"Rubbish! This was treachery. They must have suborned a guard."
"No, Merlyn!" The big Scot's tone was categorical. "That is not the way of it. They killed all the guards. It was magic of some kind. I woke in the night and went to check on them, for I fear them, as you know. Rufio came with me. When we arrived, the cells were open and the guards all dead. Not violently dead, mark you. We thought at first they were asleep."
"Damnation, Donuil, what you tell me is impossible! How could chained men kill their guards from inside a locked cell?"
"It is not impossible! The men were dead and the prisoners gone. I know not how they did it, but they did it! We raised the alarm immediately, but were not in time to stop them from opening the gate at the back. We managed to close it again, but a large number of men got in."
"How many?" There was something wrong here, but for the moment it eluded me.
The two men looked at each other and guessed, "Fifty? Perhaps sixty."
"And fifty men did all this?" I waved my arm at the desolation around us.
"They had fire arrows. They fired the thatch."
"How many are left? I presume they are in there?" I indicated my uncle's house.
"We don't know, Commander. Perhaps ten or twelve. They.. .they have hostages."
I felt my skin crawl again, as it had over the poisoned arrow. "Who?" But I already knew.
It was Rufio who answered me. "Your aunt, Commander, the Lady Luceiia. Her women. Some others."
"My father," I said, unable not to say it. "Where is my father?" Silence. "Where is he?"
"Dead, Commander."
The silence stretched on for an eternity, and finally I heard Rufio speak again, his voice sounding distant. "They killed him in his bed before they opened the gate." His voice rang in my ears like a brazen bell. My knees gave Way and I felt Donuil grasp me and hold me up. I hung there, letting him support my whole weight until my head cleared.
Finally I whispered, "Where is he now?"
"Still in his bed, where we found him."
"Wait here." I left them and made my way to my father's sleeping quarters, oblivious to my surroundings, uncaring where I stepped.
It was as they had said. My father, General Picus Britannicus, had died in his bed. But not asleep. The bedclothes tangled around his bare legs told me of a struggle and an image flashed into my mind of an earlier struggle from which he had emerged alive. His body hung backwards, his head and shoulders between the edge of his cot and the floor, so that I could not see his face. There was blood everywhere. I looked op at the light streaming in through the tiny, sooty window above his bed and my soul felt empty. I walked around the bottom of his cot and tried to lift him onto it, to arrange him with more dignity than his killers had left him, but he was rigid and cold. The gaping wound in his throat had completed the work begun by a Pictish arrow so many years before.
I abandoned my futile attempts to move him and sat on the edge of his cot for a long time, careless of the blood that lay congealed beneath me, remembering the roughness of his voice that I would hear no more, and staring at the massive hand that stretched stiff and clawlike at the end of his rigid arm as though still clutching at life. And as I stared, my resolution hardened.
By the time I emerged once more into the courtyard, I was fully in control of myself again. Somewhere close by a baby was wailing and the sound prompted the thought in me that I might never weep again. Donuil and Rufio were still where I had left them, facing towards me, waiting for me to come back. The ring of bowmen still faced inward, towards the Armoury. The fragrance of cooking food caught at my nostrils. Either the kitchens were undamaged or Ludo was improvising. The noise in the courtyard was appalling. There was smoke everywhere, swirling and eddying among the buildings. I was conscious of all of these things, affected by none of them.
My mind was focused totally on the problem of getting the magicians and their hostages out of the Armoury. I knew in the coldness of my soul that had they not held my Aunt Luceiia there, I would have stormed the place and sacrificed the other hostages. But Luceiia was there, and I could take no risks with her safety—the more so since she was now the last survivor of the original Colonists of Camulod. One clear thought kept returning to my mind, to be suppressed time and again, until I could no longer deny the lightness of it and was forced to admit that it represented the only route open to me, even though the risk that it entailed was petrifying.
I spoke to Donuil and Rufio. "Wait for me here, I have some arrangements to make. Let no one make a move against those people in there until I return, is that clear?" They both saluted me and I left to make my preparations.
I returned within the half hour and went straight to Donuil. "Have these magicians seen you?"
"What do you mean, Commander?"
"I mean have they seen you here? Do they know you are here willingly?"
He frowned, thinking, "No, Commander. I have been careful to avoid them."
"Did they see you in your father's hall?" He nodded, frowning. "And do they know of your father's high regard for you?"
He nodded again. "Aye, they do. I heard them speak of me as my father's favourite son, even though I was not firstborn."
"Good." I reached out and grasped his forearm. "How would you like to earn your freedom today?" The measure of my need of his assistance was implicit in my offer and he was astute enough to realize that immediately. His eyes narrowed.
"My freedom?"
"Yes, today. Immediate release from your bond."
He seemed about to scowl at me. "How would I do that?"
"By performing a service for me."
"A service." His expression was difficult to read. "What kind of service?"
"A pretence of being what you are, a prisoner, but an unwilling one."
"Pretence?" Now he frowned. "I do not understand."
"It's not difficult," I told him. "These people—these magicians, as you call them—hold my aunt hostage. She is one of the two people in the world I hold most dear. The only way I can think to save her life is to put it at risk in an exchange of hostages."
He was silent for the space of a few heartbeats, then, "You mean me, in exchange for her?"
"Yes."
He frowned again and shook his head. "It won't work, Commander. These men care nothing for me."
"No, but Lot does, or he will, as soon as he comes to realize that he can increase his influence over your father and impress your sister by producing you safely from captivity. He would see you as a political tool of great power— a means of fortifying his alliance with your father and his people."
The young Scot was far from stupid. He saw the flaw immediately. "But Lot is gone, Commander. As soon as he reaches his home he will see the truth of things, that our army was broken. Our forces would be useless to him now."
"I disagree, but that is not important here. The point is that these people don't know the truth of it. They will seek to make the exchange for the advantage of handing you over to Lot. They will see a golden advantage to themselves in that. Which of them is the stronger?"
He shrugged. "Neither is stronger than—"
I cut him off impatiently. "Nonsense. In any and every partnership there is a dominant and a subservient partner. That is human nature. Think! Which of them makes the decisions?"
He paused, but only for a heartbeat. "Caspar. Memnon is the follower."
"That's what I thought. I will release you to Memnon, who will also have my aunt with him. I will keep Caspar. We will all go from here to an open place where there can be no chance of trickery on my part. Once we are there, Memnon will release my aunt to walk back to me. When she has reached me, I will release Caspar."