The soldier snorted. His broad reddish nose had been badly broken in his youth, and he possessed, as legacy of the damage, a peculiarly offensive one-nostriled snort which had caused many a man larger than himself to curl up like a wood louse, but I do not think that he had ever used it on the Bishop of Venta before.
“A ruler? A petty princeling with no better claim to the High Kingship than a whole fistful of others, save for this one small matter of a few drops of blood, which he shares with Artos the Bear.”
“And with one other,” a lesser churchman said; and the implied warning and reminder that Artos had a son to follow him was clear in the small sharp silence that followed. One or two of those about the table glanced at each other and away again. Medraut’s following was among the younger of the war host; the older men, the Church and the war-scarred veterans did not, I think, even then quite trust him.
I was suddenly weary of sitting in my seat of honor and being argued over as though I were not there at all. I slammed back the heavy chair and stood up. To be the tallest man in any company is a thing that has its uses. “Holy Father Dubricius, my Lords of the Council — here is a great arguing that it seems to me may well drag on until this day year and still be no nearer to its settlement; and I would suggest that this, with the Saxons slinking to and fro like a wolf pack on our borders, waiting only for spring to be at our throats as they have not been for a score of years, is not the time for a king-choosing at all. We have enough on our hands without that.“
Dubricius looked at me with a wakening gleam in his eye and there was a sudden stillness of close attention all around the table. “Surely, my Son, if the Barbarians are indeed moving — though of that, we have little sign that differs from the signs in other years — then this, of all others, is the time to be swift in choosing a king, lest when the time of testing comes, we must face it without a leader.”
“If the thing might be done peacefully, yes,” I said, “but do you not see that whichever way you throw the apple, there will be trouble, bad trouble, afterward? See now, the choice lies between Cador and myself —” I quelled a sudden movement from the Bishop. “Oh yes it does; I am not standing aside from this in humble apology for my left-hand birth; bastardy makes me no less fitted to carry the Sword of Britain — and if the choice falls upon me, I know well enough that I shall have almost the whole body of the Christian Church ranged against me —”
The churchman cut in, querulously. “Have you shown yourself so much a friend to the Church that she should open loving arms to you now?”
“Meaning that I have pastured my horses on monastery land, and demanded a share in the monastery plate when the war kist was empty? Yet I have kept your roofs over your heads for twenty years, your lights burning in your sanctuaries and your monks inside their own whole skins. And I am thinking with a certain saying of your Christos that the laborer is worthy of his hire. If the choice falls on me, the Church will set its face against me, as I say, and with her certain of the Celtic princes who love not the ways of Rome even now, and like enough Cador of Dumnonia will join you. Sa! But let you choose Cador of Dumnonia to carry the Sword of Britain, and you will find that not only my own Company, but the whole war host will rise against him and you. Oh, I will not stir the thing up, I swear you that, but none the less they will rise, without my stirring. Holy Father Dubricius, my Lords of the Council, for God’s sake believe me. It is not the moment to be risking such a split in the kingdoms — a split through which the Saxons may come in on us, as an army through an undefended pass!”
Bishop Dubricius said wearily, “How may we be sure that all this talk of a Saxon thrust is more than an attempt to gain time?”
“For what, in God’s name?”
“For perfecting plans of your own, for making more sure of the war host.”
Aquila spoke, slowly and deliberately. “I cannot speak for the Companions, but for every man of the war host, I can speak. They will not accept a Western princeling thrust upon them without having yet earned their trust. The Rex Belliorum has no need of time to make more sure of them.”
And behind me, the leveled voice of Bedwyr said: “I can speak for the Companions.”
Dubricius’s gaze flicked past me. “I did not know that we had a new Councilor among us.”
“No? Nevertheless, as lieutenant to Artos the Bear, I claim the right to speak for his personal cavalry.” (A thunderous growl from Cei supported his words.) “We are the Bear’s men to the death, and whether he leads us or no, we will not see another man sitting in the place that should be his.”
Someone was trying to silence him, but the Bishop made a quick gesture with the hand on which the great ruby was brilliant as a gout of fresh-spilled blood. “No, let him speak — it appears, then, that you care more for a personal leader than for the good fate of Christian Britain?”
“We care for the good fate of Britain, oh yes, for the last-leavings of Rome, for the last lights that must be shielded as long as we may shield them from flickering out. Quite a few of us have died for these things from time to time. You have maybe heard? But we do not think that an untried princeling on the High Seat, instead of a war leader who has spent half a lifetime in arms against the Sea Wolves, would be for the good fate of any save the Sea Wolves themselves, at this time. You speak of Britain as though it were one, my Lord Dubricius; but we are from many tribes and many peoples. Some of us were bred up in the last lingering ways of Rome, some in the free wilderness where Rome’s shadow scarcely fell. We are from the broad hills of Valentia, from the marshes of the East and the mountains of the Cymri. Myself, I am not of this land at all, save by ancestry, but was born and bred in Armorica beyond the Narrow Seas. We have only one thing to bind us together, we are the Bear’s Companions, and our swords belong first to the Bear and then to Britain. That is a thing for you to remember, my Lords of the Council.“
He of the bird’s-nest beard leaned forward abruptly. “You speak with a loud voice, Bedwyr, Lieutenant of the Bear; yet one remembers that there are but three hundred, or maybe a few more, of you.”
“How many rode with Alexander of Macedon when he set out to conquer the world?” inquired the deep singer’s voice behind me with great sweetness. “He called them his Companions, too.”
There was a long, long pause in the Council Chamber, and the scratching of the clerks’ quills was silent. Very slowly the Bishop bowed his head and sat thinking, the thick blue-white rolls of his jowl resting on the fine embroidered stuff of his mantle, his eyes half closed. In a while they flashed open again, making their usual disconcerting change in his face, and he straightened himself in his chair. “Let me be clear as to this before we carry the matter further. What, precisely, are your demands? Not of necessity the High Kingship for yourself?”
“Not of necessity the High Kingship for myself, but that it shall not be set upon any man, at this present time.”
“And why does it seem to you that the thing will come better at another time?”
“When this spring’s fighting is over, if the victory is ours, we may have leisure to fight among ourselves, with the wolves driven off to a safe distance. If we taste defeat, then we shall be dead, and all need to choose a new High King gone from us with our last breath.” I stared around the Council table into face after face that looked back at me, in support, in rejection, in complete blankness. One of the more ancient Councilors had fallen asleep. “Father Dubricius, you speak of our need to choose a ruler before the Saxons come, but for the civil matters of state, surely this Council, this Senate, is competent, while for all that has to do with the leading of a fighting people, does not the Rex Belliorum suffice, as he did in the old days, when a confederacy of the Tribes, with no High King over all, would choose out one chief from among themselves to lead them on the war trail?”