Jack Whyte - The Saxon Shore

"Agreed in full, and here's my hand on it. Let it be done." As we clasped hands to forearms, I added my single condition. "I hope you can begin without me, for at least the first week or two."

"I can," he said with a nod. "What have you planned?"

"An expedition of a hundred troopers to Glevum, without me, the reason for which I'll explain in a moment, and for me, a journey to Cambria, although I see that might be difficult and dangerous, from what you have told me."

"Potentially fatal, I would say. Take my advice and speak with Huw on that. He will have things to say that will make more sense than anything I've told you. What's this about Glevum?"

I told him briefly about the Berbers we had seen, and their attack on the leper colony, and he listened, tight-lipped, then nodded. "You're right. Something has to be done about those people. Otherwise, they'll grow like a nest of wasps. Best to get rid of them before they can settle in to a nesting spot. There's a formal Council meeting the day after tomorrow. Can this wait that long for Council's approval?"

"Yes. It will take that long to make ready. The expedition can leave the morning after the meeting."

He pursed his lips. "Tell me, has the Council ever withheld approval of a venture like this?"

"You mean a punitive expedition? No, how could it? The mere idea is ludicrous. Things like that are only undertaken for the good and protection of the Colony itself and the Council is the legislative body of the Colony."

"What would you do if the circumstance ever arose? For the sake of argument, let's say that, for some reason inconceivable to either of us now, Council should someday decide to withhold its approval of an expedition like the one you now propose. What would you do, hypothetically?"

I grimaced and shook my head slowly. "Hypothetically? Well, I suppose hypothetically I'd do the same as I would practically. I'd override them and imprison any councillor who sought to stay me."

Ambrose grinned. "That, Caius Merlyn, is the response of an autocrat."

I grinned back at him. "Is it really? Well, I might quibble with you over that, Brother. I'd say it's the response of a professional soldier to a question that is, by definition, hypothetical—a soldier, bear in mind, whose title is Commander of the Military Forces of Camulod and whose responsibility is to the safety of the Colony . . . In my opinion, Ambrose, and perhaps it would apply within this context alone, a councillor is but an adviser with a grander title. The function of the Council in such purely military matters, in my 'official' eyes, is to counsel and support, by providing a consensus—a concurrence and a commitment—of the senior minds within our Colony. It may strongly advise against a particular course, but it is never to forbid."

"Hmm," he murmured, still smiling as his eyes focused on something behind me. "Here's Huw now. Ask him about the journey you intend to make."

"What journey?" Huw was one of the few among Uther's Celts who spoke our Latin tongue with anything approaching fluency. I swung around to face him as he joined us.

"To Cambria, Huw. I have to travel to your country, to speak with whoever is in command there now."

His face twisted into a scowl of disgust, and to express it he lapsed back into his own tongue. "In command? No one is in command there. The place is a morass—a bog of shit and waste and treachery. That's why we are here, myself and the others. The pride we've borne all our lives in being Pendragon has been blasted like a tree in a thunderstorm and all that's left of it is a smoking stump riven into shattered pieces, each leaning like a drunkard in its own direction." His eyes had been fixed on mine throughout this and I was struck by the image his words brought into my mind, but he had not yet finished. "I'm serious, Merlyn. Nothing you have to do is important enough to warrant a journey into that nest of rats."

His vehemence, and the words he chose to express it, gave me more cause for concern than I had yet considered. "Nest of rats? Huw, that is your own home you are speaking of."

"I know that!" He snapped the words at me, their utterance a rebuke for my ignorance. "But the rats I refer to are no relatives or clansmen of mine. Rats thrive among people, Merlyn; they always have. They feed on the waste people discard. That doesn't make rats of the people who supply their food, nor does it make rats' nests of their homes, but as surely as you'll find green shit in the guts of a cow, you'll find rats' nests among human dwellings. All I meant was that there's a plague of two-legged rats running around my homeland nowadays in all directions; a plague; a sickness—an insanity."

"Hmm!" I thought about that, and sighed gustily. "Still," I said. "There's no help for it. I have to go there."

"Why, in the name of all the Druids and their gods?" His exasperation made him sound angered at me.

"Because I have given a promise, Huw, perhaps foolishly, to achieve something. It may be unachievable, but that is something I will have to prove for myself, and to the satisfaction of those concerned."

"And who are they, these concerned people?" Huw's voice had regained a tone of normality. "Do you want to tell me?"

"Aye, willingly, if you'll sit down and stop barking at me like an angry dog." He sat down by the fire, close to Ambrose, and I told him of Liam Twistback and his breeding cattle, and of my promise to King Athol to arrange a temporary sanctuary for the man and his animals in the little-used grazing lands to the south and west of Glevum.

"That's all it is?"

"Aye, but I would not choose to dismiss it as scornfully as that. I made a promise. I must honour it."

"And what does this King Athol offer in return for this. . . what did you call it? Sanctity?"

"Sanctuary. A Roman word, meaning a safe haven, a place free of danger, conflict and penalty."

Huw barked a loud, hard laugh. "Sanctuary! A strange term to be applying to Pendragon country nowadays."

"I can see that now," I agreed. "But it did not seem so silly when I made the promise. I knew nothing of what's going on up there."

"Aye, much can happen to alter the world in a short time. Anyway, I asked what this king offers in return."

I shrugged my shoulders. "Nothing, in effect, because we did not discuss the matter in those terms. I would suspect, nevertheless, his people would be willing to make some form of payment, perhaps in kind, for the use of the land. I see no risk of conflict there. The risk is involved in finding whoever it may be who can confer such rights on Liam and his people."

"How many people?"

I felt myself frowning, perplexed at his pursuit of such detail. "Ten . . . Perhaps a dozen . . . The people who would tend the beasts. No more than that."

"Done, and settled, providing your Outlanders are dreaming no surprises. Bring me to this Liam Twistback." He grinned, fierce and sudden, at the look of surprise on my face. "Those lands are mine, Merlyn, south and west of Glevum—mine and my clan's, which means mine and my son's, since all the rest of us are dead."

"Yours? They're yours?" I found myself almost blustering.

He gazed at me, an expression akin to compassion complementing the smile in his eyes. "Aye, that's what I said. Those lands are mine and have been in the care and keeping of my people since before the Romans came. They thought to conquer us and called us Belgae and Silures because they didn't know the names of our clans, but we are of Pendragon, and our land was ours and well ordered long before the Caesars came and called our country Britain. The Romans are long gone, but our land remains ours as it remained ours throughout their occupation. We were never conquered, Caius Merlyn; we merely stopped fighting."

"Then I have no need to enter Cambria."