Gwenhwyfar_ The White Spirit - Mercedes Lackey [77]
Gwen and her men rode in to the camp on a bright, crisp, sunny afternoon having made all speed with their news, and she knew thanks to her work that a messenger sent to her father would have a substantial force here in plenty of time to give the Saxons second thoughts about invading. Her spirits were high, and with good luck she would see some fighting.
Above them was a sky of cloudless perfection. Before them was the camp, laid out in ordered rows. “Roman style,” was what Peder said, though he would never, ever have used those words to her father. But Gwen now knew exactly what he meant. The Romans had perfected the art of making a defensible camp, and High King Arthur was not above using that art. King Lleudd’s war chiefs and captains had learned it from him, found it good, and adopted it.
Such a camp could be made in much less than half a day in summer; in winter, it was oddly much easier. Square in shape, and surrounded by a ditch and wall system, it was possible to make snow walls higher and faster than dirt or brush walls, and in place of a ditch, simply making a fast fire of brush, allowing the snow to melt and freeze into ice served the same purpose. There was an entrance to the camp in the middle of each of the four walls, guarded night and day; the tents and pavilions inside were arranged in orderly rows, every tent was always in the same place in every camp, and if those tents were not as uniform as the ones that the Roman army had once had, at least it was possible to know exactly where everyone was in the camp. In the event of an attack, that was vital.
This wasn’t a huge force or a huge encampment, not like the big Roman ones, which had held tens of thousands. Only a couple of hundred—just enough to for hit-and-run delaying tactics in case there had been a Saxon army actually marching across the border. It looked very peaceful, with the horses picketed neatly, the stacks of hay brought from the nearby village, each man with his cook fire going. Almost like a village in itself. But peace was not what they were here for, and she knew the others were chafing for some fighting just as much as she was. Strange thing about winter—some people nearly went mad with inactivity, and some just contentedly drowsed the dark days away. She, it seemed, was one of the former. The ambush of the scouting party had only whetted her appetite for more.
But her good humor came plummeting down when the first person she met—aside from the sentry who challenged them—was Peder, who greeted her with those warning words.
Medraut. Son of Lot of Orkney, now eighteen years old. The only person she wanted to see less than Medraut was the woman he had married, her sister Gwenhwyfach.
Which, of course, utterly ruined her mood. She pulled her horse up; he was not happy about being halted so close to his picket and that lovely, lovely hay, and he curveted restlessly despite his weariness. Peder stepped back from him; this was her warhorse, Rhys, one of her father’s famed grays; it was not safe to be too near those hooves and teeth if a mood was on him. “What is he doing here?” she demanded sharply. There was no need to mince words with Peder; her old mentor knew exactly how she felt about the little pest. She had good reason for her dislike.
It had all begun five years after Anna Morgause had taken Little Gwen off to foster. The Queen of Lothian and the Orkneys had been making a state visit to the High King, which was a politic thing to do every so often, and had made sure to include in the journey a long pause at Castell y Cnwclas so that Little Gwen “could be with her family.” And it had been unpleasant enough to have Gwenhwyfach swanning about, trying to lord it over Gynath, doing not a bit of work but making plenty. But that was not the end of the unpleasantness, for Anna Morgause had brought Medraut with her.
Now, when this planned visit had been announced, Gwen had thought that her worst difficulty was going to be with the queen herself again and attempts to work magic on King Lleudd. After all, this visit might just have been another