I translated for Arthur, leaving out the more egregious insults.
A look of pain crossed Arthur’s face. Aelle saw the look, translated it as weakness and so turned scornfully away. “I will give you two hours’ start, vermin,” he called over his shoulder, ‘then I shall pursue you.”
“Ratae,” Arthur said, without even waiting for me to translate Aelle’s threat.
The Saxon turned back. He said nothing, but just stared into Arthur’s face. The stench of his bearskin robe was appalling; a mix of sweat, dung and grease. He waited.
“Ratae,” Arthur said again. “Tell him it can be taken. Tell him it is full of all the things he desires. Tell him the land it guards will be his.”
Ratae was the fortress that protected Gorfyddyd’s eastern most border with the Saxons and if Gorfyddyd lost that fortress then the Saxons moved twenty miles closer to Powys’s heartland.
I translated. It took me some time to identify Ratae to Aelle, but at last he understood. He was not happy for it seemed Ratae was a formidable Roman fortress that Gorfyddyd had strengthened with a massive earth wall.
Arthur explained that Gorfyddyd had taken the garrison’s best spearmen to add to the army he had collected for his invasion of Gwent and Dumnonia. He did not need to explain that Gorfyddyd had only risked that move because of the peace he believed he had purchased from Aelle, a peace that Arthur was now outbidding. Arthur revealed that a Christian community at Ratae had built a monastery just outside the fort’s earth walls and the comings and goings of the monks had worn a passage through the ramparts. The fortress commander, he explained, was one of Gorfyddyd’s rare Christians and had given his blessing to the monastery.
“How does he know?” Aelle demanded of me.
“Tell him I have a man with me, a man from Ratae, who knows how the monastery can be approached and who is willing to serve as a guide. Tell him I ask only that the man be rewarded with his life.” I realized then who the stranger must be who had been walking with Hygwydd. I realized, too, that Arthur had known he would have to sacrifice Ratae even before he left Durnovaria.
Aelle demanded to know more about the traitor and Arthur told how the man had deserted Powys and come to Dumnonia seeking revenge because his wife had abandoned him for one of Gorfyddyd’s chieftains.
Aelle spoke with his council while the two wizards gibbered at Nimue. One of them pointed a human thigh bone at her, but Nimue merely spat. That gesture seemed to conclude their war of sorcery for the two wizards shuffled backwards as Nimue stood up and brushed her hands. Aelle’s council haggled with us. At one point they insisted that we yield all the big war horses to them, but Arthur demanded all their war dogs in return, and finally, in the afternoon, the Saxons accepted the offer of Ratae and Arthur’s gold. It was maybe the greatest hoard of gold ever paid from a Briton to a Saxon, but Aelle also insisted on taking two hostages who, he promised, would be released if the attack on Ratae did not prove to be a trap laid by Gorfyddyd and Arthur together. He chose at random, picking two of Arthur’s warriors: Balin and Lanval.
That night we ate with the Saxons. I was curious to meet these men who were my birth-brothers and even feared I might feel some kinship with them, but in truth I found their company repellent. Their humour was coarse, their manners loutish and the smell of their fur-wrapped flesh sickening. Some of them mocked me by saying I resembled their King Aelle, but I could see no likeness between his flat hard features and what I believed my own face to be. Aelle finally snarled at my mockers to be silent, then gave me a cold stare before bidding me to invite Arthur’s men to share an evening meal of huge cuts of roasted meat which we ate with gloved hands, gnawing into the scalding flesh until the bloody juices dripped from our beards. We gave them mead, they gave us ale. A few drunken fights started, but no one was killed. Aelle, like Arthur, stayed sober, though the Bretwalda’s two wizards became foully drunk and after they fell asleep beside their own vomit Aelle explained that they were madmen in touch with the Gods. He possessed other priests, he said, who were sane, but the lunatics were thought to possess a special power that the Saxons might need. “We feared you would bring Merlin,” he explained.