“Come now, fellow, how offensive need you be? Who are you and where have you come from?”
I saw two of his companions move their heads to look at him. The others kept their eyes on me. I merely shrugged my shoulders, answering him calmly but ignoring the matter of my name.
“I had no thought of being offensive. I am merely passing through.”
“Well, pass through at some other place, you inconsiderate lout. Can you not see that you are disturbing our leisure, trespassing upon our goodwill?”
Listening to his words I felt all apprehension drain away from me, to be replaced by the familiar tingling of prefight tension. I had been waiting for one of them to speak to me, to say something that would allow me to form a judgment, and this man’s words, offensive as his tone might be, had the double effect of removing my uncertainty and committing me to a course of action. I had been looking for a fight since the moment I left Merlyn’s quarters, but I had no intention of getting myself killed and thus had been looking for a safe fight, an outlet for my frustration. I knew now that I had found what I was seeking.
None of these people facing me bore me genuine ill will. Had it been otherwise they would not have spoken at all, outnumbering me as heavily as they did. They would simply have acted, and I would be dead or unconscious. But now I knew that what I was facing here was a modified form of the same kind of pride in belonging that I had been watching among the common soldiers. These young men were all officers, all leaders, sharing and enjoying one another’s strength and companionship in a place of safety. My presence among them, as an unexpected newcomer of their own stature, afforded them an opportunity for sport, at no cost, and I was sure they would not consider swarming me. The test of strength that was shaping up here would be single combat, one against one.
I glanced over to where discarded armor was piled neatly on a patch of close-cropped turf on the riverbank. Heavy spears had been arranged in two pyramids, and pieces of armor and weaponry—helmets, cuirasses, greaves, and a number of swords and axes—had been propped against them when their owners had stripped down to their tunics to rest and enjoy the sun. Now I looked back to my challenger, staring at him with one eyebrow raised in wry amusement that I hoped would provoke him.
“Goodwill, say you? You lay claim to goodwill, behaving this way, accosting and harrying passing strangers? You and I obviously come from different places, with different definitions of goodwill.”
His eyes widened in surprise and then he drew himself up, nodding his head in agreement. “Aye, we do. Different places indeed, and I can hear the country clodhopper in your voice. Where, in God’s name, did you learn to speak Latin like that?”
Again I shrugged, refusing to rise to his baiting. “In a place far removed from here, a place where anyone as surly and ungracious as you appear to be would be tied and left outside on a cold night, to feed the wolves.”
He blinked, clearly not having expected that, but he rallied quickly enough. “You are in Camulod now, fellow. We mislike foul-tongued Outlanders here. You should be praying to whatever gods you own to help you out of here in one whole piece.”
“I have a God, Master Mouth—the one, true God, as much yours as mine—and I had been thanking Him for leading me to this fair Camulod, until this place and this meeting. Now, having found that you are here, too, the awareness of your presence kills my appetite for the place.”
I saw his face flush at that and knew that I had penetrated his defenses, and when he spoke again his voice was heavy with truculence. “Ride away, little man. I’ve told you once already and will not do so again. Ride back to where you came from, or find another path across the stream, it matters naught to me. But you will not cross here, and if you move to try it, we’ll have you down off that pretty horse before you can put spurs to him. I asked you who you are and you have not yet answered me.”
I sat my horse, staring down at him and nibbling at my upper lip, and he and all his companions stood gazing up at me in silence, awaiting my response. The fellow who had spoken was, I guessed, close to me in age, perhaps a year or two my senior but no more that that. He was tall, too, but no taller than I was, and he lacked my breadth of shoulders. Had I been offered my pick of them to fight, he was the one I would have chosen instinctively, perhaps because he was so fair of face that I suspected he might take care to avoid disfigurement in any fight that was less than deadly serious. In making that judgment, I confess freely, I based my assessment purely upon a suspected vanity for which I had no evidence other than what my own senses told me. This man, I felt, would not be inclined to endanger his comely face in a casual bout of arms, and yet I had no doubt at all that he would be formidable and completely unaware of physical risks to his beauty when the die was cast and real fighting broke out.
I could almost feel the tension in the air as everyone waited to see how I would respond to this last insult, but I merely bowed my head very slightly and answered him again in tones of mild civility.
“Nor will I answer you, asked thus. My name is my own and I have no intention of divulging it to a nameless brigand on the road simply because he has a posy of pretty blossoms as sweet as he is to back him up in his prancing and posturing.” I watched their uniform reaction of amazed disbelief as my words registered in their minds and I continued before any of them could find his voice.
“As to where I have come from, you know that already, or you should, had you a brain with which to think and take note.” I pointed backward over my shoulder, then flipped my hand forward to point toward the far side of the stream. “I came from back there, I’m going over there, and you are in my way. Now stand aside and let me pass.”
My challenger smiled now and his entire face was transformed into radiance, but he shook his head slowly from side to side. “No,” he said, “I feel no overwhelming need to move aside; no urgency. I fear you may have to bludgeon your way past me—unless, of course, you would prefer to lead your horse across, farther downstream.”
“Bludgeon my way? Against all seven of you?”
“Why not? These are our lands and you do not belong in them. Do you mislike the odds?”
“That depends upon how you intend to fight me, fellow—to the death, with you afoot and me mounted, then so be it. I’ll kill all seven of you, using these.” I reached back and touched the bundle of spears that hung behind my shoulder.
My tormentor laughed. “You have only four of them and there are nine of us, not seven.”
I had forgotten the other two men I had seen earlier, and that made me angry at myself, but before I could respond in any way a voice spoke from my right, where the two from the riverbank had approached me unseen and, even worse, unsuspected.
“That’s enough, Bedwyr. Let the man go on his way.”
The man called Bedwyr swung his head to face the newcomer, his face registering astonishment and protest. “But, Magister, we can’t let him ride by without a toll of some kind.”
“Of course you can. Besides, I think he might have the advantage between the two of you.”
Bedwyr’s expression changed from protest to outrage. “What advantage, Magister, other than the horse? If he fights me on foot, face-to-face, I’ll crush him.”
I turned my head to look at the man they called “Magister,” the title of respect by which, as a student, I had addressed Tiberias Cato and my other teachers and which meant, in my understanding, a person who was teacher and patron combined. Here in Britain, however, to these young men, it clearly had another, additional connotation, one that denoted respect, clearly, but also entailed a deference and a recognition of authority. To my complete astonishment, I saw that he appeared to be no older than the man Bedwyr, but he was huge, and although he wore no signs of rank or any other rating, his physical presence stamped him unmistakably as a leader.