Free The Winter King - 1 by Bernard Cornwell

tops were fantastic pictures carved in white stone that showed marvelous men trampling enemies beneath their horses' hooves. The stone men carried sheaves of stone spears and wore stone helmets with soaring stone crests. Some of the pictures had dropped away or had split in the frosts, yet were still a miracle to me, though Nimue, after staring at them, spat to ward off the evil.
     
     
"Don't you like it?" I asked her resentfully.
     
     
"The Romans tried to be gods," she said, 'which is why the Gods humbled them. The Council should not meet here."
     
     
Yet Glevum was where the High Council was summoned, and Nimue could not change it. Here, encompassed by Roman ramparts of earth and wood, the fate of Uther's kingdom was to be decided.
     
     
The High King had already arrived by the time we reached the town. He was lodging in another high building that faced the pillared hall across the square. He showed neither surprise nor displeasure that Nimue had come, perhaps because he thought she was merely a part of Morgan's retinue, and he gave us all a single room in the back of the house where the kitchens smoked and the slaves squabbled. The High King's soldiers looked drab beside Tewdric's shining men. Our soldiers wore their hair long and their beards wild, they had patched and frayed cloaks of different colours and carried long, heavy swords, rough-shafted spears and round shields on which Uther's dragon symbol looked crude beside Tewdric's carefully painted bulls.
     
     
For the first two days there were celebrations. Champions of the two kingdoms fought mock fights outside the walls, though when Owain, Uther's champion, went into the arena King Tewdric was forced to pit two of his best men against him. Dumnonia's famous hero was reputed to be invincible, and he looked it as he stood with the summer sun glinting off his long sword. He was a huge man with tattooed arms, a matted bare chest and a bristling beard decorated with warrior rings forged from the weapons of defeated enemies. His fight against Tewdric's two champions was supposed to be a mock battle, but the mockery was hard to see as the two heroes of Gwent took their turns to attack him. The three men fought as though they were filled with hate and exchanged sword blows that must have rung north into distant Powys, and after a few minutes their sweat was mixed with blood, their blunt swords' edges were dented and all three men were limping, but Owain was still getting the best of the bout. Despite his size he was fast with a sword, and his blows carried crushing weight. The crowd, which had gathered from all the country thereabouts and was thus drawn from both Uther's and Tewdric's kingdoms, was shouting like wild beasts to urge their men on to massacre, and Tewdric, seeing the passion, threw down his staff to end the fight. "We are friends, remember," he told the three men, and Uther, seated one step higher than Tewdric as befitted the High King, nodded agreement.
     
     
Uther looked gross and ill; his body was swollen with fluid, his face was yellowing and slack, his breathing laboured. He had been carried to the fighting field in a litter and was swathed on his throne in a heavy cloak that hid his jewelled belt and bright torque. King Tewdric dressed as a Roman, indeed his grandfather had been a real Roman which must have explained his foreign-sounding name. The King wore his hair clipped very short, had no beard, and was swathed in a white toga folded intricately at one shoulder. He was tall, thin and graceful in his movements, and though he was still a young man, the sad, wise look of his face made him seem much older. His Queen, Enid, wore her hair in a weird plaited spiral that was piled so precariously on top of her skull that she was forced to move with the angular awkwardness of a new-born colt. Her face was caked with a white paste that fixed her with a vacant expression of perplexed boredom. Her son Meurig, the Edling of Gwent, was a fidgety child