Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [25]
“Peace, Uther! I know this—it is my men who do not know it! You will get no legions for Britain, nor any standing army, Ambrosius, from the men north of the great wall.”
Gorlois said huskily, “Perhaps Caesar had the right idea, then; perhaps we should regarrison the wall. Not, as he did, to keep the wild Northmen from the cities, but to keep the Saxons from your homeland, Lot.”
“We cannot spare troops for that,” said Uther impatiently. “We cannot spare any trained troops at all! We may have to let the treaty people defend the Saxon Shores, and set up our stand in the West country, against the Scots and Northmen. I think we should make our main stand in the Summer Country; then in winter they will not be able to come down to sack our camps as they did three years ago, for they will not know their way around the islands.”
Igraine listened sharply, for she had been born in the Summer Country and knew how, in winter, the seas moved inward and flooded the land. What was passable, though boggy, ground in summer, in the winter became lakes and long inland seas. Even an invading army would find it hard to come into that country, except in high summer.
“That is what the Merlin told me,” Ambrosius said, “and he has offered us place for our people to establish camp for our armies in the Summer Country.”
Uriens said in a rusty voice, “I do not like to abandon the Saxon Shores to the treaty troops. A Saxon is a Saxon, and he will keep an oath only while it suits him. I think the mistake of all our lives was when Constantine made compact with Vortigern—”
“No,” Ambrosius said, “a dog who is part wolf will fight more hardily against other wolves than any other dog. Constantine gave Vortigern’s Saxons their own land, and they fought to defend it. That is what a Saxon wants: land. They are farmers, and they will fight to the death to make their land safe. The treaty troops have fought valiantly against the Saxons who came to invade our shores—”
“But now there are so many of them,” Uriens said, “that they are demanding to enlarge their treaty lands, and they have threatened that if we will not give them more land, they will come and take it. So now, as if it were not enough to fight the Saxons from beyond the sea, we must fight those whom Constantine brought into our lands—”
“Enough,” said Ambrosius, raising a thin hand, and Igraine thought he looked terribly ill. “I cannot remedy mistakes, if they were mistakes, made by men who died before I was born; I have enough to do remedying my own mistakes, and I will not live long enough to set them all right. But I will do what I can while I live.”
“I think the first thing and best to do,” said Lot, “would be to drive forth the Saxons within our own kingdoms, and then fortify ourselves against their returning.”
Ambrosius said, “I do not think we can do that. They have lived here since their fathers’ and grandfathers’ and great-grandfathers’ time, some of them, and unless we are willing to kill them all, they will not leave the land they have a right to call their own; nor should we violate the treaty. If we fight among ourselves here within the shores of Britain, how will we have strength and weapons to fight when we are invaded from without? Also, some of the Saxons on the treaty shores are Christians, and will fight alongside us against the wild men and their heathen Gods.”
“I think,” Lot said, smiling in wry amusement, “that the bishops of Britain thought truly when they refused to send missionaries to save the souls of the Saxons on our shores, saying that if the Saxons were to be admitted to Heaven, they wanted no part of it for themselves! We have enough trouble on this earth with the Saxons, must we have their uncouth brawling in Heaven as well?”
“I think you mistake the nature of Heaven,” said a familiar voice, and Igraine felt a strange, hollow awareness within herself. She looked down the table at the speaker, who wore a plain grey robe, monkish in cut. She would not have recognized the Merlin in this garb, but his voice she would have known anywhere.