Chapter V: King of the Dumnones

At daybreak, we were up and moving. Breakfast was perforce light, consisting of a mere few handfuls of berries. Once again our scouts rode out ahead of us, cantering up the trail. I swung into step beside Cavarillos at the head of the Botroas.
I had been marching for days now, but I still had trouble keeping up with his powerful strides. He glanced sideways at me as though to assure himself of who accompanied him. “Did you sleep well last night, Cadwalador?”
“Tolerable,” I replied, surprised by his solicitude. It wasn’t like him.
“Good,” he retorted gruffly. “It’s liable to be the last good sleep any of us get.”
I nearly stopped marching, looking over at him surprise. “What do you mean? With any luck, we’ll sleep with full bellies tonight.”
“Luck is a fickle wench. Tancogeistla’s been drinking,” was his short reply.
“What? Where did he get liquor out here?”
“Ask the gods,” Cavarillos shot back. “And while you’re at it, pray that they’ll take it away from him.”
I nodded, my cheer suddenly ripped away from me. I had seen Tancogeistla drunken before, back on the headland of Gaul. He had gotten into an argument with one of his subordinates and ended up killing three men before his bodyguards could restrain him. Just the man we needed to conduct diplomacy with the people of Ictis, the Dumnones, as they were called.
Just then, Tancogeistla rode by, as if an embodiment of our thoughts. Cavarillos was right. Our general’s face was flushed with the fire of liquor and he was unsteady in the saddle. Passing the Lugoae, the levy spearmen, he cursed their leader and ordered them to march faster.

“If he lives to see the end of this march, I will own that the gods are protecting him,” Cavarillos stated quietly. “If he does not lose his drunken head to the natives here, he will insult one of his own men to the point of killing him.”
“He is the anointed of the Vergobret,” I replied hotly. “They wouldn’t dare!”
“Once again, Cadwalador, hearken to your own words. We are all alone here, far from the magistrates of the tribe. We may never see our tribesmen again. In this case, the men may decide that one as volatile as Tancogeistla is not fit to lead. A knife in the darkness, a sword thrust on the field of battle. That is all it would take.”
I glanced into the mercenary’s dark face, the man I called my friend. “You speak of treachery as though it were a light thing!”
He shook his great head slowly. “I have lived longer than you have, my brother. I have seen many men die, felt their blood run over my hands, watched their eyes as life fled them. We number nearly two hundred men. Are we all to die because of the foolishness of one? Or is it better for that one man to die that we all be preserved?”
I couldn’t answer him. I could scarce believe what I was hearing. And yet his words made a strange, twisted sense.
The sun was directly above us when we arrived in the clearing before the village of Ictis. A small wooden palisade about the height of a man’s shoulder encircled the small settlement. Behind it one could see the homes and buildings that housed its inhabitants.
Tancogeistla rode to the front, his bodyguard of Brihentin or knights encircling him. Very few of them now were of noble blood, most being replacements from the night of the storm.
The king of the Dumnones, a man named Drustan, came out to meet Tancogeistla. He was on foot, surrounded by the champions of the tribe.

I heard our general ask him for food and supplies for his men. Perhaps Tancogeistla had sobered up since his morning binge.
“Why should we give you succor, since you come before our gates with armed men?” Drustan demanded. “Are not there more warriors behind you, to march in once you have spied out the land?”
Cavarillos tensed at my side, his hand going instinctively to the hilt of his longsword. “I pray you followed my instructions, Cadwalador,” he hissed in my ear. “Is your blade sharp?”
I nodded silently, my eyes focused on Tancogeistla. The reply he gave would determine our fate. I silently asked the gods that he would be sober enough.
“A month ago, we were washed up on the shores of your land,” Tancogeistla replied angrily. “We are the lone survivors of the wreck, yet you would turn us back in the wilderness to starve!”
“The lone survivors?” Drustan asked, his eyebrows going up suggestively. “Ten score of heavily-armed men? Nay, but to spy out the weaknesses of our defenses are ye come. Go find your food elsewhere, and get from my sight.”
Tancogeistla drew himself erect in the saddle, towering over the Dumnone chieftain. I could see the flush of liquor upon his cheeks and he was unsteady on the horse’s back. “If it is not within your will to give us food, then by the gods, we will take it! Fall upon them, men!”
His naked sword gleamed in his hand and he lashed out at Drustan before any of us could react. With an agility few would have suspected, the chieftain leaped back and Tancogeistla’s blow fell upon one of the champions, laying the man’s shoulder open to the bone.
Cavarillos swore furiously at my side. “He has done it. He has slain us all. See, Cadwalador, he has slain us all!”
As one man, our warriors advanced toward Drustan’s bodyguard, to shelter our general. Seeing our numbers, he began to fall back, toward the gates of the palisade.
Waving his sword in the air, Tancogeistla swung his horse to follow them, but two of his nobles reached out and grasped his bridles, turning him away from the enemy.
It was too late. The damage was done. We could no more stop the battle which was to come than we could stop the chill winds of Imbolc blowing through the trees. Once again, Cavarillos was right. We were all dead men. Only our bodies didn’t realize it---yet. . .