The Road to Avalon Read Online Free PDF Page B

Christ.”
    Cai sat on the side of the bath. At fourteen he was very tall, with shoulders that would one day be massive as his father’s. At present, however, he had an unfinished look. He had grown so quickly that the rest of his body had never quite caught up to his height. He was intelligent, kind, steady as a rock. He was a year older than Arthur, but had resigned himself without resentment to the fact that he would never quite be the younger boy’s equal.
    Arthur got out of the bath and began to towel his hair. Cai took the opportunity to study the scars on the other boy’s back. If Arthur knew he was looking at them, he would be angry. He hated anyone to notice his scars, and he had a collection of them. There was one above his right eyebrow, one on the side of his chin, and a particularly wicked-looking one on his left knee. Cai had asked only once about them. It was then that he had discovered that Arthur had the nastiest tongue of anyone he had ever met.
    He had learned the origin of those scars from Ector, and had immediately forgiven Arthur his bad temper. Over the years his feelings for the younger boy had coalesced into a mixture of pride, admiration, and protectiveness—the feelings of a generous-hearted older brother toward a particularly brilliant younger sibling.
    Arthur tossed his hair back and began to dry his shoulders with another towel. At thirteen he had the body of a dancer, light-framed, graceful, quick.
    “In some ways Merlin is right,” he said to Cai as he began to dress. “Romanitas still stands for civilization. It stands for regulated government and the freedom to live in peace. But the empire itself is crumbling. We in Britain are only a small part of the fight against the darkness.”
    Cai too began to dress. “My father says that the Saxons are massing for a strike in the spring. The high king is trying to gather the Celtic princes to his standard to oppose them.”
    Arthur stared at him, a line like a sword between his straight black brows. “If only I were not so young!”
    Cai reached out to put a hand on the other boy’s shoulder. “Don’t worry,” he said comfortably. “The Saxons will wait for you, Arthur.” And he reached for his own tunic.

Chapter 4
     
    “L EADERSHIP is always the management of men,” said Merlin. “Failure in the management of men cannot be compensated for by success in other things. A leader must always be aware of his public function. He cannot consider his affairs as private, even to himself.”
    The window was open and the soft air of July came blowing in. Merlin’s pupil appeared to be listening attentively, but Merlin was certain his thoughts were elsewhere. The sound of laughter floated in the window with the breeze and Merlin looked out into the courtyard and saw his daughter. She was carrying a basket of berries and her pony was following her, trying to eat them.
    Arthur was now Merlin’s sole pupil. It had been a very long time since Morgan had come to class. And this year Cai, now sixteen, had gone off to join the high king’s army. The Saxons grew ever more aggressive, and Uther was hard-put to contain them.
    “The Celtic princes are sorry now for the error they made when they invited Hengist and his kind to settle in Britain,” Merlin said, following this line of thought. He looked at Arthur, inviting a reply.
    The boy’s long lashes lowered, half-screening his eyes. “Vortigern may have been a Celt, but he was following good Roman precedent,” he answered. “The painted people of the north were pouring across the wall and Vortigern could not contain them. So he invited one set of barbarians in to harry the other.” He raised his lashes and looked at Merlin. “It worked often enough for Rome.”
    Merlin stared back at his grandson’s light eyes and deeply suntanned face. Even now, after six years, it was difficult for him to know what Arthur was thinking. “It worked for Rome, but it didn’t work for Vortigern. Why,