The Winter King (The Warlord Chronicles, #1)

by Bernard Cornwell

‘All pain is a blessed reminder of our dear Lord’s Passion,’

That death had left the kingdom without an heir, and a kingdom without an heir is a cursed kingdom,

if the Gods willed, Uther’s heir would be born to Mordred’s widow. Unless the child was a girl, of course, in which case all the pain was for nothing and the kingdom doomed.

Nimue was flowing from childhood into authority. That authority sprang from her dream, a dream she shared with Merlin, but one that she would never compromise as Merlin would.

She would rather have seen the whole earth die in the cold of a Godless void than yield one inch to those who would dilute her image of a perfect Britain devoted to its own British Gods.

‘One day, Derfel,’ Nimue said, ‘I will call on you, and if you do not come then the scar will mark you to the Gods for a false friend, a traitor and an enemy.’ ‘Yes,’ I said.

I was not amused. I wanted to believe in her magic, not have it explained as a trick played with hawk-leashes.

Magic, she said, happened at the moments when the lives of the Gods and men touched, but such moments were not commanded by men.

‘But then the Romans came,’ she said, ‘and they broke the compact.’

I know I have gained Christ and through His blessing I have gained the whole world too, but for what I have lost, for what we have all lost, there is no end to the reckoning. We lost everything.

Mordred, Uther said, would have three sworn protectors; men bound by death-oaths to defend the boy’s life with their own. If any man harmed Mordred then the oath-takers would revenge the harm or else sacrifice their own lives. Gundleus sat motionless as the edict was made, but he stirred uncomfortably when the oath-takers were named. King Tewdric of Gwent was one, Owain, the Champion of Dumnonia, was the second and Merlin, Lord of Avalon, the third.

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.’

Kingdoms need kings, and without them they are nothing but empty land inviting a conqueror’s spears.

I was released from fear as the mad, God-given joy of battle came to me for the very first time. Later, much later, I learned that the joy and the fear are the exact same things, the one merely transformed into the other by action, but on that summer afternoon I was suddenly elated. May God and His angels forgive me, but that day I discovered the joy that lies in battle and for a long time afterwards I craved it like a thirsty man seeking water.

In time the names of Arthur’s warriors became so familiar, but that night they meant nothing: Dagonet, Aglaval, Cei, Lanval, the brothers Balan and Balin, Gawain and Agravain, Blaise, Illtyd, Eiddilig, Bedwyr.

‘Caledfwlch,’ Owain explained to me, ‘was forged in the Otherworld by Gofannon.’ Gofannon was the God of Smith-craft. ‘Merlin found it in Ireland,’ Owain went on, ‘where the sword was called Cadalcholg. He won it off a Druid in a dream contest. The Irish Druids say that when Cadalcholg’s wearer is in desperate trouble he can thrust the sword into the soil and Gofannon will leave the Otherworld and come to his help.’

Taxes, as I was to learn, were the best source of wealth for men who did not want to work,

Life is a jest of the Gods, Merlin liked to claim, and there is no justice. You must learn to laugh, he once told me, or else you’ll just weep yourself to death.

‘A child’s word carries no weight in law,’ he said plaintively. ‘A child is not among the Tongued-ones.’ The Tongued-ones were the nine witnesses whose word carried the weight of truth in law: a Lord, a Druid, a priest, a father speaking of his children, a magistrate, a gift-giver speaking of his gift, a maiden speaking of her virginity, a herdsman speaking of his animals and a condemned man speaking his final words.

This miserable world is full of weak people, powerless people, hungry people, sad people, sick people, poor people, and it’s the easiest thing in the world to despise the weak, especially if you’re a soldier.

THE BARDS SING OF love, they celebrate slaughter, they extol kings and flatter queens, but were I a poet I would write in praise of friendship. I have been fortunate in friends. Arthur was one, but of all my friends there was never another like Galahad.

Fury is very useful, and dear Nimue has a talent for it. One of the things I can’t stand about Christians is their admiration of meekness. Imagine elevating meekness into a virtue! Meekness! Can you imagine a heaven filled only with the meek? What a dreadful idea. The food would get cold while everyone passed the dishes to everyone else. Meekness is no good, Derfel. Anger and selfishness, those are the qualities that make the world march.’

‘Druids are not allowed to write anything down, it’s against the rules. You know that! Once you write something down it becomes fixed. It becomes dogma. People can argue about it, they become authoritative, they refer to the texts, they produce new manuscripts, they argue more and soon they’re putting each other to death. If you never write anything down then no one knows exactly what you said so you can always change it.

I was searching for other things: the Horn of Bran Galed, the Knife of Laufrodedd, the Throwboard of Gwenddolau, the Ring of Eluned. The Treasures of Britain, Derfel …’

History is nothing but ifs.

traitors don’t reveal themselves, Lord Derfel. They wait in the dark and strike when you’re not looking.

The Gods play games with us, but if we open ourselves then we can become a part of the game instead of its victims. Madness has a purpose! It’s a gift from the Gods, and like all their gifts it comes with a price, but I’ve paid it now.’

‘May the Gods forgive me,’ Arthur said, ‘for the deaths I have just caused.’ Then we went to cause some more.

‘Not for a long time, Derfel. People underestimate Arthur. They see his goodness, hear his kindness, listen to his talk of justice, and none of them, not even you, knows what burns inside him.’ ‘Which is?’ ‘Ambition,’ she said flatly, then thought for a second. ‘His soul,’ she went on, ‘is a chariot drawn by two horses; ambition and conscience, but I tell you, Derfel, the horse of ambition is in the right-hand harness and it will always outpull the other.

We Irish know one thing above all others: an enemy forgiven is an enemy who will have to be fought over and over again.

‘We Kings only love peace,’ Gorfyddyd said at last, ‘when war becomes inconvenient to us.

‘I envy your Christian God. He is three and He is one, He is dead and He is alive, He is everywhere and He is nowhere, and He demands that you worship Him, but claims nothing else is worthy of worship. There’s room in those contradictions for a man to believe in anything or nothing,

‘I do understand that you can look into someone’s eyes,’ I heard myself saying, ‘and suddenly know that life will be impossible without them. Know that their voice can make your heart miss a beat and that their company is all your happiness can ever desire and that their absence will leave your soul alone, bereft and lost.’

that night I went to my bed in a daze of confusion, hope, stupidity, apprehension, fear and delight. For, just like Arthur, I had come to Caer Sws and been stricken by love.

A leader was expected to be good at these ritual insults before battle and I always rather enjoyed them. Arthur was never good at such exchanges, for even at the last moment before the killing began he was still trying to make his enemies like him.