The Dragon Queen Read online

  Idonia had a moment to spare for Maeniel and Dugald. “Get the child,” she said. “She is more important than our lives. She is more important than anything.”

  Maeniel and Dugald prepared to charge the attackers, but Idonia lifted her hand and shouted, “Wait!”

  “Wait!” Dugald screamed. “Wait for what? In a moment they will have us.”

  “Wait,” Idonia commanded, her voice a whip crack.

  The attackers covered the wooden palisade, swarming the way a wolf pack does when the pursued deer finally loses its footing and goes down.

  Idonia turned and lifted both arms, and the wall burst into flames. The attackers jumped away, some of them on fire. Idonia’s people charged, carrying anything they could grab up in a hurry. One man dashed past Maeniel holding a spit with a bird on it. The whole palisade was aflame, a ring of fire around the Hall of the Hawk. Idonia’s people slaughtered the few attackers able to get past, but from beyond the walls arrows began to fall like a deadly rain. The defenders took cover as well as they could.

  “Help me,” Idonia screamed, and ran to a patch of turf in front of the hall’s main door. She began to roll the turf back like a thick carpet. Maeniel and the other men helped, and a second later he saw a grating set flush with the ground. Even before they got the turf clear, he could feel cold sea air rushing past him with the force of a gale, drawn by the heat of the blazing palisade.

  The flames gulped up the air rushing past them and leaped skyward with renewed force. The arrows, like flocks of birds caught in a firestorm, caught fire, tumbling harmlessly to earth. All but the dead ran from the heat of the burning wall.

  “Hurry,” Idonia shouted. “There is no time to waste.”

  She was still moving fast, followed by Maeniel, Dugald, and the rest. She uncovered three more tunnel entrances, one at each compass point. When they were all open, the fire began spreading to the bank and ditch below, so that the timbers bracing the earth at the palisade posts were burning.

  “Are you mad, woman?” Dugald shouted. “You will kill us all. We will be roasted alive here.”

  The fire burned white hot. Nothing could get past it. The arrows shot by the attackers outside simply vanished, whiffing away into flame as they reached the superheated air above the posts.

  “I’ve always said the worst old women are men,” Idonia said. “Fool, look at the roof of the hawk’s nest.”

  Dugald looked. It wasn’t the conventional thatch but turf that in the cool, wet climate of northern Britain would grow as well on a house top as on the ground. The low walls had wood in them but were reinforced by stone. The women in a disciplined fashion were already cooling the posts with buckets of water from the well.

  “Everyone knows what to do,” Idonia shouted. “And, Dugald, if you are worried about becoming overheated”—she pointed to one of the tunnels—“go stand in the breeze.”

  The raven who’d given the warning appeared just above their heads, swooped down, and landed on the grass near Maeniel. It let fly with a long series of hisses.

  “He sounds like a bag of snakes,” Dugald said. “Is it a real bird?”

  “Only too real,” Maeniel said, giving the raven a dark look. “And I told you so doesn’t sound any more pleasant coming from a bird than it does coming from a human.”

  “How did they get here?” Dugald asked.

  “Ships,” Maeniel answered, listening intently to the raven.

  “What kind of ships? Where did they come from?” Dugald asked rapidly.

  “It’s a bird,” Maeniel pointed out.

  The raven made a raucous sound, almost like a laugh, then made a wing-assisted jump to Maeniel’s shoulder. She pecked with her beak on Maeniel’s shirt, then made some more sounds. Maeniel translated.

  “She and her friends found a stranded skate about a mile down the beach. They were enjoying their dinner, the deceased fish, when the men landed, carried in by shallow-draft vessels at low tide. More of them than the feathers on her tail and both wings. That’s still not a lot,” he said to Idonia.

  Men were returning from the hall more conventionally armed now—mail shirts, boiled-leather armor, swords, spears, shields. One by one, they were climbing down into the tunnels.

  “They lead to sea caves nearby,” Idonia explained. “I imagine our uninvited dinner guests are waiting for the flames to die down so they can rush us. Won’t they be surprised when they find a gang of angry men behind them?”

  Maeniel ran out, as close to the flaming ramparts as he could, got one of the corpses by the leg, and dragged it into the shelter of the hall. It was only just recognizably human, but the equipment was familiar.

  “The legions are gone,” Dugald said, “but the memory lingers.”

  “Roman,” Idonia grunted.

  “Auxiliaries,” Maeniel said. “Saxons?”

  Dugald shrugged. “Saxon, Frank, Vandal—who knows? They come to serve the landowners, who have a taste for life as it was under the empire, and to snatch up anything they can get.”

  The raven swooped down from Maeniel’s shoulder and began to investigate the corpse’s arm.

  “Seems he has a taste for roast meat,” Idonia said and laughed.

  “Actually, it’s a her,” Maeniel said, and made a sharp sound in his own throat at the raven. She turned her back to him, flipped her tail feathers into a fan, and bent over.

  “That looks like—” Dugald began.

  “It is,” Maeniel told him.

  “Then leave her alone,” Dugald said. “This roast pig was no more than a scavenger himself come to try to pick the bones of my beloved Albion. Let him serve the same purpose now. At least he’s useful. You can’t say the same for most of them, not while they’re alive.”

  The hatred in his voice sent a chill down Maeniel’s spine.

  “They aren’t important,” Idonia said as a steady file of well-armed men descended into the tunnel. “I’ll wager most of them will be dead before dawn, but, Dugald, you must flee with the child. Whoever sent those men will send more. We are too few to ensure her safety, and she is important. I feel it. No, that is a weak word, feel. I know it. She must be protected. Flee to the north beyond the great glen where no Roman foot has ever trod.”

  “But, Idonia, I wanted her to be civilized, to know Roman ways even if she never decides to adopt them. Idonia, whatever we may think of them, they did wondrous things. Things that will never be forgotten, much less surpassed. Their books, poetry, music, magnificent sculpture—houses with marble and cedar, mosaic floors—smooth-surfaced roads a carriage just flies along. She needs to know, to understand, these things. She must be taught Greek so that she might dip into the great learning of that people and—”

  “Be as blinded by the folly as those fools who sent these murderers here to butcher my people and end her life before it has a chance to begin?” Idonia shouted. “Have you forgotten what they did to your order? The destruction of the sanctuary at Mona?”

  “They were pagans,” Dugald said piously. “Until we received Patrick’s word, we were all—”

  “You weary me,” Maeniel said. “We could have been killed and the child lost, but immediately when there is a lull in the battle, you fall into a dispute with each other—a great weakness among your people. Tell me, when they flee—and they will in the end—where will they go?”

  “Back to their ships, I suppose,” Idonia said.

  “Yes,” Maeniel said. “And when they do, I will be waiting for them.”

  The raven was feeding ravenously. Maeniel kicked the corpse. “Come on,” he said. “You will have all you want.”

  She flew up with a cry of outrage, cursing Maeniel in tolerable Third Raven.

  “Why don’t you learn Second Raven?” Maeniel said.

  “I’m not from there,” she said.

  THREE

  HE NEXT DAY THE WOLF MET DUGALD traveling through the wilderness alone. He held the child in his arms. Maeniel stopped, sat down in the middle of the trail wi
th his tail curled around him.

  Dugald paused, considering him, and then walked over to a flat lichen-covered rock nearby. He sat down. The child was asleep against his shoulder. He eased away part of his mantle, spread it on the stained stone, and placed the child tenderly on the fold of cloth. She did not awaken but continued to sleep quietly, thumb in her mouth.

  The sky was almost clear. The breeze was gentle. Far away, below a nearby cliff, both Dugald and the wolf could hear the sounds of the sea. He and Dugald could tell the tide was coming in simply from the sound it made when the waves struck the shingle and rocky outcrops on the shore, and they would both be able to tell when it was at its height and when it began at last to ebb.

  The wolf placed his forepaws on the rock, raised his head, and sniffed the child. Healthy, and though she was dressed as a boy with her hair cut raggedly short, she was female. The wolf could tell from the information his nose conveyed that one day she would be formidably female, a creature to be reckoned with. There were no telltale signs that would tell him she was somehow wrong, that there was hidden weakness that would carry her away before she attained her growth or stunt and cripple her before she could reach her full potential. No, this creature, given decent food, access to clothing and shelter, would be as vital at eighty as she was now. He knew these things, knew it in the same way he knew, when he tested a group of deer for weakness, which ones were vulnerable and just how vulnerable they were.

  He dropped back to the ground, loped away, and vanished into the patches of sweet heather, long grass, and scrub oak clothing the cliff. Dugald remained where he was, sitting beside the sleeping child.

  A few moments later, a man strode out of the brush, sat down beside Dugald, and began to do up his leggings. He wasn’t wearing a sword.

  “Idonia and I quarreled,” Dugald said. “A serious quarrel—she threw me out.”

  “Yes,” Maeniel said. “I know.”

  “That’s interesting,” Dugald said. “How do you know?” Maeniel gave him a long, slow look, a wolf look. “My nose tells me—among other things.”

  “Yes, of course. You can scent anger. Even dogs can do that.”

  “Don’t flaunt your ignorance or try to insult me. I don’t suffer fools gladly and insults irritate me.”

  Dugald colored. “I’m sorry. You took my remark amiss. I apologize.”

  “You aren’t sorry and don’t apologize. Do you know what I find most annoying about your order?”

  “What?” Dugald snapped.

  “Your presumption of superior knowledge. The idea you have firmly lodged in your skulls that the rest of mankind are a mass of beasts only waiting with openmouthed awe for your superior knowledge to direct their lives. In that, you are like those Romans you so much admire. You both walk in an absolute certainty of your right to rule, to enslave, to exploit all those others you see as beneath you.”

  Dugald’s cheeks burned. He felt fury rising in his heart. He reached down to snatch up the child and leave.

  “No,” Maeniel said, catching his forearm in an iron grip. “You will remain here and so will I—and we will discuss your plans for this child between ourselves—because I have known Idonia for a long time and she says this child is important and I believe her. You called me by placing the child at my den, by threatening my wolf sons. Well, I am here and won’t and don’t care to leave quietly, druid. I thought here in this wild sanctuary I had escaped the troubles of the world, but I can see, and in fact saw when I met Idonia, that I hadn’t. So, I am moved to become part again of the human struggle. It would seem since I conceived an affection for Idonia and her husband, Malcolm, I must.”

  Then he released Dugald’s arm.

  Dugald made the sign of the cross and let out a ragged sigh of relief. “It seems it doesn’t do to underestimate you.”

  “The converse is also true,” Maeniel said. “Please, put up that nasty little knife in your left hand. I assume it’s the one you killed the Saxon with.”

  Dugald looked down at his hand. “Oh, sorry. I wasn’t aware I was still holding it.” The knife vanished somewhere into his clothing. “I’d prefer you didn’t use that name.”

  “What?”

  “ ‘Druid,’ and don’t play at pretense with me. We don’t call ourselves that any longer. Not since Patrick came to Ireland bearing Christ’s message.”

  “Yes. Now you’re just Christian monks.” Maeniel grinned.

  “Yes.”

  “Very powerful Christian monks, but holy men all the same.”

  “Yes. One bearing the word of God is very powerful indeed.”

  “You stole the child.”

  Dugald’s eyes darted in every direction, but he would not meet Maeniel’s gaze.

  “You stole the child and have fallen out with your master, Merlin. It is he who hunts you.”

  “Yes and no and yes and yes.”

  “And that adds up to …?”

  “Merlin took the boy. He will be king. But the girl’s mother sent for me. She is of Bodiccia’s line, the great warrior queen of the Iceni. She will not abide the Roman way. Until not so many years ago, she rode armed and led her men in battle. But the girl was an unexpected child of her middle age, and she would not yield her up to Merlin to be brought up to be a proper wife to the son of Uther Pendragon.

  “Because this is what Merlin wants. It is his wish and that of the faction of priests he leads to unite the great British lords and the Saxon warriors that dominate their defenses against the Picts, Irish, and the tribes beyond the wall and across the water. Turn their faces away from the old ways and toward Rome. He says it has worked with the barbarians on the continent and will work here. I disagreed.”

  “And why would you not face him down openly?” Maeniel asked.

  Dugald laughed. The child lying next to him stirred. Above their heads the high overcast was growing thicker, hazing the sun’s eye. The wind was chilly.

  “The stone is cold,” Dugald said.

  The baby was lying on most of Dugald’s mantle. Maeniel contributed some of his own to cover her.

  “When Patrick of beloved memory came to Ireland to bring us the word of Christ, Patrick’s opponent, the king of Connacht, died. He fell, so the story goes, from a high place. There are wheels within wheels, rules about the formation of rules, and laws about other laws,” Dugald said.

  “And?”

  “You have accused me of arrogance,” Dugald said. “Well, I am. We are. But there are reasons. For our order to function at all, there must be unanimity among us on certain important matters. The loser in such a debate must perish and take his faction with him.”

  “Patrick won, Christ and the word of Christ was accepted, the loser was thrown from a high place?” the wolf asked.

  Dugald turned his face away from the wolf into the wind. High up, a hawk cried out to its mate, a fierce rasp telling him she was in the hunt.

  “Not thrown,” he replied. “Oh no, not thrown. No one would lay hands on such a man. The blood guilt would drown the assassin. But the loser knows what to do—what will and must become of him.”

  “How do you know?” Maeniel asked. “You can’t have been there.”

  Dugald looked bleak. “Was I not? Was I not indeed?”

  Maeniel felt his skin crawl slightly. He knew these men undertook studies that involved a return to former lives. He wondered if he was in the presence of such a man. “I see.”

  “No,” Dugald replied. “No, you can’t. Not until you have made such a journey. But to continue, I found myself in this position vis-à-vis Merlin.”

  “I imagine the person in such a situation might find himself very lonely, since the loser must take those of his opinion with him. Not many would wish to share it.”

  “Not any.” Dugald nodded.

  “So, you find yourself here, alone with a stolen child, pursued not only by Saxons but also by the powerful head of your order.”

  “You’ve a nice turn of phrase, my friend. Yes, he sees her
as the mother of misfortune, disaster waiting to happen, her birth from Bodiccia’s line. She is most royal but, like the tragic queen’s line, most unlucky, most doomed. So, if I perish, she will die with me. I cannot turn back now because her mother was the first sacrifice that she might live. A great lady, who died trusting me.”

  “I will offer you what help I can,” the wolf said. “Come with me. Stay at our home. My gray lady has milk to spare.”

  He never knew what Dugald might have answered because at that moment the warriors appeared all around them. The leader, a grinning blond youngster, was holding the point of a sword to Maeniel’s throat.

  “A fair child,” the youth said. “And which of you is her mother?”

  Maeniel smiled. “That would be me.”

  The young man grinned back. “Surprising that you would own yourself not a man.” He drew the sword back slightly, and Maeniel could read the thrust in his eyes. The young warrior moved forward. The sword should have entered Maeniel’s throat, but he wasn’t there. A second later, Maeniel came up, the youngster’s long, blond hair in his fist and his opponent’s sword in his hand, holding it to his throat.

  Dugald had snatched up the child and was watching with anxious eyes.

  “Back off, the lot of you,” Maeniel said, “or I will hand you your leader’s head.”

  “Fools,” the blond man said. “You have your orders. Kill him.”

  Maeniel jerked his head back and the sword in his hand bit into the man’s neck. Blood ran down his opponent’s throat and stained his white shirt red. “Stay where you are,” Maeniel said.

  A darker young man with a strong family resemblance to the man Maeniel was threatening shouted, “Dugald, you refused the jump so we are here to see you ride the wind. Call off your hound.”

  “Hound, indeed,” Dugald yelled. “He is the hound of Cullain and was as my hound is—a great hero.”

  Maeniel smacked his captive on the side of the head with his own sword. His captive’s eyes rolled back in his head, and Maeniel released his hair and let the war leader fall at his feet.

  The dark-haired man charged him without hesitation. Maeniel didn’t parry his sword strike. A really fast man doesn’t have to; he simply wasn’t there when the stroke landed and sparks flew from the rock as the sword’s edge cried out against it.