In Winter's Shadow Read Online Free Page B

grain by the end of the winter, and many farmers, finding that they had some surplus left, took advantage of this to sell the old grain at a high price. A number of them had arrived that morning, and I was expected to bargain with them for their produce. The steward could have done it, but he was a bad bargainer, and could make no use of the information we could obtain from them about the state of things in the countryside, which was invaluable to me. When it came to buying large amounts of goods, later in the year, the price paid by Camlann set prices for all the South, and the amount taken by Camlann checked availability everywhere, so it was very important for me to understand what was happening outside the fortress as well as what was happening within it.
    There were half a dozen carts drawn up before the main storeroom, with their owners, all tight-lipped, independent clansmen, sitting in the carts in a row, looking sour because I was late. Normally I enjoyed bargaining with them because they enjoyed bargaining, and practiced it as a great art. Now I found it maddening, and wished I could simply impose a reasonable price and have done with it. Instead, we worked through the preliminary stages of the poorness/richness of the previous harvest; the amount of seed corn available to the farmers; the amount the grain would sell for in an ordinary market; the relative scarcity/surplus of grain at Camlann and in the countryside; the value of the goods Camlann offered in return for the grain; the relative scarcity and value of these, and their cost in terms of products other than grain. We were finally approaching the vital question of whether the farmers wanted payment in cattle, woolen goods, or metal, and how much, when the Family’s infantry commander, Cei ap Cynryr, came storming along the wall of the Hall, saw me, and made his way toward us. Cei was a very big man, the largest in the Family. He had a great mass of sandy red hair, and wore large quantities of garish jewelery and brightly colored clothing so that even when he was in a quiet mood it was impossible to overlook him. Now he was plainly in a temper. I braced myself.
    “That golden-tongued, oily-mannered bastard!” he exclaimed, pushing aside a farmer. “My lady, you must speak to Rhuawn and make him offer me an apology, or I will fight him, I swear it by my sword, and not spare him. And yet it is not his fault, but the fault of that weasel from the Ynysoedd Erch.”
    I took his arm and hurried him aside. I knew who “that weasel” was, but it would be better not to let the farmers, outsiders, know the details of quarrels within the Family—although by now most of Britain must be aware that Arthur’s invincible, formerly indivisible force was torn in half by violent factions. The quarrel had been going on long enough to become notorious. Almost since “that weasel” arrived in Camlann.
    “What has Medraut done now?” I asked.
    Cei spat. “Ach, he has done nothing, not directly. Would you expect it of him? No, he will never confront a man to his face. He will leave some lying story behind his back, and let someone else fight for it.”
    The farmers looked very interested at this, and I made hushing motions. Medraut ap Lot was the youngest son of Queen Morgawse of the Orcades Islands, which in British are called the Ynysoedd Erch, the “Islands of Fear.” His mother was the legitimate daughter of the Emperor Uther, and Arthur’s half-sister. Medraut had adored his mother, who had intended him to become king of the Islands on her husband’s death, though it was widely believed that he was not her husband’s son, but born of an adulterous love affair. However, Morgawse was dead, murdered by her eldest son Agravain in revenge for another of her affairs and for a rumored connection with her husband’s death; and the royal clan of the Islands had chosen Agravain as its new king, despite the murder. The queen had been reputed a witch and the clan had not