Personally, he was charming, handsome and vital and a splendid guest. He gave grave attention to men with minds shallow as a birdbath and made them feel profound. The same approach worked to ravishing success with women, I hear. Guenevere was not unimpressed—the ultimate accolade—but was wise enough to see the hard glint of calculation beneath.

Weaknesses? The usual for a comely man keenly aware of his endowments. He was vain of his narrow-waisted figure and affected a British style of dress, tight tunic and trousers of the closest-fitting material. His brownish hair and beard, naturally leonine, were put through several styles, Roman and British, before returning to the simple Saxon braid. With advancing age, his barber and tailor were urged to greater lengths of misdirection. And taste, one might add. He tended to overdress at first, though always to startling effect. Like Geraint, Roman austerity passed him by.

We first met (without weapons) at my coronation. Cerdic asked to be presented in peace. Bedivere called it downright crust, but I was delighted and gave Cerdic safe conduct, wanting

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to meet him as much as he wanted to come. I remember him at the banquet in clashing green and blue with a ceremonial gold-headed ax in his enameled belt. We talked of Eburacum with careful generosity toward each other’s skill, when suddenly Cerdic , broke off in the middle of a sentence and narrowed his eyes at me.

“It is you!”

“My lord?”

“The village at Neth,” Cerdic said. “You and two otiiers burned my ships and charged the clout of us.”

1 couldn’t resist a coy smile. “I was wondering if you 1 remembered.”

“Remember?” Cerdic hooted with delight. “You’d have finished me off if you weren’t half dead yourself. When 1 stopped running, I said to myself, there’s one man not afraid to take long odds on the dice.”

“You must meet Geraint sometime.”

“Oh, but that’s the way to do it, Arthur.” Cerdic’s admiration was unfeigned. “The only way.”

I signaled for our cups to be refilied. “Then why did you wait at Eburacum?”

The question seemed to embarrass Cerdic. He frowned at his cup, then off at the jugglers gyrating before our table, silent so long I thought I’d offended him.

“A man would think you were elf-charmed,” he allowed finally. “You have the damnedest luck. The plan was to come straight in, no waiting. But when we reached Humber, the Pict princes held out for a bigger share of the spoils. Most of die ships were theirs; they had me over a barrel and haggled away all the advantage of time. Otherwise, we’d have been in, out and gone when you got there.”

I could only gape at the colossal absurdity of it.

“Damned Picts,” Cerdic finished ruefully. “All greed, no discipline. Amateurs.”

We were young men, still learning, and Eburacum taught us both. We measured the ground, made decisions and committed our strength. Then, because of a few avaricious fools, the whole thing turned over and a city survived when it might have been gutted. Gareth would say God was at our side, but then God was notably absent other times when it mattered just as much. Where the one thought humbles a realist, the other helps his skepticism to its feet with a reassuring pat on the back.

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Cerdic had one other quality that hardly needs mention: audacity. He still caught me by surprise at Eburacum and, damn his genius, he almost won.

By sundown my squadrons were in position on a crescent tine facing the river, with the southwest corner of the city wall as its axis. Cador returned with a scraped-up cohort, barely three hundred men. He was dutifully cordial about my safe return but not too pleased over my disposition of Peredur, whom I kept rather busy as link between myself and my centurions. Cador was in the full ceremonials of a legate, ornamental bull’s-hide breastplate and gold-plumed helmet, the lot. I must say he cut an imposing figure beside the rest of us who looked—and always would look—like partly mobilized tribesmen. A time was set for the commanders to meet for final preparations, then I returned to

my men.

Sundown in overcast. Cerdic should be setting his sails for the Humber now, watching the light fade. We wouldn’t have much moonlight to help us. I passed the order through Peredur: at midnight all fires would be doused, all talk held to a murmur. A watch would post on the riverbank southeast of our line, listening for the creak of an oar, straining to see dark hulls against deeper darkness.

Dusk. With the lighting of our fires, the city gate opened and out to us came Guenevere with the ladies of the court, a train of servants and priests. They were singing as they came, and they moved among the men, cheering them, bringing blankets and small gifts. They made’music by the fires, the gallant, wistful, always heart-stirring music of our people. I could hear Bedivere’s voice raised, saw Trystan plying his harp beside Guenevere, who was in green that evening, gold-belted and -bordered under a scarlet cloak, her hair unbound and flying as she led the men in song. It was as good a way as any to face a coming battle. At least three marriages came out of that sorigfest, young people who might not otherwise have met at all. However we mangle it, life has a way of getting on with the things that matter.

A mass held in the center of our line was very well attended. Priests heard numerous confessions. Bedivere went, and Peredur and Gareth. Trystan was not a Christian and never became one—“My sins are yet too lovely to forego”—and preferred, like me, to sleep while he could. Leaving word with Peredur to

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wake me at midnight, I rolled in my blankets and drifted to sleep on a warm, rapid tide.

Peredor was faithful to his charge. He gently shook me awake in chilly darkness. “Time, Arthur. Father’s waiting for us.”

I peered at the white blur of his face in the gloom. “Gone twelve yet?”

“A little before.”

“Condition?”

“All fires out,” Peredur reported efficiently. “The river watch is set. Gawain and Agrivaine got in two hours ago. I saw to their meal and the quartering of their horses.”

“Good work, Peredur.” I rose a little stiffly and fastened my cloak. A great quiet enveloped the dark around me where men slept before battle. Only a few stirred about, their voices muted. The loudest noise by far came from Peredur’s cumbersome scale armor.

“Leave it off till the boats are sighted,” I advised him. “You sound like a busy kitchen. Here, I’ll help. Have you slept?”

“There was a deal to do,” the young prince allowed. “Setting the watches, inspecting the line. Then the Orkney brothers roared in just as I was settling down. Irksome lot.”

I pulled the heavy mail over his head. His arms seemed uncommonly stiff. “Relax, boy, you’re tight as a drumhead. Get some sleep after the meeting. You need it.”

Without the armor, his dim form seemed slight, hovering and tentative. Peredur said tightly, “I … can’t sleep.”

“Is something wrong, Prince?”

He seemed about to speak, then changed his mind. “No, nothing.”

“Thinking about tomorrow?”

“Of course not.”

That brittle young pride of his. My second-in-command and I barely knew him. A different tack was in order. “Well, I certainly am. As Tryst said, there’s a hundred things I’d rather be doing. Fine poet, Trystan. Have you heard his songs? Hardly for mixed, company, lovely as they are. They’re about a woman. All women, I guess.”

“He’s a bawdy sot.” The force of the words betrayed the emotion under them. Peredur was in agony.

“Oh, at times, but—”

“Arthur.”

“Yes, Prince?”

“It’s so real now!” The words burst through the dam of pride,

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painful but honest. “Tomorrow, I mean. They’ll try to get ashore, and I’ll have to ride straight into them as if life didn’t matter at alt. I’ve told myself all day that I only grudged this soldiering because it puts aside God’s work, but that’s a lie.”

Peredur shifted restlessly. The armor rustled metallically in his hand. “I babbled venial nonsense at confession, wasted the priest’s time when, God knows, there were braver men waiting. I think he sensed what 1 was afraid of. He said, ‘Is there anything else?’ That’s usual, but he seemed to know there was—that.” A long silence. “It’s well you’re back. I can drill them, but I’m not fit for this work.”

We stood close together in the middle of the night with a damp wind blowing off the river. “It will help to say it, Peredur. You feel afraid to die.” Grated, full of self-loathing: “Yes.” “So am I. Is that all?” “All?”

“Peredur, any man with the sense to love life is afraid to die. Who says else is either a liar or a fool.”

I had opened the door for him; the rest came in a rush. “Oh, you should hear Agrivaine raging around: no prisoners, first into the fray. Not only him. I’ve heard the same cant from the men all day in their boasts, even their prayers, how they’ll gladly die for this or”die for that. Dear God, it makes me want to retch.”

His disgust was honest as his pain. I suppressed a tender amusement, though there was nothing funny. “Let’s hope they’re liars. I don’t relish leading fools.” I looked off toward the dark river. “A year ago I might have faced tomorrow with less fear, or perhaps simply less appetite for living. But now life has some meaning for me beyond horses and iron. I’ve seen the price paid for it, how it fights to be born and sometimes fails. It has great value for me now, and great sweetness, so that it’s not death I fear so much as leaving something so beautiful as life. We’re told there’s better to come, but our flesh only knows how dearly we paid to get here and how good it is to breathe. That may be sinful to a Christian, but—”

“No!” Peredur broke in fevently. “No, it may be thought a sin, may even be one, but it’s the truth. Perhaps mere’s a truth for flesh apart from the soul.”