The Winter King Part 24

"Your enemy," I told Arthur, 'was Valerin."

It took him a few seconds to place the name, then he smiled. He had removed his helmet and dismounted to greet us. "Poor Valerin," he said, 'twice a loser," then he embraced me and thanked my men.

"The night was so dark," he said, "I doubted you would find the vale."

"I didn't. Nimue did."

"Then I owe you thanks," he said to Nimue.

"Thank me," she said, 'by bringing victory this day."

"With the G.o.ds' help, I shall." He turned and looked at Galahad who had ridden in the charge. "Go south, Lord Prince, and give Tewdric my greetings and beg his men's spears to our side. May G.o.d give your tongue eloquence." Galahad kicked his horse and rode back through the blood-stinking vale. Arthur turned and stared at a hilltop a mile north of the ford. There was an old earth fort there, a legacy of the Old People, but it seemed to be deserted. "It would go ill with us," he said with a smile, 'if anyone was to see where we hide." He wanted to find his hiding place and leave the heavy horse armour there before he rode north to roust Gorfyddyd's men out of their camps at Branogenium.

"Nimue will work you a spell of concealment," I said.

"Will you, Lady?" he asked earnestly.

She went to find a skull. Arthur clasped me again, then called for his servant Hygwydd to help him tug off the suit of heavy scale armour. It came off over his head, leaving his short-cut hair tousled. "Would you wear it?" he asked me.

"Me?" I was astonished.

"When the enemy attack," he said, 'they'll expect to find me here and if I'm not here they'll suspect a trap." He smiled. "I'd ask Sagramor, but his face is somewhat more distinctive than yours, Lord Derfel. You'll have to cut off some of that long hair, though." My fair hair showing beneath the helmet's rim would be a sure sign I was not Arthur, 'and maybe trim the beard a little," he added. I took the armour from Hygwydd and was shocked by its weight. "I should be honoured," I said.

"It is heavy," he warned me. "You'll get hot, and you can't see to your sides when you're wearing the helmet so you'll need two good men to flank you." He sensed my hesitation. "Should I ask someone else to wear it?"

"No, no, Lord," I said. "I'll wear it."

"It'll mean danger," he warned me.

"I wasn't expecting a safe day, Lord," I answered.

"I shall leave you the banners," he said. "When Gorfyddyd comes he must be convinced that all his enemies are in one place. It will be a hard fight, Derfel."

"Galahad will bring help," I a.s.sured him.

He took my breastplate and shield, gave me his own brighter shield and white cloak, then turned and grasped Llamrei's bridle. "That," he told me once he had been helped into the saddle, 'was the easy part of the day." He beckoned to Sagramor, then spoke to both of us. "The enemy will be here by noon. Do what you can to make ready, then fight as you have never fought before. If I see you again then we shall be victorious. If not, then I thank you, salute you, and will wait to feast with you in the Otherworld." He shouted for his men to mount up, then rode north.

And we waited for the real battle to begin.

The scale armour was appallingly heavy, bearing down on my shoulders like the water yokes women carry to their houses each morning. Even lifting my sword arm was hard, though it became easier when I cinched my sword belt tight around the iron scales and so took the suit's lower weight away from my shoulders.

Nimue, her spell of concealment finished, cut my hair with a knife. She burned all the loose hair lest an enemy should find the sc.r.a.ps and work an enchantment, and then I used Arthur's shield as a mirror to hack my long beard short enough so that it would be concealed behind the helmet's deep cheek pieces. Then I pulled the helmet on, forcing its leather padding over my skull and tugging it down until it enclosed my head like a sh.e.l.l. My voice seemed m.u.f.fled despite the perforations over the ears in the shining metal. I hefted the heavy shield, let Nimue fasten the mud-spattered white cloak around my shoulders, then I tried to get used to the armour's awkward weight. I made Issa fight me with a spear-shaft as a single-stick and found myself much slower than usual. "Fear will quicken you, Lord," Issa said when he had rounded my guard for the tenth time and whacked me an echoing blow on the head.

"Don't knock the plume off," I said. Secretly I was wishing I had never accepted the heavy armour. It was horseman's gear, designed to add weight and awe to a mounted man who had to batter his way through the enemy's ranks, but we spearmen depended on agility and quickness when we were not locked shoulder to shoulder in the shield-wall.

"But you look wonderful, Lord," Issa told me admiringly.

"I'll be a wonderful-looking corpse if you don't guard my flank," I told him. "It's like fighting inside a bucket." I tugged the helmet off, relieved when its constricting pressure was gone from my skull. "When I first saw this armour," I told Issa, "I wanted it more than anything in the world. Now I'd give it away for a decent leather breastplate."

"You'll be all right, Lord," he told me with a grin.

We had work to do. The women and children abandoned by Valerin's defeated men had to be driven south away from the vale, then we prepared de fences close to the remnants of the tree fence. Sagramor feared that the overwhelming weight of the enemy could drive us clear out of the vale before Arthur's hors.e.m.e.n arrived to our rescue and so he prepared the ground as best he could. My men wanted to sleep, but instead we dug a shallow ditch across the vale. The ditch was nowhere near deep enough to stop a man, but it would force the attacking spearmen to break step and maybe stumble as they closed on our spear-line. The tree barricade lay just behind the ditch and marked the southern limit to which we could retreat and the place we must defend to the death. Sagramor anch.o.r.ed the felled trees with some of Valerin's abandoned spears that he ordered driven deep into the earth to make a hedge of angled spear-points inside the pine branches. We left the gap where the road ran through the centre of the fence so we could retreat behind the fragile barrier before we defended it. My worry was the steep and open hillside down which my men had attacked in the dawn. Gorfyddyd's warriors would doubtless attack straight up the vale, but his levies would probably be sent to the high ground to threaten our left flank and Sagramor could spare no men to hold that high ground, but Nimue insisted there was no need. She took ten of the captured spears and then, with the help of a half-dozen of my men, she cut the heads from ten of Valerin's dead spearmen and carried the spears and b.l.o.o.d.y heads up the hill where she had the spear-shafts driven b.u.t.t-first into the ground, then she rammed the b.l.o.o.d.y heads on to the spears' iron points and draped the dead heads with ghastly wigs of knotted gra.s.s, each knot an enchantment, before scattering branches of yew between the widely s.p.a.ced posts. She had made a ghost-fence: a line of human scarecrows imbued with charms and spells that no man would dare pa.s.s without a Druid's help. Sagramor wanted her to make another such fence on the ground north of the ford, but Nimue refused. "Their warriors will come with Druids," she explained, 'and a ghost-fence is laughable to a Druid. But the levy won't have a Druid." She had fetched an armful of vervain down from the hill and now she distributed its small purple flowers among the spearmen who all knew that vervain gave protection in battle. She pushed a whole sprig inside my armour.

The Christians gathered to say their prayers, while we pagans sought the G.o.ds' help. Men tossed coins into the river, then brought out their talismans for Nimue to touch. Most carried a hare's foot, but some brought her elf bolts or snake stones. Elf bolts were tiny flint arrowheads shot by the spirits and much prized by soldiers, while snake stones had bright colours that Nimue enriched by dipping the stones in the river before touching them to her good eye. I pressed the scale armour until I could feel Ceinwyn's brooch p.r.i.c.king against my chest, then I knelt and kissed the earth. I kept my forehead on the damp ground as I beseeched Mithras to give me strength, courage and, if it was His will, a good death. Some of our men were drinking the mead we had discovered in the village, but I drank nothing but water. We ate the food Valerin's men had thought would be their breakfast, and afterwards a group of spearmen helped Nimue catch toads and shrews that she killed and placed on the road beyond the ford to give the approaching enemy ill omens. Then we sharpened our weapons again and waited. Sagramor had found a man hiding in the woods behind the village. The man was a shepherd and Sagramor questioned him about the local countryside and learned there was a second ford upstream where the enemy could outflank us if we tried to defend the river bank at the vale's northern end. The second ford's existence did not trouble us now, but we needed to remember that it existed for it gave the enemy a way of outflanking our northernmost defence line.

I was nervous of the coming fight, but Nimue seemed unafraid. "I have nothing to fear," she told me. "I've taken the Three Wounds, so what can hurt me?" She was sitting beside me, close to the ford at the vale's northern end. This would be our first defence line, the place where we would begin the slow retreat that would suck the enemy into the vale and Arthur's trap. "Besides," she added, "I am under Merlin's protection."

"Does he know we're here?" I asked her.

She paused, then nodded. "He knows."

"Will he come?"

She frowned as though my question was cra.s.s. "He will do," she said slowly, 'whatever he needs to do."

"Then he will come," I said in fervent hope.

Nimue shook her head impatiently. "Merlin cares only for Britain. He believes Arthur could help restore the Knowledge of Britain, but if he decides that Gorfyddyd would do it better, then believe me, Derfel, Merlin will side with Gorfyddyd."

Merlin had hinted as much to me at Caer Sws, but I still found it hard to believe that his ambitions were so far from my own allegiances and hopes. "What about you?" I asked Nimue.

"I have one burden that ties me to this army," she said, 'and after that I shall be free to help Merlin."

"Gundleus," I said.

She nodded. "Give me Gundleus alive, Derfel," she said, looking into my eyes, 'give him to me alive, I beg you." She touched the leather eyepatch and went silent as she summoned her energy for the revenge she craved. Her face was still bone pale and her black hair hung lank against her cheeks. The softness she had revealed at Lughnasa had been replaced by a chill bleakness that made me think I would never understand her. I loved her, not as I believed I loved Ceinwyn, but as a man can love a fine wild creature, an eagle or a wildcat, for I knew I would never comprehend her life or dreams. She grimaced suddenly. "I shall make Gundleus's soul scream through the rest of time," she said softly, "I shall send it through the abyss into nothingness, but he will never reach nothingness, Derfel, he will always suffer on its edge, screaming."

I shuddered for Gundleus.

A shout made me look across the river. Six hors.e.m.e.n were galloping towards us. Our shield-wall stood and thrust their arms into their shield-loops, but then I saw the leading man was Morfans. He rode desperately, kicking at his tired sweat-whitened horse, and I feared those six men were all that remained of Arthur's troop.

The horses splashed through the ford as Sagramor and I went forward. Morfans reined in on the river bank. "Two miles away," he panted. "Arthur sent us to help you. G.o.ds, there are hundreds of the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!" He wiped sweat off his forehead, then grinned. "There's plunder enough for a thousand of us!" He slid heavily from his horse and I saw he was carrying the silver horn and guessed he would use it to summon Arthur when the moment was right.

"Where is Arthur?" Sagramor asked.

"Safely hid," Morfans a.s.sured us, then looked at my armour and his ugly face split into a lopsided grin.

"Weighs you down, that armour, doesn't it?"

"How does he ever fight in it?" I asked.

"Very well, Derfel, very well. And so will you." He clapped my shoulder. "Any news from Galahad?"

"None."

"Agricola won't let us fight alone, whatever that Christian King and his gutless son might want," Morfans said, then he led his five hors.e.m.e.n back through the shield-wall. "Give us a few minutes to rest the horses," he called.

Sagramor pulled his helmet over his head. The Numidian wore a coat of mail, a black cloak and tall boots. His iron helmet was painted black with pitch and rose to a sharp point that gave it an exotic appearance. Usually he fought on horseback, but he showed no regret at being an infantryman this day. Nor did he display any nervousness as he prowled long-legged up and down our shield-wall and growled encouragement to his men.

I pulled Arthur's stifling helmet over my head and buckled its strap under my chin. Then, arrayed as my Lord, I also walked along the line of spears and warned my men that the fight would be hard, but victory certain so long as our shield-wall held. It was a perilously thin wall, in some places just three men deep, but those in the wall were all good men. One of them stepped out of the line as I approached the place where Sagramor's spearmen bordered mine. "Remember me, Lord?" he called. I thought for a moment he had mistaken me for Arthur and I pulled the hinged cheek pieces aside so he could see my face, then at last I recognized him. It was Griffid, Owain's captain and the man who had tried to kill me at Lindinis before Nimue intervened to save my life. "Griffid ap Annan," I greeted him.

"There's bad blood between us, Lord," he said, and fell to his knees. "Forgive me." I pulled him to his feet and embraced him. His beard had gone grey, but he was still the. same long-boned, sad-faced man I remembered. "My soul is in your keeping," I told him, 'and I am glad to put it there."

"And mine yours, Lord," he said.

"Minac!" I recognized another of my old comrades. "Am I forgiven?"

"Was there anything to forgive, Lord?" he asked, embarra.s.sed at the question.

"There was nothing to forgive," I promised him. "No oath was broken, I swear it." Minac stepped forward and embraced me. All along the shield-wall other such quarrels were being resolved. "How have you been?" I asked Griffid.

"Fighting hard, Lord. Mostly against Cerdic's Saxons. Today will be easy compared with those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, except for one thing." He hesitated.

"Well?" I prompted him.

"Will she give us back our souls, Lord?" Griffid asked, glancing at Nimue. He was remembering the awful curse she had laid on him and his men.

"Of course she will," I said, and summoned Nimue who touched Griffid's forehead, and the foreheads of all the other surviving men who had threatened my life on that distant day in Lindinis. Thus was her curse lifted and they thanked her by kissing her hand. I embraced Griffid again, then raised my voice so that all my men could hear me. "Today," I said, 'we shall give the bards enough songs to sing for a thousand years! And today we become rich men again!"

They cheered. The emotion in that shield-line was so rich that some men wept for happiness. I know now that there is no joy like the joy of serving Christ Jesus, but how I do miss the company of warriors. There were no barriers between us that morning, nothing but a great, swelling love for each other as we waited for the enemy. We were brothers, we were invincible and even the laconic Sa-gram or had tears in his eyes. A spearman began singing the War Song of Beli Mawr, Britain's great battle song, and the strong male voices swelled in instinctive harmony all along the line. Other men danced across their swords, capering awkwardly in their leather armour as they made the intricate steps either side of the blade. Our Christians had their arms spread wide as they sang, almost as though the song was a pagan prayer to their own G.o.d while other men clashed their spears against their shields in time to the music. We were still singing of pouring our enemies' blood on to our land when that enemy appeared. We sang defiantly on as spear-band after spear-band came into view and spread across the far fields beneath kingly banners that showed bright in the day's cloudy gloom. And on we sang, a great torrent of song to defy the army of Gorfyddyd, the army of the father of the woman I was convinced I loved. That was why I was fighting, not just for Arthur, but because only by victory could I make my way back to Caer Sws and thus see Ceinwyn again. I had no claim on her, and no hopes either for I was slave-born and she a princess, yet somehow I felt that day as though I had more to lose than I had ever possessed in all my life.

It took over an hour for that c.u.mbersome horde to make a battle line on the river's far bank. The river could only be crossed at the ford, which meant we would be given time to retreat when the moment came, but for now the enemy must have a.s.sumed that we planned to defend the ford all day for they ma.s.sed their best men in the centre of the line. Gorfyddyd himself was there, his eagle banner stained by its dye that had run in the rain so that the flag looked as though it had already been dipped in our blood. Arthur's banners, the black bear and the red dragon, flew at our line's centre where I stood facing the ford. Sagramor stood beside me, counting the enemy banners. Gundleus's fox was there, and the red horse of Elmet, and several others we did not recognize. "Six hundred men?" Sagramor guessed.

"And more still coming," I added.

"Like as not." He spat towards the ford. "And they'll have seen that Tewdric's bull is missing." He gave one of his rare smiles. "It'll be a fight worth remembering, Lord Derfel."

"I'm glad to share it with you, Lord," I said fervently, and so I was. There was no warrior greater than Sagramor, no man more feared by his enemies. Even Arthur's presence did not raise the same dread as the Numidian's impa.s.sive face and ghastly sword. It was a curved sword of strange foreign make and Sagramor wielded it with a terrible quickness. I once asked Sagramor why he had first sworn loyalty to Arthur. "Because when I had nothing," he explained curtly, "Arthur gave me everything." Our spearmen at last stopped singing as two Druids advanced from Gorfyddyd's army. We only had Nimue to counter their enchantments and she now waded through the ford to meet the advancing men who were both hopping down the road with one arm raised and one eye closed. The Druids were lorweth, Gorfyddyd's wizard, and Tanaburs in his long robe embroidered with moons and hares. The two men exchanged kisses with Nimue, talked with her for a short while and then she returned to our side of the ford. "They wanted us to surrender," she said scornfully, 'and I invited them to do the same."

"Good," Sagramor growled. lorweth hopped awkwardly to the ford's farther side. "The G.o.ds bring you greeting!" he shouted at us, though none of us answered. I had closed my cheek pieces so that I could not be recognized. Tanaburs was hopping up the river, using his staff to keep his balance. lorweth raised his own staff level above his head to show that he wished to speak further. "My King, the King of Powys and High King of Britain, King Gorfyddyd ap Cadell ap Brychan ap Laganis ap Coel ap Beli Mawr, will spare your bold souls a journey to the Otherworld. All you need do, brave warriors, is give us Arthur!" He levelled the staff at me and Nimue immediately hissed a protective prayer and tossed two handfuls of soil into the air.

I said nothing and silence was my refusal. lorweth whirled the staff and spat three times towards us, then he began hopping down the river's bank to add his curses to Tanaburs's spells. King Gorfyddyd, accompanied by his son Cuneglas and his ally Gundleus, had ridden halfway to the river to watch their Druids working, and work they did. They cursed our lives by the day and our souls by night. They gave our blood to the worms, our flesh to the beasts and our bones to agony. They cursed our women, our children, our fields and our livestock. Nimue countered the charms, but still our men shivered. The Christians called out that there was nothing to fear, but even they were making the sign of the cross as the curses flew across the river on wings of darkness.

The Druids cursed for a whole hour and left us shaking. Nimue walked the shield-line touching spearheads and a.s.suring men that the curses had not worked, but our men were nervous of the G.o.ds'

anger as the enemy spear-line at last advanced. "Shields up!" Sagramor shouted harshly. "Spears up!" The enemy halted fifty paces from the river while one man alone advanced on foot. It was Valerin, the chief whom we had driven from the vale in the dawn, and who now advanced to the ford's northern edge with shield and spear. He had suffered defeat in the dawn and his pride had forced him to this moment when he could retrieve his reputation. "Arthur!" he shouted at me. "You married a wh.o.r.e!"

"Keep silent, Derfel," Sagramor warned me.

"A wh.o.r.e!" Valerin shouted. "She was used when she came to me. You want the list of her lovers? An hour, Arthur, would not be time enough to give that list! And who's she whoring with now while you're waiting to die? You think she's waiting for you? I know that wh.o.r.e! She's tangling her legs with a man or two!" He spread his arms and jerked his hips obscenely and my spearmen jeered back, but Valerin ignored their shouted insults. "A wh.o.r.e!" he called, 'a rancid, used-up wh.o.r.e! You'd fight for your wh.o.r.e, Arthur? Or have you lost your belly for fighting? Defend your wh.o.r.e, you worm!" He walked through the ford that came up to his thighs and stopped on our bank, his cloak dripping, just a dozen paces away from me. He stared into the dark shadow of my helmet's eye-hole. "A wh.o.r.e, Arthur," he repeated, 'your wife is a wh.o.r.e." He spat. He was bare-headed and had woven sprigs of protective mistletoe into his long black hair. He had a breastplate, but no other body armour, while his shield was painted with Gorfyddyd's spread-winged eagle. He laughed at me, then raised his voice to call to all our men. "Your leader won't fight for his wh.o.r.e, so why should you fight for him?" Sagramor growled at me to ignore the taunts, but Valerin's defiance was unsettling our men whose souls were already chilled by the Druids' curses. I waited for Valerin to call Guinevere a wh.o.r.e one more time and when he did I hurled my spear at him. It was a clumsy throw, made awkward by the scale armour's constriction, and the spear tumbled past him to splash into the river. "A wh.o.r.e," he shouted and ran at me with his war spear levelled as I sc.r.a.ped Hywelbane out of her scabbard. I stepped towards him and had time to take just two paces before he thrust the spear at me with a great shout of rage. I dropped to one knee and raised the polished shield at an angle so that the spear-point was deflected over my head. I could see Valerin's feet and hear his roar of rage as I stabbed Hywelbane under my shield's edge. I lunged upwards with the blade, feeling it strike just before his charging body struck my shield and drove me down to the ground. He was screaming instead of roaring now, for that sword thrust beneath the shield was a wicked cut that came up from the ground to pierce a man's bowels and I knew Hywelbane had plunged deep into Valerin, for I could feel his body's weight pulling the sword blade down as he collapsed on to the shield. I heaved up with all my strength to throw him off the shield and gave a grunt as I jerked the sword back from his flesh's grip. Blood spilt foul beside his spear that had fallen to the ground where he now lay bleeding and twitching in awful pain. Even so he tried to draw his sword as I clambered to my feet and put my boot on to his chest. His face was going yellow, he shuddered and his eyes were already clouding in death. "Guinevere is a lady," I told him, 'and your soul is mine if you deny it."

"She's a wh.o.r.e," he somehow managed to say between clenched teeth, then he choked and shook his head feebly. "The bull guards me," he managed to add, and I knew he was of Mithras and so I thrust Hywelbane hard down. The blade met the resistance of his throat, then swiftly cut to end his life. Blood fountained up the blade, and I do not think Valerin ever knew it was not Arthur who sent his soul to the bridge of swords in Cruachan's Cave.

Our men cheered. Their spirits, so abraded by the Druids and chilled by Valerin's foul insults, were instantly restored for we had drawn the first blood. I walked to the river's edge where I danced a victor's steps as I showed the dispirited enemy Hywelbane's bloodstained blade. Gorfyddyd, Cuneglas and Gundleus, their champion defeated, turned their horses away and my men taunted them as cowards and weaklings.

Sagramor nodded as I returned to the shield-wall. The nod was evidently his way of offering praise for a well-fought fight. "What do you want done with him?" He gestured to Valerin's fallen body. I had Issa strip the corpse of its jewellery, then two other men heaved it into the river and I prayed that the spirits of the water would carry my brother of Mithras to his reward. Issa brought me Valerin's weapons, his golden torque, two brooches and a ring. "Yours, Lord," he said, offering me the plunder. He had also retrieved my spear from the river.

I took the spear and Valerin's weapons, but nothing else. "The gold is yours, Issa," I said, remembering how he had tried to give me his own torque when we had returned from Ynys Trebes.

"Not this, Lord," he said, and he showed me Valerin's ring. It was a piece of heavy gold, beautifully made and embossed with the figure of a stag running beneath a crescent moon. It was Guinevere's badge, and at the back of the ring, crudely but deeply cut into the thick gold, was a cross. It was a lover's ring and Issa, I thought, had been clever to spot it.

I took the ring and thought of Valerin wearing it through all the hurt years. Or maybe, I dared to hope, he had tried to revenge his pain on her reputation by cutting a false cross into the ring so that men would think he had been her lover. "Arthur must never know," I warned Issa and then I hurled the heavy ring into the river.

"What was that?" Sagramor asked as I rejoined him.

"Nothing," I said, 'nothing. Just a charm that might have brought us ill luck." Then a ram's horn sounded across the river and I was spared the need to think about the ring's message. The enemy was coming.

The Bards still sing of that battle, though the G.o.ds only know how they invent the details they embroider into the tale because to hear their songs you would think none of us could have survived Lugg Vale and maybe none of us should. It was desperate. It was also, though the bards do not admit as much, a defeat for Arthur.

Gorfyddyd's first attack was a howling rush of maddened spearmen who charged into the ford. Sagramor ordered us forward and we met them in the river where the clash of the shields was like a crack of thunder exploding in the valley's mouth. The enemy had the advantage of numbers, but their attack was channelled by the ford's margins and we could afford to bring men from our flanks to thicken our centre. We in the front rank had time to thrust once, then we crouched behind our shields and simply shoved at the enemy line while the men in our second rank fought across our heads. The ring of sword blades and clatter of shield-bosses and clashing of spear-shafts was deafening, but remarkably few men died for it is hard to kill in the crush as two locked shield-walls grind against each other. Instead it becomes a pushing match. The enemy grasps your spearhead so you cannot pull it back, there is hardly room to draw a sword, and all the time the enemy's second rank are raining sword, axe and spear blows on helmets and shield-edges. The worst injuries are caused by men thrusting blades beneath the shields and gradually a barrier of crippled men builds at the front to make the slaughter even more difficult. Only when one side pulls back can the other then kill the crippled enemies stranded at the battle's tide line. We prevailed on that first attack, not so much out of valour but because Morfans pushed his six hors.e.m.e.n through the crush of our men and used his long horse spears to thrust down on the crouching enemy front line.

"Shields! Shields!" I heard Morfans shouting as the six horses' vast weight buckled our shield-line forward. Our rear-rank men hoisted their shields high to protect the big war horses from the rain of enemy spears, while we in the front rank crouched in the river and tried to finish off the men who recoiled from the hors.e.m.e.n's thrusts. I sheltered behind Arthur's polished shield and stabbed with Hywelbane whenever a gap offered in the enemy's line. I took two mighty blows to the head, but the helmet cushioned both even if my skull did ring for an hour afterwards. One spear struck my scale armour but could not pierce it. The man who launched that spear lunge was killed by Morfans, and after his death the enemy lost heart and splashed back to the river's northern bank. They took their wounded, all but for a handful who were too close to our line and that handful we killed before we retreated to our own bank. We had lost six men to the Otherworld and twice that many to wounds. "You shouldn't be in the front line," Sagramor told me as he watched our wounded being carried away. "They'll see you're not Arthur."

"They're seeing that Arthur fights," I said, 'unlike Gorfyddyd or Gundleus." The enemy Kings had been close to the fight, but never close enough to use their weapons. lorweth and Tanaburs were screaming at Gorfyddyd's men, encouraging them to the slaughter and promising them the rewards of the G.o.ds, but while Gorfyddyd reorganized his spearmen a group of master less men waded the river to attack on their own. Such warriors relied on a display of bravery to bring them riches and rank, and these thirty desperate men charged in a screaming rage once they were through the deepest part of the river. They were either drunk or battle-mad, for thirty alone attacked our whole force. The reward for their success would have been land, gold, forgiveness of their crimes and lordly status in Gorfyddyd's court, but thirty men were not enough. They hurt us, but died doing it. They were all fine spearmen with shield hands thick with warrior rings, but each now faced three or four enemies. A whole group rushed towards me, seeing in my armour and white plume the fastest route to glory, but Sagramor and my wolf-tailed spearmen met and matched them. One huge man was wielding a Saxon axe. Sagramor killed him with his dark curved blade, then plucked the axe from the dying hand and hurled it at another spearman, and all the while he was chanting his own weird battle song in his native tongue. A last swordsman attacked me and I parried his scything blow with the iron boss of Arthur's shield, knocked his own shield aside with Hywelbane, then kicked him in the groin. He doubled over, too hurt to cry out, and Issa rammed a spear into his neck. We stripped the dead attackers of their armour, their weapons and their jewellery and left their bodies at the ford's edge as a barrier to the next attack.

That attack came soon and came hard. Like the first this third a.s.sault was made by a ma.s.s of spearmen, only this time we met them at the near river bank where the press of men behind the enemy's front rank forced their leading spearmen to stumble on the piled bodies. Their stumbling opened them to our counter-attack and we shouted in triumph as we slashed our red spears forward. Then the shields cracked together again, dying men screamed and called on their G.o.ds, and the swords rang loud as the anvils in Magnis. I was again in the front rank, crammed so close to the enemy line that I could smell the mead on their breath. One man tried to s.n.a.t.c.h the helmet from my head and lost his hand to a-sword stroke. The pushing match started again and again it seemed that the enemy must force us back by sheer weight, but again Morfans brought his heavy horses through the crush, and again the enemy hurled spears that clattered on our shields, and once again Morfans's men thrust down with their long hors.e.m.e.n's spears and once again the enemy pulled back. The bards say the river ran red, which is not true, though I did see tendrils of blood fading downstream from the wounded who tried and failed to get back through the ford.

"We could fight the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds here all day," Morfans said. His horse was bleeding and he had dismounted to treat the animal's wound.

I shook my head. "There's another ford upriver." I pointed westwards. "They'll have spearmen on this bank soon enough."

Those outflanking enemy came sooner than I thought, for ten minutes later a shout from our left flank warned us that a group of enemy had indeed crossed the river to the west and was now advancing along our bank.

"Time to go back," Sagramor told me. His clean-shaven black face was smeared with blood and sweat, but there was joy in his eyes for this was proving to be a fight that would make the poets struggle for new words to describe a battle, a fight that men would remember in smoky halls for winters to come, a fight that, even lost, would send a man in honour to the warrior halls of the Otherworld. "Time to draw them in," Sagramor said, then shouted the order to withdraw so that slowly and c.u.mbersomely our whole force retreated past the village with its Roman building and stopped a hundred paces beyond. Our left flank was now anch.o.r.ed on the vale's steep western side while our right was protected by the marshy ground that stretched towards the river. Even so we were much more vulnerable than we had been at the ford for our shield-wall was now desperately thin and the enemy could attack all along its length.

It took Gorfyddyd a whole hour to bring his men across the river and array them in a new shield-line. I guessed it was already afternoon and I glanced behind me for some sign of Galahad or Tewdric's men, but I saw no one approaching. Nor, I was glad to see, were there any men on the western hill where Nimue's ghost-fence guarded our flank, but Gorfyddyd hardly needed men there for his army was now bigger than ever. New contingents had come from Branogenium and Gorfyddyd's commanders were tugging and shoving those newcomers into the shield-wall. We watched the captains using their long spears to straighten the enemy's line and all of us, despite the defiance we shouted, knew that for every man we had killed at the river ten more had come across the ford. "We'll never hold them here," Sagramor said as he watched the enemy forces grow. "We'll have to go back to the tree fence." But then, before Sagramor could give the order to retreat, Gorfyddyd himself rode forward to challenge us. He came alone, without even his son, and he came with just a sheathed sword and a spear for he had no arm to hold a shield. Gorfyddyd's gold-trimmed helmet, that Arthur had returned the week of his betrothal to Ceinwyn, was crowned with the spread wings of a golden eagle, and his black cloak was spread across his horse's rump. Sagramor growled at me to stay where I was and strode forward to meet the King.

Gorfyddyd used no reins, but spoke to his horse that obediently stopped two paces away from Sagramor. Gorfyddyd rested his spear-b.u.t.t on the ground, then forced his helmet's cheek pieces aside so that his sour face showed. "You're Arthur's black demon," he accused Sagramor, spitting to avert any evil, 'and your wh.o.r.e-loving Lord shelters behind your sword." Gorfyddyd spat again, this time towards me. "Why don't you talk to me, Arthur?" he shouted. "Lost your tongue?"

"My Lord Arthur," Sagramor answered in his heavily accented British, 'is saving his breath to sing his victory song."

Gorfyddyd hefted his long spear. "I'm one-handed," he shouted at me, 'but I'll fight you!" I said nothing, nor did I move. Arthur, I knew, would never fight in single battle against a crippled man, though Arthur would never have stayed silent either. By now he would have been pleading with Gorfyddyd for peace.

Gorfyddyd did not want peace. He wanted slaughter. He rode up and down our line, controlling his horse with his knees and shouting at our men. "You're dying because your Lord can't keep his hands off a wh.o.r.e! You're dying for a b.i.t.c.h with a wet rump! For a b.i.t.c.h in perpetual heat! Your souls will be cursed. My dead are already feasting in the Otherworld, but your souls will become their throw pieces And why will you die? For his red-headed wh.o.r.e?" He pointed his spear at me, then rode his horse directly at me. I pulled back lest he saw through the helmet's eye slit that I was not Arthur and my spearmen closed protectively around me. Gorfyddyd laughed at my apparent timidity. His horse was close enough for my men to touch, but Gorfyddyd showed no fear of their spears as he spat at me.

"Woman!" he called out, his worst insult, then touched his horse with his left foot and the beast turned and galloped back towards his army.

Sagramor turned to us and raised his arms. "Back!" he shouted. "Back to the fence! Quick now! Back!" We turned our backs on the enemy and hurried away and a great shout went up as they saw our twin banners retreat. They thought we were running and they broke their ranks to pursue us, but we had too great a start on them and we had streamed through the gap in the barricade long before any of Gorfyddyd's men could reach us. Our line spread behind the fence while I took Arthur's proper place in the very centre of the line where the road ran through the empty gap between the felled trees. We deliberately left the gap without any obstacles in the hope that it would draw Gorfyddyd's attacks and thus give our flanks time to rest. I raised Arthur's two banners there and waited for the a.s.sault. Gorfyddyd roared at his disordered spearmen to make a new shield-wall. King Gundleus commanded the enemy's right flank and Prince Cuneglas the left. That arrangement suggested that Gorfyddyd was not going to take our bait of the open gap, but intended to a.s.sault all along the line. "You stay here!" Sagramor shouted at our spearmen. "You're warriors! You're going to prove it now! You stay here, you kill here and you win here!" Morfans had forced his wounded horse a small way up the western hill from where he looked north up the vale, judging whether this was the moment to sound the horn and summon Arthur, but enemy reinforcements were still crossing the ford and he came back without putting the silver to his lips.

Gorfyddyd's horn sounded instead. It was a raucous ram's horn that did not send his shield-line forward, but instead provoked a dozen naked madmen to burst out of the enemy's line and rush on our centre. Such men have put their souls in the G.o.ds' keeping, then fuddled their senses with a mixture of mead, thorn-apple juice, mandrake and belladonna, which can give a man waking nightmares even as it takes away his fears. Such men might be mad, drunk and naked, but they were also dangerous for they had only one aim and that was to bring down the enemy commanders. They rushed at me, mouths foaming from the magical herbs they had been chewing and with their spears held overhead ready to drive down. My wolf-tailed spearmen advanced to meet them. The naked men did not care about death, they threw themselves on my spearmen as if they welcomed their spear-points. One of my men was driven backwards with a naked brute clawing at his eyes and spitting into his face. Issa killed that fiend, but another managed to kill one of my best men and then screamed his victory, legs apart, arms upheld and b.l.o.o.d.y spear in b.l.o.o.d.y hand, and all my men thought the G.o.ds must have deserted us, but Sagramor ripped the naked man's belly open, then half severed his head before the corpse had even fallen to the ground. Sagramor spat on to the naked, eviscerated corpse, then spat again towards the enemy shield-wall. That wall, seeing the centre of our line was disordered, charged. Our hastily realigned centre buckled when the ma.s.s of spearmen slammed home. The thin line of men stretched across the road bent like a sapling, but somehow we held. We were cheering each other, calling on the G.o.ds, stabbing and cutting while Morfans and his hors.e.m.e.n rode all along the shield-wall and threw themselves into the fight wherever the enemy seemed about to break through. The flanks of our shield-wall were protected by the barricade and so had an easier time, but in the centre our fight was desperate. I was maddened by now, lost in the weltering joy of battle. I lost my spear to an enemy's grip, drew Hywelbane, but held back her first stroke to let an enemy's shield hammer into Arthur's polished silver. The shields banged together, then the enemy's face showed for an instant and I lanced Hywelbane forward and felt the pressure vanish from the shield. The man fell, his body making a barrier over which his comrades had to climb. Issa killed one man, then took a spear thrust to his shield arm that soaked his sleeve in blood. He kept fighting. I was hacking madly in the s.p.a.ce made by my fallen enemy to carve a hole in Gorfyddyd's shield-wall. I saw the enemy King once, staring from his horse to where I screamed and slashed and dared his men to come and take my soul. Some did dare, thinking to make themselves the stuff of songs, but instead they made themselves into corpses. Hywelbane was soaked in blood, my right hand was sticky with it and the sleeve of the heavy scale coat was smeared with it, but none of it was mine.

The centre of our line, unprotected by the tangling trees, very nearly did break once, but two of Morfans's hors.e.m.e.n used their beasts to plug the gap. One of the horses died, screaming and thrashing its hooves as it bled to death on the road. Then our shield-wall mended itself and we shoved back at the enemy who slowly, slowly were being choked by the press of dead and dying bodies that lay between the two front ranks. Nimue was behind us, shrieking and hurling curses. The enemy pulled away and at last we could rest. All of us were b.l.o.o.d.y and mud stained and our breath came in huge gasps. Our sword and spear arms were weary. News of comrades was pa.s.sed along the ranks. Minac was dead, this man wounded, another man dying. Men bandaged their neighbours' wounds, then swore oaths to defend each other to the death. I tried to ease the galling pressure of Arthur's armour that had rubbed great sores on my shoulders.

The enemy was wary now. The tired men who faced us had felt our swords and learned to fear us, yet still they attacked again. This time it was Gundleus's royal guard that a.s.saulted our centre and we met them at the b.l.o.o.d.y pile of dead and dying that was left from the last attack, and that gory ridge saved us, for the enemy spearmen could not clamber over the bodies and protect themselves at the same time. We broke their ankles, cut open their legs, then speared them as they fell to make the b.l.o.o.d.y ridge higher. Black ravens circled the ford, their wings ragged against the dun sky. I saw Ligessac, the traitor who had yielded Norwenna to Gundleus's sword, and I tried to cut my way through to him, but the tide of battle swept him away from Hywelbane. Then the enemy pulled back again and I hoa.r.s.ely ordered some of my men to fetch skins of water from the river. We were all thirsty for the sweat had poured off us, mingling with blood. I had one scratch on my sword hand, but nothing else. I had been to the death-pit and always reckoned that was why I was lucky in battle.