Startled, Lance turned to look at the messenger. The man’s eyes were fixed on him fearlessly. The countryside had changed beyond recognition. The hills had smoothed out to broad flatlands, the turf and gorse of the moors replaced by mile after featureless mile of salt-grass. The eastern sky was pink as wild strawberries. “Where are we?”
“Still on the road the Romans made. It stretches from Pons Aelius to the river the Scots call Uisge Thuaigh, fifty miles north of here. If you gallop for a few more days and nights, you can ride your horse right into the water.”
“Is that the dawn?”
“Yes, sire.”
Lance reined Balana in. She dropped to a trot, then a stumbling walk, then came to a halt and stood wearily, head down. “Heaven forgive me. I should be kinder—not just to her, but to you. What is your name?”
“Drusus, sire.”
“Pardon my discourtesy, Drusus.”
“You’d better pardon mine, or Gaius will have me publicly flogged.”
Lance smiled despite himself, despite the sick yearning he felt to be moving onwards, closing the gap between himself and Din Guardi at any cost. “Is there a place nearby where we can rest the horses?”
“And ourselves, sire, or we’ll be useless to the very men we so wish to aid. There’s a settlement a little way west of here—Anglian, but they’re not hostile. All manner of traders and travellers pass through here.”
Stiffly Lance dismounted. Only when he was on the ground did he realise his own exhaustion. The horse pushed at him with her nose, a gesture of forgiveness he didn’t deserve. “Go ahead. Not too fast, though—I’m going to lead Balana on the rein.”
Lance had never seen anywhere like the settlement before. In many ways it was primitive, a couple of dozen timber huts roofed in thatch, none of Vindolanda’s crumbling Roman grandeur. The track running through it was made of hardpacked earth, ringing beneath the horses’ hooves after a frosty night. In wet weather it would turn into a swamp. And yet there was a bustle and brightness in the air, even at this early hour. The forge was open for business, the baker shovelling fresh loaves out of an open-air oven. The two streets, marked at their junction by a fine round-headed cross, were already busy with men and women, some dark like himself, others strikingly fair. Most wore wooden pattens and thick tunics against the cold. It was hard to tell who was a villager, who was just passing through. Hard to tell where anyone came from at all.
There wasn’t time to wonder. Lance had taken the messenger’s point, but he didn’t think he could linger here. Drusus and the horses needed rest. For himself, he’d hire a fresh mount and ride on, if he could find anything bigger than a market-cart pony to carry him. He’d barely taken enough gold with him to cover his journey, but surely someone here could help. He drew a breath to ask.
“Here, sire. It’s not much, but at least it’s shelter.”
One of the huts, larger than the rest, had been fitted up as a kind of hostelry. A brazier burned in the middle of the floor, smoke curling upwards through a hole in the roof. A sturdy, yellow-haired boy appeared at Lance’s elbow and took Balana’s reins from him: dazedly he allowed this, then followed Drusus into the warmth.
Broad wooden benches surrounded the fire. They were covered in sheepskins that looked as though they’d been there since the hut was built, but were no less comfortable for that when Lance sat down. He hadn’t even meant to do that much: stiffened immediately and tried to get back up, but Drusus placed a large hand on his shoulder. “Rest,” he ordered. “Gaius would be angry to know you were driving yourself and the animals so hard. And he’s a general now, so you have to mind what he says.”
“A general?” Lance echoed in amusement. He sank his fingers into the sheepskin to keep a grip on reality, but all that served to do was plunge him back into memories of the firelit bedchamber at Vindolanda. “He’ll be a good one, I’m sure. What about Ector?”
“You have to sleep. Close your eyes, at any rate, while I fetch food.”
“All right. But then I have to move on.”
“Very well, very well.”
“What happened to him, Drusus?”
“To... To Ector?”
“No. To Arthur. Was his wound very bad?”
“No worse than he’s had before, but he took an infection after it. Still, you know how strong he is.”
“I should have been there with him. I should have gone the first damn time he asked.”
“You’ll be there soon enough.” Drusus gave him a shove, and Lance, who for all he burned and longed to be on horseback and flying north once more was still a lad of nineteen summers, at the mercy of his body’s demands, rolled down onto the bench, asleep before his head touched the sheepskin.
He had a strange dream. In it, he was the dragon who had come from the stars to rest in the moorland earth. He coiled his tail around Caer Lir in the west, and he laid his great head on the sands at Din Guardi.
No rest for him here, though. The people at his centre were hungry, the men and women of Vindolanda. He tried to curl himself protectively around them, but he was stretched too thin. He lost the sense of himself as male, slipped into a dark, blood-hot knowledge of his mother, of Viviana, the very land itself and the dragon-force within it. The dragon waited. She could feed everyone if she herself was fed, if the ancient contract of friendship and trust was fulfilled. If the women came to the cave...
But the women were gone. Starving, the dragon tried anyway. She rubbed her great snout around the fort at Din Guardi, causing panic and earth tremors there. She pressed one vast eye to the chamber where the future king lay dying, the magical weave of his ongoing life snapping thread by thread, falling into disarray. She’d have wept over him, and her tears would have washed away his fever and pain like the dust from a long weary day, but he was sealed away from her. She cried out his name, and the soldiers herded the women and children inside, barred the gates and dropped a portcullis of iron, a terrible new barricade through which she could not pass.
Fading and sick, the dragon retreated. She shrank as she coiled herself back into the earth. She became as an adder, then a tiny grass snake, and then she was nothing but a worm, her powers reduced to the small mindless ever-task of eating and turning the soil. When the hare appeared, the creature seemed vast, blocking out the sun. “Ah,” said the hare. “Which miracle do you need, child—the small one to stop you breaking your poor coils in two between your past and your future, or the great one concerning the sword from the stone?”
“Both. I need both, Viviana.”
A distant chuckle, the feel of a gnarled old hand on his hair. “Greedy boy! Well, well. We’ll see what we can do.”
Lance jolted awake. He couldn’t have slept long: there was a bowl of broth on the ground by the bench, still steaming. Half a loaf of bread, too, warm to his touch when he reached for it. Drusus, seated on the bench next to his, was tearing hungrily into the other half. He grunted as Lance sat up, silently gestured to him that he should eat.