Excalibur

by Bernard Cornwell

  Arthur dismounted and he and I insisted on carrying Cuneglas’s body back to his men. We both wept. In all the long years we had possessed no stauncher ally than Cuneglas ap Gorfyddyd, King of Powys. He had never argued with Arthur and never once failed him, while to me he had been like a brother. He was a good man, a giver of gold, a lover of justice, and now he was dead. The warriors of Powys took their dead King from us and carried him behind the shield wall. ‘The name of his killer,’ I said to them, ‘is Liofa, and I will give a hundred gold coins to the man who brings me his head.’

  Then a shout turned me. The Saxons, assured of victory, had started their advance.

  My men stood. They wiped sweat from their eyes. I pulled on my battered and bloody helmet, closed its cheekpieces, and snatched up a fallen spear.

  It was time to fight again.

  This was the biggest Saxon attack of the day and it was made by a surge of confident spearmen who had recovered from their early surprise and who now came to splinter our lines and to rescue Aelle. They roared their war chants as they came, they beat spears on shields and they promised each other a score of British dead apiece. The Saxons knew they had won. They had taken the worst that Arthur could hurl at them, they had fought us to a standstill, they had seen their champion slay a King, and now, with their fresh troops in the lead, they advanced to finish us. The Franks drew back their light throwing-spears, readying themselves to rain a shower of sharpened iron on our shield wall.

  When suddenly a horn sounded from Mynydd Baddon.

  At first few of us heard the horn, so loud were the shouts and the tramp of feet and the moans of the dying, but then the horn called again, then a third time, and at the third call men turned and stared up at Mynydd Baddon’s abandoned rampart. Even the Franks and Saxons stopped. They were only fifty paces from us when the horn checked them and when they, like us, turned to gaze up the long green hillside.

  To see a single horseman and a banner.

  There was only one banner, but it was a huge one; a wind-spread expanse of white linen on which was embroidered the red dragon of Dumnonia. The beast, all claws, tail and fire, reared on the flag that caught the wind and almost toppled the horseman who carried it. Even at this distance we could see that the horseman rode stiffly and awkwardly as though he could neither handle his black horse nor hold the great banner steady, but then two spearmen appeared behind him and they pricked his horse with their weapons and the beast sprang away down the hill and its rider was jerked hard backwards by the sudden motion. He swayed forward again as the horse raced down the slope, his black cloak flew up behind and I saw that his armour beneath the cloak was shining white, as white as the linen of his fluttering flag. Behind him, spilling off Mynydd Baddon as we had spilled just after dawn, came a shrieking mass of men with black shields and other men with tusked boars on their shields. Oengus mac Airem and Culhwch had come, though instead of striking down the Corinium road they had first worked their way onto Mynydd Baddon so that their men would link up with ours.

  But it was the horseman I watched. He rode so awkwardly and I could see now that he was tied onto the horse. His ankles were linked under the stallion’s black belly with rope, and his body was fixed to the saddle by what had to be strips of timber clamped to the saddle’s tree. He had no helmet so that his long hair flew free in the wind, and beneath the hair the rider’s face was nothing but a grinning skull covered by desiccated yellow skin. It was Gawain, dead Gawain, his lips and gums shrunken back from his teeth, his nostrils two black slits and his eyeballs empty holes. His head lolled from side to side while his body, to which the dragon banner of Britain was strapped, swayed from side to side.

  It was death on a black horse called Anbarr, and at the sight of that ghoul coming at their flank, the Saxon confidence shuddered. The Blackshields were shrieking behind Gawain, driving the horse and its dead rider over the hedges and straight at the Saxon flank. The Blackshields did not attack in a line, but came in a howling mass. This was the Irish way of war, a terrifying assault of maddened men who came to the slaughter like lovers.

  For a moment the battle trembled. The Saxons had been on the point of victory, but Arthur saw their hesitation and unexpectedly shouted us forward. ‘On!’ he shouted, and ‘Forward!’ Mordred added his command to Arthur’s, ‘Forward!’

  Thus began the slaughter of Mynydd Baddon. The bards tell it all, and for once they do not exaggerate. We crossed our tide line of dead and carried our spears to the Saxon army just as the Blackshields and Culhwch’s men hit their flank. For a few heartbeats there was the clangour of sword on sword, the thump of axe on shield, the grunting, heaving, sweating battle of locked shield walls, but then the Saxon army broke and we fought among their shredding ranks in fields made slick with Frankish and Saxon blood. The Saxons fled, broken by a wild charge led by a dead man on a black horse, and we killed them until we thought nothing of killing. We crammed the bridge of swords with Sais dead. We speared them, we disembowelled them, and some we just drowned in the river. We took no prisoners at first, but vented years of hatred on our hated enemies. Cerdic’s army had shattered under the twin assault, and we roared into their breaking ranks and vied each other in killing. It was an orgy of death, a welter of slaughter. There were some Saxons so terrified that they could not move, who literally stood with wide eyes waiting to be killed, while there were others who fought like demons and others who died running and others who tried to escape to the river. We had lost all semblance of a shield wall, we were nothing but a pack of maddened war-dogs tearing an enemy to pieces. I saw Mordred limping on his clubbed foot as he cut down Saxons, I saw Arthur riding down fugitives, saw the men of Powys avenging their King a thousandfold. I saw Galahad cut left and right from horseback, his face as calm as ever. I saw Tewdric in a priest’s robes, skeletally thin and with his hair tonsured, savagely slashing with a great sword. Old Bishop Emrys was there, a huge cross hanging about his neck” and an old breastplate tied over his gown with horsehair rope. ‘Get to hell!’ he roared as he jabbed at helpless Saxons with a spear. ‘Burn in the cleansing fire for ever!’ I saw Oengus mac Airem, his beard soaked with Saxon blood, spearing yet more Sais. I saw Guinevere riding Mordred’s horse and chopping with the sword we had given her. I saw Gawain, his head fallen clean off, slumping dead on his bleeding horse that peacefully cropped the grass among the Saxon corpses. I saw Merlin at last, for he had come with Gawain’s corpse, and though he was an old man, he was striking at Saxons with his staff and cursing them for miserable worms. He had an escort of Blackshields. He saw me, smiled, and waved me on to the slaughter.

  We overran Cerdic’s village where women and children cowered in the huts. Culhwch and a score of men were working a stolid butcher’s path through the few Saxon spearmen who tried to protect their families and Cerdic’s abandoned baggage. The Saxon guards died and the plundered gold spilled like chaff. I remember dust rising like a mist, screams of women and men, children and dogs running in terror, burning huts spewing smoke and always Arthur’s big horses thundering through the panic with spears dipping to take enemy spearmen in the back. There is no joy like the destruction of a broken army. The shield wall breaks and death rules, and so we killed till our arms were too tired to lift a sword and when the killing was done we found ourselves in a swamp of blood, and that was when our men discovered the ale and mead in the Saxon baggage and the drinking began. Some Saxon women found protection amongst our few sober men who carried water from the river to our wounded. We looked for friends alive and embraced them, saw friends dead and wept for them. We knew the delirium of utter victory, we shared our tears and laughter, and some men, tired as they were, danced for pure joy.

  Cerdic escaped. He and his bodyguard cut through the chaos and climbed the eastern hills. Some Saxons swam south across the river, while others followed Cerdic and a few pretended death and then slipped away in the night, but most stayed in the valley beneath Mynydd Baddon and remain there to this day.

  For we had
won. We had turned the fields beside the river into a slaughterhouse. We had saved Britain and fulfilled Arthur’s dream. We were the kings of slaughter and the lords of the dead, and we howled our bloody triumph at the sky.

  For the power of the Sais was broken.

  PART THREE

  Nimue’s Curse

  QUEEN IGRAINE SAT IN my window and read the last sheets of parchment, sometimes asking me the meaning of a Saxon word, but otherwise saying nothing. She hurried through the story of the battle, then threw the parchments onto the floor in disgust. ‘What happened to Aelle?’ she demanded indignantly, ‘or to Lancelot?’

  ‘I shall come to their fates, Lady,’ I said. I had a quill trapped on the desk with the stump of my left arm and was trimming its point with a knife. I blew the scraps onto the floor. ‘All in good time.’

  ‘All in good time!’ she scoffed. ‘You can’t leave a story without an ending, Derfel!’

  ‘It will have an ending,’ I promised.

  ‘It needs one here and now,’ my Queen insisted. ‘That’s the whole point of stories. Life doesn’t have neat endings, so stories must.’ She is very swollen now, for her child is close to its time. I shall pray for her, and she will need my prayers for too many women die giving birth. Cows do not suffer thus, nor cats, nor bitches, nor sows, nor ewes, nor vixens, nor any creature except humankind. Sansum says that is because Eve took the apple in Eden and so soured our paradise. Women, the saint preaches, are God’s punishment on men, and children his punishment on women. ‘So what happened to Aelle?’ Igraine demanded sternly when I did not respond to her words.

  ‘He was killed,’ I said, ‘by the thrust of a spear. It struck him right here,’ I tapped my ribs just above my heart. The story was longer than that, of course, but I had no mind to tell her just then for I take little pleasure in remembering my father’s death, though I suppose I must set it down if the tale is to be complete. Arthur had left his men pillaging Cerdic’s camp and ridden back to discover whether Tewdric’s Christians had finished off Aelle’s trapped army. He found the remnants of those Saxons beaten, bleeding and dying, but still defiant. Aelle himself had been wounded and could no longer hold a shield, but he would not yield. Instead, surrounded by his bodyguard and the last of his spearmen, he waited for Tewdric’s soldiers to come and kill him.

  The spearmen of Gwent were reluctant to attack. A cornered enemy is dangerous, and if he still possesses a shield wall, as Aelle’s men did, then he is doubly dangerous. Too many spearmen of Gwent had already died, good old Agricola among them, and the survivors did not want to push forward into the Saxon shields another time. Arthur had not insisted that they try, instead he had talked with Aelle, and when Aelle refused to surrender, Arthur summoned me. I thought, when I reached Arthur’s side, that he had exchanged his white cloak for a dark red one, but it was the same garment, just so spattered with blood that it looked red. He greeted me with an embrace, then, with his arm about my shoulders, led me into the space between the opposing shield walls. I remember a dying horse was there, and dead men and discarded shields and broken weapons. ‘Your father won’t surrender,’ Arthur said, ‘but I think he will listen to you. Tell him that he must be our prisoner, but that he will live with honour and can spend his days in comfort. I promise the lives of his men, too. All he needs do is give me his sword.’ He looked at the beaten, outnumbered and trapped Saxons. They were silent. In their place we would have sung, but those spearmen waited for death in utter silence. ‘Tell them there’s been enough killing, Derfel,’ Arthur said.

  I unbuckled Hywelbane, laid her down with my shield and spear, then walked to face my father. Aelle looked weary, broken and hurt, but he hobbled out to meet me with his head held high. He had no shield, but held a sword in his maimed right hand. ‘I thought they would send for you,’ he growled. The edge of his sword was dented deep and its blade was crusted with blood. He made an abrupt gesture with the weapon when I began to describe Arthur’s offer. ‘I know what he wants of me,’ he interrupted, ‘he wants my sword, but I am Aelle, the Bretwalda of Britain, and I do not yield my sword.’

  ‘Father,’ I began again.

  ‘You call me King!’ he snarled.

  I smiled at his defiance and bowed my head. ‘Lord King, we offer your men their lives, and we…’

  Once again he cut me off. ‘When a man dies in battle,’ he said, ‘he goes to a blessed home in the sky. But to reach that great feasting hall he must die on his feet, with his sword in his hand and with his wounds to the front.’ He paused, and when he spoke again his voice was much softer. ‘You owe me nothing, my son, but I should take it as a kindness if you would give me my place in that feasting hall.’

  ‘Lord King,’ I said, but he interrupted me for a fourth time.

  ‘I would be buried here,’ he went on as though I had never spoken, ‘with my feet to the north and my sword in my hand. I ask nothing more of you.’ He turned back to his men, and I saw that he could hardly stay upright. He must have been grievously wounded, but his great bear cloak was hiding the wound. ‘Hrothgar!’ he called to one of his spearmen. ‘Give my son your spear.’ A tall young Saxon came out of the shield wall and obediently held his spear out to me. ‘Take it!’ Aelle snapped at me, and I obeyed. Hrothgar gave me a nervous glance then hurried back to his comrades.

  Aelle closed his eyes for an instant and I saw a grimace cross his hard face. He was pale under the dirt and sweat, and he suddenly gritted his teeth as another ravaging pain seared through him, but he resisted the pain and even tried to smile as he stepped forward to embrace me. He leaned his weight on my shoulders and I could hear the breath scraping in his throat. ‘I think,’ he said in my ear, ‘that you are the best of my sons. Now give me a gift. Give me a good death, Derfel, for I would like to go to the feasting hall of true warriors.’ He stepped heavily back and propped his sword against his body, then laboriously untied the leather strings of his fur cloak. It dropped away and I saw that the whole left side of his body was soaked in blood. He had suffered a spear thrust under the breastplate, while another blow had taken him high in the shoulder, leaving his left arm hanging useless, and so he was forced to use his maimed right hand to unbuckle the leather straps that held his breastplate at his waist and shoulders. He fumbled with the buckles, but when I stepped forward to help he waved me away. ‘I’m making it easy for you,’ he said, ‘but when I’m dead, put the breastplate back on my corpse. I shall need armour in the feasting hall, for there is much fightingthere. Fighting, feasting and…’he stopped, racked once again by pain. He gritted his teeth, groaned, then straightened to face me. ‘Now kill me,’ he ordered.

  ‘I cannot kill you,’ I said, but I was thinking of my mad mother’s prophecy that it would be Aelle’s son who killed Aelle.

  ‘Then I shall kill you,’ he said, and he clumsily swung his sword at me. I stepped away from the swing, and he stumbled and almost fell as he tried to follow me. He stopped, panting, and stared at me. ‘For the sake of your mother, Derfel,’ he pleaded, ‘would you have me die on the ground like a dog? Can you give me nothing?’ He swung at me again, and this time the effort was too much and he began to sway and I saw there were tears in his eyes and I understood that the manner of his death was no small thing. He willed himself to stay upright and made an immense effort to lift the sword. Fresh blood gleamed at his left side, his eyes were glazing, but he kept his gaze on mine as he took one last step forward and made a feeble lunge at my midriff.

  God forgive me, but I thrust the spear forward then. I put all my weight and strength into the blow, and the heavy blade took his falling weight and held him upright even as it shattered his ribs and drove deep into his heart. He gave an enormous shudder and a look of grim determination came to his dying face and I thought for a heartbeat that he wanted to lift the sword for one last blow, but then I saw he was merely making certain that his wounded right hand was fastened tight about his sword’s handle. Then he fell, and he was dead before he struck the ground,
but the sword, his battered and bloody sword, was still in his grip. A groan sounded from his men. Some of them were in tears.

  ‘Derfel?’ Igraine said. ‘Derfel!’

  ‘Lady?’

  ‘You were sleeping,’ she accused me.

  ‘Age, dear Lady,’ I said, ‘mere age.’

  ‘So Aelle died in the battle,’ she said briskly, ‘and Lancelot?’

  ‘That comes later,’ I said firmly.

  ‘Tell me now!’ she insisted.

  ‘I told you,’ I said, ‘it comes later, and I hate stories that tell their endings before their beginnings.’

  For a moment I thought she would protest, but instead she just sighed at my obstinacy and went on with her list of unfinished business. ‘What happened to the Saxon champion, Liofa?’

  ‘He died,’ I said, ‘very horribly.’

  ‘Good!’ she said, looking interested. ‘Tell me!’

  ‘It was a disease, Lady. Something swelled in his groin and he could neither sit nor lie, and even standing was agony. He became thinner and thinner, and finally he died, sweating and shaking. Or so we heard.’

  Igraine was indignant. ‘So he wasn’t killed at Mynydd Baddon?’

  ‘He escaped with Cerdic.’

  Igraine gave a dissatisfied shrug, as though we had somehow failed by letting the Saxon champion escape. ‘But the bards,’ she said, and I groaned, for whenever my Queen mentions the bards I know I am about to be confronted with their version of history which, inevitably, Igraine prefers even though I was present when the history was made and the bards were not even born. ‘The bards,’ she said firmly, ignoring my groan of protest, ‘all say that Cuneglas’s battle with Liofa lasted the best part of a morning, and that Cuneglas killed six champions before he was struck down from behind.’

  ‘I have heard those songs,’ I said guardedly.