The Hallowed Isle Book Two by Diana L. Paxson Page B

sparkling in the sun. Where the ribbon of the road passed, habitations, or their remains, were most thickly clustered, and as they neared Durobrivae, the Roman town that guarded the crossings of the Meduwege and the western half of Cantuware, the land became more populous still.
    â€œThe British have got themselves a high king!” Red-faced and perspiring, Hrofe Guthereson shouted out the words even before he greeted his king. He had come out with his houseguard to escort them into the city, but with his news the whole party had come to a halt in the road.
    â€œWho?” barked Hengest. “Has Leudonus finally got the southern princes to accept him?”
    â€œNo—” Hrofe shook his head, eyes sparkling. “It’s a fifteen-year-old boy! Uthir had a son!”
    Fifteen! thought Oesc. My age. . . . How strange to think that the battle in which he had lost his own father had so deprived another boy as well.
    â€œLegitimate?” asked Byrhtwold.
    Hrofe shrugged. “That’s not clear, but Queen Igierne has claimed him as her child by the king.”
    â€œI remember hearing talk of a babe,” Hengest said, frowning, “but I thought it died. . . .” Slowly they had begun to move forward again.
    â€œThey say he was sent away to the west country for safety, so secretly that even the folk that fostered him did not know who he really was.”
    Hengest smiled sourly. “Well perhaps they had some reason. When you are trying to get rid of a family of bears, you should attack the den.”
    â€œWell this one is a bear cub, right enough,” said Hrofe. “Arktos, they call him, or Artor.”
    Artor . . . To Oesc’s ears, that name rang like the clash of steel.
    â€œAnd they accepted him on the queen’s say-so?” Hengest said dubiously. “I know the British princes, and they would be hard put to agree that the sun sets in the west without nine days of arguing.”
    The walls were quite close now.
    â€œIt was not the queen’s word that convinced them,” said Hrofe, with the air of one who has saved the best for last. “It was because the boy could handle the Sword!”
    The sword that killed Octha. . . . Oesc’s stricken gaze met that of his grandfather, and he saw Hengest’s face grow grim.
    â€œI had hoped that accursed weapon would go with Uthir to his grave.”
    â€œOh no—” Hrofe babbled on with hateful cheer.
    Unable to bear it any longer, Oesc dug his heels into his mare’s flank and pushed past the king and through the shadowed arch of the eastern gate into Durobrivae.
    Shaded by an awning of canvas, Hengest sat in judgment in the forum for five long days. Oesc fidgeted beside him, the arguments half-heard, dreaming of the hunting he was missing while the weather held fair. His other grandfather used to spend a lot of time listening to men complain against each other too. Why, he wondered resentfully, would anyone want to be a king? But even the master of a farmstead had to settle disputes among his people, he supposed. The men the king judged were more powerful, that was all.
    â€œAnd how would you decide this matter, Oesc—” Hengest said suddenly.
    Blinking, the boy tried to remember what the man before them had just said. He was a big, fair, fellow with the lines of habitual ill-temper graven deeply around his mouth and on his brow.
    â€œHe says,” the king repeated, “that his neighbor deliberately burned down his woodlot, and nearly destroyed his house as well.”
    â€œIt is not so!” exclaimed the accused, glaring. “I only meant to burn the stubble from my fields.”
    â€œBut you burned my woods!”
    â€œIs it my fault if Thunor turns the wind? Blame the gods, not me!”
    Oesc gazed from one man to the other, frowning, as he tried to remember the law. “Was it a large wood?” he asked finally. Hengest began to smile,