Arthur smiled. “I asked first, Tristan,” he said lightly.
“No!” Bedwin found his tongue. “It cannot be!”
Arthur gestured at the sword. “You wish to pluck it, Bedwin?”
“No!” Bedwin was in distress, foreseeing the death of the kingdom’s best hope, but before he could say another word Owain himself burst through the hall door. His long hair and thick beard were wet and his bare chest gleamed with rain.
He looked from Bedwin to Tristan to Arthur, then down to the sword in the earth. He seemed puzzled. “Are you mad?” he asked Arthur.
“My sword,” Arthur said mildly, ‘maintains your guilt in the matter between Kernow and Dumnonia.”
“He is mad,” Owain said to his warriors who were crowding in behind him. The champion was red-eyed and tired. He had drunk for much of the night, then slept badly, but the challenge seemed to give him a new energy. He spat towards Arthur. “I’m going back to that Silurian bitch’s bed,” he said, ‘and when I wake up I want this to prove a dream.”
“You are a coward, a murderer and a liar,” Arthur said calmly as Owain turned away and the words made the men in the hall gasp once more.
Owain turned back into the hall. “Whelp,” he said to Arthur. He strode up to Excalibur and knocked the blade over, the formal acceptance of the challenge. “So your death, whelp, will be part of my dream. Outside.” He jerked his head towards the rain. The fight could not be held indoors, not unless the feasting hall was to be cursed with abominable luck, so the men had to fight in the winter rain.
The whole fort was stirring now. Many of the folk who lived at Lindinis had slept in Caer Cadarn that night and the compound seethed as people were woken to witness the fight. Lunete was there, and Nimue and Morgan; indeed all Caer Cadarn hurried to watch the battle that took place, as tradition demanded, within the royal stone circle. Agricola, a red cloak over his gorgeous Roman armour, stood between Bedwin and Prince Gereint while King Melwas, a hunk of bread in his hand, watched wide-eyed among his guards. Tristan stood on the circle’s far side where I, too, took my place. Owain saw me there and assumed I had betrayed him. He roared that my life would follow Arthur’s to the Otherworld, but Arthur proclaimed my life was under his surety.
“He broke his oath!” Owain shouted, pointing at me.
“On my oath,” Arthur said, ‘he broke none.” He took off his white cloak and folded it carefully on to one of the stones. He was dressed in trews, boots and a thin leather jerkin over a woollen vest. Owain was bare chested. His trews were crisscrossed with leather and he had massive nailed boots. Arthur sat on the stone and pulled his own boots off, preferring to fight barefoot.
“This is not necessary,” Tristan said to him.
“It is, sadly,” Arthur said, then stood and pulled Excalibur from its scabbard.
“Using your magic sword, Arthur?” Owain jeered. “Afraid to fight with a mortal weapon, are you?”
Arthur sheathed Excalibur again and laid the sword on top of his cloak. “Derfel,” he turned to me, ‘is that Hywel’s sword?”
“Yes, Lord.”
“Would you lend it me?” he asked. “I promise to return it.”
“Make sure you live to keep that promise, Lord,” I said, taking Hywelbane from her scabbard and handing it to him hilt first. He gripped the sword, then asked me to run to the hall and fetch a handful of gritty ash that, when I returned, he rubbed into the oiled leather of the hilt.
He turned to Owain. “If, Lord Owain,” he said courteously, ‘you would rather fight when you are rested, then I can wait.”
“Whelp!” Owain spat. “Sure you don’t want to put on your fish armour?”
“It rusts in the rain,” Arthur answered very calmly.
“A fair-weather soldier,” Owain sneered, then gave his long sword two practice cuts that whistled in the air. In the shield-line he preferred to fight with a short sword, but with any length of blade Owain was a man to fear. “I’m ready, whelp,” he called.