“We have to go soon,” I told Morgan. “They’re chasing Nimue.” Nimue was being bandaged and clothed by Ermid’s servants.
“It’s not Nimue they’re after, you fool,” Morgan snapped at me, ‘but Mordred.”
“Mordred’s dead!” I protested, but Morgan answered by turning and snatching at the baby that lay in Ralla’s arms. She tugged the rough brown cloth away from the child’s body and I saw the clubbed foot.
“Do you think, fool,” Morgan said to me, ‘that I would permit our King to be killed?”
I stared at Ralla and Gwlyddyn, wondering how they could ever have conspired to let their own son die. It was Gwlyddyn who answered my mute look. “He’s a king,” he explained simply, pointing to Mordred, ‘while our boy was just a carpenter’s son.”
“And soon,” Morgan said angrily, “Gundleus will discover that the baby he killed has two good feet, and then he’ll bring every man he can to search for us. We go south.” There was no safety in Ermid’s Hall. The chief and his warriors had gone to war, leaving only a handful of servants and children in the settlement.
We left a little before midday, plunging into the green woods south of Ermid’s holdings. One of Ermid’s huntsmen led us on narrow paths and secret ways. There were thirty of us, mostly women and children, with only a half dozen men capable of bearing arms and of those only Gwlyddyn had ever killed a man in battle. Druidan’s few surviving fools would be no use, and I had never fought in anger, though I walked as a rear guard with Hywel’s naked sword thrust into my rope belt and the heavy Silurian war spear clasped in my right hand.
We passed slowly beneath the oaks and hazels. From Ermid’s Hall to Caer Cadarn was no more than a four-hour walk, though it would take us much longer for we travelled on secret, circuitous paths and were slowed by the children. Morgan had not said she would try to reach Caer Cadarn, but I knew the royal sanctuary was her probable destination for it was there that we were likely to find Dumnonian soldiers, but Gundleus would surely have made that same deduction and he was just as desperate as we were. Morgan, who had a shrewd grasp of this world’s wickedness, surmised that the Silurian King had been planning this war ever since the High Council, just waiting for Uther’s death to launch an attack in alliance with Gorfyddyd. We had all been fooled. We had thought Gundleus a friend and so no one had guarded his borders and now Gundleus was aiming at nothing less than the throne of Dumnonia itself. But to gain that throne, Morgan told us, he would need more than a score of horsemen, and so his spearmen would surely even now be hurrying to catch up with their King as they marched down the long Roman road that led from Dumnonia’s northern coast. The Silurians were loose in our country, but before Gundleus could be sure of victory he had to kill Mordred. He had to find us or else his whole daring enterprise would fail.
The great wood muffled our steps. Occasionally a pigeon would clatter through the high leaves, and sometimes a woodpecker would rattle a trunk not far off. Once there was a great crashing and trampling in the nearby underbrush and we all stopped, motionless, fearing a Silurian horseman, but it was only a tusked boar that blundered into a clearing, took one look at us and turned away. Mordred was crying and would not take Ralla’s breast. Some of the smaller children were also weeping out of fear and tiredness, but they fell silent when Morgan threatened to turn them all into stink-toads.
Nimue limped ahead of me. I knew she was in pain, but she would not complain. Sometimes she wept silently and nothing Lunete could say would comfort her. Lunete was a slender, dark girl, the same age as Nimue and not unlike her in looks, but she lacked Nimue’s knowledge and fey spirit. Nimue could look at a stream and know it as the dwelling place of water spirits, whereas Lunete would simply see it as a good place for washing clothes. After a while Lunete dropped back to walk beside me. “What happens to us now, Derfel?” she asked.