Jack Whyte - The Saxon Shore

Outside, in the bustle of the busy encampment, Dergyll said, "That's Timor who's with him now. He's a Druid, too. He'll tend him well. Come."

I followed him in silence as he wended his way among the few tents that served his army, until we arrived by a blazing fire stacked over a clay oven. Several thick logs were grouped around the fire and Dergyll sat on one, pointing me to another. From the ground at his feet he picked up a leather-bound flask and uncorked it, tipping back his head to swallow a great draught, then handing it to me. It was mead, and I gulped it deeply, after which I sighed and stared into the fire.

"Tell me about this Carthac," I said.

"What is there to tell? You knew him, as a boy. He is demented."

"Demented? I did not know that, or I don't remember. I never knew him well. I knew he was misshapen but can remember no more of him, other than that he was generally disliked. Uther, I recall, could not abide him."

"No one could. We were all first cousins. Carthac's mother, my father and Uther's father were siblings. And we were all much of an age, too, less than two years between Uther, who was oldest, and Carthac, the youngest of us. I fell in the middle." He reached for the flask and took another deep drink. "Carthac was always . . . troublesome, even as a child. His mother died birthing him and his skull was crushed out of shape in the delivery. But then he was kicked in the head by a horse, when he was eight."

"I met him after that," I told him. "Two years after he had been kicked. I thought it was the horse's kick that had deformed him."

Dergyll shook his head. "No. That happened at birth. The kick merely completed his undoing, it seems. He was never well liked. Even you remember that, after meeting him only long years ago. He was a treacherous little whoreson even then. Would he had stayed that way. In his fourteenth year, Carthac began to grow prodigiously, and it seemed he might never stop. But as his body grew, and his strength multiplied, his mind degenerated. He was ungovernable—still is . . . He would fly into fantastic rages, often for no reason that anyone could see or understand, and in such rages he would kill anything or anyone that crossed his path. Killed several people before he attained manhood."

I shook my head. "Couldn't anyone restrain him?"

Dergyll pursed his lips and shook his head. "Nah. Finally they banished him, drove him out altogether. But he kept coming back, and because his father was who he was, Carthac was permitted to commit atrocities no one else would ever have dreamed of. Then he turned to violating women, and several of us, myself and a few others, decided to teach him a real lesson. We beat him badly; broke a few bones, then dragged him, tied and kicking in a cart, up to a cave in the hills, miles from the village. We left him there and told him that if he ever came back, we would kill him. We should have killed him there and then.

"Anyway." He heaved a great sigh and looked around him before continuing. "It seemed we had made the correct impression on him. He stayed away for years, and we forgot he was even there. But he was there, and over those years he attracted some followers, the gods alone know how. Then Uther went to war with you against the Cornishman and died there, and all a sudden we had wars of our own. Uther had been king but had no son, and there was never any settlement of the succession, although it should have come to me on Uther's death. But even before then that fire was beyond control. We had problems with invaders, people from the north of us, who thought they could take our lands because the major part of our manpower was away from home. And then Carthac emerged from hiding, backed by a rabble of landless filth and worse, far worse than he had ever been. But he fought craftily and well. We fought a pitched battle against him, and he almost beat us. He's crazed, of course, but he fights like a devil. . . Anyway, Ironhair had arrived in our lands just before that. I disliked him from the outset, but many others didn't particularly since he mantained he had been a friend to both you and Uther. . .

"He was there the day we fought against Carthac and he found out that Carthac had a claim to being king. Shortly after that he disappeared and now he is Carthac's closest friend and trusted adviser. It must be sorcery of some kind, but he seems to be able to control the animal sufficiently to make him do whatever Ironhair wishes to have done, and what Ironhair wishes to have done has caused me endless grief for months now. The end is coming, for all that. We almost had them, day before yesterday, but caught only their rearguard. Carthac and Ironhair evaded us by hours. We questioned the few people left alive after our fight and one of them told us about this camp, with its stolen horses. We were close by, so we came down, and then you came."

"But you knew we were coming. How?"

He dipped his head. "You were seen."

"Not so! We took great pains to remain unseen."

"Aye, but insufficient, nonetheless. You passed a solitary shepherd, lying hid on a hill slope. He saw a thousand horsemen led by one whose standard was a silver-metal bear, on black. That night, he told the Druid Daffyd what he'd seen, and Daffyd made his way direct to me—or would have, had he not unexpectedly encountered Carthac and his band. Brought face to face with Ironhair, Daffyd confronted him and denounced him, knowing the truth of his perfidy, Mod says, accusing him of having tried to murder you. Carthac cut Daffyd down and threw him on a fire for his daring. Mod tried to pull the old man from the fire, and Carthac skewered him with a hunting spear. They left him lying there, thinking him dead, when they rode on, and as I told you, two of my men found him when they passed by the same way that afternoon."

I sat and stared into the fire, losing myself in the leaping transparency of the daylight-dimmed flames. Dergyll left me to my thoughts, content to dwell upon his own for the time being. Eventually, he leaned in front of me and thrust a horn cup full of mead into my grasp. I took it with a nod, and sipped at it, lost in thoughts that no longer primarily concerned Mod and Daffyd or even Carthac and Peter Ironhair. My thoughts at that point, in the main, had to do with Dergyll himself, and with the underlying reasons for my presence here in Cambria.

After my return from Cornwall, late the previous summer, I had been concerned about the attitude I might have provoked among the Pendragon by my own apparent lack of gratitude for the sacrifices made on my behalf by Uther's people, who were half my own people, too, through my mother's blood. As recently as my return from Eire, when I had been concerned about Liam's liberty to raise his breeding stock in safety on Pendragon land, these thoughts had plagued me, and then the raid on our outpost had almost crystallized the belief in my mind that we had forsworn the alliance between Camulod and Pendragon. Now, it appeared, an opportunity had come to hand to reassess the situation. Dergyll seemed to bear us no resentment over the matter of Lot's wars or the losses his people had sustained because of them. I knew, however, that I might be indulging in wishful thinking there. For all I knew, he might be deeply angered over the whole affair and merely be holding his peace for reasons of his own, as important to him as mine were to me.

I snapped back to attention when I heard my name being called from across the fire, and I looked up to see Dergyll approaching me from that direction. I had been unaware of his having moved from beside me, and now I made to rise to my feet, but he waved me back and came to join me, seating himself on the log beside me and resuming his attack upon the flask of mead.

"Your men are settled in," he grunted eventually, offering me the flask again. Seeing my headshake, he dropped it to the ground beside his foot. "Dedalus, your man in charge, says there is nothing for you to concern yourself over, and bids you take your ease."