Forging the Runes Read online

  And of course, Osmod thought dryly, he, the so-loyal ealdorman, was always ready to lend a helping hand— though naturally never doing anything blatantly or firmly enough to make it look like coercion.

  Friendly, Osmod thought, that's me. And, come what may, there's this convenient thing: Egbert harbors deep ambitions for eventual conquest, even if he hasn't shared them openly. And so do I.

  The Witan, naturally, were another matter: all those disparate, not yet quite trusting minds with all those different levels of prejudices and cleverness. But Osmod had already managed to twist a few weaker wills to his own. Eventually the stronger ones would follow—as long as Egbert followed up on the fine beginning he'd made in his first few months as king. All would, with time, be well.

  If only the cursed runes would cooperate, instead of giving him, each time he cast them, a disconcertingly vague possible change and possible danger.

  Ridiculous.

  But then Osmod heard what Egbert was saying, and came bolt upright:

  "An emissary from King Aedh of Eriu is on his way to Uintacaester. What Eriu might want from us . . ."

  But Osmod didn't bother listening to the rest of it. Eriu.

  Far-off, all but unknown Eriu. Possible change, he thought wearily. Possible danger.

  The runes, it seemed, hadn't been lying after all.

  Ardagh glanced about with quick Sidhe curiosity as he, his Eriu followers and his Saxon escort travelled along. A good, wide road, this, paved with large, worn cobblestones (old, his Sidhe senses told him, far older than these folk), though the occasional stretch of rough ground or holes told of fading maintenance. Small, neat farms lined the road to the left, interspaced with patches of forest not quite as dense as that of Eriu. A good deal of oak in that forest, wonderful, he'd learned, for the building of house or ship. And yes . . . even with all the human dwellings, there should be enough natural Power left to keep him healthy.

  The Itchen rushed its way to their right. It ran, according to his guide, up from Hamwic all the way to Uintacaester but, alas for swift travel, was far too shallow at most times of the year to support decent river traffic. As the party crossed the Itchen over a small stone bridge, Ardagh felt the same prickle of (older than these folk) and wondered, Relics of the . . . what did Aedh call them? The Romhanach—no, no, the Romans, that's what they called themselves. Long gone from these lands, but judging from what they left behind, they must have been master builders.

  Cadwal, riding beside him, was once again tense as a nervous cat. "Relax, man," Ardagh murmured. "These folk are only human."

  "They are Saesneg." It was a fierce mutter. "I may have sunk as low in honor as a warrior may, but I have never yet borne sword for one of their race. This land," he added in a soft, savage voice, "was ours once. They came, and came in greater numbers than we could withstand, driving us back till the only land we hold is my own Cymru and the narrow realm of Cernyw."

  "All that could hardly have happened in your lifetime."

  "No, of course not!" But then, before Ardagh could find anything safely noncommittal to say, Cadwal shrugged. "Old hatreds," he said with a visible attempt at self-control, "die slowly."

  The prince thought of Eirithan, the brother who had so gladly seen him cast into exile and who would hardly weep over his death. "If they die at all." It did not come out quite as emotionlessly as he would have liked. "But try not to let the past get in the way of the present."

  That earned him a glare. "I would not dishonor King Aedh."

  "Neither would I, Cadwal, neither would I." Ardagh added, with a sudden sly little sideways look, "At least the Saxons have done us some good." At Cadwal's startled glance, the prince added blandly, "They have you talking to me normally again, almost as though I hadn't turned into a demon."

  To his satisfaction, he saw the hardened mercenary actually blush. But then they came out of a last clump of forest into cleared farmland on all sides, and Ardagh straightened in the saddle. On the horizon sat a grey ridge that was far too regular to be natural. "Well now," he said. "That can only be Uintacaester. At last."

  "At last," Cadwal echoed, but so grimly that the prince winced.

  Don't fight me, Cadwal. I have difficulties enough already. Please, my prickly human friend, if friend you truly are, don't add to them.

  Encounters

  Chapter 11

  Ardagh glanced up at Uintacaester's sturdy stone walls and towers—the first true stonework that he'd seen in these lands—and frowned slightly. "Now those," he said to Cadwal without thinking, "were never built by these people, any more than was the road."

  The mercenary glanced at him in alarm. "How would you know that?"

  How, indeed? "The stones whisper of age," the prince said after a moment, "of other times and . . ." He saw the wary mask drop once more over Cadwal's face, and let the rest go unspoken. Human cautions, human fears . . . he was growing heartily weary of them. But of course saying anything like that would be further reminding the mercenary of who and what he was, so Ardagh contented himself with nothing more satisfying than a sigh.

  Ae, but look at this. The stone walls had led him to expect something more within their circuit than—wood. Just as with Hamwic, he was faced with a sea of wooden houses, one or two stories, most with thatched roofs, some topped with neat wooden shingles, all of them crowded in together as though just inviting a flame. If the city hadn't yet suffered a fire—but it already had, if what his uneasy Sidhe senses were telling him was accurate.

  Yes, and they rebuilt almost exactly as before. How very . . . human.

  But they had at least some sense: a great, wide street, paved with very worn but still serviceable cobblestones, ran arrow-straight east to west, bisecting the city. (Old, his Sidhe senses added once again, a Roman street, surely, old as the walls.) The current inhabitants might not have built it, but had at least been wise enough to keep the street in repair. It would act as a decent firebreak, as well as allowing traffic to travel through Uintacaester with relative ease.

  Relative, Ardagh repeated to himself. As his party rode along the old Roman road—High Street, his Saxon guide informed them—their horses' hooves clicking against the cobblestones, they were almost instantly swarmed by a noisy, curious crowd.

  Ardagh just barely kept his face from showing his sudden rush of panic, overwhelmed as he was by the smell of massed and not totally clean humanity, by the cold, burning feel of iron and the impact of a psychic storm of human emotions. Yes, and added to all this chaos were the mingled stinks of beast and smoke and garbage. Ardagh felt a shudder of sheer disgust shake him. Waste disposal would definitely be a problem in a close-packed city like this.

  I couldn't tell this to my dear, human Sorcha, but that never-ending pressure of humanity in Hamwic drove me nearly to distraction. At least there I knew it was a finite ordeal. Here, it's going to be far worse—

  No. Things were as they were. He was not a weak-minded human. He would adapt.

  Of course. No problem at all. Hah.

  All right. He'd already learned one way to adjust to the physical and psychic onslaught that was humanity, the never-ending waves of sound and sight and smell, and that was to analyze it as coolly as possible. Willing himself to calmness, Ardagh studied his audience as dispassionately as he could, forcing himself to see not a mass of noise and odor but a group of individual lives.

  Interesting. In a way. Almost everyone here seemed to be fair of hair and skin, as had been the population of Hamwic, and the prince fought back a self-conscious urge to touch his own black hair, wondering if there were any brunettes in this human Realm. The style of clothing here was predominantly the woolen tunic, worn knee-length over the leather-wrapped leggings for the men, ankle-length for the women; the more prosperous the person, Ardagh guessed, the more brightly dyed—and thereby more expensive—the clothing. Solid colors; no one seemed to go in for the cheerfully loud plaids he'd seen in Eriu.

  Phaugh, here was another problem with living pa
cked in together with poor sanitation and no magic: the easy spread of disease. Ardagh noticed a fair number of folks suffering from eye or skin disorders, and felt his stomach try to rebel.

  No. Stop that. Their misfortune, not yours.

  But what if there were some illness omnivorous enough to attack a Sidhe? There had been none in Fremainn, but then the people of Fremainn had been, for the most part, a healthy lot. The prince saw one young man with eyes nearly crusted shut, and felt a new shudder shake him.

  Idiot! he snapped at himself. Even if by some wild mischance there is some such illness that can affect you, you won't be here long enough to contract it!

  Powers willing.

  No. He was letting his self-control slip. Ardagh firmly turned his concentration back to studying the folk around him. The men were all clean-shaven, and . . .

  And their narrow faces (narrower, at any rate, than those of Eriu) gave him an uneasy little twinge: closer to his people's general shape of face, yet wrong so very disconcertingly human.

  Or is it just that I've grown so used to the folk of Eriu that I accept them as the norm?

  That wasn't such a comforting thought, either, and Ardagh deliberately thrust it from his mind. Being on horseback gave him the height to see over the sea of yellow hair; beyond, other streets branched off on either side of this one. A good deal of Uintacaester would appear to be divided into a grid. Another little touch of common sense: Fire would still be able to spread, but at least there would be some hope of keeping it from eating the entire city—barring destructive wind, of course—and some chance of safe evacuation.

  Not that this chattering crowd seemed to be at all worried about anything. Most of the men were watching him with the mix of awe and suspicion he'd seen often enough on the faces of Eriu's men; very well aware of the effect of Sidhe beauty on humans, he thought wryly that he could pick out husbands and fathers with daughters by the heightened wariness in their eyes.

  The women were more openly curious and—yes, no doubt about it in a good many of them—downright interested.

  Sorry, he told them silently. There will be no complications.

  But the people seemed to be demanding some sort of gesture. Ardagh waved a polite, regal hand and received a delighted cheer in return.

  And they don't even know who I am. No, no, they do know: novelty, that's what I represent, yes, and spectacle. How . . . nice.

  The breeze shifted slightly, bringing him a new wave of animalistic human odor. He was not looking forward to the close confines of a Saxon court!

  Ah well, one did what one must. And who knew? Odors aside, the visit might not be unbearably unpleasant. Some of the architecture was rather attractive, always a good sign, surely, as far as civilization was concerned. To his left, a great structure two or three streets back from High Street loomed over the lesser buildings in the foreground. He couldn't see too much of it from here, but its high roof and tower were quite elegantly peaked, and its wooden shingles glinted in the sunlight with what looked like gold but was more probably gilt. Without a doubt, a place of major importance in the city's life.

  Sure enough, his party made a left turn towards it, their horses' hoofs now crunching on gravel. Ardagh saw that the building was a great wooden rectangle and square tower, both set with elegant arched windows. It sat almost haughtily back from the others, and the prince wondered aloud, "The royal palace?"

  "The cathedral," he was told in a somewhat condescending tone. "There is the palace, just beyond it."

  Ah. The royal residence would be, the prince assumed, equally imposing, like Fremainn a complex of buildings rather than one palace—he assumed it because the whole thing was hidden almost completely by a high wooden palisade; little could be seen but the gabled roofs. Those, like that of the cathedral, were covered with shingles that glinted almost dazzlingly bright in the sunlight, as though the entire roof was worked of gold.

  They do like their gilding, don't they?

  "Forgive my ignorance," Ardagh said to the human who'd spoken, so mildly that the man flinched. "We are to be lodged there?"

  "Uh . . . yes, Your Highness."

  "Then by all means take us there."

  "At once, Your Highness."

  Egbert, once a hopeless exile, now King of Wessex, sat his throne in the great council hall with casual ease (an ease still, he admitted, a bit feigned), elbow on armrest, chin on fisted hand, and pretended to be deeply engrossed in what the Witan was debating. But try though he would, this discussion of wheat and corn that hadn't yet sprouted, yet alone been harvested, just was not interesting enough to keep his mind from wandering.

  This was what a good deal of a king's day entailed: coping with bureaucracy and the minutiae of a land's daily life. Growing up seeing a royal court firsthand as he had, Egbert had expected nothing more—but that didn't make the tedium any easier to endure. No, no, his mind insisted on making grand jumps into the future. It wasn't too early to set about finding himself some politically useful wife and start founding his dynasty. And as for what that dynasty would inherit . . .

  Egbert smiled ever so slightly, indulging himself in a quick vision of himself at the head of a conquering army, expanding Wessex's borders, engulfing Mercia and all the other Saxon realms, even—why not?—the lands of those quarrelsome Cymraeg. A united Britain, he thought. United under one rule: mine.

  Someday, he promised himself. Someday.

  Ah yes. When he was not still so very new to the throne. When proposing anything as dramatic as conquest wouldn't be looked at askance. When people had learned to trust him. If the years in exile had taught him anything besides how to hide in plain sight it had been patience. Time enough to worry about expansion when he'd won Witan and commons both totally to his will.

  A bright blue gaze caught his attention: Osmod, smiling almost conspiratorially, almost as though he'd caught the gist of his king's musings. Egbert found himself smiling back, then caught himself and fixed his face back into its severe royal lines. That was the way with Osmod: he could get almost anyone to like him. And there didn't seem to be anything but open approval on that pleasant face. There never was. Never the slightest reason to think the ealdorman was anything but thoroughly his.

  Osmod the ever-smiling Egbert thought. Osmod the ever-friendly. Osmod, the king added dryly, the highly ambitious. You didn't help me onto the throne out of pure altruism, my noble friend, we both know that.

  Nothing wrong with that; the man would be unnaturally saintly were it otherwise. Osmod would welcome expansion, no doubt about it—with himself playing a vital role.

  Oh, not on the battlefield. Our friendly ealdorman would never make a good warrior. But as an administrator, perhaps . . .

  Egbert shook his head fractionally. Osmod really was a likeable fellow, and he just might be as honest as his smiles implied. But he was also as cunning as he was pleasant. You didn't let such a one out of your sight, not if you didn't want him slipping his pleasant way into your role and pushing you into oblivion. Far better, come what may, to keep Osmod at his side as a counselor. A valuable man that way. Very valuable; Egbert admitted to himself how much he'd come to welcome the ealdorman's counsel. Having him here kept Osmod safe. In every respect.

  Don't, as the saying goes, disturb the sea till you're ready for the waves.

  Ach, yes, but waves there were, and not of his making. Out of nowhere had come the complication of King Aedh of Eriu. Barbaric land, that, Egbert mused, with its many regal subdivisions: a High King ruling over lesser kings. A situation that was just asking for civil war—barbaric, yes. Even if, he added honestly to himself, it had been Eriu's monks who'd spread the Faith to his own Saxon folk.

  But that had happened ages back. For year after year there'd been almost no news out of Eriu; the country had kept quite deliberately to itself. What could be bringing it out of isolation now? What could Aedh be about? Egbert realized with a shock that he knew a disconcertingly small amount about the man, next to nothing about th
e way he thought or plotted.

  I'll find out more, soon enough. It shouldn't be long before his ambassador arrives at court. And then . . . and then, I think, our Osmod shall earn his keep. If he can't charm the very heart and soul of that barbarian envoy, I shall be very surprised, indeed.

  "Hopefully," Ardagh murmured into his little amulet-half, "this house, which is one of the many buildings within the royal enclosure, is to be mine for the length of my (short, Powers grant) stay."

  "Amen," Sorcha murmured back. "What's it like?"

  Ardagh glanced about. "It's a rather simple wooden hall, with an equally simple separate sleeping chamber to be reached by an outer ladder, but the place smells of blessedly clean wood and herbs. It is, my love, far, far better than the cramped quarters we all had to share in Hamwic. However, I could do very nicely without the obsequious swarm of servants who seem to come with the hall and—here they come again. Till later, love!"

  At least, Ardagh mused, the servants had had courtesy enough to let him rest for a bit—and, though they didn't know it, speak with Sorcha—and remove the worst of the dust of travel (though, ae, how he missed the luxury of Fremainn's bathhouse!) before pouncing. The Saxon tunic that he was offered was dyed a deep, rich blue that, he had to admit, went very nicely with his fair skin and black hair and was of such a fine, soft woolen weave that it could only have come from the royal chests.

  A nice touch of courtesy, that.

  The leggings, once they were properly wrapped, fit no worse than those worn in Eriu. Ardagh, rather to the dismay of the servants, determinedly wrapped his brat about the whole thing (after, of course, those servants had frantically shaken the dust out of it); he was, after all, here as a representative of the High King of Eriu.