The primary horror, however, and the greatest cause for the fear and awe the monstrous being causes, is his cannibalism. He roasts the flesh of his victims and eats it, and he wears necklaces of human ears about his neck and shoulders. Everyone walks in terror of him, save for Ironhair, to whom the creature seems devoted: Our Druid friend came here seeking your assistance for the people of that land, and mistook me for you. He was greatly disappointed not to find you here and begged me to pass on this word to you, and to wish you well. His name is Tumac, and he says he knew you well, once, long ago.
Tumac! I released the bottom of the tightly rolled scroll, allowing it to spring back into place, rose to my feet and began pacing agitatedly. Tumac had been the second, and the younger, of the two students apprenticed to my old teacher Daffyd the Druid. They were mere children when I first knew them, and years younger than me. Long before I knew I had a brother called Ambrose, Tumac and Mod had been as dear to me as siblings. Daffyd had been viciously slain by this same Carthac for his loyalty to me, and Mod, the elder student of the two, had been speared and left for dead at the same time, vainly trying to assist and protect his tutor.
The unexpected sight of Tumac's name in this letter dispelled any "doubt I might have had about the truth of the report on Carthac's madness and atrocities. Cannibal and murderer by torture! Why had someone not put an end to him long before now? He was but a man, despite his fearsome reputation, and even a mad dog would be long since dead for lesser sins than those of which he stood accused.
I had no doubt his appalling ferocity might inspire terror in any individual man, but I remembered Dergyll's description of how, when Carthac's boyhood excesses had become too grim to suffer, his companions had banded together to get rid of him, abducting him by force and thrashing him savagely, then abandoning him high in the hills with dire Warnings of what would happen to him should he ever dare return to afflict them again. That had been effective in deterring him then. Perhaps his dementia had progressed too far in the interim to be checked, but I found myself wondering why someone had not simply killed him, from concealment, with a well-aimed arrow.
Deeply agitated by these thoughts, and shaken by the depths of the feelings of revulsion, anger and disgust they stirred in me, I forced myself to breathe deeply and made a determined attempt to empty my mind of Carthac and of Ironhair. I walked the length of the escarpment behind the rear gate several times, staring down at the carpet of tree tops far beneath and forcing myself to keep my mind empty of anything except what I could see with my eyes. Then, when my unruly thoughts had settled down and I felt calm enough to read again, I returned to the letter, settling myself again on the rock that had become my favoured seat. ,
Caius, I have no idea how these tidings will affect you, but I suspect you will be much disturbed by what you are reading here. If that is so, rest easy. Cornwall is as far from your new home as it is possible to go in west Britain, and Tumac says that · Ironhair's ambition is to rule as king in Cornwall. I see no reason to doubt the rightness of that, and it follows naturally that, as an upstart king, usurping power in Cornwall, Ironhair can pose no threat to you in Ravenglass, where no one knows your true identity. Nonetheless, forewarned is forearmed. Ironhair yet lives, and now we know where.
Otherwise, all is quiet here in Camulod. I have no word of how things are developing in Vortigern's domain. Optimist I may be, but I choose to accept the silence as confirmation that the king is well and Hengist still has power upon his son Horsa. Dergyll reigns on in Cambria, and he and I have met several times in the past few years. He is an amiable fellow and seems to rule his folk with benevolence and wisdom over and above his iron hand. He asked me to wish you well, wherever you might be.
Greetings, too, from Owain of the Caves, who continues to instruct our bowmen in the art of the great Celtic bow. He assumed responsibility, a few years ago, for two unwed sisters here in Camulod who had lost their only brother to the wasting sickness several years prior to that, and since then he has kept both of them pregnant and seemingly well content. He spoke warmly of you when last we met and asked me to pass on his good wishes when next I saw you. I was surprised that he should know anything of your whereabouts, or that you and I should be meeting each other, but then I realized that with the passage of so many of our people between here and Ravenglass, it would be impossible to keep the secret close. I treated his approach with circumspection, nevertheless, and made sure to betray nothing, even though he is an old friend of yours. He made no mention of our boy, so I believe his wishes may be taken at face value.
I hope you enjoyed the sight of Falvo, Benedict and Philip coming down the hill towards your gates. Ludmilla sends her love to all of you.
Be well. Ambrose.
Ambrose's comments on Owain of the Caves troubled me almost as much as his tidings of Ironhair and Carthac, and the fact that I should be troubled by such a seemingly insignificant thing increased my uneasiness. So to rid myself of the ridiculous sense of wrongness where no wrongness ought to be, I took great pains to think the entire thing through logically, seeking the non sequitur that must be there. I found the answer in what was perhaps the most innocuous line of the text: "I ... made sure to betray nothing, even though he is an old friend of yours ... "
The inconsistency was one of allusion rather than fact. Owain was one of a group of Uther's Celtic captains who had eventually made their way to Camulod after deciding they could no longer stay in Cambria with Uther dead. They had all been Uther's friends as well as followers, utterly loyal to him, and upon their return from the wars against Lot of Cornwall, mere weeks after Uther's death, they had found themselves, collectively, unable or unwilling to cast their lot so soon in favour of one or any of the contenders for Uther's vacant kingship. Unfortunately, each of the contending warlords had construed such neutrality to entail hostility, and the group had become personae non gratae in their own homeland.
After four of their number had been murdered individually by stealth, leaving only fourteen of them alive, they decided to come down out of the mountains and offer their allegiance to me, and I was glad to accept both it and them. They had been my companions and comrades in arms for years by that time, and that association breeds strong ties. But there was only one of them, Huw Strongarm, son of the bowyer Cymric who made the first longbow of yew, whom I would think of calling a real friend. Though Owain and I had marched and camped together, and had fought in several engagements together, and I knew that Uther trusted him as he did all the others, he had been one of Uther's men and no more than that to me. And yet, I thought, he might have harboured more friendly feelings for me, in the most casual way, just as I had held amity for bam without conscious volition.
I would tune dismissed the question then and thought no more of it, save that one matter had been plaguing me for years: someone had betrayed young Arthur's security to Peter Ironhair and smoothed the way for Ironhair's assassins to steal into Camulod and attempt the life of the boy. In that attack, which was undone only by Shelagh's quick thinking and her mastery of her deadly throwing- knives, Hector's wife had been violated and murdered and Arthur and the other children had barely escaped with their lives. Someone we knew, some trusted person within Camulod, had betrayed our trust and remained concealed. That knowledge had sown fear and suspicion among us, who had never known distrust prior to then, and had resulted in my flight—for it was nothing less—with the boy in tow, from Camulod to Mediobogdum.