The King's Cavalry Read Online Free PDF Page B

peevishly.
    Finally , the Pict’s warrior blood won out. Candless resolved to go whatever the cost or danger. If he died, he would one day die anyway, he shrugged. But he had high hopes he could so impress the Romans they’d cooperate. Had not Caratacus the Briton been taken in chains to meet his new masters, and had he not so stirred them with his courage and arguments that he had been freed to live out his days in Italia?
    The bishop set about organising his entourage for the springtime weeks of journeying across Gaul, the Alps and Italia, and gave careful thought to his display of pomp. Too much could encourage greed and possible seizure, too little could arouse contemptuous dismissal. He would wear his alligator hide breastplate and a sword, he thought, and he would ensure that every man in his train wore the red cross and white surplice of the Christians.
    A week later, he was riding out on a cleric’s palfrey, leaving Bononia at the head of a procession of mules, monks, guards and baggage carts. Bishop Candless was on the last part of his journey to find holy relics.
    Guinevia watched him go. The sorceress was standing on the landward ramparts of the citadel where she had been pacing, wondering about the welfare of her teenage son, Milo, the agreed heir to the throne of Alba. At the youth’s wedding just a few months before, the Pictish king, Kinadius, and the British emperor, Arthur, had sealed in blood an agreement of peace between their countries, and had joined Milo and Kinadius’ daughter Sintea in marriage.
    As Guinevia’s son, Milo had legitimate claim to the throne, for the Picts practised matrilineal succession, and the sorceress was by birth the daughter of a Pict chieftain with royal blood. But, regal or not, she was a mother whose 14 -year-old son was far distant, and she fretted for him. “I’ll view his actions,” she thought, and returned to her chamber, calling for her body slave.
    She took out a silk-wrapped block of smooth, black obsidian, a volcanic glass that helped her focus her mind and send it abroad, and settled to quiet her thoughts. The slave readied her wax tabulum and stylus, preparing to scribble down the thoughts her mistress spoke aloud.
    Guinevia looked into the obsidian’s depths, relaxed her mind and body and waited for the swirling fogs in the glass to part… She saw Milo, tall and golden, walking with his young bride Sintea. Behind them was a stretch of water she recognised as the familiar Tay. The couple looked calm and content, the glimpse of them was brief but reassuring and soon, too soon for Guinevia, the scene faded.
    Her slave read back the few remarks the sorceress had muttered – it was best not to analyse matters while viewing them but merely to speak thoughts aloud. Guinevia had learned that if she psychically ‘saw’ something large and green it might be a tree, a mossy wall, or even a close view of a green cloak. Interpreting her vision while it was ongoing could be misleading, she had discovered. Better to analyse it all after the remote, mental view was ended.
    “I’ll send to Arthur and tell him all seems well,” she thought, and settled again to look into the obsidian.
    *
    Far away, under the snow-smoothed slopes of Yr Wyddfa, the sorcerer Myrddin was also peering into his viewing tool: a deep, black pool of water contained in an ancient and large iron cooking pot. The vessel was an old, old Druidical artefact and had seen some sinister uses that included child sacrifice and several ritual drownings of men.
    Myrddin used it on a regular basis to view and even to communicate telepathically with other magi. Most ominously, the sorcerer also practised necromancy, the art of communicating with the dead, and he had been ruthless on occasion, calling up spirits to do his bidding. Famously, he had enlisted Boadicea, the long-dead queen of the Iceni, to lead a chariot attack on the Romans at their landing place on the shore at Dungeness.
    Awestruck British