Free Warrior of the West by M. K. Hume Page A

brutishness to achieve his ends? Had he recognized that those deaths were the only means to fight a legitimate war against Glamdring? And had he wanted to strike at King Lot and Queen Morgause to revenge their treachery by using the fair and decent Gaheris as a weapon?
    Artor’s brow furrowed. He had truly hoped for peace, but the responsibility of kingship was not so simple. For years he had known that this war would come.
    Sickened and confused, Artor mounted his horse and tried to smile at Ector, Julanna and the children without the shadows of cares that were massing behind his face.
    He knew it was almost as easy to stop the inflowing tide as it was to still the desire to inflict pain in the human character. The crows knew. They waited in the Old Forest for Artor’s departure. And, perhaps, they chose to follow him, for every scavenger knows when the raptor takes to the wing.
    When the three visitors rode away, they were watched by black, knowing eyes. The woods were alive with blue-black shadows . . . and a memory of stirring feathers.

CHAPTER III
    INTO THE WEST
    A week later, the army of the Britons finally reached Venta Silurum and prepared for the coming campaign.
    Venta Silurum was an insignificant settlement, ancient even before the Roman invasion, and was named Castell Goronw in the old tongue. The envoys from Artor’s court had perished in the hills to the north of the old fortifications, so there was a grim appropriateness in the High King’s choice of bivouac. Situated overlooking the threadbare lowlands of the coast, the town had proved to be an easy site to fortify and hold, and the granite bones of the Roman walls still served the Silures well.
    Gruffydd gazed upon the place of his birth, where he had taken a plump wife after many painful years in Saxon slavery, and felt a fierce surge of pride in his heritage.
    For years Gruffydd had been Myrddion Merlinus’s best spy in the east, where his knowledge of the Saxon tongue had made him an invaluable tool. He was present when Artor recovered the crown and sword of Uther Pendragon at Glastonbury, and it was there that the High King had appointed him to the position of sword bearer. During the last twelve years, Gruffydd had been privy to secrets so fearsome that his toes still curled to think of them. When he had returned to Venta Silurum in the past, he had always come alone, and was viewed by the citizens as an ex-slave. Now, in the full livery of one of the High King’s most trusted servants, the whole city could see his status in the hierarchy of the west as he bore the enormous blade, Caliburn, on a jewelled sheath on his back.
    As the army rode through the streets of the town to a plateau of land that would serve to rest the troops, Gruffydd watched his master’s face with concern.
    The High King rubbed his gritty, sleep-starved eyes. Aquae Sulis seemed a lifetime behind them although only seven days had passed. The physical demands of a campaign were far from new to Artor, as he had fought eleven major battles in the past twelve years. But the strain of devising strategies that would diminish the vast cost to his realm in human tragedy drained his mental resources. The aftermath of battle came with guilt so crushing that he had often believed he would die of it after his first wars against Oakheart so many years before.
    His second battle, at Magnis, was a huge success because of his use of the horse. But Targo had been correct. That strategy had never again possessed the element of surprise, but Artor had studied the campaigns of Caesar in Gaul and was determined to integrate the use of bowmen, cavalry and infantry to ensure that the three parts of his army worked as a united whole.
    At Pontes in the south, where the Tamesis River branched in four directions and the small town was hemmed in by water, Artor used the soggy landscape and the spring flood rains to encircle the Saxons and wait for them to foul their drinking water. When sickness struck