on his benches. The miller was always a busy man but had more time to talk while dressing his stones, and Natalenya sometimes chatted with him and the other ladies of the village on those occasions.
Hearing footfalls behind her, Natalenya continued around the circle until she cracked her hip into the upper millstone, rocking the supporting benches. Pain shot through her leg, and she cried out.
Behind her, mocking laughter filled the air. “You’re trapped. Turn an’ get yer due!”
Natalenya reached out to her right and felt the wall of the crennig. To the left, then. She jumped onto the bottom millstone … and ran into Allun’s workbench, covered with files and tools. Many of them fell clanging to the stone below, along with her knife.
“No way out, you rich brat!”
CHAPTER 33
AN END UNIMAGINED
Uther awoke. Besides his head feeling as if it had been bashed with a war hammer, his whole body ached, and his hands, tied behind his back, were numb and swollen.
He opened his eyes and found he could see out of only one, as drying blood had smeared across the other, gluing it shut. He tried focusing, but the world around wouldn’t hold still. Finally he realized he lay in the bottom of a boat, and the rocking he felt was nothing more than gentle waves under the hull. A slight breeze blew and thinned the fog somewhat, but even then the final gasps of daylight couldn’t pierce the gloom.
“Stay thine hand, O Boar of the Britons. Thou art safe from my biting jaws,” spoke an unfamiliar voice.
The stranger bent down and peered into Uther’s good eye. “Thou needest not strike thy boggy servant in the pate. I mean no harm to thee or thy kin.”
Water dripped from the man’s grimed forehead, and the smell of the swamp rolled off him. “Bah,” he shouted in Uther’s face, making him jerk. “The rotten trees ha’ taken thy torc, they have.”
“What?” Uther groaned, realizing his neck ached and his legs were twisted across the sharp edge of a thwart.
“I’ll get it back, curse them. A king should die with his torc on!”
“Don’t want to die. Cut my bonds.”
The man’s mud-caked nose came in and out of focus. “Shah, ‘twill take only a moment, but it’s too late. They come to slurp the mire off this glacking frog’s bones!”
Uther heard footsteps on the rocks, with shouting and confusion.
“The other boat — it’s gone!”
“The wee scout’s taken it.”
“Hey! Who’s that old’un crouchin’ next to the High King?”
The man bent one more time and winked at Uther. “A task for me from thy good God!” He ran away, swinging a rusty sword. “For the Boar of Britain!”
Uther tried to lift his head to see, but his neck was too stiff. Cries and shouting echoed forth. Steel clashed. Someone screeched.
“He cut me, the limmer. Kill ‘im!”
A short shriek pierced the night, then all was silent.
“What now, O’Sloan?” came a voice. “We canna all fit in one boat, not w’ McEwan, an’ we already staved in the king’s boat.”
“Lookit, another one, there! Must be the wild man’s. ‘Tis a carved-out log that could carry two.”
“That’ll do us, sure, now that we’re rid o’ McGoss.”
“Dinna say his name agin as long as I live.”
“Sorry. ‘Tis fool hard ta believe his evil deed. An’ that poor bard.”
“Shah, I said. We judged the traitor by our good laws, and sure, I’ll speak no more o’ it. You, then, get in the log boat an’ see if it sinks or nay.”
Uther used all his might to arch his back and untwist his legs.
A man shouted. “Thar’s a snake in the log boat! I’ll nah go in there.”
“We’ll have to ferry o’er in two trips, then, what with Gilroy’s body ‘n all.”
“But the boy’s gone ‘n stole the king’s heir. Sure ‘n the ard dre’ll have our heads.”
Uther’s addled brain tried to comprehend these tidings. His heir? Were they talking about Arthur? Anger surged through his limbs, but he couldn’t break free of his bonds.
“He’ll take a fury to us, sure,” one of the Eirish warriors said. “But we’ve got the High King, and we’ll be rewarded well. The ard dre has special plans for this one, I ken.”
Merlin found a place to sit on a rock just outside the stone circle — reasonably close to the wicker cages and not too far from where his father lay tied to the Stone. There, as darkness finally spread over the hilltop, he pulled his hood down and prayed.