"Bishop Enos. Has he passed this way, or sent word of any kind?' I saw their heads shake in unison. "And Arthur. What of him?" I had to fight to keep my face expressionless as I asked this, greatly fearing the answer I might receive.
"Arthur is here, " Benedict said. "Or he was, until today. He rode out with Ambrose. "
My heart leaped with relief. "How is the boy, is he well?'
"Better than well, " Falvo laughed. "And he's a boy no longer. He is a full Commander of Cavalry now, as big as you are, easily. Huge, he is, grown like a big, strong thistle, and beloved of his men. You will be proud of him, when next you see him. "
"Thank you for that, " I said, slumping in my seat from the intensity of my relief. 'Those are the finest tidings I could hear tonight. I have been terrified that something might have gone amiss with him. He was with Llewellyn, you know, when Horsa's Danes landed. "
Benedict nodded. "Aye, but they came straight to us when we arrived, and Arthur has been with us ever since. He is a sweet fighter, that lad. " '
"What happened to Llewellyn? Is he not here with Arthur?"
"He was, but he went back to be with Huw Strongarm. Will you have some more mead?"
I shook my head and rose to my feet. "No, I must leave now. I want to be far from hoe by morning, exacting Merlyn's Vengeance as usual. But before I go, I need more information. Where is Ironhair quartered, do we know? And where is Carthac? They seem to have no means of communication between their armies, save at the highest levels. Certainly none of the fools I meet have information on the whereabouts of their commanders."
Falvo stood and moved to the open flaps of the tent, his hands on his hips as he stared out into the darkness of the camp. "Ironhair is everywhere, according to reports. He never seems to stay in one place long enough for us to find out where he is. Rufio calls him the Man of Wind, since he passes like wind, and in the passing makes much noise and leaves a lingering unpleasantness..." He leaned forward and closed the flaps, shaking them loose from their ties, then turned back to me and moved to sit at the guard commander's table, where he tilted his chair back and crossed his feet on the table top.
"Carthac, on the other hand, is close by now. He has a well established camp, in a mountain valley eight miles from where we sit now, to the west. It's a natural fortress and we can't approach it—not with our horses. We have to wait until his animals come down to us. They have seven or eight ways in and out, but they all feed into three narrow approaches, higher up, and those are heavily manned and guarded at all times.
"His men think he is immortal and he has become a demigod of sorts, albeit a malign and twisted one. Every excess, every atrocity that you may name is his indulgence, and the creatures that he leads revere him for his lusts. They throng around him in hundreds, fanatical in their adulation of the imbecile. We cannot come near him—" He paused, abstracted, then continued. "And even if we could, I seriously wonder if we could kill him. He is... elemental. A terrifying, overwhelming presence. "
"Horse turds. He's a man, Falvo, and he must die. I intend to kill him, painfully and slowly. That is why I am here, doing what I do alone. But in order to kill him I must find him, and when I've found him I must come close by him. Once he is dead, your task will become much simpler. " I moved to leave, adjusting my hood about my face. "Please pass on my greetings to my brother... Merlyn... and tell him that. Tell him that Carthac's death is my prime task. " I smiled very slightly. 'Tell him I will do nothing to contradict his identity. Tell him, too, if you will, that I think of him daily, with love, as I do Arthur, and that I hope to meet them both again some day soon, when this is over. Farewell. "
Then the darkness swallowed me, and no one saw me leaving the encampment.
Six days later, in the first hour after dawn on a bright morning, I sat with my back pressed against the top of a high ridge, scanning another encampment, this one in the valley below me. I was enjoying the distant singing of a skylark as I listened to the sounds of the man who was clambering up behind me on the opposite side, towards the self same notch in the skyline that had attracted me the day before. Thinking himself alone, the newcomer made no attempt to cover his own noise; I had heard him long before, slipping and clattering as he climbed up a steep, dry stream bed. I had been on the top of the ridge since the previous evening, arriving there too late to run the risk of trying to descend in the darkness that was gathering by the time I had completed my examination of the site below.
Behind me, the newcomer reached the top and stopped, and I could hear his heavy breathing. He was a big man , heavy set and grey bearded. I waited, out of his sight, and suddenly saw the dipping flight of the skylark for the first time since it had started singing. Below me, a large and loose knit group of men entered the valley at its northern end and began to make their way to the encampment. Then I heard metal clink and a soft grunt as the man behind me raised himself cautiously to bring his head into the V-shaped notch in the ridge, where he could peer unseen into the valley below. He was less than an arm's length from where I sat.
"I had a dream about you last night," I said softly.
There came a grunt of startled fear and then a breathless moment of tense, motionless terror, followed by a great "whoosh" of breath and the sound of a body sagging against the ground.
"Merlyn, you demented whoreson! Is that you? Are you frying to kill me? What kind of sorcery is this?"
I bent sideways and offered Derek of Ravenglass my hand, then leaned backwards and heaved him into sight, pulling him belly downward through the narrow opening where he had crouched.
"Careful!" I warned. "It's steep, up here, but no one can see us. We're below the crest. There!"
He sat up, breathing heavily and digging in his heels to brace himself against the slope, then set about brushing the dust and tiny pebbles from his front. That done, he removed his helmet and wiped the sweat from his brow before scrubbing the helmet's leather rim with his sleeve. Only when he had replaced the helmet and mastered his breathing somewhat did he turn to me, blowing out a short, sharp breath through pursed lips.
"Falvo and Ben told us you had been into camp, but what in the name of Lud are you doing here?"
"I've been up here all night." I nodded towards the camp below. "Carthac's down there and I'm on my way to visit him, to end his miserable life. Didn't they tell you that, too? That's the reason I am here in Cambria. What are you doing here? You must have spent the night on the mountain, too. "
"I did, at the bottom of the last slope, there. " His eyes swept the valley from one end to the other. "I'm here to see what's down there. What's your fancy word for it? Reconnaissance?" I said nothing, and he was silent for a few moments. "Did you really dream of me last night?" he finally asked. I smiled and shook my head, and he relaxed visibly. "Thank the gods for that, then. It terrifies me to think you might dream of me, the way you dream. What happened to your hand?"
"What?" I had been unconsciously kneading my left hand with my right thumb, and now I glanced down to where the web between the thumb and the index finger had grown dead and grey. I stifled the instantaneous urge to snatch it away and hide it from his sight, and forced myself instead to flex the hand several times. "Oh, that, " I said. "I scalded it, last week. It's healing, but it still feels stiff and sore. "
Derek turned his eyes away, back to the valley. "It's not much of a camp, is it?"
"No, but it's effective enough for their purposes. It's sheltered, and it's safe. Nearly impregnable, in fact. "
He grunted. "What's that building?"
There was only one, a long, low construction probably built from the stones that lay everywhere down there, fallen from the cliffs above, "it's some kind of cattle shelter. Nothing else it could be, up here, is there? There's grass for grazing, but there can't be any soil down there to speak of. So it wouldn't be a house. Must be a byre. "