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help, but I had no such belief. I might not have liked Guinevere, but I had never thought her a fool, and I
was worried about her forecast that Cerdic would attack in the south. The alternative made sense, of
course; Cerdic and Aelle were reluctant allies and would want to keep a careful eye on each other. An
overwhelming attack along the Thames would be the quickest way to reach the Severn Sea and so split
the British kingdoms into two parts, and why should the Saxons sacrifice their advantage of numbers by
dividing their forces into two smaller armies that Arthur might defeat one after the other? Yet if Arthur
expected just one attack, and only guarded against that one attack, the advantages of a southern assault
were overwhelming. While Arthur was tangled with one Saxon army in the Thames valley, the other
could hook around his right flank and reach the Severn almost unopposed. Issa, though, was not worried
by such things. He only imagined himself in the shield wall where, ennobled by Mithras s acceptance, he
would cut down Saxons like a farmer reaping hay.
The weather stayed cold after the season of the solstice. Day after day dawned frozen and pale with
the sun little more than a reddened disc hanging low in the southern clouds. Wolves scavenged deep into
the farmlands, hunting for our sheep that we had penned into hurdle folds, and one glorious day we
hunted down six of the grey beasts and so secured six new wolf tails for my warband s helmets. My men
had begun to wear such tails on their helmet crests in the deep woods of Armorica where we had fought
the Franks and, because we had raided them like scavenging beasts, they had called us wolves and we
had taken the insult as a compliment. We were the Wolftails, though our shields, instead of bearing a wolf
mask, were painted with a five-pointed star as a tribute to Ceinwyn.
Ceinwyn was still insistent that she would not flee to Powys in the spring. Morwenna and Seren could
go, she said, but she would stay. I was angry at that decision. So the girls can lose both mother and
father? I demanded.
If that s what the Gods decree, yes, she said placidly, then shrugged. I may be being selfish, but that
is what I want.
You want to die? That s selfish?
I don t want to be so far away, Derfel, she said. Do you know what it s like to be in a distant
country when your man is fighting? You wait in terror. You fear every messenger. You listen to every
rumour. This time I shall stay.
To give me something else to worry about?
What an arrogant man you are, she said calmly. You think I can t look after myself?
That little ring won t keep you safe from Saxons, I said, pointing to the scrap of agate on her finger.
So I shall keep myself safe. Don t worry, Derfel, I won t be under your feet, and I won t let myself
be taken captive.
Next day the first lambs were born in a sheepfold hard under Dun Caric s hill. It was very early for
such births, but I took it as a good sign from the Gods. Before Ceinwyn could forbid it, the firstborn of
those lambs was sacrificed to ensure that the rest of the lambing season would go well. The little beast s
bloody pelt was nailed to a willow beside the stream and beneath it, next day, a wolfsbane bloomed, its
small yellow petals the first flash of colour in the turning year. That day, too, I saw three kingfishers
flickering bright by the icy edges of the stream. Life was stirring. In the dawn, after the cockerels had
woken us, we could again hear the songs of thrushes, robins, larks, wrens and sparrows.
Arthur sent for us two weeks after those first lambs were born. The snow had thawed, and his
messenger had struggled through the muddy roads to bring us the summons that demanded our presence
at the palace of Lindinis. We were to be there for the feast of Imbolc, the first feast after the solstice and
one that is devoted to the Goddess of fertility. At Imbolc we drive newborn lambs through burning hoops
and afterwards, when they think no one is watching, the young girls will leap through the smouldering
hoops and touch their fingers to the ashes of Imbolc s fires and smear the grey dust high between their
thighs. A child born in November is called a child of Imbolc and has ash as its mother and fire as its
father. Ceinwyn and I arrived in the afternoon of Imbolc Eve as the wintry sun was throwing long
shadows across the pale grass. Arthur s spearmen surrounded the palace, guarding him against the sullen
hostility of people who remembered Merlin s magical invocation of the glowing girl in the palace
courtyard.
To my surprise, I discovered the courtyard was prepared for Imbolc. Arthur had never cared for such
things, leaving most religious observances to Guinevere, and she had never celebrated the crude country
festivals like Imbolc; but now a great hoop of plaited straw stood ready for the flames in the centre of the
yard while a handful of newborn lambs were penned with their mothers in a small hurdle enclosure.
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