'Some do,' he admitted. Before the battle, when Arthur's cause had seemed utterly lost, a party opposed to Arthur had grown bold in Dumnonia and that party had been led by the Christians, the same Christians who had the guardianship of Mordred. The immediate cause of their hostility had been a loan that Arthur had forced from the church to pay for the campaign that ended in Lugg Vale, and that loan had sparked a bitter enmity. It was odd, I thought, how the church preached the merits of poverty, but never forgave a man for borrowing its money.

'I wanted to talk to you of Mordred,' Arthur said, explaining why he had sought my company on this fine morning. 'In ten years,' Arthur went on, 'he'll be old enough to take the throne. That's not long, Derfel, not long at all, and he needs to be raised well in those ten years. I le must be taught letters, he must learn to use a sword and he must learn responsibility.' I nodded agreement, though not with any enthusiasm. The five-year-old Mordred would doubtless learn all the things Arthur wanted, but I did not see what business it was of mine. Arthur had other ideas. 'I want you to be his guardian,' he said, surprising me.

'Me!' I exclaimed.

'Nabur cares more about his own advancement than he does about Mordred's character,' Arthur said. Nabur was the Christian magistrate who was the child King's present guardian, and it was Nabur who had plotted most vigorously to destroy Arthur's power; Nabur and, of course, Bishop Sansum.

'And Nabur is no soldier,' Arthur went on. 'I pray that Mordred will rule in peace, Derfel, but he needs the skills of war, all kings do, and I can think of no one better than you to train him.'

'Not me,' I protested. 'I'm too young!'

Arthur laughed at that objection. 'The young should be raised by the young, Derfel,' he said. A distant horn sounded to signal that game had been started from the valley's end. We hunters entered the trees and stepped over the tangles of briar and the dead trunks that were thick with fungi. We advanced slowly now, listening for the terrifying sound of a boar crashing through the brush. 'Besides,' I went on, 'my place is in your shield-wall, not in Mordred's nursery.'

'You'll still be in my shield-wall. You think I would lose you, Derfel?' Arthur said with a grin. 'I don't want you tied to Mordred, I just want him in your household. I need him to be raised by an honest man.'

I shrugged that compliment away, then thought guiltily of the clean, unbroken bone in my pouch. Was it honest, I wondered, to use magic to change Ceinwyn's mind? I looked at her, and she glanced my way and gave me a shy smile. 'I have no household,' I said to Arthur.

'But you will, and soon,' he said. Then he held up a hand and I froze, listening to the sounds ahead of us. Something heavy was trampling in the trees and we both instinctively crouched with our spears held a few inches above the ground, but then we saw that the frightened beast was a fine stag with good antlers and we relaxed as the animal pounded past. 'We'll hunt him tomorrow, maybe,' Arthur said, watching the stag run past. 'Give your hounds a run in the morning!' he shouted to Guinevere. She laughed and came down the hill towards us, her hounds straining at their leashes. 'I should like that,' she said. Her eyes were bright and her face flushed by the cold. 'The hunting's better here than in Dumnonia,' she said.

'But not the land,' Arthur said to me. 'There's an estate north of Durnovaria,' he went on, 'that is Mordred's by right and I plan to make you its tenant. I'll grant you other land, too, for your own, but you can make a hall on Mordred's land and raise him there.'

'You know the estate,' Guinevere said. 'It's the one north of Gyllad's holding.'

'I know it,' I said. The estate had good river land for crops and fine uplands for sheep. 'But I'm not sure I know how to raise a child,' I grumbled. The horns sounded loud ahead and the huntsmen's hounds were baying. Cheers sounded far to our right, signifying that someone had found quarry, though our part of the wood was still empty. A small stream tumbled to our left and the wooded ground climbed to our right. The rocks and twisted tree roots were thick with moss.

Arthur dismissed my fears. 'You won't raise Mordred,' he said, 'but I do want him raised in your hall, with your servants, your manners, your morals and your judgments.'

'And,' Guinevere added, 'your wife.'

A snapping of a twig made me look uphill. Lancelot and his cousin Bors were there, both standing in front of Ceinwyn. Lancelot's spear shaft was painted white and he wore tall leather boots and a cloak of supple leather. I looked back to Arthur. 'The wife, Lord,' I said, 'is news to me.'

He clasped my elbow, the boar hunt forgotten. 'I plan to appoint you Dumnonia's champion, Derfel,'

he said.

'The honour is above me, Lord,' I said cautiously, 'besides, you are Mordred's champion.'

'Prince Arthur,' Guinevere said, for she liked to call him Prince even though he was b.a.s.t.a.r.d born, 'is already chief of the Council. He can't be champion as well, not unless he's expected to do all Dumnonia's work?'

'True, Lady,' I said. I was not averse to the honour, for it was a high one, though there was a price. In battle I would have to tight whatever champion presented himself for single combat, but in peace it would mean wealth and status far above my present rank. I already had the t.i.tle of Lord and the men to uphold that rank and the right to paint my own device on these men's shields, but I shared these honours with two score other Dumnonian war leaders. To be the King's champion would make me the foremost warrior of Dumnonia, though how any man could claim that status while Arthur lived, I could not see. Nor, indeed, while Sagramor lived. 'Sagramor,' I said carefully, 'is a greater warrior than I, Lord Prince.' With Guinevere present I had to remember to call him Prince once in a while, though it was a t.i.tle he disliked.

Arthur waved my objection aside. 'I am making Sagramor Lord of the Stones,' he said, 'and he wants nothing more.' The lordship of the Stones made Sagramor into the man who guarded the Saxon frontier and I could well believe that the black-skinned, dark-eyed Sagramor would be well content with such a belligerent appointment. 'You, Derfel,' he prodded my chest, 'will be the champion.'

'And who,' I asked drily, 'will be the champion's wife?'

'My sister Gwenhwyvach,' Guinevere said, watching me closely.

I was grateful that I had been forewarned by Merlin. 'You do me too much honour, Lady,' I said blandly.

Guinevere smiled, satisfied that my words implied acceptance. 'Did you ever think, Derfel, that you would marry a Princess?'

'No, Lady,' I said. Gwenhwyvach, like Guinevere, was indeed a Princess, a Princess of Henis Wyren, though Henis Wyren was no more. That sad kingdom was now called Lleyn and was ruled by the dark Irish invader, King Diwrnach.

Guinevere yanked the leashes to subdue her excited hounds. 'You can be betrothed when we return to Dumnonia,' she said. 'Gwenhwyvach has agreed.'

'There is one obstacle, Lord,' I said to Arthur.

Guinevere yanked on the leashes again, quite unnecessarily, but she hated all opposition and so she took out her frustration on the hounds instead of on me. She did not dislike me at that time, but nor did she particularly like me either. She knew of my aversion for Lancelot, and that doubtless prejudiced her against me, but she would not have thought my dislike significant, for she doubtless dismissed me as merely one of her husband's war leaders; a tall, dull, flaxen-haired man who lacked the civilized graces that Guinevere so valued. 'An obstacle?' Guinevere asked me dangerously.

'Lord Prince,' I said, insisting on talking to Arthur and not to his wife, 'I am oath-sworn to a lady.' I thought of the bone in my pouch. 'I have no claim on her, nor can I expect anything from her, but if she does claim me then I am obligated to her.'

'Who?' Guinevere demanded immediately.

'I can't say, Lady.'

'Who?' Guinevere insisted again.

'He doesn't need to say,' Arthur defended me. He smiled. 'How long can this lady claim your loyalty?'

'Not long, Lord,' I said, 'only days now.' For once Ceinwyn was betrothed to Lancelot then I could consider my oath to her voided.

'Good,' he said vigorously, and smiled at Guinevere as though inviting her to share his pleasure, but Guinevere was scowling instead. She detested Gwenhwyvach, finding her graceless and boring, and she desperately wanted to marry her sister out of her life. 'If all goes well,' Arthur said, 'you can be married in Glevum at the same time that Lancelot marries Ceinwyn.'

'Or are you demanding these few days,' Guinevere asked acidly, 'to conjure up reasons why you should not marry my sister?'

'Lady,' I said earnestly, 'it would be an honour to marry Gwenhwyvach.' That, I think, was the truth, for Gwenhwyvach would doubtless prove an honest wife, though whether I would prove a good husband was another matter, for my only reason for marrying Gwenhwyvach would be the high rank and great wealth she would bring as her dowry; but those, for most men, were the purpose of marriage. And if I could not have Ceinwyn, what did it matter who I married? Merlin ever warned us against confusing love and marriage, and though the advice was cynical, there was truth there. I was not expected to love Gwenhwyvach, just to marry her, and her rank and dowry were my rewards for fighting that long b.l.o.o.d.y day in Lugg Vale. If those rewards were tinged with Guinevere's mockery, they were still a rich gift. 'I will marry your sister gladly,' I promised Guinevere, 'so long as the keeper of my oath does not call on me.'

'I pray she does not,' Arthur said with a smile, then whipped round as a shout sounded uphill. Bors was crouched with his spear. Lancelot was beside him, but was glancing down the slope towards us, perhaps worried that the animal would escape through the gap between us. Arthur gently pushed Guinevere back, then gestured for me to climb the hill and plug the gap.

'Two of them!' Lancelot called to us.

'One will be a sow,' Arthur called, then ran a few paces upstream before starting to climb uphill.

'Where?' he asked. Lancelot pointed with his white-shafted spear, but I could still see nothing in the bushes.

'There!' Lancelot said petulantly, prodding his spear towards a tangle of briars. Arthur and I climbed another few feet and then at last we could see the boar deep inside the undergrowth. He was a big old beast with yellow tusks, small eyes and humps of muscle under his dark scarred hide. That muscle could move him at lightning speed and make him hook his sword sharp tusks with a fatal skill. We had all seen men die from tusk wounds, and nothing made a boar more dangerous than to be cornered with a sow. All hunters prayed for a boar charging in open ground so that they could use the beast's own speed and bulk to drive the spear into his body. Such a confrontation demanded nerve and skill, but not nearly so much nerve as when a man had to charge the boar.

'Who saw him first?' Arthur asked.

'My Lord King did.' Bors indicated Lancelot.

'Then he's yours, Lord King.' Arthur graciously waived the honour of the kill to Lancelot.

'He is my gift to you, Lord,' Lancelot answered. Ceinwyn was standing behind him, biting her lower lip and with eyes wide. She had taken the spare spear from Bors, not because she hoped to use it, but to spare him the burden, and she held the weapon nervously.

'Put the hounds on him!' Guinevere joined us. Her eyes were bright and her face animated. She was, I think, often bored in Dumnonia's great palaces and the hunting field gave her an excitement she craved.

'You'll lose both dogs,' Arthur warned her. 'This pig knows how to fight.' He moved cautiously forward, judging how best to provoke the beast, then he stepped sharply ahead and beat hard down on the bushes with his spear as though to offer the boar a path out of its sanctuary. The beast grunted, but did not move, not even when the spear blade flashed down within inches of its snout. The sow was behind the boar, watching us.

'It's done this before,' Arthur said happily.

'Let me take him. Lord,' I said, suddenly anxious for him.

'You think I've lost my skill?' Arthur asked with a smile. He beat the bushes again, but the briars would not lie flat, nor would the boar move. 'The G.o.ds bless you.' Arthur said to the beast, then he shouted a challenge and jumped into the tangle of thorns. He leapt to one side of the path he had crudely beaten and as he landed he rammed the spear hard forward, aiming its glittering blade at the boar's left flank just forward of its shoulder.

The boar's head seemed to twitch, only a slight twitch, but it was enough to deflect the spear blade off the tusk so that it slashed a b.l.o.o.d.y and harmless cut down the animal's flank, and then it charged. A good boar can come from a still stance into instant madness with its head down and tusks ready to gut upwards, and this beast was already past Arthur's spearhead when it charged and Arthur was trapped by the brambles.

I shouted to distract the boar and plunged my own spear into its belly. Arthur was on his back, his spear abandoned, and the boar was on top of him. The hounds howled and Guinevere was shouting at us to help. My spear was deep in the beast's belly and its blood spurted up to my hands as I levered up and over to roll the wounded beast off my Lord. The creature weighed more than two full sacks of grain, and its muscles were like iron ropes that twitched my spear. I gripped hard and pushed up, but then the sow charged and swept my feet away from under me. I fell, and my weight pulled the spear shaft down and thus brought the boar back onto Arthur's belly.

Arthur had somehow gripped both the beast's tusks and, using all his strength, was now forcing its head away from his chest. The sow vanished, plunging downhill towards the stream. 'Kill him!' Arthur shouted, though he was half laughing as well. He was just inches from death, but he was loving the moment. 'Kill him!' he called again. The boar's back legs were thrusting, its spittle was spattering Arthur's face and its blood was soaking his clothes.

I was on my back, my face lacerated with thorns. I scrambled to my feet and reached for my jerking, twisting spear that was still buried in the great brute's belly, but then Bors plunged a knife into the boar's neck and I saw the enormous strength of the animal begin to ebb as Arthur managed to force the squat, stinking, b.l.o.o.d.y head away from his ribs. I seized my spear and twisted the blade, searching for the animal's life blood deep in its guts as Bors stabbed a second time. The boar suddenly p.i.s.sed on Arthur, gave one last desperate lunge of its huge neck and then abruptly slumped down. Arthur was awash in its blood and urine, and half buried under its bulk.

He cautiously let go of the tusks, then dissolved into helpless laughter. Bors and I took a tusk each and, with a concerted heave, hauled the corpse away from Arthur. One of the tusks had caught in Arthur's jerkin and it ripped the cloth as we tugged it away. We dropped the beast into the brambles, then helped Arthur to his feet. The three of us stood grinning, our clothes muddied and torn and covered with leaves, twigs and the blood of the boar. 'I'll have a bruise there,' Arthur said, tapping his chest. He turned to Lancelot, who had not moved to help during the struggle. There was the briefest pause, then Arthur bowed his head. 'You gave me a n.o.ble gift, Lord King,' he said, 'and I took it most ign.o.bly.' He wiped his eyes. 'But I enjoyed it all the same. And we shall all enjoy it at your betrothal feast.' He looked at Guinevere and saw that she was pale, almost trembling, and immediately he crossed to her. 'Are you ill?'

'No, no,' she said, and she put her arms about him and leaned her head against his bloodied chest. She was crying. It was the first time I had ever seen her cry.

Arthur patted her back. 'There was no danger, my love,' he said, 'no danger. I just made a hash of the killing.'

'Are you hurt?' Guinevere asked, pulling away from him and cuffing away her tears.

'Only scratched.' His face and hands were lacerated by thorns, but he was otherwise unwounded except for the bruise caused by the tusk. He stepped away from her, picked up his spear and gave a whoop. 'I haven't been put on my back like that in a dozen years!'

King Cuneglas came running, worried about his guests, and the huntsmen arrived to truss and carry the corpse away. They must all have noted the comparison between Lancelot's unstained clothes and our dishevelled and b.l.o.o.d.y state, but no one remarked on it. We were all excited, pleased to have survived and eager to share the story of Arthur holding the brute away from his body by its tusks. The story spread and the sound of men's laughter rang loud among the trees. Lancelot alone did not laugh. 'We must find you a boar now, Lord King,' I said to him. We were standing a few paces from the excited crowd that had gathered to watch as the huntsmen gralloched the beast to give Guinevere's hounds a meal of its guts.

Lancelot gave me a sidelong, considering glance. He disliked me every sc.r.a.p as much as I disliked him, but suddenly he smiled. 'A boar,' he said, 'would be better than a sow, I think.'

'A sow?' I asked, smelling an insult.

'Didn't the sow charge you?" he asked, then opened his eyes guilelessly wide. 'Surely you don't think I was referring to your marriage!' He offered me an ironic bow. 'I must congratulate you, Lord Derfel!

To marry Gwenhwyvach!'

I forced my anger down, and made myself look into his narrow mocking face with its delicate beard, dark eyes, and long hair oiled as black and shining as a raven's wing. 'And I must congratulate you, Lord King, on your betrothal.'

'To Seren,' he said, 'the star of Powys.' He gazed at Ceinwyn who stood with her hands clasped to her face as the huntsmen's knives ripped out the long coils of the boar's intestines. She looked so young with her bright hair drawn up at the nape of her neck. 'Doesn't she look charming?' Lancelot asked me in a voice like the purr of a cat. 'So vulnerable. I never believed the stories of her beauty, for who would expect to find such a jewel among Gorfyddyd's whelps? But she is beautiful, and I am so very fortunate.'

'Yes, Lord King, you are.'

He laughed and turned away. He was a man in his glory, a King come to take his bride, and he was also my enemy. But I had his bone in my pouch. I touched it, wondering if the struggle with the boar had broken the rib, but it was still whole, still hidden and just waiting for my pleasure. Cavan, my second-in-command, came to Caer Sws on the eve of Ceinwyn's betrothal and brought with him forty of my spearmen. Galahad had sent them back, reckoning that his work in Siluria could be completed by the twenty remaining men. The Silurians, it seems, had glumly accepted their country's defeat and there had been no unrest at the news of their King's death, merely a docile submission to the exactions of the victors. Cavan told me that Oengus of Demetia, the Irish King who had brought Arthur victory at Lugg Vale, had taken his allotted portion of slaves and treasure, stolen as much again, and had then gone home, and the Silurians were evidently happy enough that the renowned Lancelot was now to be their King. 'And I reckon the b.a.s.t.a.r.d's welcome to the place,' Cavan said when he found me in Cuneglas's hall where I spread my blanket and took my meals. He scratched at a louse in his beard.

'Scrubby place, Siluria.'

'They breed good warriors,' I said.

'Fighting to get away from home, I wouldn't wonder.' He sniffed. 'What clawed your face, Lord?'

'Thorns. Fighting a boar.'

'I thought you might have got married when I wasn't watching you,' he said, 'and that was her wedding gift.'

'I am to be married,' I told him as we walked out of the hall into Caer Sws's sunlight, and I described Arthur's proposal to make me Mordred's champion and his own brother-in-law. Cavan was pleased at the news of my imminent enrichment for he was an Irish exile who had sought to turn his skills with spear and sword into a fortune in Uther's Dumnonia, but somehow the fortune had kept slipping away across the throwboard. He was twice my age, a squat man, broad-shouldered, grey-bearded and with hands thick with the warrior rings we forged from the weapons of defeated enemies. He was delighted that my marriage would mean gold and he was tactful about the bride who would bring that metal. 'She isn't a beauty like her sister,' he said.

'True,' I admitted.

'In fact,' he said, abandoning tact, 'she's as ugly as a sack of toads.'

'She is plain,' I conceded.

'But plain ones make the best wives, Lord,' he declared, never having been married himself, though never lonely either. 'And she'll bring us all wealth,' he added happily, and that, of course, was the reason I would marry poor Gwenhwyvach. My common sense could not put faith in the pork rib in my pouch, and my duty to my men was to reward them for their fidelity, and those rewards had been few in the last year. They had lost virtually all their possessions at the fall of Ynys Trebes and had then struggled against Gorfyddyd's army at Lugg Vale; now they were tired, they were impoverished and no men had ever deserved more of their lord.

I greeted my forty men who were waiting to be a.s.signed quarters. I was glad to see Issa among them, for he was the best of my spearmen: a young farm boy of huge strength and undying optimism who protected my right side in battle. I embraced him, then expressed my regrets that I had no gifts for them.

'But our reward is coming soon,' I added, then glanced at the two dozen girls they must have attracted in Siluria, 'though I'm glad to see most of you have already found some rewards for yourselves.'

They laughed. Issa's girl was a pretty dark-haired child of perhaps fourteen summers. He introduced her to me. 'Scarach, Lord.' He named her proudly.

'Irish?' I asked her.

She nodded. 'I was a slave. Lord, to Ladwys.' Scarach spoke the tongue of Ireland; a language like ours, but different enough, like her name, to mark her race. I guessed she had been captured by Gundleus's men in a raid on King Oengus's lands in Demetia. Most Irish slaves came from such settlements on Britain's west coast though none, I suspected, were ever captured from Lleyn. No one but a fool ventured uninvited into Diwrnach's territory.

'Ladwys!' I said. 'How is she?' Ladwys had been Gundleus's mistress, a dark, tall woman whom Gundleus had secretly married, though he had been ready enough to disown the marriage when Gorfyddyd had offered him the prospect of Ceinwyn's hand.

'She's dead, Lord,' Scarach said happily. 'We killed her in the kitchen. I put a spit in her belly.'

'She's a good girl,' Issa said eagerly.

'Evidently,' I said, 'so look after her.' His last girl had deserted him for one of the Christian missionaries who wandered Dumnonia's roads, but somehow I doubted that the redoubtable Scarach would prove such a fool.

That afternoon, using lime from Cuneglas's stores, my men painted a new device on their shields. The honour of carrying my own device had been granted to me by Arthur on the eve of the battle at Lugg Vale, but we had been given no time to change the shields which, till now, had all carried Arthur's symbol of the bear. My men expected me to choose a wolf's mask as our symbol, to echo the wolf-tails that we had begun to wear on our helmets in the forests of Benoic, but I insisted that we each painted a five-pointed star. 'A star!' Cavan growled in disappointment. He wanted something fierce, with claws and beak and teeth, but I insisted on the star. 'Seren,' I said, 'for we are the stars of the shield-wall.'

They liked that explanation, and none suspected the hopeless romanticism that lay behind my choice. So we first laid a coat of black pitch on the round, leather-covered willow-board shields, then painted the stars in lime, using a scabbard to get the edges straight, and when the limewash had dried we applied a varnish made of pine resin and egg-white that would protect the stars from rain for a few months. 'It's different,' Cavan grudgingly allowed when we admired the finished shields.

'It's splendid,' I said, and that night, when I dined in the circle of warriors who ate on the floor of the hall, Issa stood behind me as shield-bearer. The varnish was still wet, but that only made the star seem brighter. Scarach served me. It was a poor meal of barley gruel, but Caer Sws's kitchens could provide no better for they were busy preparing the next night's great feast. Indeed the whole compound was busy with those preparations. The hall had been decorated with boughs of dusk-red beech, the floor had been swept and strewn with new rushes, and from the women's quarters we heard tales of dresses being made and delicately embroidered. At least four hundred warriors were now in residence at Caer Sws, most of them quartered in crude shelters thrown up on the fields outside the ramparts, and the warriors' women, children and dogs thronged the fort. Half the men belonged to Cuneglas, the other half were Dumnonians, but despite the recent war there was no trouble, not even when the news spread that Ratae had fallen to Aelle's Saxon horde because of Arthur's treachery. Cuneglas must have suspected that Arthur had purchased Aelle's peace by some such means and he accepted Arthur's oath-promise that the men of Dumnonia would extract vengeance for the dead of Powys who lay in the ashes of the captured fortress. I had seen neither Merlin nor Nimue since the night on Dolforwyn. Merlin had left Caer Sws, but Nimue, I heard, was still in the fortress and was staying hidden in the women's quarters where, rumour said, she was much in the Princess Ceinwyn's company. That seemed unlikely to me because Nimue and Ceinwyn were so very different. Nimue was a few years older than Ceinwyn and she was dark and intense and forever trembling on the narrow divide between madness and anger, while Ceinwyn was fair and gentle and, as Merlin had told me, so very conventional. I could not imagine that either woman had much to say to the other, and so I a.s.sumed that the rumours were false and that Nimue was with Merlin who, I believed, had gone to find the men who would carry their swords into Diwrnach's dreaded land to seek the Cauldron.

But would I go with him? On the morning of Ceinwyn's betrothal I walked northwards into the great oaks that lapped around Caer Sws's wide valley. I sought a particular place and Cuneglas had told me where to find it. Issa, loyal Issa, came with me, but he had no idea what business took us into the dark, deep wood.

This land, the heart of Powys, had been lightly touched by the Romans. They had built forts here, like Caer Sws, and they had left a few roads that arrowed along the river valleys, but there were no great villas or towns like those that gave Dumnonia its gloss of a lost civilization. Nor, here in Cuneglas's heartland, were there many Christians; the worship of the old G.o.ds survived in Powys without the rancour that soured religion in Mordred's realm, where Christian and pagan vied for royal favour and the right to erect their shrines in the holy places. No Roman altars had replaced Powys's Druid groves and no Christian churches stood by its holy wells. The Romans had cut down some of the shrines, but many had been preserved and it was to one of those ancient holy places that Issa and I came in the leafy twilight of the midday forest.

It was a Druid shrine, a grove of oaks deep within a ma.s.sive wood. The leaves above the shrine had yet to fade to bronze, but soon they would turn and fall onto the low stone wall that lay in a semicircle at the grove's centre. Two niches had been made in the wall and two human skulls were set in the niches. Once there had been many such places in Dumnonia, and many more had been remade after the Romans had left. Too often, though, the Christians would come and break the skulls, pull down the drystone walls and cut down the oaks, but this shrine in Powys might have stood among these deep woods for a thousand years. Little sc.r.a.ps of wool had been pushed between the stones as markers for the prayers that folk offered in this grove.

It was silent in the oaks; a heavy silence. Issa watched from the trees as I walked to the centre of the semicircle where I unstrapped Hywelbane's heavy belt.

I laid the sword on the flat stone that marked the shrine's centre and took from my pouch the clean white rib bone that gave me power over Lancelot's marriage. This I placed beside the sword. Last of all I put down on the stone the small golden brooch that Ceinwyn had given me so many years before. Then I lay down flat in the leaf mould.

I slept in hope of a dream that would tell me what to do, but no dream came. Maybe I should have sacrificed some bird or beast before I slept, a gift that might have provoked a G.o.d to grant me the answer I sought, but no answer came. There was just silence. I had put my sword and the power of the bone into the hands of the G.o.ds, into the keeping of Bel and Manawydan, of Taranis and Lleullaw, but they ignored my gifts. There was only the wind in the high leaves, the scratching of squirrel claws on the oak branches and the sudden rattle of a woodp.e.c.k.e.r.

I lay still when I woke. There had been no dream, but I knew what I wanted. I wanted to take the bone and snap it in two, and if that gesture meant walking the Dark Road into Diwrnach's kingdom, then so be it. But I also wanted Arthur's Britain to be whole and good and true. And I wanted my men to have gold and land and slaves and rank. I wanted to drive the Saxons from Lloegyr. I wanted to hear the screams of a broken shield-wall and the blare of war horns as a victorious army pursued a shattered enemy to ruin. I wanted to march my starry shields into the flat eastern land that no free Briton had seen in a generation. And I wanted Ceinwyn.