Wudka Villandsson lent Weyland a gelding, and rode with him to the sea in the predawn of the next morning. The salt air and round-pebbled beach roused distant memory, a time before the blood of a cursed beast and its slavering jaws.
“Father,” Wudka began, and Weyland stopped him with a sharp look.
“I could never be father to you, a nobleman. But, legend says that you were conceived in the light of a moon, under the shadow of a spell that brought iron from water. Iron will always call to you, and your heirs will always be skilled in the shaping of it.” Weyland dismounted.
Wudka nodded, taking the reins of the gelding. They waited in silence as a thick and eerie fog rolled in, touched with the chill of salt sea and the kiss of foreign lands. The morning light shaped it into billows and a diffuse otherworldly light. They heard the waves lapping against the boat’s sides before they saw the vessel emerge from the mists.
The sleek silver swanship sailed right up to the shore, spinning gracefully until she faced the north again and holding steady without dropping anchor. Weyland removed his boots and stuffed them into the top of his pack, and waded into the waist deep waters, and then swam the last few yards when the bottom dropped out from beneath him. He pulled himself up over the side of the ship by the knotted rope thrown over the side to him, and Avril scrambled over the side, shaking the water out of her pelt and grinning with delight in this new adventure. He looked back at Wudka and lifted a hand to the warrior who was also a smith.
Weyland nodded to the three people manning the ship, one at the rudder at the back and two at the sail. As in his memory, the three sailors were by turns very tall, very broad, and very slim in their build, and all wore their hair tightly braided against the sea spray, protected from the wet in heavily oiled leathers.
He put his hand through the loop of rope and held on against the bucking of the ship, and the sail was raised and boomed hard against the winds that filled it.
When the fog lifted with the nooning sun, Weyland suddenly saw a gently sloped shoreline. No slender tongue of rock pilings and wooden planks waited for the slender swanship, and Weyland nodded his thanks to the three sailors and set off, north and west along the curving shoreline, climbing up into the cliffs to find a road that would lead him true.
It took him several days, passing through villages that showed evidence of the passing of the conquerors, trade in wine and goods from far away, and chapels built to the new God. Hidden, still, were the sacred groves, oak trees beautifully kept amid the arching forest canopies. He bartered small kindnesses for food and shelter, mending a waggon wheel or re-shoeing a horse, Avril helping to find lost livestock or children.
They climbed a steady slope, and at the top looked over a valley. Across the valley was a elegantly tiered mountain rising from the morning mists. It was small, for certain, in comparison to the Giants mountain, and the town sprawling below it was lively and bustling. As Weyland drew near, finding the road as they descended into the valley, he noted a large structure being raised to the west of the Tor.
He fell in with a group of pilgrims wearing the cross, protected by men in boiled leather armor. They chattered with excitement as they drew closer to the new structure, a church and abbey being raised by the local king, a newly made Archbishop in residence already.
When the pilgrims stopped in the town for the night, Weyland continued on with Avril, approaching the abbey. A banner was raised below the red and white cross, a blood red shield with a black dragon, rampant. Night was falling as he approached the gate and the guards stopped him. The pair looked familiar, and bore themselves with the same rigid discipline of Roman soldiers he’d known in the times before.
“I seek a moment with Commander Patricius,” he said, hoping he was right about the crest and the soldiers.
“You - you’re the smith who made the serpent spears,” the older man exclaimed, clapping Weyland on the shoulder with aa grin. “The commander’s had a bit of a promotion, but he will likely see you.” He called to a man on the wall, who called to someone else in the walls that surrounded the construction.
At length, a grizzled old centurion came to the gate. With a shock, Weyland recognized Drusus, greyer and with more scars than he remembered, but still strong.
“I didn’t think it possible,” Drusus said, embracing Weyland roughly. “Have you come to make more spears? I think we’ve a better need for more common things, here.”
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“I came to see the Commander. I have something for him that should be kept safe.”
Drusus sobered. “Are you certain you want to see him? He is deeper in his faith since he rid the green isle from serpents and drove most of the ones here back to the continent.” Weyland remembered the commander’s proscription against witches, and the suspicions Patricius had of Weyland’s work.
“I am certain. He is the only one.” Drusus nodded and led the way.
Patricius, too, was older, his hair white, though he kept clean-shaven still. He wore a monk’s plain brown robe and sandals, bent over a table scattered with parchment drawings and lists, quill and ink nearby. He looked up in the dim candlelight, and blinked twice, his eyes focussing finally on Weyland. Avril greeted him joyfully, licking his ink-stained fingers.
“You,” he breathed, and Weyland braced himself against the fear that the man he’d considered a friend might call the guard down again. “God’s breath, you haven’t aged a day.” He came to greet Weyland, offering his hand in greeting.
“You have done all the aging for me, I think,” Weyland replied, grasping the man’s wrist firmly.
“Sit, if you would,” Patricius indicated the other stool at the table. “Have wine with me.” He began to pour wine into a second cup, but Weyland stopped him with a gesture.
“I do not have time, Commander. I have brought something that needs safeguarding, and this place is where it shall be revealed in time.” Weyland slung his pack forward, dropping it to the ground and opening it. He drew the water-born sword from the bag, taking it in its scabbard and holding it across his hands. The sword shifted in the candlelight, the plain crosspiece curling into twin chimeras.
“Ah,” Patricius said in quiet wonder. Weyland pulled the blade from its sheath, laying the scabbard on the table and turning the sword in the dim light.
“This sword is the birthright of the One True King,” Weyland said quietly. “It was forged with the blessings of God and Brittania herself, and will only be carried by that king.” He looked up at the aging commander. “Keep it safe, perhaps beneath your altar stone.”
“Certainly,” Patricius agreed. “Does this sword have a name, for this One True King to know it by?”
“It’s had several names. For now, it is Caliburnus.” Weyland re-sheathed it, leaving it on the table.
“How will I know the king who shall take it up?” Patricius asked, looking back up at Weyland sharply.
“I only know that it should be brought to you, a holy man, to be kept in a keep made of sacred stone. The rest is history that has yet to come to pass, and I am no prophet.” Weyland smiled wryly. “I also know that I should leave it here with you, and take my leave.”
“Surely you can stay at least until tomorrow? That we can speak of old times and older friends?” Weyland remembered the circumstances of their last parting, the suspicion and concerns about sorcery and witchcraft.
“No, my old friend, there are other tasks that await me.” Avril came back to Patricius from where she was begging for scraps from Drusus. She pushed her head up into his hand, and the old commander stroked her ears.
“Then, know that you have a haven here, if you need it,” Patricius looked up and around the stone room with a lingering wonder, whether at circumstance or accomplishment or some other experience Weyland could not see.
“Blessings to you, commander, and to the bishop you serve.”
Drusus laughed. “Ah, smith, the commander’s the new Archbishop, just come back from Rome with his charge.”
Weyland nodded. “Then the sword is in the best of all possible hands.” Weyland tied his pack closed and slung it back over his shoulder. “I must away before dawning. Thank you for your hospitality, years ago and now.”
“Go with God, blacksmith,” the Archbishop pulled the smith into a rough embrace and turned back to his drawings and the sword as Drusus led Weyland away.
Weyland wandered for a season or more, looking for the right angle of light to lead him back further in his own time, to find passage to his family’s homeland. He often dreamed of blood and terror, but also now, he dreamed of the giants, and a tall castle with diamond paned windows. Avril woke him from the worst of his nightmares as they came.
He still avoided people as often as possible, but sometimes came upon a child or animal lost in the woods, returning it to family or village as quickly as possible. Small villages of people who dressed like his kinsmen lay along the coast, shield maids training no less fiercely, though none were black eye’d and golden haired warrior queens. There were more women and children with flaming auburn hair, and dark hazel eyes, and the sons of the people were tall and broad, men with great braided beards and longships that were massive cousins to the delicate swanship that had carried Weyland twice in his travels. He mended pots and tools, and made a simple knife or ax as necessary, but never lingered long.
Seasons passed, then years, and he did not find any sign of his family’s holdings, or the hall of the White Hart, or Myrddin’s tower. His steps turned to the southern coast, reluctant.
When a ship came back with its war-band, and some of the men were pale and shaking with fever, Weyland’s sight turned inward, and his darker self urged him back to the lands south of the passage. No swanship awaited him at the coast, so he simply found a war-party sailing to join a larger band. He took a turn at the oars, and Avril curled miserably in the well beneath his bench. When they landed on a rocky shore far north of the lands he’d wandered before, he parted ways with the warriors, drawn to the south and east, to large forests of tall dark trees.