Month: December 2018

R5 Gerraint: Rebellion, part 2 of 3

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

The twenty approaching riders slowed on sight of the campfire.  They let their horses walk forward while everyone stayed hidden.  The man out front turned twice in the road before he made his pronouncement.  “They have ridden on, back toward Caerleon.”  The enemy might have ridden on as well, but a squirrel startled a horse hidden in the woods and it neighed.

“Now.” Pelenor shouted and fired his first arrow. Five arrows followed.  Three missed, and the other two wounded two men, one in the arm and one in the leg.  Pelenor prepared to fire again when a half-dozen arrows came out of the trees beyond the camp.  Whoever those men were, they were dead shots.  Arthur’s crew got off one more arrow in the time the strangers fired three. When Bedwyr and his four men came charging back, swords drawn, war cries flying, they saw a few survivors riding away as fast as they could.

Six men, all dressed as hunters came from the trees and bowed to Arthur before they approached Gerraint.  They all wore the lion beneath their cloaks so the older men understood.

“Lord.”  The chief hunter bowed low.  “We do not forget.”

“Thank you, Pinewood,” Gerraint named him, just before the thunder took all of their attention.

“Arthur!”  They all heard the voice.

“Meryddin?”  Arthur looked up and all around, but of course Meryddin was not there.

“I see a hundred enemies bearing down on you. You must flee,” Meryddin’s voice said.

“Get the horses,” Pelenor shouted.  “Put out the fire.”

People jumped, but while they finished packing, Gerraint got to ask.

“Meryddin can sometimes see things and speak at a great distance,” Arthur explained.

“And hear?”  Gerraint did not really ask.

“And he can make people see and hear things that are not really there,” Arthur finished.

When they were ready, Bedwyr volunteered to stay behind with his men to delay the enemy.

“No, Lord,” Pinewood interrupted.  “We have our bows and plenty of arrows.  We might not delay them much, but we should be able to slow them down.”

Arthur looked at Gerraint and Gerraint nodded. “Lord Bedwyr, you need to ride with us.” Arthur sounded decisive.

“Your duty is to protect the Pendragon and see him safely back to Caerleon,” Gerraint suggested.

“Well said,” Peredur smiled at the squires, and Bedwyr made no objection

They rode hard, back the way they came the day before, and Gerraint had time to wonder who Meryddin was to have such special powers.  They rode all morning and into the afternoon, this time without stopping for a leisurely lunch, and they spotted the hundred, which Gerraint thought looked more like two hundred, when they came to the open fields outside the town.  The great gate looked open in the small city wall, and they passed through untouched.  The watchmen shut the gate as soon as they were safe, and then they all went up to the top of the short stone and wood wall to look down on the enemy.

They saw a number of soldiers from the fort alongside the watchmen.  Just in case, they said.  Meryddin also stood there.  He grabbed Arthur and dragged him off to the fort, and did not stay to see the hundred turn and ride back out of sight.

“They have decided not to test the walls,” Ederyn said.

Pelenor looked up and down the well manned wall. “Smart move,” he said.

In the evening, several scribes sent by Dubricius penned letters to call up the fighting men for war.  Peredur pointed out that it would not do to send a call to arms to a chief who might be in rebellion, “Like a call to fight against himself,” he said, and the others saw the wisdom in that.  So, while they worked on a list of men they knew were faithful, Arthur and Gerraint sat around the chessboard.

“How long before we can move to meet the enemy?” Arthur asked.

Pelenor looked up and spoke with a straight face. “Maybe six months.”

“He didn’t even blink saying that.”  Gerraint dropped his head to the table and banged his free hand several times.

“I suppose we could push it to three months, but we don’t want to go without the full complement of men and prepared,” Pelenor said more thoughtfully.

“Thirty days,” Arthur suggested.

“Your move.”  Percival tapped Gerraint on the shoulder.

They finally decided sixty days, because the rebels were already gathering, and had been for some time.  The older men insisted any less would be impossible. It would not give them time enough to gather the food to feed an army, or make the spears necessary for those who might come unprepared.  Meryddin argued on the side of the boys.  He said the way this game got played, often it was the first to gather the semblance of an army who won, and sometimes without ever getting to the battle.  He strained his far sight to try and discern what the enemy might be doing.  He also sent out Druids to spy and report back.  They were the ones who identified eleven Lords who made a pact, though really there were only ten that were certain because Kai kept trying hard to convince Loth to stay out of it.

“Mostly Welsh,” one man reported over supper in the Great Hall.  “Mostly Lords still committed to the old ways.”  He probably should not have said that part.

Meryddin held back his anger with the words, “This is not the time for that.”  But Arthur could tell Meryddin was not happy.  When he mentioned it, Gerraint wondered when might be the right time for the old ways.

Arthur, Gerraint and Percival spent those months drawing up rules for the round table and the RDF, which is what they were calling the rapid deployment force.  Gerraint told the others how the rapid cavalry of the Franks, Visigoths and Vandals, and especially the Huns ran right over and destroyed the great Roman legions. “The day of the foot soldiers would never end, but it would never be the same as it was,” he said.  “Horses are the thing, and lances.”  With that in mind, they drew up plans for battle, that is, if the Lords of the Pendragon and the rebels should ever happen to meet in battle.

“But the Lords and old men will want to control the order of battle,” Percival groused.

“Not if we move before they are ready,” Arthur said. He had a plan for that.

They visited Bishop Dubricius on Sunday, and in fact made it a regular habit.  Percival said they ought to always go to church.  Arthur wanted the excuse to get away from Meryddin for a time.  Gerraint was willing, but sort of in the middle on the issue.

One day, Percival went dressed in his new tunic, white with a big, red cross painted on the front.  Arthur said it looked silly.  Gerraint said Percival was making himself into a target for archery practice, and he poked the boy with his finger where the cross met.  Percival showed some steam.

“I am a Christian and so is my mother and my father,” he squeaked.  Peredur stood right there and he put his arm around his boy.  He and Ederyn often went to church with the boys, and even Pelenor went, sometimes.

The Bishop took that moment to walk up and offered his insight.  “Arthur. I’ve been thinking about this round table club of yours and I understand one of the key ingredients is to make sure everybody is on the same page.”  All three boys nodded.  “Well, I think you need to decide if the club is going to be Christian and support the ideals of grace, charity, and mercy and defend the poor, the weak and the needy, or if the club is going to be pagan.  You know very well that those two ideas do not get along.”

“Christian,” Percival said quickly.  Gerraint held his tongue and deliberately did not look at Arthur so as not to influence anything.  Besides, he got busy trying to imagine what a pagan and Druid round table might be like, and he did not like what he imagined.

“Christian,” Arthur said, and Gerraint never asked about that decision.

Gerraint had the carpenters build a protective, hand cup toward the end of the longest spears he could find.  He had gloves made in boy’s sizes so they could grip the spears tight, under their arms.  He dared not invent Velcro, but he thought real hard about stirrups.

When the Lords began to arrive, Arthur grabbed the squires for some rapid training.  Soon, there were as many as fifty young men racing around the huge open court of the fort, the place where a whole legion of Romans used to gather in ordered ranks before moving out.  The boys brandished their makeshift lances and struck at the targets Arthur had set up, mostly at man-eye level.  There were any number of near misses in those weeks, but fortunately, none of the actual men walking around got skewered.  Most of the men just sat back and watched the game and laughed.  By the end of that time, some were taking bets on which of the boys would hit the target and which would miss.

R5 Gerraint: Rebellion, part 1 of 3

M G Kizzia 1 Comment

Arthur spent a year at Caerleon, fixing up the fort which proved as large, though not in as good a shape as the Bishop reported. Most of the men there were stationed under Uther, and now were well into their age.  With Peredur to guide him, Arthur let the eldest go for a small tract of land and a smaller pension.  Meryddin did not worry about the old men.  He set about recruiting young, untrained men yearning for adventure.  Gerraint took credit for putting that idea into the Druid’s head, and barely avoided offering the phrase “Be all that you can be.”  To be sure, it fit with Meryddin’s thinking, which as far as Gerraint could tell looked like a strong central government with high taxes.  But a strong central government was not the world they lived in.

They brought the administration up from Cadbury where the clerks had been dutifully collecting and recording the receipt of tax money for the past twelve years.  Of course, many of the Lords stopped paying at some point, not seeing any reason to continue to support a Pendragon who did not exist.  Precious little money got collected over all those years, but then the accounts did not exactly match, so Arthur let a large number of those men go as well.

Arthur came into the great hall one afternoon wearing a brand-new tunic, white with a bold dragon on the front.  Everyone ignored him.

Meryddin stood in the corner arguing with Ederyn about the training of the recruits.  Meryddin wanted them on horseback as much as possible.  Ederyn kept saying the foot soldier remained the basic element of any army.  To his surprise, Gerraint agreed with Meryddin.  Cavalry swept across the old Roman borders at an alarming rate and crushed everything in its way.  Just as well that Ederyn had as much chance of winning an argument with Meryddin as a ship had sailing directly into the wind.  Gerraint then considered lateen sails, but dismissed them.  He was not there to mess up history.  Besides, Gerraint stayed too busy arguing with his Master, Pelenor.

“You will get more money with low taxes than with high taxes,” Gerraint insisted.

“Now son, that doesn’t make any sense,” Pelenor responded, and threw his hands in the air in frustration.

“Think about it,” Gerraint came back.  “A man will pay a reasonably low tax, but most of a high tax will end up in the barn, hidden under the hay.”

“Then we will check under all the haystacks in Britain,” Pelenor said with a sigh.

Gerraint let out his own sigh of frustration. Pelenor just didn’t get it.  He dared not get into the notion that lower taxes spurred economic growth.  Meryddin would have squashed that idea as soon as it escaped his mouth.  Meryddin did not want economic growth.  He wanted subservience and a population dependent on his whims.  The man had some Brunhild in him, and because of that, Gerraint smiled when he found something he disagreed with Meryddin about.

Meanwhile, Peredur and his son Percival looked at the dais and debated the relative merits of raising it another foot or so in height so Arthur could be sure to look down on all of his guests, and Arthur shouted.

“Hey!  I like cavalry.  Set the taxes half way between.  I don’t want to look down on anyone.  That would be offensive.  I’m just a kid.  Give me a big table on the floor where me and all the Lords can see each other face to face, like maybe a big, round table.”  Arthur grinned.  “Now, what do you think?”  He modeled his new tunic.

“Nice.  Okay. Cute.  Good.”  No one showed any enthusiasm, and they went right back to what they were arguing about.

So, after a year of that, having found an honest accountant, and one good man to Captain the fort and train the new men, Pelenor, Peredur and Ederyn wanted to go home.  Naturally, their squires accompanied them.

All three Lords lived in the British Midlands, not far from Caerleon.  Peredur and Pelenor had been good neighbors and good friends their whole lives.  Not many neighbors in Britain could say that. Ederyn lived just down the way from Peredur, technically in the province of Leogria.  He would be taking Percival there, but Percival would not be far from home.

“Why don’t we stop in my place first for a while?” Peredur suggested.  “It would give Percival’s mother a chance to see her son, and Pelenor, you always said you liked my wife’s dumplings.”

“There is that.”  Pelenor looked briefly like his mouth started watering.

Ederyn did not mind.  His wife died a few years ago from the flu, so he moved in no particular hurry.  He had servants, who were in fact slaves, who kept the place, and did so honestly no matter how long he stayed away.  Gerraint knew Ederyn was lucky in that respect, but that thought made him fear for the future.  He understood that Meryddin would eventually have his way all across Europe.  The Lords would be granted or buy or simply take more and more land and the free people in the big towns and cities would become peasants, and the people on the land would have no choice but to contract with the landowner for their service and become serfs.  Actual slavery would all but disappear as an unnecessary expense, but it would be small compensation.

Shortly after a long and filling lunch, the group came to a forest.  Gerraint only once wondered if this might be a haunted forest.  No such luck, he decided.  A mere half-mile in, and they came to a small clearing where Peredur suggested they spend the night.  It only turned three in the afternoon, but once the squires got the tents up and the fire blazing, they had the horses to rub.  Gerraint started in again on the idea of a rapid deployment force.

“We need a whole troop of men that can be called out on little or no notice.  They should be good at moving quickly and quietly to wherever the trouble may be. They should be trained to scout out the enemy without giving themselves away.  And most important, they should know when to engage the enemy and when to harass a large foe while regular troops are called up.”

Arthur put down his brush for a minute.  “You realize that would be a big expense.”

‘No,” Percival interjected.  “Let the squires do it.  We will all be young Lords eventually.”

“We would still need a small force at Caerleon to go out with whatever young Lord might be there at any given time.” Arthur mused.  “That expense might be manageable.  But the question is, how will we convince the Lords to do it, and at their own expense?”

“That’s easy,” Gerraint said.  “When they come of age and have proved themselves in some worthy deed, invite them to be members of the special club.  We won’t have to ask people to join.  No one will dare accept the shame of being left out.”

“I suppose the young Lords won’t have anything better to do than stay home and work as servants to their fathers for who knows how long.”  Arthur started thinking.

“And think how many second and third sons there are,” Gerraint added.

“Hey, I know!”  Percival got excited.  “You could use that round table idea of yours where all the young lords can see eye to eye.”

“Face to face,” Arthur corrected.  “But I think they will need more than an invitation, like when they join they should get a title of some sort.”

“Sir,” Gerraint said, but then he held his tongue because he realized he was in danger of interfering with history.

“Boys,” Pelenor came up from the fire.  “Give it a rest.”

The squires went back to rubbing down the horses before supper.

In the morning, the boys got up early and again they cared for the horses first and got them ready to travel before they started cooking for themselves.  That smell woke the men, and they stumbled out of their tents which the squires immediately took down and packed.  It looked like it would be a good morning.

While Pelenor contemplated thirds for breakfast, they heard the horses.  Everyone grabbed their weapons and hid as well as they could.  There came a moment of trepidation before they breathed relief. Bedwyr appeared with four soldiers from the Oxford fort, which sat right beside Bedwyr’s lands.

“Arthur!  Master Pelenor!”  Bedwyr shouted, even if they were all right there.  “We must ride.  There are rebels hard behind us.”

“Rebels?”  Peredur did not believe it.

“Some dozen Lords have secretly agreed they would have no Pendragon rather than a boy,” one of the soldiers said, while Bedwyr dismounted and tried to hurry the others.

“No time for that,” Pelenor said as they heard more horses coming on.  He sent Bedwyr and his soldiers down the road while his group got bows.  “Get those horses under cover,” Peredur helped. “Find good cover, but don’t fire until I fire.”

Ederyn bent down to Percival and said, “Just like we practiced.”