Jack Whyte - The Saxon Shore

"Do you ever regret, Ambrose, not having returned to visit Vortigern? I recall that when you first came here you were insistent that you should return to make your final severance with him face to face."

I found myself glowering fiercely at Lucanus, shaking my head urgently to warn him to desist. It had been years since Ambrose spoke of going east, and I had no wish to rekindle the ambition in his mind. Of course, I was far too late to forestall Luke's words. Ambrose made no response for a long time and when he did reply, his tone was musing.

"Yes, Luke," he said. "I do regret it. Not often, and for different reasons than you might suppose. The bonds that bind me here, to Camulod, are far more solid and enduring than those that once linked me to Vortigern, and yet I would like to return, some day, to see how things progress there in Northumbria without me."

"Then you should go, and soon."

I began to rise to my feet in protest, but Lucanus had my measure. He swung to face me.

"Both of you should go. Together, and immediately." He held up one hand to stop me from speaking. "Think of it, Merlyn, before you say you cannot. You talked of it before, planned it indeed, to happen after your return from Cambria. What has happened in the interim? We have had five years, almost six, of prosperity and peace. Our Colony is strong and secure, and no danger threatens anywhere. You have just been imposing on our collective goodwill as friends, weeping about how life has passed you by. Well, here is a chance to go out there and meet it, and arrest its too-swift progress. There is not one reason in this world why you may not go, not even if you were to leave tomorrow."

His eyes moved from me to Ambrose and back. No one else spoke.

"Is there?" He looked at each of us again. "Can you provide one? One solid reason why you should not take a furlough and enjoy yourselves away from home for a short space of months?" A pause generated no response from anyone present, and he continued speaking. "I thought not, for there is no good reason to the contrary, particularly when such a course would serve a useful purpose. By visiting Vortigern you could discuss alliance with him. There was a time you deemed that to be important, did you not? Nothing has changed in that, I think, save for the fact that you have done nothing to make it happen. Why don't you go now? Our affairs are in good hands and, though the hearing of it may surprise and dismay you, we can manage to live without you for at least a short time."

I looked at Ambrose, who returned my look and slowly began to smile.

"Brother," he said, "I think our friends have an eye to our welfare. I also think such an expedition would be fun. Why not do as Luke says, and simply up and go?"

I grinned back at him, already and quite suddenly convinced that we should, feeling excitement at the notion stirring in my breast.

"What about your wife? Will she allow you to leave? I have no such encumbrance."

"Hah! She will be glad to be rid of me for a spell, especially since I would be travelling with you, my saintly brother, and therefore likely to avoid temptation in the fleshpots of the world."

There are times when careful planning ensures success, and there are times when the most careful planning comes to naught. But there are also times when spontaneity brings benefits uncountable. This was one of those times.

XXVIII

On a morning more than two weeks after that, deep within the borderless, alien territory known as the Saxon Shore, I knelt in wet grass beside my brother, peering through a screen of bushes at a man who had almost fatally surprised us. He was evidently the owner of a hay- filled barn where we had spent the night, exhausted after a long day's travel in heavy rain, and he was a Saxon. We had come upon his barn without warning the previous evening, just as night was falling and, soaked and tired and lulled by the torrential rain, we had succumbed to the temptation to shelter there, uncaring whether the owner was Briton or Saxon. In the last half hour of fading light, thankful for the solid roof over our heads, we had unsaddled and tended our horses, then dried ourselves and changed our soaked clothing before crawling into the fragrant piles of loose hay that filled the building and on which our horses were feeding placidly. Sleep overcame us quickly. I can remember only feeling grateful for the softness of the hay and listening to the gentle crunching of the eating beasts, then nothing.

The extent of our exhaustion became apparent in the dawn of the new day, when Ambrose shook me awake, his hand clasped over my mouth. I looked where he was looking, and saw the form of a large man approaching through the trees. Motionless, we watched him come, each of us wondering what was to happen here. As he drew closer, he loomed larger, and I began to feel an insane urge to laugh aloud, because he still had not looked up to see our four horses among his hay, clearly outlined as they were to us, against the morning light. We ourselves lay hidden in the hay. Yet he did not look up, seemingly intent upon his feet, so deep was he in thought. And then, as my searching fingers closed about the handle of my sword, a cry came from behind him and he stopped and turned away, listening intently. The cry came again, a woman's voice, and he called back, the tongue he used discordant and alien to my ears. Again the woman called, and then with a muttered curse he walked away, back whence he had come, until the trees concealed him.

Within moments, we had saddled our mounts and packhorses and Ambrose led them from the barn while I concealed the signs of our stay. I ran to join him immediately, thankful the rain had stopped during the night, and found him waiting just beyond the barn, holding the reins of all four animals, but making no attempt to mount. He held up one hand, wrapped about with reins, bidding me be still as he cocked his head to listen. I listened too. There was nothing to hear.

"He's gone," I said, my voice still low.

"Aye, but he might come back. What would you have done, had he seen us?"

I glanced at him, surprised that he need ask. "He was a dead man. Why?"

"You would have killed him, not knowing who or what he was?"

"He was a Saxon; what more need I know? Even before I heard him speak, I knew that."

Ambrose shook his head, pouting his lips. "No, he's no Saxon. At least, the language he spoke was no Saxon tongue I've ever heard, and I've heard several. Probably an Angle."

"A what?" I felt the blankness in my face.

"An Angle . . . some people, Vortigern's Danes among them, call them Anglians. Another race altogether from the Saxons. They come from farther north."

"Farther north of where?"

His teeth flashed in a quick grin. "Of where the Saxons come from. They are different peoples. Like Donuil's Celts and your Pendragons. The same in many things, perhaps, but from different places and speaking different tongues."

I shook my head. "Nah!" I said. "That can't be right. The Pendragon are Celts, too. I speak the Pendragon language, and though it sounds different from Donuil's tongue I could yet understand what Donuil said the first time I met him. You said this fellow here spoke unintelligibly."

"Exactly, so he cannot be a Saxon. Therefore he must be an Angle, or perhaps a Jute—" He smiled again, seeing my face. "Another race entirely. There are many of them."

"Aye." I said no more, allowing my tone to convey my disgust in the single syllable and reaching to grasp my saddle horn, preparing to mount. His hand on my arm stopped me.

"No, wait, Cay. I want to see what kind of place this is, what kind of farm they have. That barn is large, larger than I would have expected to find in a place like this." He stopped, looking me in the eye. "Will you wait for me? Or will you join me?"