Pendragon and the Traitor's Menace Read online

  Pendragon

  and the

  Traitor's Menace

  C.J. Brown

  Pendragon Legend Book Three:

  Pendragon and the Traitor's Menace

  Copyright © 2021 by C.J. Brown. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  Contents

  Prologue

  1. Highlands

  2. Attack Imminent

  3. Loyalty

  4. Farewell

  5. Low Tide

  6. Journey Across the Highlands

  7. Absence

  8. Three Hundred

  9. Strip the King

  10. Staged

  11. Caravan

  12. The Festival

  13. Enchanted Journey

  14. The Rescue

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  About the Author

  For all the readers who have joined me on this journey.

  Prologue

  The news brought a crushing blow to Arthur. He turned to his mother. It was evident from her countenance that she was already in possession of key facts. Although, it did seem that the heartbreaking revelation was a new occurrence for her as well. For her, it was not just the facts of the revelation and the ramifications of it, it was also the years-long betrayal that had been revealed by Uther’s admission.

  For Arthur, no longer being first-born certainly had its ramifications. Although there was no kingdom and no throne to gain, Arthur’s loss felt more of a personal one than a mere loss of power, status, and wealth. He had always been a loyal son to Uther. But the new revelation abolished all that.

  Still, if Uther had denied the relationship, it would have been easier for Arthur to have felt differently. But Uther had not denied it. In fact, it was he who revealed that Mehmet was his son. Mehmet himself had no idea of his genealogy and heritage. Arthur’s confusion grew. It morphed into sadness that morphed further into anger.

  “By choosing to reveal this, you are also choosing to cast me aside, Father. It is the one thing that you could have controlled in all this. You could have left out the fact that he is your son, and our family could have gone on. You should have carried this secret to the grave,” Arthur said, rising to his feet. He did not show it, but Igraine could feel his pain.

  Instead of taking Arthur’s side and addressing her husband, Igraine admonished him, “Arthur, you will honor your father.”

  Arthur’s forward motion was arrested by his mother’s words. He curtailed his advance and swung around, casting his gaze away from his father.

  “You are angry because you feel you have lost your right to the throne,” Uther said.

  "What throne, Father? You are not Emperor. You are not King. You are not even a baron or magistrate. What throne do you think I have lost in all this?”

  Uther’s anger seemed to boil beyond the container of his character, and he let fly the frustration of a man caught between two paths, both leading to sub-optimal outcomes.

  “How dare you question me?” he barked. His face, flushed with red-hot fire, matched the flare in his nostrils like a bull about to charge. “You owe your life to me—”

  “As you owe yours to Grandfather,” Arthur shouted.

  Uther drew his sword. “I will have your head for this as is my right in Roman custom,” he screamed.

  “My lord,” Igraine interjected, calming her voice in hopes of lowering the temperature in the tent. “We have but one child. One son. Find it in your heart to spare his life for my sake.”

  “No. I will have his head,” Uther screamed. “How dare he speak to me in a manner that insults an emperor?”

  “My lord,” Arthur said, his voice now cooler like his mother’s, cool enough, indeed, to turn the dead cold. “It is no sin to speak the truth. Once, a great man and heir to the throne taught me that. You are indeed the king of nothing. Saying so does not make me insolent. It merely makes me truthful, and since I speak the truth as my father taught me, then you should find your grievance with him, and take his life if you must.”

  Before Uther could respond, Igraine said, “If you must kill him, then you must kill me, too. You have two sons, so you can flippantly throw one away. Throwing the old out for the new must be easy for you. But I have only one child, and I do not choose to live. But you must take mine first, as I do not wish to see him die.”

  Uther had no intellectual leg to stand on and no reasoned room to maneuver. Instead, he turned to Vipsanius to issue his command. But the look on the man’s face told him all he needed to know. Vipsanius looked upon the scene with contempt and his body language, where his sword hand hugged his breast while it clenched the hilt of his sword, told Uther where the man’s loyalties lay. Without another word, Uther vacated the tent, hollower than when who had entered it earlier that day.

  1

  Highlands

  The Highlander Occupied the relatively barren lands of the cold north. In freedom and peace, they farmed its land, fished its seas, and foraged its woods. These burly men of the north were simple folk steeped in tradition. Honor and respect were their code. Chivalry and valor, their religion.

  For all the colors on their banners and the polished metal on their armor, the true Highlander was easily thought of as a simpleton. The complex ways of the southern Demetian were not his, and the ambition of the Highlander was to be merry and shown respect. It was not for gold, nor power.

  But the strain of being a simpleton that ran through them also dictated the reasons they would go to war to defend their honor. Such was the posture King Fergus had taken when the Romans had landed on Inver Bay and camped upon Inver Ridge.

  At the bottom of the leeward side of the ridge, a freshwater lake marked the northern extent of Inver. Just beyond its northern shore, the Roman lookouts identified approximately two hundred horses approaching. The captain of the watch, a young soldier who had recently been elevated in rank, mounted his horse and made haste toward the Pendragon Complex where his master sat in council. Captain Janus arrived at the outer perimeter and dismounted his horse, not finding the time to secure it to the pole. Instead, he ran the rest of the way till he reached the guards who saw his approach.

  “I need to report to Lord Pendragon that a force of approximately two hundred men approach from the north,” he told Vipsanius.

  Vipsanius’s first notion was that the approaching men were aligned with the stranger, Bulanid Mehmet. Sounding the trumpets, Vipsanius triggered a series of events that would morph the Romans’ posture from that of peaceful visitors to that of hostile combatants. By the time the last sequence of trumpet sounds blared across the ridge, every man who was to respond to the call to arms was already in motion toward his post, ready to defend his kin.

  The last to arrive was Arthur. The fact that he was fully immersed in his colors signified the defensive posture they had taken. The ridge undoubtedly gave them significant advantage, and in that knowledge, they watched the thundering horses approach in the form of a wedge.

  The center of the approaching line was led by one rider who was immediately followed by three riders, flying banners. Arthur coul
d see across the distance that separated them that three banners held images he did not understand, but he took them to represent the Caledonian people of the North. While he had no trust for Mehmet, he was also certain that the approaching line had nothing to do with the stranger who had arrived the day before.

  “Keep the archers at the ready, but do not allow them to deploy their weapons. I do not want to trigger an accidental feud. They may be hostile, but it makes sense that we give them every endeavor to refrain from battle. We are, after all, strangers on their land,” Arthur said, as he nudged his steed forward.

  With every intention in his heart shaded pure, Arthur broke into a gallop. But a lot weighed on him. Flashes of his mother’s words to his father haunted him. Glimpses of a stranger’s face in the Pendragon tent vexed him. Honor for his father burdened him. Together, the weight of his fifth day in a new land presented him with challenges that he had never known since birth.

  As he drew close to the advancing visitors, he shook himself from his distracted state and altered his disposition. He stirred in his seat, attempting to alter the fates that had momentarily befallen him and regain his composure. For now, he was not a general, but an emissary of the Pendragon clan.

  The two sides came to a halt. Two hundred and one to one. The sudden silence permeated the valley as the dust settled. Vipsanius, now joined by Uther, stood on the ridge and watched for any sign that his brother in arms faced danger. None came.

  “I am Magi Ro Hul,” boomed the voice of the large man, his eyes as cold as ice. Glaring at the newcomer, the commander of the mounted sentinels was careful to not create the impression that his presence was an entreaty to war.

  Arthur bowed his head and lowered his eyes below the horizon, noting to himself that the man before him loomed large. The man had at least half a cubit’s advantage in height and not all of that advantage was contributed by the height of his horse.

  “I come to welcome you to our land,” Magi Ro Hul said firmly, with no intention to raise his voice higher than needed. The giant of a man eyed Arthur while observing the posture of the Roman army on the ridge. Once he had assessed that Arthur was not a great threat, he bowed and pulled on the reins, signaling his cart horse to back up and join the three horsemen behind him.

  His move confused Arthur, who thought that the initial introduction had gone well. A pull-back indicated a breakdown in communication, and it seemed early for such a failure. Arthur considered his options. At the drop of a hand, his men would descend the slopes and take the advantage. Instead, he raised his hand, a gesture Vipsanius was not expecting and found hard to follow, but follow, he did.

  With mild hesitation and pronounced trepidation, Vipsanius turned the men and repositioned them behind the ridge, out of sight.

  Magi Ro Hul stopped, unsure of what had just happened. He was not expecting the men on the ridge to attack, but he also was not expecting them to retreat. He said nothing and returned to the line of three horses. Armor covered the riders who carried the banners. Magi Ro Hul’s return released the last rider to trot forward.

  Arthur watched, calmly and without fear or expectation, as this rider approached. Smaller in stature and a graceful equestrian, the rider moved without hesitation and arrived at a spot directly in front of Arthur and raised her face shield.

  “I am Olivie Camela Fergus,” she declared, her voice filled with stately mission and her eyes bright. She could tell that her guest tried hard to contain his surprise.

  “You expected a man?” She let fly a smile that completely warmed Arthur’s heart.

  Until that point, he had never turned to look at any member of the fairer sex. Now, he was struck by a thunderbolt so profound that even the whinny of his horse went unnoticed.

  Princess Olivie knew to give the stranger a moment to collect his thoughts as Magi Ro Hul snickered at what was unfolding before him. It was plain for all to see that the man the strangers had sent to greet the Highlanders was smitten like a teenager. What no one saw that bright cool morning was that Olivie had felt the same.

  2

  Attack Imminent

  Igraine paced in the new tent that had been erected for her in the dead of the previous night. The way Uther had behaved the previous day left her no choice but to have her servants erect new quarters. The sign of the new construction told Mehmet all he needed to know. But there was more that he was yet unaware of. He had made his way into Uther’s life and displaced those who were there before him. “What a fortunate turn of events,” he thought.

  The men had gone to line the ridge in response of an approaching army. Igraine knew very well that this had to be the Highlanders. She found them to be a little brutish, but with hearts of gold. They would show no mercy to enemies and go to the ends of the earth for friends. Igraine was glad that the meeting was happening so soon after they had landed. The sooner they found common ground with the two primary factions of the island, the sooner they could be brought together.

  It was a happy turn of events, but not enough to lift Igraine from the depths of sadness. After a lifetime together, her husband had disregarded her in favor of the consequence of his indiscretion. Uther, in his youth, had been a red-blooded Roman. That was for certain. It was not beyond the realm of possibility that he had sired many in the wake of his conquests. But why was this son so special? It could only mean that the woman who bore the stranger must have been one close to his heart.

  This saddened Igraine and tore her heart. She was willing to make room for the newcomer, but not at the cost of her son’s place in Britannia. Closing her eyes, she could see the consequences that rolled out in time. The path they were now on was not one that would end well for any concerned, even for Mehmet. Getting Merlin involved at this point would not work well either. This was a problem only the Pendragons could solve, or else, the consequences would tarnish the future of Britannia and all that flowed from it.

  Shaking her mind of the weight of the world, she prepared herself to greet the emissaries of the north and left the tent.

  ***

  The plan, Mehmet thought, had gone off better than he had expected. The gods, if he believed in such things, had smiled on him. What were the chances that his family rug would appear in the tent of the man he wished to vanquish? He contemplated. Uther Pendragon represented the sum of his pain and ambition. By striking down the old man, he would be able to avenge his family and his village while sealing his place as heir to Attila.

  Bishkar sat back on his luxurious Roman pillows and drifted into thought. In the privacy of his new tent, with no one to disturb him, he let his mind drift to a time he had long forgotten until the day before. The weeks and months preceding the Roman invasion of his village were blur in him mind, but not for long.

  He had been an outcast amongst the people of his village, he suddenly remembered. He had never understood the reason. His father loved him, and his mother doted on him. But his grandmother was distant. as were his older sister and the kids in the neighborhood. Bishkar turned bitter, suddenly remembering that they had labeled him unfavorably. He had forgotten the word itself, but the meaning had stuck with him. Outcast.

  “Why would they label me an outcast?” He felt the bile of hatred rise in his chest. The only man who had ever treated him with kindness was Attila, King of the Huns, and to him alone Bishkar pledged his loyalty. He had to somehow get news to his king, that the plan was underway, and soon, he would be able to strike a blow into the heart of the reviled Romans.

  Arriving at the porcelain basin and polished silver plate, he began to groom himself. Beneath the crud and the hair, he found that he didn’t look much different than the Romans who surrounded his tent. His skin was lighter in shade than the Huns he called kin. But not as fair as the Franks he had sailed with. Beneath the crud of decades and the dirt of a thousand miles, he found the true color of his hair, and after hour upon hour of cleaning and grooming, a new man emerged.r />
  He looked nothing like his Anatolian father who wore a darker complexion and had smaller eyes. But he had his mother’s facial structure. He could see why they called him an outcast and why they took him for an Ostrogoth, rather than an Anatolian like his parents.

  Bishkar had learned to be anyone at any time because of his lack of strong heritage. He was neither Anatolian, Ostrogoth, nor Hun. As such, Bishkar became a chameleon, morphing into whoever he needed to be in the moment. Now he was Mehmet.

  Looking nothing like a Hun and more like a Roman, Mehmet emerged from his tent after midday to find visitors crowding the treeline. Over two hundred horses, by his assessment, lined the edge of the grassland. Caledonian men mulled about the grand tent as Roman guards stood sentry around it. Mehmet, Mehmet was unsure of what new development had come with the new day, his fifth on the island.

  Striding confidently, he approached the entrance and was allowed to pass by the guards who had already been instructed by Uther himself to give the visitor every courtesy. No one but the Pendragon family and Vipsanius possessed the knowledge of Mehmet’s true lineage. Not even Mehmet. Yet.

  As he passed the flaps of the entrance the scene came into view. Two long tables faced each other with Uther in the center of one and a woman in the center of the other. He figured quickly that these were representatives of a neighboring tribe, the ones locals referred to as the Highlanders.

  Beside Uther sat his son, Arthur, the object of Mehmet’s devious plan. He remembered Arthur’s face. It was the last thing he saw before he jumped into the water as the Bouvet crashed into the Nostre Dame. Beside Arthur sat a woman Mehmet assumed was Uther’s wife.

  Across from them were five representatives of the Northerners. Mehmet did not recognize any of them as he stood on the periphery of tent.

  “My father bids thee welcome,” Mehmet heard the woman say, and this intrigued him. Could it be, that the king in the North would have sent his daughter to broker an alliance, or at least, a friendship? As his thoughts drifted toward the mischief he could cause, the conversation between the two sides gathered momentum.