Excalibur

by Bernard Cornwell

  We drew back six or seven paces, then Liofa skipped forward, as light on his feet as a dancer, and cut at me fast. Hywelbane met the cut hard and I saw him draw back from the solid parry with a flinch. I was faster than he expected, or maybe he was slower than usual for even a small amount of ale will slow a man. Some men only fight drunk, but those who live longest fight sober.

  I wondered about that flinch. He had not been hurt, yet I had obviously worried him. I cut at him and he leapt back, and that leap gave me another pause to think. What had made him flinch? Then I remembered the weakness of his parries and I realized he dared not risk his blade against mine, for it was too light. If I could strike that blade with all my force then it would as like as not break and so I slashed again, only this time I kept slashing and I roared at him as I stamped towards him. I cursed him by air, by fire and by sea. I called him woman, I spat on his grave and on the dog’s grave where his mother was buried, and all the while he said not a word, but just let his sword meet mine and slide away and always he backed away and those pale eyes watched me.

  Then he slipped. His right foot seemed to slide on a patch of rushes and his leg went out from under him. He fell backwards and reached out with his left hand to check himself and I roared his death and raised Hywelbane high.

  Then I stepped away from him, without even trying to finish the killing blow.

  I had been warned of that slip by Bors and I had been waiting for it. To watch it was marvellous, and I had very nearly been fooled for I could have sworn the slip was an accident, but Liofa was an acrobat as well as a sword fighter and the apparently unbalanced slip turned into a sudden supple motion that swept his sword around to where my feet should have been. I can still hear that long slim blade hissing as it swept just inches above the floor rushes. The blow should have sliced into my ankles, crippling me, only I was not there.

  I had stepped back and now watched him calmly. He looked up ruefully. ‘Stand, Liofa,’ I said, and my voice was steady, telling him that all my rage had been a pretence.

  I think he knew then that I was truly dangerous. He blinked once or twice and I guessed he had used his best tricks on me, but none had worked, and his confidence was sapped. But not his skill, and he came forward hard and fast to drive me back with a dazzling succession of short cuts, quick lunges and sudden sweeps. I let the sweeps go unparried, while the other attacks I touched away as best I could, deflecting them and trying to break his rhythm, but at last one cut beat me squarely. I caught it on my left forearm and the leather sleeve broke the sword’s force, though I bore a bruise for the best part of a month afterwards. The crowd sighed. They had watched the fight keenly and were eager to see the first blood drawn. Liofa ripped the blade back from my forearm, trying to saw its edge through the leather to the bone, but I flicked my arm out of the way, lunged with Hywelbane and so drove him back.

  He waited for me to follow up the attack, but it was my turn to play the tricks now. I deliberately did not move towards him, but instead let my sword drop a few inches as I breathed heavily. I shook my head, trying to flick the sweat-soaked hanks of hair from my forehead. It was hot beside that great fire. Liofa watched me cautiously. He could see I was out of breath, he saw my sword falter, but he had not killed forty-eight men by taking risks. He gave me one of his quick cuts to test my reaction. It was a short swing that demanded a parry, but would not thump home like an axe biting into flesh. I parried it late, deliberately late, and let the tip of Liofa’s sword strike my upper arm as Hywelbane clanged on the thicker part of his blade. I grunted, feigned a swing, then pulled my blade back as he stepped easily away.

  Again I waited for him. He lunged, I struck his sword aside, but this time I did not try to counter his attack with one of my own. The crowd had fallen silent, sensing this fight was about to end. Liofa tried another lunge and again I parried. He preferred the lunge, for that would kill without endangering his precious blade, but I knew that if I parried those quick stabs often enough he would eventually kill me the old way instead. He tried two more lunges and I knocked the first clumsily aside, stepped back from the second, then cuffed at my eyes with my left sleeve as though the sweat was stinging them.

  He swung then. He shouted aloud for the first time as he gave a mighty swing that came from high above his head and angled down towards my neck. I parried it easily, but staggered as I slid his scything blow safely over my skull with Hywelbane’s blade, then I let her drop a little and he did what I expected him to do.

  He backswung with all his force. He did it fast and well, but I knew his speed now and I was already bringing Hywelbane up in a counter-stroke that was just as fast. I had both hands on her hilt and I put all my strength into that slashing upward blow that was not aimed at Liofa, but at his sword.

  The two swords met plumb.

  Only this time there was no ringing sound, but a crack.

  For Liofa’s blade had broken. The outer two thirds of it sheared clean away to fall among the rushes, leaving only a stump in his hand. He looked horrified. Then, for a heartbeat, he seemed tempted to attack me with the remnants of his sword, but I gave Hywelbane two fast cuts that drove him back. He could see now that I was not tired at all: He could also see that he was a dead man, but still he tried to parry Hywelbane with his broken weapon, but she beat that feeble metal stump aside and then I stabbed.

  And held the blade still at the silver torque about his throat. ‘Lord King?’ I called, but keeping my eyes on Liofa’s eyes. There was a silence in the hall. The Saxons had seen their champion beaten and they had no voices left. ‘Lord King!’ I called again.

  ‘Lord Derfel?’ Aelle answered.

  ‘You asked me to fight King Cerdic’s champion, you did not ask me to kill him. I beg his life of you.’

  Aelle paused. ‘His life is yours, Derfel.’

  ‘Do you yield?’ I asked Liofa. He did not answer at once. His pride was still seeking a victory, but while he hesitated I moved Hywelbane’s tip from his throat to his right cheek. ‘Well?’ I prompted him.

  ‘I yield,’ he said, and threw down the stump of his sword.

  I thrust with Hywelbane just hard enough to gouge the skin and flesh away from his cheekbone. ‘A scar, Liofa,’ I said, ‘to-remind you that you fought the Lord Derfel Cadarn, son of Aelle, and that you lost.’ I left him bleeding. The crowd was cheering. Men are strange things. One moment they had been baying for my blood, now they were shouting plaudits because I had spared their champion’s life. I retrieved Ceinwyn’s brooch, then picked up my shield and gazed up at my father. ‘I bring you greetings from Erce, Lord King,’ I said.

  ‘And they are welcome, Lord Derfel,’ Aelle said, ‘they are welcome.’

  He gestured to a chair on his left that one of his sons had vacated and thus I joined Arthur’s enemies at their high table. And feasted.

  At the feast’s end Aelle took me to his own chamber that lay behind the dais. It was a great room, high-beamed, with a fire burning at its centre and a bed of furs beneath the gable wall. He closed the door where he had set guards, then beckoned that I should sit on a wooden chest beside the wall while he walked to the far end of the chamber, loosened his drawers, and urinated into a sink hole in the earthen floor. ‘Liofa’s fast,’ he said to me as he pissed.

  ‘Very.’

  ‘I thought he’d beat you.’

  ‘Not fast enough,’ I said, ‘or else the ale slowed him. Now spit in it.’

  ‘Spit in what?’ my father demanded.

  ‘Your urine. To prevent bad luck.’

  ‘My Gods take no note of piss or spit, Derfel,’ he said in amusement. He had invited two of his sons into the room and those two, Hrothgar and Cyrning, watched me curiously. ‘So what message,’ Aelle demanded, ‘does Arthur send?’

  ‘Why should he send any?’

  ‘Because you wouldn’t be here otherwise. You think you were whelped by a fool, boy? So what does Arthur want? No, don’t tell me, let me guess.’ He tied the rope belt of his trew
s, then went to sit in the room’s only chair, a Roman armchair made of black wood and inset with ivory, though much of the ivory pattern had lifted from its setting. ‘He will offer me security of land, is that it,’ Aelle asked, ‘if I attack Cerdic next year?’

  ‘Yes, Lord.’

  ‘The answer is no,’ he growled. ‘A man offers me what is already mine! What kind of an offer is that?’

  ‘A perpetual peace, Lord King,’ I said.

  Aelle smiled. ‘When a man promises something for ever, he is playing with the truth. Nothing is for ever, boy, nothing. Tell Arthur my spears march with Cerdic next year.’ He laughed. ‘You wasted your time, Derfel, but I’m glad you came. Tomorrow we shall talk of Erce. You want a woman for the night?’

  ‘No, Lord King.’ ‘Your Princess will never know,’ he teased me.

  ‘No, Lord King.’

  ‘And he calls himself a son of mine!’ Aelle laughed and his sons laughed with him. They were both tall and, though their hair was darker than mine, I suspect they resembled me, just as I suspected that they had been brought to the chamber to witness the conversation and so pass on Aelle’s flat refusal to the other Saxon leaders. ‘You can sleep outside my door,’ Aelle said, waving his sons out of the chamber, ‘you’ll be safe there.’ He waited as Hrothgar and Cyrning went out of the room, then checked me with a hand. ‘Tomorrow,’ my father said in a lower voice, ‘Cerdic goes home, and he takes Lancelot with him. Cerdic will be suspicious that I let you live, but I will survive his suspicions. We shall talk tomorrow, Derfel, and I’ll have a longer answer for your Arthur. It won’t be the answer he wants, but maybe it’s one he can live with. Go now, I have company coming.’

  I slept in the narrow space between the dais and my father’s door. In the night a girl slipped past me to Aelle’s bed while in the hall the warriors sang and fought and drank and eventually slept, though it was dawn before the last man began snoring. That was when I woke to hear the cockerels calling on Thunreslea’s hill, and I strapped on Hywelbane, picked up my cloak and shield, and stepped past the embers of the fires to go out into the raw chill air. A mist clung to the high plateau, thickening to a fog as the land dropped down to where the Thames widened into the sea. I walked away from the hall to the hill’s edge from where I stared down into the whiteness above the river.

  ‘My Lord King,’ a voice said behind me, ‘ordered me to kill you if I found you alone.’

  I turned to see Bors, Lancelot’s cousin and champion. ‘I owe you thanks,’ I said.

  ‘For warning you about Liofa?’ Bors shrugged as though his warning had been a small thing. ‘He’s quick, isn’t he? Quick and lethal.’ Bors came to stand beside me where he bit into an apple, decided it was pulpy and so threw it away. He was another big warrior, another scarred and black-bearded spearman who had stood in too many shield walls and seen too many friends cut down. He gave a belch. ‘I never minded fighting to give my cousin Dumnonia’s throne,’ he said, ‘but I never wanted to fight for a Saxon. And I didn’t want to watch you being cut down to amuse Cerdic’

  ‘But next year, Lord,’ I said, ‘you will be fighting for Cerdic’

  ‘Will I?’ he asked me. He sounded amused. ‘I don’t know what I shall do next year, Derfel. Maybe I’ll sail away to Lyonesse? They tell me the women there are the most beautiful in all the world. They have hair of silver, bodies of gold and no tongues.’ He laughed, then took another apple from a pouch and polished it against his sleeve. ‘My Lord King now,’ he said, meaning Lancelot, ‘he’ll fight for Cerdic, but what other choice does he have? Arthur won’t welcome him.’

  I realized then what Bors was hinting. ‘My Lord Arthur,’ I said carefully, ‘has no quarrel with you.’

  ‘Nor I with him,’ Bors said through a mouthful of apple. ‘So maybe we shall meet again, Lord Derfel. It’s a great pity I couldn’t find you this morning. My Lord King would have rewarded me richly if I had killed you.’ He grinned and walked away.

  Two hours later I watched Bors leave with Cerdic, going down the hill where the clearing mist shredded among red-leaved trees. A hundred men went with Cerdic, most of them suffering from the night’s feast, just like Aelle’s men who formed an escort for their departing guests. I rode behind Aelle whose own horse was being led while he walked beside King Cerdic and Lancelot. Just behind them walked two standard-bearers, one carrying Aelle’s blood-spattered bull skull on a staff, the other hoisting aloft Cerdic’s red-painted wolf skull that was hung with a dead man’s flayed skin. Lancelot ignored me. Earlier in the morning, when we had unexpectedly encountered each other close to the hall, he had simply looked through me and I made nothing of the encounter. His men had murdered my youngest daughter, and though I had killed the murderers, I would still have liked to avenge Dian’s soul on Lancelot himself, but Aelle’s hall was not the place to do it. Now, from a grassy ridge above the muddy banks of the Thames, I watched as Lancelot and his few retainers walked towards Cerdic’s waiting ships.

  Only Amhar and Loholt dared challenge me. The twins were sullen youths who hated their father and despised their mother. In their own eyes they were princes, but Arthur, who disdained titles, refused to give them the honour and that had only increased their resentment. They believed they had been cheated of royal rank, of land, of wealth and of honour, and they would fight for anyone who tried to defeat Arthur whom they blamed for all their ill-fortune. The stump of Loholt’s right arm was sheathed in silver, to which he had attached a pair of bear’s claws. It was Loholt who turned back to me. ‘We shall meet next year,’ he told me.

  I knew he was spoiling for a fight, but I kept my voice mild. ‘I look forward to the meeting.’

  He held up his silver-sheathed stump, reminding me how I had held his arm as his father had struck with Excalibur. ‘You owe me a hand, Derfel.’

  I said nothing. Amhar had come to stand beside his brother. They both had their father’s big-boned, long-jawed face, but in them it had been soured so that they showed none of Arthur’s strength. Instead they looked cunning, almost wolf-like.

  ‘Did you not hear me?’ Loholt demanded.

  ‘Be glad,’ I told him, ‘that you still have’one hand. And as for my debt to you, Loholt, I shall pay it with Hywelbane.’

  They hesitated, but they could not be certain that Cerdic’s guards would support them if they drew their swords, and so at last they contented themselves with spitting at me before turning and strutting down to the muddy beach where Cerdic’s two boats waited.

  This shore beneath Thunreslea was a miserable place, half land and half sea, where the meeting of the river and the ocean had spawned a dull landscape of mudbanks, shoals and tangling sea-creeks. Gulls cried as Cerdic’s spearmen plunged across the glutinous foreshore, waded into the shallow creek and hauled themselves over the wooden gunwales of their longboats. I saw Lancelot lift the hem of his cloak as he picked his delicate way through the foul-smelling mud. Loholt and Amhar followed him and, once they reached their boat, they turned and pointed their fingers at me, a gesture designed to cast ill-luck. I ignored them. The ship’s sails were already raised, but the wind was light and the two high-prowed boats had to be manoeuvred out of the narrow ebbing creek with long oars wielded by Cerdic’s spearmen. Once the boats’ wolf-crested prows were facing towards the open water the warrior-oarsmen began a chant that offered a rhythm to their strokes. ‘Hwaet for your mother,’ they chanted, ‘and hwaet for your girl, and hwaet for your lover who you hwaet on the floor,’ and with every ‘hwaet’ they shouted louder and pulled on their long oars and the two ships gained speed until at last the mist curled about their sails that were crudely painted with wolves’ skulls. ‘And hwaet for your mother,’ the chant began again, only now the voices were thinner through the vapour, ‘and hwaet for your girl,’ and the low hulls became vague in the mist until, at last, the ships vanished in the whitened air, ‘and hwaet for your lover who you hwaet on the floor.’ The sound came as if from nowhere, and then faded with the splashing of
their oars.

  Two of Aelle’s men heaved their lord onto his horse. ‘Did you sleep?’ he asked me as he settled himself in his saddle.

  ‘Yes, Lord King.’

  ‘I had better things to do,’ he said curtly. ‘Now follow me.’ He kicked back his heels and turned his horse along the shore where the creeks rippled and sucked as the tide ebbed. This morning, in honour of his departing guests, Aelle had dressed as a warrior King. His iron helmet was trimmed with gold and crowned with a fan of black feathers, his leather breastplate and long boots were dyed black, while from his shoulders there fell a long black bearskin cloak that dwarfed his small horse. A dozen of his men followed us on horseback, one of them carrying the bull-skull standard. Aelle, like me, rode clumsily. ‘I knew Arthur would send you,’ he said suddenly and, when I made no answer, he turned to me. ‘So you found your mother?’

  ‘Yes, Lord King.’

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘Old,’ I said truthfully, ‘old, fat and sick.’

  He sighed at that news. ‘They start as young girls so beautiful they can break the hearts of a whole army, and after they’ve had a couple of children they all look old, fat and sick.’ He paused, thinking about that. ‘But somehow I thought that would never happen to Erce. She was very beautiful,’ he said wistfully, then grinned, ‘but thank the Gods there’s a constant supply of the young ones, eh?’ He laughed, then gave me another glance. ‘When you first told me your mother’s name I knew you were my son.’ He paused. ‘My firstborn son.’