Robert Asprin: For King and Country

Lailoken's dirty face, smeared with mud and his own blood, washed a sickly hue. He kept his gaze on the floor, where it belonged, unable to face those he had so grievously wronged. What Cedric Banning was thinking, Stirling had no idea—but intended to find out. Artorius asked for the roll of royal houses to be called. The kings and queens and princes of Britain answered for the people and lands they represented, until every kingdom had been accounted for—even Ynys Weith, answered for by Princess Iona in a strong, clear voice.

"Let the first matter before this council be the fate of the Saxons." Artorius gestured and the Saxon kings and princes were marched into the chamber, wrists bound, clothing matted with filth. "Aelle and Cutha of Sussex. Cerdic and Creoda of Wessex, gewisse traitors to Britain, who slaughtered the royal families of the kingdoms they have overrun. What say you, kings and queens of Britain, to their fate?"

Debate was brutally brief. Recommendations were universally grim. At the end of the tally, the vote was unanimous for beheading Cutha, who stared straight ahead and remained stone-silent throughout his sentencing. Opinions varied on whether to hang Creoda by the neck until dead, or simply burn out his eyes and let him wander as a beggar for the rest of his days. The princeling fell blubbering to his knees. "Please—I never killed any of those poor souls at Penrith, it was Cutha's doing, him and those brutes of his—"

Cadorius glared down at him. "Your crime is worse than Cutha's in my eyes, gewisse. You brought them among us, under oath of truce. You collaborated with them, scheming to insinuate yourself into Rheged's council, in the very council hall where Artorius and the high councils meet. You are a weak, spineless, sniveling thing, wretched beyond loathing. When your allies slaughtered all Penrith, did you lift a hand to stop them from butchering innocent babes?"

The princeling's lips trembled, wet and pathetic. "I—I feared too greatly they would turn upon me—"

" Yet you brought these jackals among us!" Cadorius roared to his feet, bringing his fists down so hard the table jumped and Creoda fell to his knees. " You brought them! Knowing you could neither control them nor enforce their honorable behavior. Fool, you are ten times the traitor for unleashing that on people whose blood flows through your veins! You disgust me." Cadorius spat on the floor, wringing a flinch and a moan from the ashen young man. "Hanging is too quick a mercy for his like. Blind the bastard and let him repent his folly at leisure." When Cerdic began to plead for mercy on his son's behalf, Cadorius stopped him with a single backhanded blow.

"That," he said through clenched teeth, "is for the murders of Princess Iona's entire family at Ynys Weith! Dear friends of mine, married to my own beloved cousins. I leave your fate to her discretion, for among us, none is so grievously wronged by your greed than she."

Iona rose with slow dignity, grey eyes as haunted by grief and horror as Queen Keelin's. She stood gazing down at Cerdic for a long time, her face like cut marble, her lips thin and hard. Keelin, at least, still had her father. Iona had lost everyone. Everything. Except herself. Her eyes were chilly as the winter Atlantic, stormy seas clashing and rolling behind those eyes, behind that long, utterly silent gaze. Cerdic flushed, ran icy pale, began to tremble. When she finally spoke, her voice was scarcely a whisper, yet as clear and strange as warped faerie bells in the twisted midnight glen.

"Show him the courtesy he showed to me. Send him naked into the winter marshes to hunt for his survival with nothing but his ragged nails and teeth. Let him eat fish raw from the bones while his hands bleed from the brambles he's pulled up to make a hand-knotted net to trap his wet and scaly dinner in, without so much as a knife to cut the thorny stems. Let him sleep in rotten rushes with the crabs and the mice to nibble at his frozen toes. And send him thus, exiled from human civilization, of which he knows nothing, lawfully deprived of all he holds dearest."

Cerdic had begun to tremble.

"Let his daughters and the infant grandchildren playing in his grand hall be taken as hostages. Let him trade places with me for the year I cowered and crawled in those self-same marshes. But grant his loved ones the mercy he failed to grant mine, for I will never demand that his kinsmen be slaughtered without pity, as mine were. Let the kings and queens of Britain decide how they will gift his family, should he ever try to leave those marshes. I wash my hands of the House of Cerdic and pray God has yet some mercy to spare in His rage over what you have done."

It was, Stirling realized slowly, while harsh in its demand for justice, still the most humane punishment yet suggested. All the more surprising, given what Iona had so grievously lost. As though reading his mind, Brenna McEgan murmured in a low English whisper, "Good for her. She's refusing to sink to their level. That child has more courage and more compassion than any five men in this room."

He shot her a startled glance, then nodded. She was right. More than right. It was a hopeful sign, one he almost dared believe would prevail. Artorius put the matter to a vote and within moments, Cerdic's fate had been sealed—along with his family's. Cadorius, commander of the besieged defenders at Badon Hill and highest-ranking monarch of the southern kingdoms, gave pronouncement on Cerdic's head.

Staring coldly down at the defeated Briton traitor who had crowned himself king with Saxon gold and treachery, Cadorius said, "You will be stripped of land, rank, title, and possessions. You will be sent into the salt marshes of Dumnonia's Irish-facing coast, away from your people, away from anyone who might give you pity or shelter, to live there by your wits, or die as God wills. If you so choose, you may take your son with you, once this council has carried out his sentence. He may share your exile, to remind you of the blind folly in your own dark hearts. Your children and grandchildren will be brought to Dumnonia, where they will remain my guests. So long as neither of you sets foot outside those marshes again, they will be treated with courtesy and respect. More than this, the kings and queens of Britain will not grant. Unlike God, our mercy has reached its limits. Do not ask for more."

The Saxons were taken away, heads bowed in utter defeat.

Artorius called for mulled wine to be passed round, symbolically washing the bitter taste of vengeance from their mouths before moving to the next item of business. Tension ebbed away and a low murmur of voices broke out as people rose and stretched their legs, strolled in conversation, sipped at the heated wine servants brought in clay pitchers. Covianna Nim brought a goblet of the steaming, spiced beverage to Artorius, smiling as she spoke in a low voice. He chuckled softly and drank with evident thirst. Morgana was frowning at the younger woman, a mixture of worry and hostility in that long, narrow-eyed stare. Ancelotis, alert to the fact that Covianna Nim had been the one to betray Morgana's intention to Artorius, decided to join her conversation with the Dux Bellorum.

"Have you received any word of Emrys Myrddin's whereabouts?" Ancelotis asked as he strolled up, while watching Covianna closely.

Lovely eyes widened slightly. "No, I haven't. I can't understand what's happened to him. He was so eager to return to Caer-Badonicus when he left the Tor, to oversee final preparations here. I fear bandits may have overpowered him. Or Saxon scouting parties."

Ancelotis narrowed his eyes. The likelihood of Saxons sending a reconnaissance party as far as Glastenning Tor was almost nonexistent, given its distance west and north of Caer-Badonicus. And Badon Hill was—so far as anyone had been able to determine—the farthest west and north any Saxon force had penetrated. "Bandits, more likely," he said coolly. "We'll have to scour the countryside for them, burn them out."