Chapter 23
Walking into Rhys’s hall was a wholly different thing this time. Bed had led the way the first time. He still insisted on walking beside Arthur, but Arthur had made him agree to let him speak first. Losing Agravain’s men had been his own fault, after all.
For the dead of winter, the hall was lively. Food and drink aplenty, not to mention musicians and whores and all manner of entertainments. After the border camp and its forest stillness, the hall was almost overwhelming, the noise and heat pressing against his skin until he wanted to push back. A few steps before they reached Rhys’s chair he felt a light touch against his knuckles. A glance down caught Bedwyr’s hand as it swung away from his own, but he knew it’d been no accident.
The reminder of Bed’s understanding calmed him. He couldn’t claim to be fearless, but he could weather a lord’s anger. He’d done so before—they both had. They’d lost most of what they’d known, but here they still stood, side by side.
“Arthur, Bedwyr,” Rhys said, sounding wary. “Have you chased off the Saxons already?”
“No, my lord. Agravain’s men.”
Rhys glanced from him to Bed and back. “I sent you to the border for winter patrol, but you decided to rid me of Lot’s promised fighting force instead?”
“Didn’t decide to, but they left, and I was the cause.”
Rhys studied them for a long moment. “You aren’t jesting, are you?”
“No, my lord,” Bedwyr said.
Arthur wanted to look at him but didn’t dare. “I grew restless and began to raid the Saxons’ camp. After a few of those raids, some of Agravain’s men wanted in on them, so I took them with me. They met with a couple Saxons and killed them. Agravain found out and left with his men.”
Rhys leaned back in his great chair. “Let me see if I have this correct. You got bored… at a winter camp…”
“I’m sorry, my lord—”
“Not finished, cub! So, because this perfectly normal winter camp wasn’t exciting enough for you, you decided to pester an armed enemy—”
Bedwyr shifted. “My lord—”
“Still not finished, young dragon! So you—both of you now, I assume?—poked and prodded and generally caused mischief amongst some Saxons, and with little enough discretion that you drew the notice of the northmen, who, also having grown bored, being too well fed and rested at my expense, decided to follow you into the enemy hive… for fun?”
Rhys’s rising voice had drawn the attention of most of the hall. Arthur didn’t think his ears had ever felt this hot. He braced himself for the rest of it—the worst. The loss of Lot’s men. “Yes, my lord.”
Rhys stared at him. “Well?”
“My lord?”
Rhys lifted his open palms. “What have you brought me?”
Arthur did look to Bedwyr now, but he was just as confused. He turned back to Rhys. “I’m sorry?”
“I don’t want your apologies, cub. I want a cut!”
Arthur felt his mouth fall open. “I… uh…”
“My lord, if you please.” Gwalchmai stepped around them then and bowed to Rhys. “I vouch for everything Arthur has said. I can also tell you that, even if the Saxons had risen up, Agravain would have left. Lot ordered him not to join a fight.”
Rhys studied Gwalchmai. “You’re Lot’s son as well. Why did you not leave with your brother?”
“Because I’d rather follow Arthur and Bedwyr.”
“And what of the northmen who helped them raid?”
“They followed him once. I believe they would do so again.”
“They left.”
“Agravain threatened them.”
“Did he not threaten you?”
Gwalchmai stood straight. “For the final time, my lord. Oh, and here’s this.” He lifted the flap on his pack and withdrew the seax. He handed it to Rhys. “Arthur asked me to keep it safe for you.”
Arthur fought to keep his face expressionless. He had asked no such thing, but gods be good to this bold northern lad with the Cymrish name.
The wry twist to Rhys’s mouth said that he knew Gwalchmai had just acted to save Arthur’s arse. “You have a trustworthy new follower here, young man.”
“I do.”
Rhys turned the weapon over, eyeing the blade’s edge. “What are the Saxons up to just now?”
“Still camped.”
“No vengeance for their dead companions?”
“No, my lord. Not yet, anyway.”
“Well.” Rhys laid the seax over his knees. “Answer me this, Arthur. If I were to send a group of men back with you, how would you spend the remainder of the winter?”
Sitting on my shield—that’s what he needed to say. Playing dice. Keeping watch. Doing nothing.
But there was a glint in Rhys’s eyes that made him say, “Robbing the Saxons toothless, my lord.”
Rhys’s laughter rang through the hall, soon joined by everyone near them.
Bedwyr’s knuckles brushed his again. Then his mustache tickled Arthur’s ear. “You’ve got some stones, cub.”
Arthur shivered and leaned in to Bedwyr. “They’re drawn up tighter than a bishop’s purse. Maybe you can find them for me.”
Bed grinned.
Rhys sank back into his great chair with a sigh and shook his head at them. “You two do have extraordinary timing. I seem destined to play matchmaker between you and your distant relations.”
Gods, another of Bedwyr’s cousins? How many were there?
“Not so distant now.”
The deep voice jolted Arthur’s skin, and he and Bedwyr both spun toward its source.
Behind them stood Lord Uthyr. He looked each of them up and down in that way that always felt like the scrape of a blade’s edge.
“Ta,” Bed said.
“Son.” It didn’t precisely sound as if Lord Uthyr wanted to claim it.
But Bedwyr weathered that. “What brings you to Lord Rhys’s?” he asked, as if they spoke over a casual cup of ale and not before an entire breathless hall.
“Your sister.”
Arthur held his breath. This would be the moment they got their arses roasted for helping her run away.
Uthyr glared at them for a few seconds longer. Then his expression shifted, and he leaned toward them conspiratorially. “She hit a rough bit of track with Elain. I came to help.”
“You?” Bedwyr said, evidently unable to hide his disbelief.
“Yes, me,” Uthyr said, sounding testy.
Bedwyr was silent for a moment, then said, “Winter got you restless, too, then?”
Uthyr narrowed his dark eyes, but his mouth cracked into a quarter-moon smile. His gaze slid to Arthur. “These Saxons. Just sitting on their mangy tails?”
“Yes, my lord.”
Uthyr’s eyes flashed over their shoulders, and Rhys made a sound of outrage.
“I want my loot!”
Uthyr shrugged. “We’ll bring you whatever’s left. Might have some blood on it.”
Rhys rolled his eyes. “Fine. Go. Drive away perfectly salable goods.” He looked out over the hall. “Who wants to go freeze their stones off fighting Saxons?”
Every warrior in the place rose, shouting.
~ ~ ~
The border camp was a place of surprises. This time it was the knot of men around the fire pit when their force of eighty arrived from Rhys’s.
At first sight of the fire, Bedwyr gripped Arthur’s arm. “Saxons?”
“No,” Arthur said, smiling.
Behind them, Gwalchmai made a triumphant noise. “Told you so.”
A dozen of Agravain’s men had returned. The man himself was long gone, they said, but faced with the trek home, through snow and ice and a wind that could freeze a man in place, they had preferred the prospect of the relatively mild southern camp.
“Your winters are child’s play,” said one.
Another nodded. “And Agravain’s as pleasant as an itchy arsehole.”
He was, but Bedwyr suspected it was the man’s way of saying he’d rather follow Arthur.
His suspicion bore out when Arthur told them they planned to empty the Saxon camp. Rather than showing any disappointment that their raiding was over, the northmen formed up without question.
Uthyr split their force into three units. Familiar with many of the men from Rhys’s, he took command of a number of veterans and put Elain’s friend Palahmed in charge of a second group. The remainder, including Lot’s men, came under Arthur. Watching his father direct men lulled Bedwyr into a sense of normalcy, so that when the time came to explain their scheme to the men, he was surprised once more.
And yet, he wasn’t. What he was was proud, for when that time arrived, Uthyr stood aside and nodded to Arthur.
“You know the terrain and the Saxons’ movements,” he said, and the simplicity of it, delivered with Uthyr’s apparent confidence in Arthur’s ability to lead, had every man turning to Bedwyr’s shieldmate.
To his commander.
Bedwyr walked with him as he spoke to each group. As Arthur repeated what he’d learned of the Saxons’ camp, and how each unit should best approach it, Bedwyr watched. From man to man, he studied their expressions as they listened to Arthur, watched their body language. Arthur wouldn’t fully earn their trust or respect until the fight and maybe not then, either. Such was the way of it.
But his cub was finding himself among these strangers. He might have been able to lead their people in the mountains, simply because they knew him. Or perhaps not—that sort of familiarity could limit a man’s ability to lead and to follow. Perhaps it was best these men were relative strangers. They hadn’t witnessed Arthur’s training, his missteps. They would get to know him first on a battlefield, and on a battlefield…
Well, Bedwyr’s opinion was, admittedly, a biased one.
The last group Arthur addressed was his own. As he did so, Bedwyr’s gaze fell on Gwalchmai. The lad looked ready to launch himself at some Saxons at a single word, and Bedwyr had to smile at the way he watched Arthur. Gwalchmai stood on the fringe of his fellow northmen, gripping his ax and spear, rapt with the sort of focus only adoration wrought. He looked proud, too, to have been the first of his men to turn back for Arthur. But he also looked… alone. Bedwyr counted the men and came up with an odd number. When Arthur finished speaking to them, Bedwyr murmured a suggestion to him. At Arthur’s nod, Bedwyr set a hand on the back of Gwalchmai’s neck.
“Follow me.”
If the lad had watched Arthur with admiration, he had met the force of Uthyr’s attention with awe back in Rhys’s hall, where Bedwyr had introduced them. The boy was no less bolt-struck now.
“My lord,” he said and bowed his head.
“Nephew.” Uthyr looked to Bedwyr.
“He needs a shieldmate.”
“Ah.”
“We don’t fight with shieldmates in the north,” Gwalchmai said.
Uthyr made himself large, a move Bedwyr knew well. “Are you currently in the north, son of my beloved but troublesome sister?”
Gwalchmai shrank, slightly. “No, Uncle.”
“Then it’s time you learned how we fight in Cymru.” Uthyr put an arm around the lad’s shoulders and led him away.
They passed the night in small, quiet groups. In the misty hush before dawn, the units ranged out to position themselves for attack. The northmen would begin at their own fire pit, to lend the camp an air of normal winter use to any Saxon who happened to look across the distance between the camps. The other three groups used the forest to surround the Saxon camp, with Uthyr’s veteran warriors on the far side to block an eastern retreat.
As their men knelt in the dark to wait, Arthur took Bedwyr’s arm. “A word?”
His voice was hushed, but Bedwyr could hear the tightness in it. When Arthur stopped, several paces farther into the trees from the other men, Bedwyr leaned in close. “What is it?”
“Don’t know if I can do this.”
“Do what?”
“Lead them. Why are they looking to me? Why did Lord Uthyr defer? I don’t—”
He pressed his fingers to Arthur’s lips. “Shhh.”
“Those’re Saxons,” Arthur said anyway.
Bedwyr chuckled softly. “Didn’t stop you before.”
“I know, but… we have almost a hundred men now.”
“Then it will be that much easier.”
“Or we could lose more.”
Bedwyr set down his armor as quietly as he could, then took Arthur’s from him and laid it aside. Stepping up to Arthur, he slipped his arms around him, drawing him in. His hair smelled of fresh woodsmoke. “Look over my shoulder,” he murmured in Arthur’s ear. “What do you see?”
A breath, and then Arthur said softly, “Our men.”
“And beyond them?”
“The Saxon camp.”
“And what can’t you see from here?”
“Lord Uthyr’s men. Palahmed’s men.”
“But they’re positioned exactly where you ordered. And they’re waiting. Do you know why?”
Arthur shook his head.
Bedwyr smoothed his hand over Arthur’s hair. “Because you’re a warrior. And in the short time you’ve been a warrior, you’ve proven yourself a leader. You’re skilled, but that’s not what draws them. They come to you because you’re bold. Because you aren’t content to do things the way they’ve always been done just for the sake of it. You see possibilities, and you have the courage to test them. And when you do, you bring your skill and your wit and a fierceness your enemies wish they’d never roused. You’re the bear, Arthur.”
A tremor coursed through Arthur’s body.
“Do you truly need words?”
“No,” Arthur whispered.
Slipping his fingers into Arthur’s hair, Bedwyr pulled him into a kiss. Arthur leaned into it, and Bedwyr took his weight. It felt good to do so, felt right. Planting his boots in the fallen leaves and needles underfoot, Bedwyr held him up, fed him breath and fire, and gradually Arthur regained his balance and maybe his sense of himself. His arms strapped Bedwyr to him like iron bands, and he took over the kiss, hungrily consuming everything Bedwyr could give him, as if he understood as viscerally as Bedwyr did that the source was inexhaustible.
When Arthur finally pulled away, he pressed his nose to Bedwyr’s temple. “Someday, I’m going to do that for everyone to see.”
The tremor rippled through Bedwyr this time. “Slay the dragon?”
Arthur’s lips brushed over his ear. “Claim the dragon.” He nipped Bedwyr’s earlobe. “Tame the dragon.”
Bedwyr chuckled softly. “Take care you don’t get scorched.”
They armored each other and rejoined their men. Just as the sky shifted from deep blue to slate gray, Arthur gave the signal, a whistled bird call. A muted echo of it sounded as Uthyr answered it, and again a few moments later as Palahmed did the same off the far end of the Saxon camp. They advanced, quiet and deadly.
They squeezed the dogs in a three-sided vise so effectively the first shout didn’t rise from the camp until the three Cymrish ranks had met at the corners. Saxons sprang up from sleep, disoriented, and tried to flee westward, only to meet with the northmen, who’d already dispatched the Saxon lookouts.
It was an odd thing to fight in the chill of winter. Bedwyr had only done it a few times. On one of those occasions, he’d lost his hand. On the next, Arthur had fought as his shieldmate for the first time. Bedwyr had been nervous then, taut with the responsibility of keeping Arthur alive even as he tried to prove he himself could still handle his weapons in battle.
Perhaps he should have felt those same qualms this morning; their last skirmish had been before the harvest. But they’d shielded each other all the previous spring and summer, so that while the crunch of their boots on frosty ground was strange, this clash felt like nothing less than coming home. He wasn’t so addled as to believe they were invincible, but by the gods, they were damned close to it. And when the last Saxon fell, and their men stood heaving clouds of breath into the dawn, he found himself wishing there’d been more of the dogs to thrash. His blood seared his veins like molten iron, and he felt almost as tall as Arthur. The sidewise grin his victorious cub gave him only stoked him further.
With an effort, Bedwyr banked the fire. The coldest weeks were coming, and they would need the heat then.
When Uthyr left the next day, leading all but a winter camp’s worth of warriors back to Rhys’s, each man carried double and triple the weapons he’d arrived with. Rhys would be pleased with the haul, Bedwyr thought, and even happier to learn they’d not lost a single man.
He waved a farewell to his father, and then he and Arthur and their winter force set out eastward, past their camp, past the smoking pyre marking the Saxons’ defeat, to set up a new watch on a new border.