Page 92 of The Road to Avalon
For a moment I didn’t know what to say. Arthur had killed my son. No matter how he’d been manipulated into doing so, he’d still chosen to do it, even if it was through a misguided sense of upholding the law. Not my law, his. But this was Camlann, and he might be riding out to die, and he was my husband, and whatever he’d done, I did still love him so much it hurt.
The thought that I might never see him alive again exploded in my heart.
“I never stopped loving you,” I said, my grip on his hand tightening. “For a long time, I thought I had. I thought my love for you had turned to hate because of what you did. It might have done for a while. Forgiving you will be difficult, but I can’t hate you anymore.” I looked into his dark eyes, at the flecks of gold that caught the light, the eyes of the young man I’d first fallen in love with so long ago, and given up everything for. “Why do you think I’m here? Don’t youknowhow much I love you? More than life itself. So much it hurts, like a constant ache inside my heart.”
He didn’t smile, but his eyes burned into mine like the hot embers in a fire. He leaned forward in his saddle and put one hand around my waist to pull me closer. His touch branded my skin even through the chainmail. For a moment, I hesitated. Always within me there’d be Amhar, deep down in my heart, but I couldn’t fight the way I felt about his father.
I could resist no longer. The longing for what I’d feared never to feel again took me in its grasp. His lips met mine, warm and alive and demanding. My lips parted, and the kiss deepened. My body melted into his as his hand pulled me closer, and that old familiar tingling ran through me. The ache in my heart dissolved as a yearning I’d not felt for months took hold of me.
He released me, and I straightened in my saddle, more than a little breathless and flustered that he could still do this to me when I’d thought until a short time ago that I hated him and never wanted him to touch me again. Love and hate are two strange, interchangeable things, capable of living side-by-side in our hearts.
I stared into his eyes. Should I tell him? Now? Would it give him something to live for if he thought he might be getting another son?
“I love you, Gwen,” he said, gathering Taran’s reins.
My hand shot out. “Wait.”
He held her in tight check, fidgeting under his grip.
“I’m with child,” I said, before I could think better of it. “That day on the headland at Din Tagel three months ago.” I bit my lip. “Don’t die. Please don’t die. I need you.” I put one hand on my belly. “Your unborn son needs you.”
His eyes widened for a moment before a delighted smile lit his face. “After the battle,” he said, and spun Taran away from Enfys. Without a backward glance, he spurred her back to the center of the frontline to rejoin Theodoric.
I stared after him, for a moment only aware of my heart pounding to the rhythm of his horse’s hooves. A rising wind soughed in the trees along the edge of the River Cam, and in their topmost branches a colony of rooks cawed, raucous and angry. I put my helmet back on and did up the strap one-handed.
“Gwen.” A voice I knew. “Good to have you back with us.” Cei brought his horse up beside mine.
I turned to greet him. The same as ever: big, good-natured, kind, but not smiling.
He held out his hand and I took it, his huge paw enveloping my much smaller one. “And you’ve brought warriors to help us, too,” Cei said. “Our warrior queen.”
He stood in his stirrups to address my men. “This way. Line up here. Spears at the ready.” Then he turned to me. “I can’t have you in the front line, even if you want to be. You’ll have to be at the back. No arguments.” Lucky he didn’t know I was pregnant, then.
I knew better than to cavil, and anyway, no time remained to object. I spun Enfys in a creditable pirouette on her haunches and took her to the back of the rows of warriors, acutely aware of my heart’s galloping beat and the breathlessness tightening my chest. Look well if I had a heart attack and died before the battle even began.
Oh God, the battle. Camlann. I was lining up to fight atCamlann. For a moment, I was back in Eigr’s stuffy, dark hut, staring into her scrying glass at a battlefield littered with broken banners and the humps of dead horses. The little river ran red with blood, and scarlet even stained the clouds.
I shook the unwelcome vision from my head before it could show me Arthur… dying.
Overhead, the bright autumn sun climbed higher in a sky devoid of red but dotted with incongruous, picture-book-perfect white clouds. From their roost in the riverbank trees, the colony of rooks set up a cacophony of screeching cries, and high above us, half a dozen buzzards soared on thermals, no doubt attracted by the glitter of our armor and the knowledge that where there were soldiers, there’d soon be carrion for them to feed on.
Enfys swished her tail and tossed her head at the swarming flies as the day warmed up. Standing in my stirrups, I peered between the ranks of warriors. Medraut had drawn up his army on the flat land between us and the high hill of Din Cadan. It spread out in a long line facing us, spears pointing skyward in a forest of death. Briton facing Briton, just as the legends said.
As far as I could tell, he had more men than we did, although Arthur had augmented the expeditionary force he’d taken to Armorica with Theodoric’s sailors and now added the ones I’d brought. Ranged on Medraut’s side were mostly the easily swayed, green young men he’d spent all this summer wining, dining and winning to his cause with promises of war and booty to be seized. But our men were the more experienced, and surely that must more than make up for the vigor of youth in the opposing force. I hoped…
The men in Arthur’s ranks had fought at Badon, and before that, against the Picts in the far north and in the Saxon Wars that had led to the accomplishment of the peace of Badon. Medraut, like most of his followers, had been too young to take part. Training at home, or a few excursions against Irish raiders, ought to be no match for experience in battle. Only there were more of them than there were of us… and they were younger…
I could just make out Arthur at the front, beside the huge shape of Theodoric, more at home on the deck of a ship and too big for the horse they’d found him. How musthefeel to be facing his own son in battle? His loyalty to Arthur must run strong, or he wouldn’t be here at all. The ties of friendship and a brotherhood forged in battle.
Perhaps he thought Arthur’s aim was to capture Medraut and chastise him. But if Amhar’s supposed crime had merited death, then, even more so, Medraut’s did as well. Not only was he the true murderer of Llacheu, but he’d committed treason against not just his own king, but the High King of Britain.
I wouldn’t have liked to have been in his boots.
What was I thinking? That cocksure young man would have no doubts in his head that he’d emerge from this the winner, or he wouldn’t have led his men out to meet Arthur. He’d be hightailing it in the opposite direction with a few stalwarts and leaving the rest to face the consequences of their actions. But he wasn’t. He was here.
The two armies could only have been three hundred yards apart, at most. Nowhere near close enough to see the whites of each other’s eyes, but close.
Now, as I strained to see between the ranks of silent warriors, Arthur urged his horse forward maybe twenty yards. Close enough for him to shout to our opponents, but out of range of any clever dick amongst Medraut’s ranks who might think to take him out beforehand with a well-aimed arrow. Any bowman firing over that distance couldn’t be sure what he’d hit, if anything.
