“What happens if you keep going west?”
“West?” The man practically barked at me. “Why’d you want to go that way?”
The old man’s raised voice drew eyes to me. I shrugged and said, “I suppose because I’m poorly informed. What’s wrong with the road to the west?”
“Bloody awful doings down at the Viking trading post.Sveinsey, they call it, down there on the Gwyr peninsula, but f**k if anyone knows what that means.”
I laughed along with him at that, even though I knew it meant Sveinn’s Island in Old Norse—which was simply called “Norse” then. Today the place is called Swansea.
“How bloody awful are we talking about?” I asked.
“It’s a long story, and me tongue is like a slug left out in the sun.”
“Ah. Allow me to buy you a drink, then?”
“Kind of you, sir. What’s your name?”
I introduced myself as Gawain, which many people heard, no doubt, especially since I spoke their language with a noticeable accent. Conversation in the dining area was subdued and people probably noted that my kit marked me as a knight of some means. The old man offered his hand and told me his name was Dafydd. We bellied up to the bar and I ordered two flagons of mead. I also made inquiries about staying the night and the innkeeper shook his head. “No rooms left. Not unless you want to stay in the stables.”
“The stables it is, then.”
Once the old man had slaked the worst of his thirst, he told me merrily of death and ruin in the west.
“Some daffy Pict with his face pierced a hundred times has come into Sveinsey and bollixed up the entire kingdom. Haven’t seen the sun in three months. The rain never lets up—never enough to flood, mind, but nothing ever gets a chance to dry out either. Crops are collapsing from root rot and you have poxy mushrooms bigger than an ox’s c**k sprouting up all over the place. Cows and sheep are shitting themselves until they die, am I right?” He looked at the innkeeper and nearby patrons for corroboration. A couple of half-hearted grunts set him off again. “Pastures of them just spread out in the mud for the sport of crows. The smart people moved out a few months ago when they saw there wouldn’t be any f**king food, but it’s a hard thing to give up one’s land after fighting over it and sweating over it year after year.”
“So did the people who moved earlier get out? They weren’t trapped like you?”
“Aye, they made it out. This magic fence he’s put up has only been in effect for a month now. Good King Cadoc is off praying about it, God bless him, but I don’t see what good it’s doing when the Pict is sitting there building defenses. Bloody sorcerer says he’s got his own king there now at Sveinsey.”
“Begging your pardon, but I’ve been away for a good while. What kingdom am I in right now?”
Dafydd laughed at me, and a few of the patrons listening in joined him. “What kingdom, you say? How does a knight not know where he is?”
I shrugged. “I travel a lot. Just came across from the continent not long ago. Borders shift and kings die all the time. Hard to keep track after a while.”
“Well, that’s true enough. You’re in Glywysing. Who is your lord?”
“I don’t have a lord,” I said, but immediately saw that the assembled men wouldn’t accept such a state of existence. “I’m looking for one,” I added. “A righteous one. My last lord was slain by the Saxons.”
A round of cursing and spitting greeted this revelation, and as an enemy of the Saxons, I was instantly their friend. Someone offered to buy my next drink.
“How are you surviving if you can’t get new supplies in?” I asked, shooting a glance at the innkeeper. He scowled and picked up a flagon that needed polishing.
“Lads have been helping out,” he said. “They go hunting. Plenty of game hereabouts. But it’s all meat all the time now. That and drink, because I had quite a few kegs in storage. Ran out of flour so there’s no bread. Haven’t seen a vegetable in three weeks.”
“That’s a sailor’s diet, that is,” Dafydd said. “We’re going to turn pasty and die weeping if we can’t get out of here.”
“Well, what about the Pict?” I asked. “Isn’t he facing the same problem?”
“Oh, no,” Dafydd said, shaking his head. “He’s got something special there at his wee little fortress. He’s trying to turn it into a proper castle, you know—but bugger that, what I keep hearing is that he has some kind of infinite supply of food. It’s a magic graal, you know. Take food from it and more appears. He can feed everyone in his fortress just fine, and plenty of people have joined him to get their three squares a day, you bet. But meanwhile the land is dying around him, spreading east from the Gwyr peninsula and maybe north and west, too, I don’t know. Haven’t heard from anybody out there.”
“So nobody is heading to Sveinsey anymore? Or even in that direction?”
“Only the evil and the stupid.”
I raised an eyebrow. “The evil?”
“Pagan bastards. Druids. There was one in here about seven days ago, and another a couple weeks before that. Tattoos on their arms, you know.”
That was why I’d asked Ogma for a full kit. The time when Druids earned respect wherever they walked had passed, and it was getting to the point where we couldn’t even walk around freely without harassment or outright violence. I nodded and asked, “They went to join the Pict?”
“No, not join him. They thought they could bloody do something about him. I wished them well in that regard, but they haven’t come back and we still can’t get to Gloucester, so they’ve had all the effect of King Cadoc’s prayers, which is to say, no effect at all.”
Abruptly I no longer felt like drinking with those men. They had told me all I needed to know, and nothing would follow except personal questions and the exchange of lies. Blending in with the converted populace wasn’t difficult so long as I kept my tattoos hidden, for the rules were simple in the early Church of the time: praise Jesus, and if you ran into anyone who didn’t do the same, attack the weak and shun the strong. The social camouflage was easy to maintain but wearying on the spirit. I thanked the men for their company and excused myself to look after my horse, may the Lord bless and keep them and destroy all evil.
I brushed Apple Jack down and fed him and settled in to wait out the night, resolving to get an early start in the morning. I wanted to strip and dry out my kit but the necessity of maintaining my Christian façade made that impossible. Whenever someone entered the stables I knelt and clasped my hands and made a show of prayer. No one interrupted my pious devotion.
The rain renewed with a vengeance in the morning, determined to erode my substance away and chap my hide. Big fat drops spanged off my helmet and slapped against my leathers. I kept my head down for most of the time and trusted Apple Jack to follow the path. After a soggy lunch under the partial shelter of an ash tree, we longed for the dry comfort of the stable at the Silver Stallion.
An hour’s numbing march after lunch brought a surprise. I wiped rain out of my eyes at one point and Apple Jack shook his head to accomplish the same end. Refocusing on the road, I saw a structure ahead that I had missed before.