“Yes, Lord,” I said and stared with him across the wide, flat land. It was not so cold as the night on which Mordred had been born, but it was still bitter, and the wind made it more so.
“There is a purpose to all things,” Arthur said, ‘even being a soldier.” He smiled at me, as though apologizing for being so earnest, yet he had no need to be apologetic for I was drinking in his words. I had dreamed of becoming a soldier because of a warrior’s high status and because it had always seemed to me that it was better to carry a spear than a rake, but I had never thought beyond those selfish ambitions. Arthur had thought far beyond and he brought to Dumnonia a clear vision of where his sword and spear must take him.
“We have a chance’ Arthur leaned on the high rampart as he spoke ‘to make a Dumnonia in which we can serve our people. We can’t give them happiness, and I don’t know how to guarantee a good harvest that will make them rich, but I do know that we can make them safe, and a safe man, a man who knows that his children will grow without being taken for slaves and his daughter’s bride price won’t be ruined by a soldier’s rape, is a man more likely to be happy than a man living under the threat of war. Is that fair?”
“Yes, Lord,” I said.
He rubbed his gloved hands against the cold. My hands were wrapped in rags that made holding my spear difficult, especially as I was also trying to keep them warm beneath my cloak. Behind us, in the feasting hall, a great roar of men’s laughter gusted. The food had been as bad as any at a winter feast, but there had been plenty of mead and wine, though Arthur was as sober as I was myself. I looked at his profile as he gazed west towards the building clouds. The moon shadowed his lantern jaw and made his face seem bonier than ever. “I hate war,” Arthur said suddenly.
“You do?” I sounded surprised, but then I was young enough to enjoy war.
“Of course!” He smiled at me. “I happen to be good at it, maybe you are too, and that just means we have to use it wisely. Do you know what happened in Gwent last autumn?”
“You wounded Gorfyddyd,” I said eagerly. “You took his arm.”
“So I did,” he said, almost in a tone of surprise. “My horses aren’t much use in hilly country, and no use at all in wooded land, so I took them north into Powys’s flat farmlands. Gorfyddyd was trying to knock down Tewdric’s walls so I started burning Gorfyddyd’s haystacks and grain-stores. We burned, we killed. We did it well, not because we wanted to, but because it needed to be done. And it worked. It brought Gorfyddyd back from Tewdric’s walls to the flat farmland where my horses could break him. And they did. We attacked him at dawn, and he fought well, but he lost the battle along with his left arm, and that, Derfel, was the end of the killing. It had served its purpose, do you understand? The purpose of the killing was to persuade Powys that it would be better for them to be at peace with Dumnonia than at war. And now there will be peace.”
“There will?” I asked dubiously. Most of us believed the spring thaw could bring only a fresh attack from Powys’s embittered King Gorfyddyd.
“Gorfyddyd’s son is a sensible man,” Arthur said. “His name is Cuneglas and he wants peace, and we must give Prince Cuneglas time to persuade his father that he’ll lose more than one arm if he goes to war with us again. And once Gorfyddyd is persuaded that peace is better than war he’ll call a council and we’ll all go and make a lot of noise and at the end of it, Derfel, I shall marry Gorfyddyd’s daughter, Ceinwyn.” He gave me a swift and somehow embarrassed look. “Seren, they call her, the star! The star of Powys. They say she’s very beautiful.” He was pleased by that prospect and his pleasure somehow surprised me, but back then I had still not recognized the vanity in Arthur. “Let’s hope she is as beautiful as a star,” he went on, ‘but beautiful or not, I’ll marry her and we’ll pacify Siluria, and then the Saxons will face a united Britain. Powys, Gwent, Dumnonia and Siluria, all embracing each other, all fighting the same enemy, and all at peace with one another.”