If the lad is to rule, in Camulod or Cambria or Cornwall, he must learn to be a king—a warrior and a leader, greater than a Vortigern and free of such errors as Vortigern has made—and I believe he will not learn such things stuck here in isolation. To learn, he needs examples—of the weaknesses of men as much as of their strengths—and to find those he must look abroad, in the world of men, where ambition and greed and ruthlessness and petty, thieving treachery are daily things, exposed and shown for what they are by nobility and honour and integrity. Only by seeing such things will he learn how to deal with them and rise above them. I learned them by riding on patrols with Uther, keeping the peace in Camulod and dealing with the people beyond our domain. You learned them by riding to war with your guardian uncle, in Lindum, and with Vortigern, keeping the peace and guarding your king's affairs. Arthur may learn the theories behind such things up here, but he will lack the practical aspect of training. We have no venal traitors in our little group—no monsters like Lot of Cornwall or the demented, deformed Carthac. We lack even a Peter Ironhair."
"I think you are overwrought, Cay." The level tone of Ambrose's voice brought home to me the stridency that had been present in my own. "I can see clearly why you are so concerned. This is a lonely life you lead, up here, and I have no doubt its shortcomings loom more starkly in the winter months, but I think you are worrying unnecessarily. Arthur will come home eventually to Camulod, as planned, when he and his friends are old enough to ride with our troopers. That has already been discussed and agreed upon, and should take place within the next three or four years—perhaps even sooner if the lad continues to shoot up the way he's going. In the meantime, our concern must be to keep him safe, to provide him with a stable, wholesome home, and to teach him all he is capable of learning. Although after what he taught us both a few nights ago, it might be more accurate to say we should teach him all that we are capable of teaching, for I suspect he'll learn much more than that, eventually.
"Here in these mountains you can teach him to fight like a warrior, on horseback and on foot, and to live like a man, in self-sufficiency. You can teach him the lessons learned and taught to you by those who learned them years before young Arthur's father saw the light of day. You can give him enlightenment: the power to read and write, both of them sadly lacking in this land today. The people with whom you have surrounded him are the best teachers he could have, and the boy is highly gifted. He will waste nothing, learning from such as these. So let him learn from them, but expose him to other sources, too.
"Think about taking him away, to Gaul, to spend some time with your friend Bishop Germanus, and let him see how others live in other climes. Maybe take him to Eire, where there are no roads, and to the northern islands his grandfather holds, and let him see how primitive life is in such remote and hostile places. You could take him abroad in Britain, too ... not to Cambria or to Cornwall, or even to Camulod, yet. But across the brow of the country, following the Roman roads you spoke of, to Vortigern for a certainty, I should think, providing the king's peace lasts there, in the north-east. Why not? The boy has no enemies there, nor do you, and Vortigern is kindly disposed to you, as is Hengist. Remember, you are no longer Merlyn of Camulod; you'll travel as a common traveller, in company with others and a boy or two, perhaps even four. You'll both be better for it. His Uncle Connor would be happy to escort you anywhere by sea, even to Gaul, I would imagine."
Listening, I heard the truth and wisdom of my brother's counsel, and sat straighter in my saddle, the cares caused by my thoughts on this over the past months falling away like leaves in autumn. I nodded my thanks wordlessly, and he returned my nod and kicked his horse forward again, towards the woods that loomed a short distance ahead. From then on, we rode in silence, appreciating the beauty of the day and little considering how the Fates themselves would dictate the tempo of Arthur's progress and education.
Not everyone in the hillside forest clearing to which we eventually came was sawing wood. Long before we reached the spot, we could hear the rapid and unmistakable sound of practice swords hammering at each other with the solid, ringing, concussive authority that bespoke a number of mature men belabouring each other mightily. It soon became clear, however, that others were working. Now we could hear the hollow-sounding thock of hard- swung axes and, farther off, the asthmatic rasping of saw blades chewing at green wood.
When we emerged from the woods, we saw that Dedalus and Rufio were the two swordsmen, as I had known they would be, simply from the rattling rhythm of their "blades." Behind them, almost beyond our sight, I could see Mark, our master carpenter, whose skills and knowledge placed him in command of this work group. A team of four harnessed horses was pulling and straining on his right under the urging of one of Derek's men, while the burden with which they were struggling lay somewhere beyond my sight. The man handling the horses turned slightly towards us, and I was surprised to recognize him as Longinus, Derek's artillery commander, who evidently worked as a teamster when not called upon to practise his skills with heavy weaponry.
Off to my left, along the bottom of the slope on which we sat, I could see Joseph and Hector, smith and farmer, working together as a team, driving their axe heads with perfect, flawless rhythm into the solid heartwood of a great oak tree. Lars and Jonathan would be somewhere close by, I knew, working in or around the saw-pit, with a handful of other men, some of them new arrivals, others brought in this morning from Ravenglass to aid with this task of felling and dressing enough trees to keep us supplied with strong, well-seasoned lumber for the next few years.
Dedalus and Rufio had not seen us arrive, so total was their concentration on what they were doing. A moment's carelessness in their pastime could bring great pain. The thick ash dowels from which the wooden practice swords were made were as heavy and unyielding as iron, and both men were wearing only light leather armour. A rap with a hard-swung dowel on an exposed arm could break a bone, so both men were rapt in what they were about. Ambrose sat staring at them in amazement, for there was something here he had never seen before, something completely new that had emerged during the winter past. Neither Dedalus nor Rufio held a shield; instead, each held an ash practice sword in either hand. The swinging, swaying play of the "blades," underlined by the brilliant, rhythmical clattering as they glanced off each other—four sounds instead of two—turned what the two men were doing into an elaborate, bedazzling ritual-like dance.
Dedalus had begun this thing, two summers earlier. He had always been equally gifted with both hands, to the confusion, envy and disgust of his friends, enemies and competitors. After seeing and admiring the dazzling skills of an itinerant juggler in Camulod several years before, Dedalus had developed a game he played by himself, revelling in his mastery of the skills of hand and eye coordination it required. He would control a third sword with the blades of two others, holding it between them and juggling it astoundingly, sending it into great leaps and spinning bounds, throwing it high in the air, spinning end over end, to fall back and be recaptured by the other blades.
Rufio had been impressed, at first, then cynical. But then, never one to lie back and allow another to win all the laurels, he had eventually begun to practise the same game on his own, in secret, until he had become almost as adept at it as was Dedalus. At that point he stepped forward and issued a challenge to Ded. No one could guess how long or how hard Rufio had been working to acquire his skills, but his progress had been astounding. The contest between the two men for championship status was long, close, hard fought and never settled. Many wagers had been won and lost by the time the contest had moved on to its next stage.