The Road to Avalon by Joan Wolf

Author:Joan Wolf [Wolf, Joan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Fiction, Historical, Romance, Fairy Tales; Folk Tales; Legends & Mythology
ISBN: 9781569765777
Google: mv7ypTFlDAMC
Amazon: 155652658X
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Published: 2007-04-30T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 23

IT was a time of waiting. The king waited for news of the Saxons, which came in sporadically and was ambiguous in nature. Messengers were going back and forth among the three bretwaldas, and in March Offa, Cynewulf, and Cerdic met for two days in Sussex.

“They might be meeting about the treaty, or they might be planning something else,” Arthur said to Bedwyr when this piece of news came in from one of Lionel’s spies.

“Wouldn’t it be ironic if our peace proposals were the very thing needed to make them unite in opposition to us,” Bedwyr said.

Arthur’s straight black brows rose faintly. “Very ironic.” His tone was extremely dry.

Bedwyr grinned.

The two men were returning to the praetorium from the cavalry schooling ring. Bedwyr was riding Sluan and Arthur was on the chestnut, Ruadh, he had first ridden during the training session that Gwenhwyfar and Gawain had witnessed a few months ago. Arthur liked the horse and was using him as a second mount. The horses walked slowly side by side and Bedwyr looked again at Arthur’s lean, dark face. “You think they’re coming, don’t you?” he asked.

“Yes,” said the king, “I do.” There was no irony now in his voice.

“If Kent and Sussex and Anglia combine,” Bedwyr said soberly, “they will come against Dumnonia.”

“Yes.”

Bedwyr drew a long breath. “Ambrosius’ wall has held them before.” The wall he referred to was one built by Arthur’s uncle, Constantine’s oldest son, in order to protect Dumnonia’s vulnerable east from attack from the Saxon shore. The rest of Dumnonia was effectively guarded by natural obstacles: the south and west by the sea, the north by the Aildon hills. Ambrosius’ wall, a fifty-mile-long bank with a ditch, had done for Dumnonia what Hadrian’s wall had done for several centuries in the north—held back the barbarian invaders.

“They will have to come over the wall,” Bedwyr went on. “It is the only feasible access into the southwest from the Thames valley. We shall have to concentrate our defense there. We’ve held them before. We can do it again”

Ruadh shied at something on the side of the road and Arthur absently patted his neck. He stared in silence for a moment at his own hand on the horse’s bright coat, then said, “Actually there are two ways into Dumnonia from the Thames valley.”

“Two ways?” Bedwyr looked at him in puzzlement. “Do you mean by sea?”

“No. One way is the way you have named, the Roman road to Calleva. In order to get through to Calleva, however, they would first have to breach Ambrosius’ wall and the forts that guard it. Not an impossible task, but difficult.”

“And the second way?”

“The Roman road to Corinium.”

Bedwyr continued to look puzzled. “The Aildon hills are between the Corinium road and Dumnonia. And they are high in the west, up to a thousand feet. No army could get through there.”

“They could if they took the Badon pass.” He looked from his hand to Bedwyr’s face. “Cut off the Corinium road, break south through the pass, and you’d find yourself right on the Roman road to Venta.

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