A chapter a day: The Broken Kingdom – Chapter 4

I’ve decided to publish a fresh chapter every weekday for the next month or so of my new Arthurian epic novel The Broken Kingdom. It’s completely free to read, and I am hoping that people will come to this website each day and read the next chapter (of 30) of the story about the legendary hero Arthur, his mother Igraine and sister Morgan, the wizard Merlin, and all the rest of the familiar cast from the legends, plus a few new additions. It’s a fantasy novel, technically, as it has a little light magic and some seriously nasty dragons, but otherwise it is set in a realistic 5th-century Britain, after the Romans have left, which is riven by endless war. Only Arthur and his band of warriors, can hope to mend The Broken Kingdom . . .

Chapter Four
The wind whipped across the hillside and ruffled the long grey hair of the lean, old man who lay still as a corpse atop a flat boulder, tugging, too, at his loose black robe. 

Merlin did not feel the wind on his clothing. Not this wind. Not this chill breeze on this immobile, stick-thin body. Yet, far to the north, high currents swept over his golden wings and the black scales of his belly, warmer jets lifted his leathery pinions and swept along his widespread tail feathers that steered his path through the air. The enormous dragon-bird he inhabited was all eyes, its tiny mind occupied only with the shrill cry of “I see, I see!” It had not fought him so much as given a shudder when he entered its body. He could feel the sharpness of its talons curled into its loins, and sense the taint of evil thrumming in its dreigiau blood, and feel the wind streaming over its bright plumage but, most of all, through its magnificent eyes he could see.

The sorcerer could see for miles in all directions, and in the smallest detail. He noted the scurrying of a field mouse, bolting from a clump of dandelions to the safety of a tree root, and felt a flare of interest, red and strong in his belly. But he had eaten not two hours hence, and he could still taste the blood of the hare in his beak and feel the delicious crunch of small bones, and the sliding of hot, raw meat down his gullet.  

The dragon-eagle swooped low over a silvery lake, and felt the brisk wind buffeting off the waves, it came up over the round green hills, the lambs and their mothers bleating at his approach, and down into a valley where a crowd of hundreds of fur-clad warriors on horseback raced each other up a green slope towards the fortress of a king surrounded by a high palisade of sharpened stakes upon the hilltop.
The boy was among them. His boy. Arthur. Not his son, the one he had chosen, which was a far stronger bond, to Merlin’s mind. This boy – no, this young man – he had guided and counselled since childhood. The one in whom the rich blood of the Pendragon flowed, a divine bloodline combined a courageous heart, a quickness of hand and a lively intelligence. Arthur had great promise – but he was still very young, not yet twenty. Through the eyes of the dragon-eagle, he saw Arthur was galloping up a muddy track with his red cloak billowing out behind him. The princess was beside him, level with him, inching slightly ahead, as they came up to the forbidding gates. 

The dragon-eagle banked, dipping a wing to turn in a wide graceful arc. A little pause and the gates were opening, and the men and horses were entering together in a jostling mass. There was danger here, he knew. But it was as nothing compared to the real threat. The Wormkind were gathering in the north. And the Evil One was coming – Cythraul himself. The Worm, the distillation of all that was inimical to the human race, had been awakened. And Merlin believed he knew by whom. There was only one who would have the skill, the malice and the fearlessness to raise the Worm from its long slumber. Nimue. The Soothsayer: only she would risk it. He knew her of old. 

He could feel the fell essence of the Worm even now in the bones and sinews of this simple dragon-bird, a kind of heaviness, a kind of seeping poison, and his human body twitched from its stillness with revulsion in its deep sleep on the rock. He had chosen to enter the mind of this unnatural creature, so he must endure the discomfort.

Not for much longer. The boy Arthur was inside the Palace of Penrith, within the thatched halls of King Urien, where he, Merlin, could no longer keep his watch. All would be well, probably. Taliesin was there. The Shining One would ward the boy.

It had begun. Arthur would help to forge an alliance here that would strengthen Britain and give this broken kingdom the cohesion necessary to defeat the Worm.

The huge bird-like creature flew on past the gates of the stronghold, it glided down the hillside and across the arrow-straight ancient road and into a thick patch of woodland on the other side where he alighted on a high branch of a spreading oak. 

Arthur was safely inside Penrith, his fate was in the hands of the gods. Merlin had watched over him all the way on the long road north from Dumnonia, first as a sparrow, then a raven, and finally through the eyes of this blood-tainted dragon-eagle. 

The boy had been set on his path. His hard road lay before him.

Two hundred miles to the south, the windswept sorcerer lying on the slab of rock opened his eyes. As always, there was a sense of dislocation, of disorientation when he came back into his body, and the nausea. Always the nausea when he had been inhabiting another living creature, particularly a beast spawned by the Worm. 

He rolled over on to his side and vomited a browny greenish stream over the side of the stone. And another. He looked down at the spattered mess and made out the half digested remains of the mushrooms that had formed the base of the potion he had consumed. He rolled back and felt his own returning life-force running hot in his belly and pulsing down into his fingers and feet. He wiggled his bare toes and forced himself to sit up on the rock. The world swung and spun around him; soft brown wood and bright green leaves of the ash trees in the copse at the head of the valley, almost painfully yellow flowers on the gorse bushes, an achingly blue sky and the grey of rain clouds massing in the east. The sun was still just a brilliant orange smear.

It is spring, he thought wonderingly. Spring again. In spite of everything, in spite of Cythraul’s presence, the world renews itself; the rich earth quickens with life.

The taste of the hare’s blood was still coppery-hot in his mouth.

The sorcerer took up his blackthorn staff. It was a dark pole as thick as his wrist, tall as he was, tapering to a point at the bottom end, and with a sphere of smooth crystal clenched in a root formation at the top, like the fingers of a hand grasping a ball of ice; strips of red iron were sunk into the twisted fibres of the wood like veins all along its six-foot length. Fire and magic, water and crystal, wood and iron had gone into the making of that potent staff. He would surely never possess another like it. 

He picked up the battered leather bag that lay beside the stone, brushed a few flecks of vomit from its flap, slung it over his shoulder and strode down the narrow hillside path away from the dreaming rock: he felt light as a cloud, alive with power, yet curiously empty. He would eat and drink and sleep again when he reached Clas Myrddin. He would sleep in his own bed under blanket and furs like an ordinary man. 

That thought made him laugh. Perhaps he would fuck one of the serving girls, too. Anya with her wanton glances; she would be willing. Maybe he would forsake his sacred vows, abandon all his plans, turn his back on the advances of Wormkind, and all the years of knowledge he had worked so hard to accumulate, and settle down to be an ordinary lord of mortal men, the gods knew he was surely wealthy enough. 

The lands all around him as far as the eye could see were his, the great forest of Dene was his, and the river Wye, a great loop of which surrounded his forges and halls and fields was his property. Apart from this land under his eye, the land that men called Siluria, he also held territories in Dumnonia, Elmet and Kernow. Men farmed his rich fields across a hundred villages. He could have trained a regiment of spearmen and sent them to Uthur – a thousand spears – as a gift, if he had chosen to do so. He could, if he wished, take a full part in the petty struggles of men, lead his men into battle with a sword in his hand, rather than this staff of power, win great victories, and forsake the true war, the only real and abiding conflict, for as long as he lived in this body. He could be an ordinary man. Even take himself a wife. Why not?

He was laughing almost too much to walk straight by the time he reached the bottom of the hill, giggling like a child, and swishing the long staff at the nettles that grew by the pathway, cutting them down like corn before the sickle. Inhabiting a wild creature always made him light-headed and absurdly joyful for a long time afterward.

Why not? Because he knew, a voice whispered in his head. And there could be no unknowing. Because he knew that true evil marched across the earth. The Worm had awoken from its slumber. And Wormkind multiplied. The Soothsayer made it so. The enemies of men were massing for a great conflict that would destroy all he loved.

Because Merlin loved the race of men – all human kind. The stupid ones, the clever, the evil tyrants, the dreamers, the lovers, the weak and strong. He cherished them and, while he drew breath, he would not see the world cleansed of all its people.

Because, while helping Uthur win his battles was a worthy aim, and slaying the High King’s enemies might be amusing for a while, he knew it was ultimately futile. The petty struggles of mortals, even the greatest victories and bloodiest defeats, were all without meaning while Cythraul yet lived in the world. The Worm threatened all men, all women, all children – all human life, all that was good and true in the land. 

Because he knew.

The cloud of smoke above the forges was thick as broth, and from half a mile away he could hear the tinny ringing of many hammers on metal. He could see scores of men labouring in and around the huts and squat low buildings, pushing heavy handcarts of the finest, blackest charcoal, burnt in vast mounds deep in the forest and brought to the forge by boat; others wheeled tottering mounds of crumbly brown ore to the forge fires. The ale-wives, who dispensed a mild, nutty liquor to any thirsty man who asked for it, were busiest of all, scurrying here and there with small casks strapped to their backs and dozens of tin cups jangling on their long apron strings.

A cup of ale would be good, Merlin thought. Two cups, three, five. And then a sleep. As he strode into the heart of the settlement – it had no walls, the sorcerer’s reputation was enough to keep all enemies at a distance – he was greeted with nods and friendly waves but with no great deference. He was loved by these people, he knew that, for they came here friendless, hungry, lost and he gave them food and shelter and tasks to perform in the forges depending on their skills and intelligence.

There was a healthy amount of fear, too, it could not be denied. A year past a one-eyed brute, a cowardly deserter from the King of Elmet’s spear-host, had become very drunk and had abused him publicly, calling for payment in goods or in precious silver for his labours. The sorcerer had merely touched the tip of his staff to his belly, once, murmured one of the milder curses and walked away. The Elmet man died three days later, in sweating agony having squirted his boiling innards out of his hole till there was nothing left to squirt. So fear, yes, fear was necessary for their respect.

Merlin paused at the open front of the main forge and looked inside. The great mound of coals glowed rose-red and yellow flames chased tiny cinders up the vast hooded chimney. A huge man, a giant in truth, for he was over seven feet tall, moved across his line of sight holding a huge pair of iron tongs. He grasped a bright rod that extended from the coals and hauled out – a long strip of fiery metal, a sword. The giant hauled the blade from the coals and they slid and grumbled, shooting out sparks and spikes of flame as the sword was withdrawn. 

He took two strides and plunged the blade into a vat of dark red liquor that sat beside the long water trough. The sword sizzled and bubbled and gouts of steam exploded from the vat. The smell of burning meat filled the forge. The giant pulled the sword into the light of the entrance and peered at it closely. He saw the sorcerer.

“Merlin,” he said, surprised. “You are back with us.”

“By the gods, nothing at all escapes your keen sight, Balin,” said the sorcerer. “Men should call you falcon-eyes.”

The giant grunted and shook his head in disgust and carried the sword over to the anvil. The blood blistered and smoked on the red-hot metal. Balin took a huge lump hammer from a rack on the shelf and began to batter at the sword. Blood and iron flaked off in red smoking scabs. The noise was deafening. The giant peered once again at the blade, gave it a few more strokes of the hammer, battering at the edges of the blade, rhythmically, evenly, to flatten them. Then he walked over and thrust the weapon back into the bright fiery mound.

“How comes the sword?” Merlin asked. His mouth was bone dry. He looked around to see if there was an ale-wife within hailing distance.

“Passable,” said the giant. “But it is far from ready. I mislike that pig’s blood. The old songs tell of virgin’s blood. And I believe the original spell requires it.”

“There are no virgins in Clas Myrddin,” said a voice from above their heads. “I make it my personal quest to see to that.”

The sorcerer looked up and saw a tiny form seated on a beam ten feet above the floor of the forge. It was a dwarf, his stumpy legs dangling from the beam, and he was chewing on a joint of roast mutton, almost as big as his misshapen, balding head.

“Eating again, Kalin?” said the sorcerer. “Trying to grow some taller bones?

“Got to keep up my strength, you know, for all the virgins,” said the little man. “But I never seem to get any larger. I’m as light as a feather. Catch me and see.”

And with that he launched himself off the beam and plummeted to the beaten-earth floor. Merlin was forced to take a step forward and catch the falling dwarf.

He set the little man gently on his feet on the forge floor.

“Keep from under my boots, you,” said the giant waging a massive finger. “Or I’ll set you back up there for a whole week, this time, with no food or drink at all.”

“Yes, brother,” said the dwarf meekly. “I hear and obey!” He turned and looked up at the sorcerer: “Did you have sweet dreams, my lord? Up on your lonely rock?” 

“Sweet enough. I saw Arthur get safely to Penrith. But I fear for him in Urien’s caer – he’s a treacherous weasel, that Urien. So, tell me, what news from the south?”

“Uthur is dead – as was foretold in your dreams,” said Balin. “He drowned in his own blood, exactly as you said he would. Six, seven days past. We heard the news yesterday – but it will be across Britain by now. Gorlois of Kernow cut his throat at a great feast, a feast to celebrate their peace. In Uthur’s hall, after eating Uthur’s meat.”

“Murdering your host! The height of rudeness in a guest,” snickered the dwarf. 

The other two men ignored him. 

“Kenan the Mighty is dead, too,” said Balin. “He died beside his liege lord.”

“That great dumb ox!” the dwarf sneered.

“Some respect for the fallen, Kalin, if you please,” his huge brother scolded.

“Why?” said the dwarf. “He was probably the worst bodyguard in Dumnonia, in Britain, perhaps the whole world. His High King, the man he has sworn to protect, gets his throat slit in his own hall by his guest of honour? It is almost unbelievably incompetent. I only believe it because it was Kenan the Mouse-brained. He was a born fool, a near imbecile for all his great size and strength – much like you, Balin.”

With extraordinary speed, Balin’s huge hand swept out and slapped his brother. The dwarf, anticipating the blow, was already cowering, his knees bent, his over-large head tucked down on his shoulders, and when the giant’s hand smacked into him his small body rolled across the forge floor like a child’s ball.

“Enough!” Merlin’s voice cracked like a whip. “You two are supposed to be my wise counsellors. So stop behaving like a pair of market-day mountebanks and give me the tidings. What has occurred in Dumnonia in the six days since Uthur’s fall.”

The dwarf had bounced to his feet, apparently quite unharmed. 

“Uthur didn’t fall,” Kalin said, grinning, “he was pu . . .” A look from Merlin’s slate grey eyes silenced him mid-quip.

His giant brother said: “Blood and chaos, fire and murder. The usual shambles after a High King’s death. Gorlois now holds Caer Camlann and the surrounding land for ten leagues in every direction. He has killed scores of men, and claims Dumnonia and Kernow are now one united kingdom, under his rule. And about half of Uthur’s sworn swords have gone over to his banner. Traitors. Conan the Black’s men killed him – their own captain! – and made their oaths to Gorlois before the High King’s blood was dry. There are more marching in from Kernow, another five hundred men.”

“But . . .” said Merlin, raising an eyebrow.

“But Prince Caius escaped unscathed. He was in the east on the frontier with two centuries of the King’s Guard when Uthur was killed. They say he is coming west to wrest Caer Camlann away from the usurper and set his head upon a spike at the gate. He is gathering men. The Stone Men have proclaimed Caius as their King.”

The Stone Men, Merlin thought, that news will rob Gorlois of any rest. The Army of the Men of the Stones, also called the Stone Men, were the best trained troops in all Dumnonia. The hardest. The fiercest in battle, and the most stubborn. They were criminals, murderers, runaway slaves. Many were Estronwyr. Foreigners.

For three generations now, a trickle of Estronwyr had been arriving every year on the eastern shores of the Island of Britain. They came in their little boats across the German Sea, driven out of their own flatland farms by the ever-rising waters. Some of them traveled to the far north, to the Uncovered Lands, newly denuded of their covering of ice. But, as the seas continued to rise, more were forced to take up their animals, their planting seed, their axes and shields, and seek a new home in Britain. 

Merlin could not say for sure when the first of them had arrived on these shores, perhaps in the days of the old Roman legions – some even claimed that they had been invited to come to Britain as auxiliary troops by the emperors in far-off Rome, to guard the shores of Britain from attacks by their very own kind of sea-predators. 

But now that the old Roman legions had departed, the Saxons – as most of them called themselves – had abandoned their boats and usurped farmlands in the east of Britain. The Kingdom of Kent, the Kingdom of the East Saxons, and that of the West Saxons and the East Angles – another tribe of Saxons, apparently. They raised crops on the fertile lands beyond a tacitly agreed line between the Isle of Wiht in the south, and the River Humber estuary in the north, and defended them vigorously, too. More than that, as they grew more numerous, they encroached ever westward into British territory. This was why Uthur had formed the Army of the Men of the Stones – to keep the Saxons in check. To keep them penned in the east, far away from Dumnonia. 

It had begun as a punishment legion, men who were convicted of grave crimes were allowed to serve as Stone Men for a time rather than be executed on the spot. Their officers were Dumnonian lordlings, often the younger sons of great men, who wanted to prove their worth in battle, and the discipline they employed had been truly savage. But, over the years, others had been conscripted into the ranks of the Stone Men – including hundreds of Estronwyr, from the Saxon lands, men who fled their own communities and who were willing to fight against their own kind. Desperate men. Hard men. Good soldiers. Conscripts into the Stone Men must swear to serve for ten years in this frontier legion, but then they would be released from service and given lands to farm in the west of Britain. Some of the Estronwyr who made oaths to the Army of the Men of the Stones had brought their wives and children with them.

The Stone Men were so called because their main garrison was built beside the great circle of holy stones that the ancients had set up to order the heavens on the wide plain of Salis. It was a place filled with a savage, lonely magic, as Merlin well knew. He had trained there as a youth, under his mentor Ambrosius, and through pain and self-denial he had learnt much wisdom. He remembered the long freezing nights lying naked atop the lintel stones, gazing at the heavens and waiting for the gods to bring him the dreaming sight. The Stone Men were named for this holy place – but they also revelled in their reputation of standing immovable like the grey dolmen themselves when they were attacked by the enemy. 

It was commonly said that it was easier to move a mountain than drive off a phalanx of Stone Men, once they had planted their feet. Uthur had taken a rabble of brutal criminals and runaway slaves and outcast Esronwyr farmers and turned them into the most disciplined and respected troops in all Britain, a truly formidable force.

“Gorlois was a fool to overlook the Stone Men,” Merlin said, half to himself.

“Gorlois sent them an envoy, an elderly Estronwyr farmer who was living in Kernow, a former Stone Man, who promised them five gold pieces each, and five years off their term of service, if they would kneel to Gorlois,” Balin rumbled.

“And?” said Merlin.

“The Stone Men sent the envoy back to Gorlois in five pieces.”

“I think I have the picture,” said the sorcerer. “Good, good, thank you both.”

“There are dozens of Dumnonian refugees in Clas Myrddyn, my lord, and more coming each day. They could give you better detail. Do you wish to speak to them?”

“Later, now I must eat and sleep.”

Balin nodded. He turned back to his forge and began to pump a huge bellows that fed air into the heart of the fire. 

“There is one more thing, my lord,” said the dwarf, just as Merlin was turning to leave. Kalin’s ugly face uncharacteristically serious. 

He flicked a small piece of silvery metal high and it glittered in the ruddy forge light as it spun. The sorcerer snatched it out of the air. He looked closely at it. It was a small shield-shaped slice of metal no bigger than an inch in height and in width with four small rectangular holes punched through the top half in the shape of a square. Merlin put the metal in his mouth and bit down hard. He looked at the tiny object; his strong white teeth had left no mark. He stepped over to the anvil, placed the sliver on the flat iron surface, seized up one of Balin’s hammers and struck the item as hard as he could. The tiny shield jumped from the iron and once again Merlin snatched it in its flight. It was completely unmarked.

“This is only the first of thousands, my lord,” said Kalin, a little smugly.

“Yes, of course, yes,” the sorcerer was still staring at the flake of shiny metal. 

“And, brother, I did have one other thought,” said the dwarf. The giant only grunted at him; once more his hands were filled with iron tongs and red-hot blade.

“If you really must have a virgin’s blood, Balin, why don’t you ask our generous lord to give you a pint or two of his own?”

Balin looked up from his glowing sword in shock.

Merlin held up the tiny shield between thumb and forefinger. “Because you are such a clever and industrious homunculus, and because I am in a good mood, I am going to pretend that I did not hear that last impudent remark. But know this: the old spells say that, in the making of good swords, dwarf blood works as well as virgin.” 

And Merlin swept out of the forge into the light, his black cloak trailing behind.

Chapter Five 
Arthur looked along the line of the spear shaft, at the scowling face of the Rheged warrior at the other end. His primary sensation was astonishment. Then outrage. They had come here on a mission of peace, hoping to heal the rift between Rheged and Dumnonia, between north and south. An honourable marriage mission, bearing gifts. 

To be continued tomorrow.

If you would like to read the complete story of The Broken Kingdom, either as an eBook, or paperback, or listen to the audio version, it is available now from Amazon. Follow the link here.

If you enjoyed this free extract from the book but would like to buy me a cup of coffee or a pint of ale to say thank you, I will most gratefully accept. Visit the Ko-Fi website here to show your appreciation for my work. Thank you very much!

Angus Donald’s has also written an epic five-book Viking series, published by Canelo, which begins with The Last Berserker (Fire Born 1). He is the author of the Outlaw Chronicles, which kicks off with Outlaw, published by Little, Brown. He is currently writing the 11th Robin Hood novel in that bestselling series.

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