half-trained warhorses as well, that we don’t have room for up here. They’ve all been backed. Might be best to take one of them. Less likely to be missed. Better than drawing attention to yourself by trying to leave in daylight by the main gates.”
I nodded. “She’s right. Can you go now?”
His turn to nod. “Where’m I going?”
We told him everything we knew, including that we felt certain it was Medraut who’d killed Llacheu.
When we’d finished, he rubbed his hand across his eyes. “You have it right there. That bastard wants to catch our king unawares, then he really will be dead.”
Was that how it had happened in the legends? Had Medraut surprised Arthur’s army and slaughtered them? Was I changing history here? Maybe that was why I’d fallen back in time– for this very moment. Or maybe whatever I did the outcome would be the same and I was pissing in the wind.
Llawfrodedd squared his shoulders. “I’ll go now. The sooner the better, as it’ll give me a whole night’s head start should they notice me gone and come after me. But I doubt they will– I’m unimportant to them.” He glanced at Coventina. “Clavinium’s not much more than thirty miles south of here, and the road’s good. But I won’t be able to go flat out in the dark. If I leave now, and only have a half-trained colt, I should be there by morning. I’ll find somewhere out of the way to hide myself, and I’ll wait for the ships to come up the river.”
Oh, how I wished I could go with him. But it felt essential that Medraut shouldn’t know we’d warned Arthur what was happening. Two could play at this game, and if my plan worked, it could be Medraut walking into a trap.
“I’ll come with you to the wall,” I said. “If anyone gets suspicious, I’ll make it look like I’m the one they saw. They’ll not guess you’ll have just gone over.”
“Is that a good idea?” Coventina asked, her hand going to her mouth.
“If I can’t go myself, then I can at least see Llawfrodedd safely on his way,” I retorted. It irked me to be stuck at Din Cadan, forever waiting and doing nothing.
Coventina bit her lip. “You will be careful, won’t you?”
I hugged her tight, then wrapped her darkest cloak about my shoulders and drew the hood up. Then Llawfrodedd, already hidden by his own dark cloak, and I slipped out of the door and into the cool night air.
Overhead, stars spangled the blue-black canopy of the sky, but no unfriendly moon shone down on us. Thank goodness. We both knew our way about the fortress too well to make a noise, and we slipped on silent, boot-clad feet between the close-packed houses and barns until we came to the practice grounds. Nothing. No one. But up on the walls there’d be guards posted, and we’d need to avoid them.
We crept closer, keeping to the shadows, and I spotted the silhouettes of guards fifty yards apart along the wall. Night watch was never a good posting, and they’d already be fed up and bored, and possibly a little drunk as Medraut had been breaking out the fortress’s ample alcohol supply for all his men. Nothing ever happened in the night, and they’d be at their least attentive. Some of them might even be taking a nap.
Llawfrodedd climbed the wooden steps set into the grassy bank, and I followed him, keeping an eye on the men to either side of us, each a bare twenty-five yards distant. I’d peered over this bit of our fortifications many times. A solid stone wall with a wooden, crenellated palisade on top, on the far side it dropped a good fifteen feet. If Llawfrodedd could hang by his hands he’d make the drop less dangerous, but at the foot, the ground dropped away steeply into a wide ditch. Four concentric ditches and banks surrounded Din Cadan, dug long before the Romans came. They’d be hard work to negotiate on his way down the hill.
Neither of the guards were looking our way. The one on the right was leaning against the palisade as though nodding off, and the one on the left was looking toward the next guard along, to his own left.
“Now,” I whispered to Llawfrodedd.
He slipped across the wall-walk like a ghost and shimmied over the wall in a matter of seconds. His hands gripped the wooden crenellation for a moment, before he let go and disappeared from sight. I strained my ears to listen. A thump, but neither lazy guard reacted. Standing at the top of the steps, my eyes level with their feet, I cocked my head and listened harder, but heard nothing else. Hopefully he hadn’t broken his leg on landing and would be halfway down the hill by now. Hopefully…
I waited five more minutes, then slid down the steps and crept back across the practice grounds and between the houses, my heart pounding in overtime. I slid inside Coventina’s door to be enfolded in her tight embrace.
“Thank the gods you’re back,” she gasped into my left ear. “I was picturing all manner of awful things happening. Did he get away safely?”
