“Keels.”

Weak sun struggled behind clouds. Bedivere and 1 saw our first Saxon longships, two of them, low and black in the water, the gracefully upswept sea-serpent prows making rapidly for the river mouth.

“Toward Neth,” said Geraint.

“The fort?”

“The village just south. They don’t know the fort’s there.”

“Nor does Dun More.” Bedivere squinted toward the promontory. “No smoke. This time of day, wouldn’t there be a cooking fire at least?”

Geraint went pale. “Dear God, they can’t be gone without a watch at least. It will take hours to bring them. No. No, listen!”

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Firelord

Faint in the morning air shimmered the tiny sound of a frantic

bell.

“The alarm.” Geraint lashed his horse into a gallop. “They

are there. Hurry!”

We dashed after him along the cliffs, across a small valley and then up the narrow path cut out of living rock that was the only entrance to Neth Dun More. The bell went on clanging as we clattered into the main enclosure and saw what Geraint called a ,fort: a scatter of low-domed beehive monks’ cells, an oratory, a tiny chapel and several newer buildings of wattle and thatch, a middling timber hall and makeshift stable. But no men. The only living creature in sight was a saddled horse. The bell ceased as we reined up and a slight figure appeared in the chapel door, a young girl of thirteen or fourteen with a brown hooded cloak over her plain kirtle. She ran to Geraint, who leaped with a shout from the saddle to embrace her.

“Sister!”

“Geraint, I was in the village when I saw them, and—”

“Where are the men, Eleyne?”

“Gone home. They waited and waited for you to come back.”

Geraint exploded. “Gone home, is it? Did I not have to contend with the legate and the tribunes and the God knows what? And here’s the centurion with the silver to pay them. Oh God, God: there’s not time to gather them all, those that heard

the bell.”

By my calculations, we had perhaps half an hour before we must be riding again. Tired mounts would do us no good,

“Bedivere,” I said, “walk the horses, give them a fast rub and see if there’s feed in the stable. Not too much.”

I ran to the seaward wall and looked for the two keels: they were just off the river mouth, near enough to see the men laboring at the oars. Geraint and his sister joined me on the parapet. Geraint’s courtesy was hurried but not without grace.

“Sister, this is Lord Arthur, the brother of Prince Kay who visited father last year. My sister, the Lady Eleyne.”

“My lady.”

“God save you, sir.”

Eleyne had the same tawny brown hair as her brother without his high skin coloring. The child looked frail and ill, a brave little mouse of a woman and plain as a boot. I turned to Geraint.

“I’ve counted oars. No more than forty to a boat. Any sort of a force could stop them.”

Geraint studied the keels. “That’s true.”

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23

“Have you met them before?”

“Since he was fifteen.” Eleyne took his brother’s arm. “At Astolat, we hang their broken shields on our walls. We heard six ships raided at St. Petroc. Maybe these are two of them.”

“Very like.” Geraint’s lips worked over his teeth as he thought. Stores, he judged at last; that’s all they wanted. Two small keels were too light a force for raiding. Probably hit by a storm and separated from the other boats, short of supplies. A fight was the last thing they wanted. Geraint laughed and swung his sister toward her horse with rapid instructions.

“Cross the ford, tell the folk to quit the village until they hear our bell again. Then ride to my nearest men, tell them to come. Let each man tell two others and so on. But the first of mem must be here within an hour—dear God, no longer, killed horses or come what may—and say Lord Arthur’s here for the paying of the silver. Haste you now.”

Geraint watched her go with a zestful rubbing of hands. “Got them, by God’s Blood, got them fair!” With his dagger, he etched his plan in the dirt. “They won’t beach the boats, there’s not time. They’ll anchor shallow, ready to move before anyone can get here. But, by Jesu, the filthy boats won’t be mere. We’ll cut them loose, and those heathen who never heeded Gospel or Christian prayer will be caught between the squadron and ourselves.”

He glanced from Bedivere to myself, waiting for our enthusiastic approval and perhaps a word of praise for his tactics. Bedivere stared at Geraint as if he had just dropped from the moon.

“We can bum the boats, set them adrift,” Bedivere said with considerable restraint. “But if your men don’t get here in time, we’re three against eighty.”

Geraint laughed aloud, ran to a small cell and emerged with three long boar spears. He tossed one to each of us. “Do you not see the glorious mathematics of it? That’s twenty-six apiece!”

From the cover of a stand of trees, the three of us watched the men splashing ashore. At this distance, a good bowshot, Geraint recognized the flag flying over the sails: a coiled serpent.

“Cerdic.”

I knew the name. Cerdic was a very young son of a war chief out of the island of Gueid Guith, which the Saxons call Wight. The men were all young and lightly armed. Besides the necessity

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of stores, this was probably a prestige raid. Younger men became war chiefs when they proved their leadership and gathered loyal gesith—companions to their personal service. This Cerdic pup was out to make a name for himself.

“And it pains me to think what that name will be after this day,” Geraint chuckled. “Jesu, you lumbering sods, get ashore. I’ve work to do.”

Bedivere counted the men pattering up the beach. “Seventy-five, Arthur, not an archer in the lot. Swords and axes only.”

“And none left aboard. The boats will be easy.” I tried to keep my voice level. My stomach fluttered with a mixture of excitement and terror. My hands sweated on the spear haft.

“Watch out for the small axes,” Geraint cautioned. “They

throw them.”

We waited a hundred heartbeats after the last of them disappeared through the trees toward the village, then dashed forward along the shore and out to the anchored boats. Geraint was to watch while Bedivere and I each took a boat. The keels would have braziers of live coals ready for cooking and other needs. For good measure, each of us had an ample skin of lamp oil. I tethered my mount to the boat hawser and hauled myself up over

the side.

She was a beauty, built on a concept that made her the fastest, finest thing in the water. Even as I tossed the oil about, I tried to remember everything about her. Ambrosius should build boats like these. With such craft we could meet them on the sea, even carry their war home to them.

The smoke rose from Bedivere’s keel as the flames lapped over die deck and up the square sail., He waved to me and grinned: frightened as myself, Bedivere still looked ten years younger at that moment, thick in the middle of our old boy-mischief just before we got caught. He pointed to the shore: Geraint paced his horse back and forth, restless as a leashed hound straining after quarry.

I fired a piece of kindling from the brazier and dropped it on the oil-soaked deck. The greasy flame rolled along the boards, grew, crept up the mast toward the sail. When it was roaring healthily in the river breeze, I leaped overboard, floundered to the shying horse, mounted, cut the hawser and coiled the loose line under my arm.

“Let’s pull them out!”

As we spurred the horses up onto the beach, there were two

Merlin and a Sword

25

doomed craft swinging about in the current that caught at them and nudged them faster and faster downstream.

Geraint chortled. “Trapped! You dear men, one on each side of me now.”

Bedivere scanned the hills nervously. “How long since we left the fort?”

“About half an hour,” I judged.

“My men will come,” Geraint promised. “When they move, they move fast.”

The first sharp cries reached us from the village, startled and angry. Gerainl crouched his spear. “Jesu, I can hardly wait.”

Bedivere licked his lips. “I could.”

And looking up one last time at the empty hills, I could, too. Ten more minutes, at least five, I begged whatever spirits had helped me live this long. The first running figures appeared among the trees. I swallowed hard; our count must be wrong, there must be a hundred or more. I glanced at Bedivere, saw him white as myself, but Geraint sighed with pleasure.

“Are they not a lovely sight? Be not afraid, Bedivere.”

That was too much for Bedivere, catching his heart midway between fear and courage. He answered through clenched teeth. “Geraint, if I die today, which seems a good wager, I wouldn’t want to go off without letting you know my opinion of your abilities as an officer.”

Alas, Brother Coel will not write what Bedivere called Lord Geraint—pungent and colorful as it was, impugning his intellect, his judgment and, most of all, his sanity. Then there was no more time for talk or thought. They’d seen us. The big fellow in the lead, blond as myself but shaggier, broke into a loping run, shouting at his men.

With a cry, Geraint kicked his horse into a gallop, Bedivere and I behind. We had agreed to stay in a close wedge, not to be encircled and dragged from our horses, but Geraint forgot that now. It was too late to close with him. He charged straight into the nearest of them. Bedivere and I couched our lances tight against our bodies and, close together for protection, galloped after.

Faces snarled up at me, bodies toppling, until the lance stuck in something and wouldn’t come free. A blurred picture of Geraint’s sword hewing like a thresher, Bedivere’s horse wheeling round and round, then that hated face.

“Cerdic!”

I spurred at him, sword whirling in the air. A dull, distantly

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Firelord

painful jolt somewhere in my body and the face was gone. A great, cold rage had taken me, pan hate, part fear. Cold it was, though, and I could still think with terrible clarity. Geraint was beyond saving now. It always seemed he was surrounded and doomed; then, impossibly, he was free again to plunge back into the dodging Saxons. Time after time Bedivere and I tore free of the men who reached for us to form together and charge back in as a two-horse wall, scattering or crushing them underfoot. None that I met were good swordsmen, but their shield work was brilliant. We had to watch that their wounded didn’t hamstring our horses, whose lathered flanks already bled from a score of