The anger boiling inside me grew stronger and I stormed out of the room, headed for the bright afternoon sunlight and spoiling for a fight with someone—anyone at all.
It was probably fortunate that I met no one during that angry journey from Merlyn’s quarters to my own, for my resentment continued to build, demanding an outlet. It was probably equally providential that when I arrived back at the accommodations assigned to us, neither Perceval nor Tristan were there and I could not even find young Bors, and that removed any possibility of venting my anger and unpleasantness on my uncomplaining friends. With no means of finding out where they had gone, however, the only options open to me were to remain in my quarters alone with my misery, or to go in search of them. I had paid little attention to the weather as I stalked from Merlyn’s place, but now that I was considering going out again, I had to acknowledge, albeit grumpily and with reluctance, that this was a perfect day on which to be walking and breathing deeply, savoring the scents of the world. It was one of those long, warm, late-summer afternoons that are so universally seductive and alluring, beguiling normally responsible people into neglecting and deserting their appointed tasks and wasting their time instead on frivolity and self-indulgence. At that moment, on that afternoon, having found no one on whom I could vent my anger, I was perfectly open to temptations of that kind, and in exactly the right frame of mind for them. I was in no mood to do anything constructive, aware that I would not be able to concentrate on anything except the questions that were threatening to drive me to distraction. Besides, I thought, if I went walking I might find someone, some stranger, I could provoke into a fight.
Bors had leaned my two quivers of throwing spears upright, as he always did, against the wall in one of the back corners of our quarters, and the long, needle-pointed metal heads gleamed dully in the afternoon light that filtered into the room. I caught sight of them as I moved to leave the room, and I hesitated there in the doorway for several moments, looking back at them and thinking that it had been far too long since I last practiced with them. The last time I had thrown one of them, in fact, had been that day at Saint Alban’s Shrine, when I watched the child Gwinnifer cast so surprisingly. The reminder of how quickly time had passed came as a shock, and shortly after that I found myself striding toward the stables, a small bundle of four spears tied with thongs and dangling behind my right shoulder.
I paid no visible heed to anyone, but I was aware of people noticing me and staring at the spears hanging from my shoulder as I passed by, for the weapons were extremely unusual and most of the people crowding the open spaces and narrow walkways I traversed were soldiers and warriors, trained and conditioned to notice and examine other people’s weaponry. No one made any comment, however, and I collected my horse and saddled it in silence, then mounted and made my way out of the gates.
Below me at the foot of Camulod’s hill, as was normal at this time of the year, the enormous drilling ground was almost completely obscured by the clouds of dust stirred up by the ceaseless movement of the riders training there. I avoided the place, purely because there were too many people there, and steered my horse well clear of the swirling dust clouds, angling it to my right, toward the woods that lined the outer edge of the approach road to the fortress. Once there, in the green-hued shade among the trees, I swung right again and began to ride around the base of Camulod’s hill, following a route I recalled from my first visit. About a mile back there, I knew, behind and below the hilltop fort, there was a gently sloping meadow, bisected by a wide, deep brook that was bridged by a trio of well-matched logs supporting a deck of heavy planking, and slightly downstream from the bridge there was a hole that was full of fine trout and was also deep enough to swim in. My intention, when I first set out from my quarters, was to go directly to the meadow, spend some time there practicing my throwing, both from horseback and afoot, and then perhaps to spear a fat trout and cook and eat it alone, since I had no idea what had happened to occupy my friends. To that end, I had gone first to the cookhouse, where I procured a loaf of fresh bread and a twist of salt before heading for the stables. But I was destined to fulfill none of my plans that afternoon.
The entire countryside was swarming with men—Arthur Pendragon’s victorious armies, freshly returned from their victory over Horsa’s Danes—and there was no avoiding them. I hoped at first to simply ride out the mass of them, passing beyond their presence into something at least approaching solitude, but it was not to be. There were simply too many of them, spread out too far, to permit anything close to privacy, and I realized that there was nothing I could do to change that.
As I penetrated deeper and deeper into the woodlands and drew farther and farther away from the fortress on the hilltop, my impatience continued to grow despite my awareness of the truth of things, and against all logic I found myself becoming increasingly resentful of the persistent presence of others around me. Most of them were men, but no army in history has ever failed to attract its share of women. There were enough camp followers scattered throughout these teeming throngs to keep everyone at a high pitch of excitement, for one reason and another. On three separate occasions I made my way toward spots that appeared to be deserted, only to find them occupied by lovers and even small groups of revelers in varying stages of undress and coupling.
There were other activities going on, too. In one spot, some enterprising soul had set up a game in which men threw horseshoes at a pair of iron spikes hammered into the ground some twenty paces apart from each other. They threw their horseshoes from one end of the playing space to the other and the object of the game appeared to be to land each one as close as was possible to the spike at the far end. I was unsurprised to see that, as usual among armies of any kind, large amounts of money were changing hands among the onlookers, based upon the play. Four men, playing in teams of two, each threw two shoes and when all eight had been thrown, the distances from the spike to those shoes that had landed closest to it were measured with extreme care and the closest throw was declared the winner and awarded points. Higher points were scored by anyone whose horseshoe ended up physically touching the spike, and even more were awarded for a shoe that was propped up and leaning against the spike, while the highest points of all were given to anyone who actually dropped a shoe cleanly over the spike, encircling it. Intrigued in spite of my foul humor, I watched the play for nigh on half an hour and saw only one man achieve that feat, to the uproarious delight of those who had bet on him.
In another spot, a clearing in the woods, a number of men were throwing knives and axes at a range of targets and from varying distances, and as I rode through, several of these fellows glowered at me with open suspicion, turning completely around to follow me with hostile, watchful eyes until I disappeared from their view. There was no gambling taking place there, that I could see, and it seemed to me that everyone involved was taking the entire exercise very seriously. I stared directly at one of the participants in passing, a tall, dark-haired fellow who looked as though he would be happy to fight any casual foe that life might throw at him, but he ignored my truculence completely, merely turning slowly to follow me with an unblinking gaze as sullen as my own.