Warlord 2 Enemy of God by Bernard Cornwell Read Free Book Online Page B

Gwenhwyvach and waste your life battering Saxon shields while the Christians connive to take Dumnonia. I leave the choice to you, Derfel. Now close your eyes.’
    I closed my eyes and dutifully kept them closed for a long time, but at last, when no more instructions were given, I opened them.
    The hilltop was empty. I had heard nothing, but Merlin, Nimue, the eight bones and the silver cup were all gone. Dawn showed in the east, the birds were loud in the trees and I had a clean-picked bone in my pouch.
    I walked downhill to the road beside the river, but in my head I saw the other road, the Dark Road that led to Diwrnach’s lair, and I was frightened.

We hunted boar that morning and Arthur deliberately sought my company as we walked out of Caer Sws. ‘You left early last night, Derfel,’ he greeted me.
    ‘My belly, Lord,’ I said. I did not want to tell him the truth, that I had been with Merlin, for then he would have suspected that I had not yet abandoned the Cauldron’s quest. It was better to lie. ‘I had a sour belly,’ I explained.
    He laughed. ‘I never know why we call them feasts,’ he said, ‘for they’re nothing but an excuse to drink.’ He paused to wait for Guinevere, who liked to hunt and who was dressed this morning in boots and leather trews that were strapped tight to her long legs. She hid her pregnancy beneath a leather jerkin over which she wore a green cloak. She had brought a brace of her beloved deerhounds and she handed me their leashes so that Arthur could carry her through the ford that lay beside the old fortress. Lancelot offered the same courtesy to Ceinwyn who cried out in evident delight as Lancelot swept her into his arms. Ceinwyn was also dressed in men’s clothes, but hers were not cut close and subtle like Guinevere’s. Ceinwyn had probably borrowed whatever hunting clothes her brother did not want and the baggy, over-long garments made her look boyish and young beside Guinevere’s sophisticated elegance. Neither woman carried a spear, but Bors, Lancelot’s cousin and his champion, carried a spare weapon in case Ceinwyn wanted to join a kill. Arthur had insisted that the pregnant Guinevere should not carry a spear. ‘You must take care today,’ he said as he restored her to her feet on the Severn’s southern bank.
    ‘You worry too much,’ she said, then took the hounds’ leashes from me and pushed a hand through her thick, springing red hair as she turned back to Ceinwyn. ‘Become pregnant,” she said, ‘and men think you’re made of glass.’ She fell into step beside Lancelot, Ceinwyn and Cuneglas, leaving Arthur to walk beside me towards the leafy valley where Cuneglas’s huntsmen had reported plenty of game. There might have been fifty of us hunters altogether, mostly warriors, though a handful of women had chosen to come and two score of servants brought up the rear. One of those servants sounded a horn to tell the huntsmen at the valley’s far end that it was time to drive the game down towards the river and we hunters hefted our long, heavy boar spears as we spread out into a line. It was a cold late summer’s day, cold enough to cloud our breath, but the rain had cleared and the sun shone on fallow fields laced with a morning mist. Arthur was in high spirits, revelling in the day’s beauty, his own youth and the prospect of a hunt. ‘One more feast,’ he said to me, ‘then you can go home and rest.’
    ‘One more feast?’ I asked dully, my mind fuddled with tiredness and from the lingering effects of whatever Merlin and Nimue had given me to drink on Dolforwyn’s peak. Arthur clapped my shoulder. ‘Lancelot’s betrothal, Derfel. Then back to Dumnonia. And to work!’
    He sounded delighted at the prospect and he enthusiastically told me his plans for the coming winter. There were four broken Roman bridges that he wanted rebuilt, then the kingdom’s stonemasons would be sent to finish the royal palace at Lindinis. Lindinis was the Roman town