There had been nothing there.
Sick with despair, he had sat up after a while, and pulling the duvet around his shoulders, huddled in the dark. It had been at least half an hour before he’d gotten up, groped for the sword under the bed, and found it zipped safe in the canvas cover Hawk had given him. Even then he hadn’t dared open the zip.
“Well, you can see why Cal doesn’t want us calling for him at the house.” Shadow smiled archly. “Think of the embarrassment of this thing shedding its hubcaps in such a respectable residential area. Think of what the neighbors would say!”
“Fine,” Cal muttered. “Make fun.”
Maybe she saw he was down, because she said gently, “I was only joking.”
It was true though. He always met them at the corner. After Shadow had come to the house that first time Trevor had said, “I don’t want her sort hanging round here,” in a voice that Cal hated. And yet he was a bit ashamed of them himself, the van with its painted sunflowers, their terrible clothes, the mess.
Shadow was watching him in the mirror. She said, “I know what they’re like. Parents. Do what we say. Be what we want you to be.” She looked away, so he saw for the first time the tiny tattooed spider that hung from the web down under her ear. “They just stifle you.” She sounded surprisingly bitter. Cal nodded, wondering what she’d say if she knew he’d love to be stifled like that, to have had anyone that even cared what he did.
To his relief the van turned onto the A48. It was so noisy that talking would be a waste of time. Cal watched the winter fields. Some were plowed, others had a few sheep huddled against the cold. All the woodlands had the same stark bareness; there were no birds, except that high above Wentwood a falcon swung. He frowned, thinking of the osprey. For three weeks he’d worked at the office and washed and ironed his clothes to perfection and tried to forget about Corbenic. And despite what he’d told his mother, despite all his promises, he hadn’t gone home. No money had been the first excuse, and yesterday he’d stopped her in midsentence and told her that Trevor had wanted him to work today, Saturday. It had been a lie. He just couldn’t face her. He couldn’t face the flat. He had only wanted to come here. He was one of the Company now, and they were teaching him. Every weekend and sometimes in the evenings Hawk practiced with him, and the moves of the sword, the dance and science of it, were coming to delight him. To his own astonishment, he loved it. He felt so much better. He was fitter; he was sure the muscles of his arms were stronger. And he just liked being with them all.
Turning off at Catsash, the van droned painfully up the long hill. Shadow giggled. “We’d be better off pushing.”
“Shut it.” Hawk leaned forward, as if he urged the van on. At the top they turned left, and went through the lanes at the top of the ridge, before swinging over and down to Caerleon, where the long red curve of the Usk curled round the sprawling village. Arthur’s place was just outside, down toward Llangibby. As the van pulled into the farm drive, mud from its tires spattered the lopsided gate with its chalked name. CELLI WIC FARM.
A gang of men and girls were shooting arrows at targets in the field; one of them came and opened the gate, leaning on it, and Cal saw it was the tall man, Kai.
“Well.” Kai smiled his acid smile. “Our new boy. How’s it going?”
“He’s coming on.” Hawk cursed as the engine cut out. In the sudden silence the slice and thud of the arrows, the shouts of the archers seemed unnaturally loud.
“But will he make it? There’s more to being here than knowing how to swing a sword.” The tall man looked at Cal narrowly. “We have to be careful.”
Hawk put both brawny arms on the wheel and said quietly, “He’s all right.”
Kai nodded. “Let’s hope so. We’ve had enough of traitors.”
“I’ll take responsibility for bringing him.”
“Like last time.”
Hawk started the van. “That was all a long time ago.”
Kai stepped back. “As you and I both know, Hawk of May, not long enough.”
The van rocked and plunged through the ruts.
“What’s his problem?” Cal said irritably. “Seems like he can’t stand the sight of me.”
Shadow shook her head. “It’s not that.”
“What does he think I’m going to do?”
Concentrating on getting the van out of the mud, Hawk said grimly, “We had a lot of trouble once with someone we trusted. He almost destroyed us.”
“How?” Cal asked. Shadow’s kick on his ankle came just too late.
“Ask someone else.” Hawk pulled up and cut the engine. He got out before Cal could say another word.
Cal looked at Shadow. “Are they really sane, these people?”
“That,” she said, swinging her boots out and splashing into the mud, “I really couldn’t say.”
It was some sort of game, though they’d call it a reenactment. They were Arthur’s Company, and they had each taken on one of the characters from the legends, and they lived it, as if they really were those people, as if they’d been alive for centuries, not in some cave asleep, but here, still living, still guarding the Island of Britain from its enemies. Sometimes he thought they really believed they were Arthur’s men. Sometimes he almost believed it, too.
He spent the first hour or so that day training with Osla. Osla was built like the side of a house; he could have picked Cal up in one hand, but his gentleness was amazing. Shadow said he kept tiny canaries flying free inside his broken-down van. Osla’s specialty was knife-work. He taught Cal how to defend himself, how to grab the assailant’s arm, what to do against strikes. He was patient and careful.
Once, breathless, Cal leaned on the fence and said, “What about attack? When do I learn that?”
Osla didn’t smile. “When I say. Arthur’s men don’t seek out quarrels. You have to learn about responsibility, Cal.”
They were a strange bunch. Most of them seemed to live in various cottages and dilapidated barns around the farm, or in a decaying collection of vans out under the trees in the bottom field. They were always coming and going, but he’d gotten to know some of them. There was Bedwyr, a quiet man with a stutter, and a girl called Anwas, who told everyone she could fly and who spent most of her time designing bizarre machines made of plywood and feathers; there was Drwst, who had an artificial hand so strong it could straighten a bent sword; and Moren and Siawn and Caradog, all relations of Arthur’s, and a poet called Taliesin and a bent ugly man called Morfran who had a brother Sandde, who they all called Angel-face because he looked like butter wouldn’t melt, though he told the filthiest jokes. There was a whole clan called the Sons of Caw, about a dozen of them, all with impenetrable Glaswegian accents and looking so alike Cal could never tell which one he was talking to. There was Owein, who had a pet lion cub, and Sgilti, a whippet of a boy who could run so fast Cal told him he should train for the Olympics. Sgilti roared, and the man next to him, sharpening a pile of rusted spears, laughed with him. This was Gwrhyr, who boasted he could tell what the animals were saying, and could speak any language. If you named one he would spout a barrage of foreign-sounding words. Cal had no idea if any of it was real.
They were scruffy and dirty and they laughed a lot. But he liked them. They were like no people he’d ever met. The girls were friendly; they didn’t make fun of him like the girls at home had always done. Their names were Olwen and Indeg and Esyllt, and they dressed as weirdly as Shadow, only in brighter colors. There must have been over a hundred Companions altogether, a loud, boasting, bickering tribe, who asked his name and nosed about his family and wound him up with dozens of crazy tales, how they’d once journeyed into Hell, how Gila could jump clear across Ireland in one go, how the old man Teithi had a magic knife and he could never get a handle to stay on it, and he was terrified that unless he did he’d dwindle away and die.