Morgana remained seated, having made her own decisions about Galwyddel and Ynys Manaw, and simply held her young sons close. Brenna watched in silence, torn by conflicting emotions as the Britons prepared for war.
Chapter Eleven
The first report of disaster came before Ancelotis' manservant, Gilroy, had even finished packing for the journey back to Gododdin. Stirling, helplessly along for the ride in the unfolding political and military affairs of Britain, jerked around in startled surprise when a great bronze bell began to toll a clangorous alarm. An armed soldier appeared at the entrance to the council hall, moving at a dead run and escorting a boy of no more than thirteen, a runner who staggered with every stride. Mud plastered his clothes and ran in rivulets from sweat-soaked hair. "Attack," the lad gasped out, "attack by raiders near Long Meg and Her Daughters! They've burnt every farm within five miles of the standing stones!"
"The heart of Penrith!" King Meirchion snarled. "We should have hanged that Saxon bastard from the nearest oak! More's the pity you didn't cut his throat, Ancelotis, when you had him at your mercy, and host laws be damned. The Saxons certainly don't abide by them." He strode away, bellowing orders as the alarm bell continued to send its warning reverberating through the late afternoon air, the sound dropping through the open ceiling above the hearth like hailstones.
Artorius met and held Ancelotis' gaze. "I must stay here and prepare the campaign in the south. Meirchion could use your judgement and skill."
Stirling most emphatically did not want to leave Artorius unguarded, convinced as he was that the Dux Bellorum was the IRA's main target, but he didn't have much choice, since Ancelotis agreed at once.
"Aye," his host nodded, "I'll send riders to Gododdin to spread the word, to strengthen the forts and raise an army to send south. I'll take most of the cataphracti who rode with me from Gododdin and try to catch that Saxon bastard before he does more damage. Meirchion was right. I should have killed him."
Within minutes, Stirling found himself in the saddle once more, shouting orders to the narrow-lipped Sarmatian cavalrymen who had ridden with him from Caer-Iudeu. The combined cataphracti of Gododdin, Strathclyde, and Rheged thundered through the great fortress gates and left Carlisle behind in a sea of churned-up mud flung on house walls by nearly three hundred heavily armored horses. Stirling couldn't help the thrill of adrenaline through his veins, caught up as he was in the glittering midst of sun-struck armor, helmets, and spearpoints.
They followed the Roman highway south toward Penrith, a town deep in the heart of Cumbria, which Stirling had driven through on many a holiday. The Cumbrian mountains rose as a massive barrier to the west, lifting their craggy heads from the lowlands around Carlisle and marching straight south through the Lake District. It was less than twenty miles to Penrith from Caerleul's sandstone walls. At a gallop for much of the way, they covered the distance in just a few hours.
Smoke and ruin rose on every side as they neared Penrith. Farms lay scorched, with wildfires still spreading beyond villages that were nothing but smoking rubble. Livestock—cattle, goats, sheep, horses, and barnyard fowl—lay slaughtered in every direction while carrion crows flocked in such numbers, the sky blackened when they took wing, deafening the armored column with their raucous protests. Far worse than the livestock were the other bodies lying twisted in the late-slanting sunlight. Farmers cut down with cane knives or spears in their hands, women butchered in their kitchen gardens, skirts disarranged in violation inflicted before the killing blow. Children, rosy-cheeked boys and fair-skinned girls with their hair in long braids, had been hacked to pieces, gobbets of flesh scattered in ghastly splashes of blood.
The deeper they rode into the zone of devastation, the harder Stirling ground his teeth over rage. The Saxons, like the Vikings who would sweep down from the north in later centuries, were not averse to using the blood eagle, where a victim's rib cage was hacked open and his lungs yanked out across his back like hideous wings. Rage swept the length of the cataphracti's column. Everywhere the stench of blood and death permeated the air, thick with coppery blood, sickly sweet. The only sound was the massive clatter of horses' hooves on the stone road and the calls of the crows, interrupted in their grisly feast.
The village of Penrith still smouldered, embers flaring beneath the top layer of white ash, adding to the general stench a sickening smell of cooked flesh. At the head of the column, King Meirchion halted his horse and sat staring at the destruction for long moments, jaw muscles working and fingers knotted around his reins. Ancelotis joined him.
"You know the land better than I," Ancelotis murmured. "Where will the bastard strike next?"
Meirchion spat to one side, as though trying to spit out the taste of death itself. "He may follow the Roman road south out of Penrith, but I suspect not, as he's fired every farmhold between here and the great stone circle on the River Eden. If he cuts east between Long Meg and the Caldron Snow rapids, he could strike as far north as Wall's End, then follow the coast south to Sussex. If he fired the villages near Long Meg first, destroying Penrith last, he may have ridden south already, toward Merecambe Bay and the road that drives through south Rheged, into the Pennines, and south through Calchrynned and Caer-Lundein to Sussex."
Stirling superimposed Ancelotis' knowledge of the region and the oxhide map of the great council over his own mental map of England. "Whichever route he takes, he'll have to move fast, for he knows the cataphracti will ride hard to catch him. The borders of Wessex are closer than those of Sussex and Creoda rides with him. He could also reach Dewyr, south of Ebrauc, which would give him a Saxon haven far closer at hand and ships to return south without risking the long ride through Briton-held territory."
"We must split our forces then," Meirchion decided. "I'll take my own cavalry south, following the possible route through south Rheged. Take your own cataphracti and Strathclyde's to the east, toward Long Meg and Her Daughters. If he's raiding in that direction, you'll find evidence of it soon enough. If it's Dewyr he's heading toward, you'll have a hellish ride trying to catch him up."
On that point, both Stirling and Ancelotis agreed.
The column split, with Meirchion heading south out of the smouldering ruins of Penrith and Ancelotis riding hard east, with young Clinoch leading the men of Strathclyde behind him. Cutha and Creoda had clearly passed this way, for Ancelotis' path followed a swath of devastation sickening in its barbarity. It was nearly nightfall before they reached the headwaters of the Eden and the great standing stones of the megalithic circle known as Long Meg and Her Daughters. Smoke hung on the air, turning the sunset at their backs a lurid, blood-smeared red. The immense stones stood eerie watch above the countryside, with its squabbling, black-winged clouds of scavenging crows rising in drifts like charcoal mist in the long, slanting light. In the distance, they could hear the roar of water as the Eden gathered herself to tumble her way to the sea and the Caldron Snow rapids in the other direction snarled their way toward the lowlands of the south.
Beyond the sound of falling water, dark against the smudge of approaching night on the far horizon, smoke bellied up into the evening, clear evidence that Cutha was, indeed, riding east for Dewyr as hard as he could push his horses. The villages and farmholds in his path would have no warning before death burst in amongst them. Stirling ground his molars over the deepest and most savage anger he had ever felt in his life. Desperate as he was not to alter history, he could not witness such butchery and not hate the man responsible with a cold and knife-edged passion. Stirling found it difficult to bear, that by his failure to kill Cutha when he'd had the chance, Stirling himself had condemned these people to the ghastly butchery Cutha had gifted them with. The thought that he might already have changed history with an irrevocable failure to act haunted Trevor Stirling long after sunset, as they guided their horses deep into the smoke and shadows looming ahead.