Lancelot

by Giles Kristian

  ‘Artorius!’ the men around me called. ‘Artorius!’

  Lord Arthur, mounted on an enormous white mare, spearheaded a group of seven riders who galloped across the plateau, their horses’ hooves flinging clods of dew-damp earth into the wan day. Arthur wore his scale armour and gripped a long spear in both hands, its shaft crossing the mare’s neck so that its iron blade hung two feet in front of the animal’s left eye. And how those horses galloped!

  ‘Arthur,’ I whispered, the name like magic across my lips.

  ‘Taranis and his thunder, look at that,’ Benesek said. ‘The man is mad.’

  His helmet’s long red plume flying behind him, Lord Arthur and his men looked like gods come down to earth with the dawn, summoned perhaps by last night’s great balefire whose flames had whispered into the moonlit sky.

  The Dumnonians on the right of their shieldwall were turning to face the horsemen and most got their shields up in the press, though fear had bunched them tight and some men sought to put themselves slightly behind their comrades. And yet there was no hiding.

  A loud crack filled the day, followed by a scream as Lord Arthur’s spear pierced a shield and mail and plunged into a man’s chest, and Arthur let go the spear and drew his sword as his mount drove on into the press of bodies. Scything at heads and shoulders, he laid about him with shining blade and men fell under that onslaught, while the other six horsemen ploughed into the gap, their spear blades piercing men where they stood or slashing faces or necks and sowing terror.

  The shock of Lord Arthur’s impact surged along the whole of the Dumnonian shieldwall and I saw Lord Constantine yelling at his men to hold the line, shoulder to shoulder, shield to shield. To stand firm. Cursing any man who broke formation, while he and his bodyguard of ten spearmen left the centre and strode towards the mayhem on the right. Towards the place where men died under blades and horses’ hooves and where Lord Arthur drove his mount on, his men on his flanks as he strove to reach Lord Constantine, whose death might end this madness.

  ‘We should attack now,’ Benesek called.

  ‘We hold!’ our leader bellowed in reply.

  ‘If we don’t hit them now, Arthur will die,’ I said.

  ‘It’s too late,’ the spearman on my right said, and perhaps he was right, for in his eagerness to drive through the Dumnonians and kill Constantine, Lord Arthur had led his men deep into the enemy ranks. Now, the momentum of their charge spent, they were vulnerable as some of the Dumnonians gave those slashing swords and stabbing spears a wide berth in order to get behind Arthur’s men, whose horses were not clad in their scale or leather armour. The lustre of their flanks was from well-groomed coats, not bronze or steel. The impetus of their stampede into the enemy had been born of muscle and sinew and noble obedience, not from the added weight of armoured shaffrons and peytrals and the heavy quilted under-garb.

  I saw one of Arthur’s men arch horribly in the saddle. Saw the spearman pull his weapon free only to plunge it home again and lever the rider off his horse. I saw another horse and rider sink into the press, the horse shrieking as its hamstrings were cut, its master swinging his sword madly this way and that before a spear took him under the arm and another was driven into his side.

  ‘They’ll finish Arthur off and then they’ll come for us,’ Benesek said, because the men with their oval shields facing us had stopped advancing and now stood firm. Waiting.

  Arthur and Constantine were almost upon each other now, though they could not close for the press of men between them, and were like war dogs straining at the leash. Behind Arthur I recognized Gawain by his bulk and his grim face as he hewed off a head with his sword then parried a spear and back cut, slashing a man’s face in a spray of blood and teeth.

  ‘There’s still a chance if we hit them now,’ Benesek shouted.

  ‘Hold!’ our leader bellowed. I could sense the desperation in the men around me. They wanted to fight now, to meet the Dumnonians in the fray and fight beside their lord. But another of Arthur’s horsemen was down, pulled from his saddle and pummelled with spear butts, and if we broke now, with Arthur’s charge having faltered, our ragged line would die on the rampart of the Dumnonians’ well-made shieldwall.

  Still Arthur spurred his big horse on with Gawain close behind off his flank, those two hacking left and right, cleaving heads and knocking aside spear blades and leaving a wake of dead and broken men. But Arthur could not meet every lunge, and some of those blades slid off his armour or gouged into it, sending bronze scales flying like fireflies in the dawn half-light. And then Arthur’s fine mare stumbled and screamed, leg-cut, and Arthur split the head of the spearman who had savaged his horse, but another man managed to grab hold of Arthur’s red cloak and hauled him from the saddle.

  And I ran. Unencumbered by war gear I flew, aware of a spear streaking past my right ear as I sprinted across the ground, leaping a dead man and stooping to gather up a discarded spear. Towards that shrieking, white-eyed, spittle-flinging mare that was mad with pain, and her master who was on his feet again fighting for his life.

  A big, black-bearded Dumnonian stepped out of the line into my path and threw his shield and spear out wide as a challenge, then staggered backwards and fell to his knees, a spear having impaled him through the throat. I knew if I looked back I would see Benesek spearless, but I did not look back. I ran. Fast as a breeze across the trodden grass, Boar’s Tusk and the spear light in my hands. Towards Arthur.

  I had chosen my man, just like that other Dumnonian had chosen me, and this man lifted his shield to catch my spear thrust but I threw one leg forward, dropped and slid along the dewy grass, coming under his shield and thrusting up with the spear into the man’s groin. He screamed, knowing the ruin I had done him, and fell, but I was up again and plunged the spear into another man’s open mouth as he shrieked in surprise to see me in front of him, before I hauled it back and used the stave to parry a blade which would have pierced my chest. The blade streaked again and I deflected it again, in that heartbeat recognizing the snarling, scarred face before me. It was Benesek’s old friend Cunittus, whom I had met the previous night. But we knew we were enemies now, borne on this blood tide like leaves that have landed on a fast-flowing stream, and I stepped back and swept my spear down. But Cunittus caught the blade on his shield and knocked my spear wide with his sword. I could tell he had once been good, perhaps great, but he was grey-haired and old, and I was young and fast and already knew I had a gift for war.

  I feinted with the spear then drew it back, reversing it and bringing the butt end down onto the sword which Cunittus had scythed after my spear. The arm fell away and Cunittus swung his shield, but again my spear wasn’t where he thought it was and so there was nothing to slow his shield’s momentum and it was wide of his injured sword arm, leaving his face open. Boar’s Tusk streaked, opening Cunittus’s face from his left temple to his lower right jaw, and I finished him in the next breath. Then a spear blade streaked past me to take another Dumnonian in the shoulder, the strength in that thrust enough to break through the scale armour and embed in bone.

  ‘I thought you’d never come,’ I rasped at Bors, who buried his left foot into the man’s groin as he twisted and hauled the spear free of bone and gristle.

  A Dumnonian lunged at Bors but I knocked the warrior’s spear aside with my own then slashed Boar’s Tusk across his throat, spattering Bors in crimson gore.

  ‘You had a head start again,’ my cousin said, as the roaring, screaming mass of Arthur’s men enveloped us and crashed into the enemy. They had followed me, even the big, dark-skinned leader who had tried to hold his shieldwall firm, and now all was chaos. Blades sang, steel on steel, and rasped and thumped against shields and thudded wetly into flesh. Men roared with fear and fury and pain. They shrieked at the injustice of the death which they knew had been given them, and they lay in the grass, trying to stem the flood of their lifeblood, their keening reminding me of the women’s death wail, so desperately did they long to b
e amongst loved ones as the light faded and the sound of battle receded and cold crept into the flesh.

  The mare was on her side, whinnying, teeth savaging the bit, hooves thrashing at the air, her wild eyes rolling and her white coat spattered with dark red drops. I avoided those hooves to reach Arthur, then speared a man in the back before he could bring his sword down onto Lord Arthur’s red-plumed helm. Arthur hauled his sword from the belly of a man doubled over from his blow, then turned on me as if to strike, his features twisted into a vicious, hate-filled, exultant mask.

  ‘Lord Arthur,’ I said, my sword raised to parry his blow, but in that instant he recognized me and stayed his hand. He was standing over a wounded warrior, one of his brave horsemen who had charged with him into the enemy but who now lay on his side, curled up like an infant and clutching his stomach.

  ‘Lancelot,’ Lord Arthur said. His men had caught up with me and they closed around us to protect their lord, yelling encouragement at each other as they drove the Dumnonians back. Arthur bent to the man by his feet. Touched his face and smoothed his hair. Offered calm words and praised the man’s courage. Then he went over to his own white mare and knelt by her writhing, vein-corded neck and for a moment discarded his sword to lay his bloody hands on her. Bereft of her armour, she had been savaged. Raw gashes in her withers, shoulder, left hind gaskin and rump steamed in the dawn and Arthur thanked her for her service then drew a long knife, weighted her head down with his own body, hushed her with secret whispers and cut both of the big arteries in her neck. And for just a few heartbeats those long friends were a boulder around which a river of disarray roiled, engulfing men in pain and despair and pulling them under.

  Bors careened into the little clearing, slipping on gore-slick grass, and with him was Benesek, his sword red and some of the rings of his long mail coat clotted with blood, though I could not tell if it was his own.

  ‘You get yourself killed and the Lady will have me thrown from the top of the keep,’ he said, bent and breathing hard, and I wondered if he had somehow known about the fate of the seaman Guinevere and I had killed all those years ago.

  ‘You said attack,’ I said.

  He shook his head and some garbled profanity tumbled out on his panting breath.

  ‘Arthur, we cannot win this,’ a man shouted. I turned to see Gawain glaring down at us. Miraculously he was still mounted on his chestnut mare, which seemed not to be wounded, though she was panting like Benesek. The only other man still horsed was some twenty feet away, leaning forward over his mare’s neck as he compelled her to stave in a fallen man’s skull with her big hooves. ‘We must retreat, lord!’ Gawain insisted, and by his grimace I could tell how much it pained him to say it.

  Standing now, sword in hand, Lord Arthur took in the clamorous chaos around him as if he could barely comprehend how we had gone from High King Uther’s funerary feast to this welter of blood. How, just a day before his acclamation as the next king of Dumnonia, his dead father’s ablest warlord had betrayed him so that under the shadow of the Saxon threat Britons were killing Britons on this summer’s dawn.

  He nodded to Gawain, who nodded back, relieved to have his lord’s consent, then turned to the other rider and ordered him to sound the retreat, which the man did, blowing three long notes on the horn he wore on a thong around his neck.

  A Dumnonian spearman slipped through the ring of Arthur’s men and lunged at the prince, but Arthur beat the long blade aside and contemptuously gutted the man with a neat thrust.

  ‘This way, Lord Arthur,’ someone at my shoulder called. It was Merlin, and he wore no armour over his black robe nor carried any weapon other than his formidable ash staff, for no one, not even Arthur’s enemies, would dare harm a druid. Nevertheless, a few steps behind him was Oswine, his tame Saxon, and he wore an old iron helmet and carried a splintered shield and a hand axe whose blade shone with blood. ‘You must come now while the way is open,’ Merlin told Arthur, who seemed torn between taking the druid’s and Gawain’s advice and staying to fight till his last breath.

  ‘Come on, boys, time to get out. This is not our fight,’ Benesek growled at Bors and me.

  ‘Lancelot swore an oath, Benesek,’ Merlin challenged him.

  ‘Damn the oath!’ Benesek said. ‘He’s a Guardian of the Mount.’ Still gasping for breath, he nodded at Bors. ‘They both are.’

  ‘Why do you think the Lady sent them with you, you dimwit?’ Merlin asked him.

  Bors and I looked at each other, bewildered that they were arguing over us in the midst of this desperate struggle with men fighting and dying around us.

  ‘You’re coming with me, Lancelot,’ Arthur said.

  ‘Then so am I,’ Bors put in, stepping forward to impose with his height and broad shoulders.

  Benesek’s eyes glared and his moustaches quivered with anger.

  ‘Lancelot swore to protect the next king of Dumnonia,’ Merlin said, ‘and an oath is an oath.’

  ‘Who is to say Lord Constantine will not be the next king of Dumnonia?’ Benesek asked, pointing his bloody sword towards where I had last seen that bronze, fin-like crest above the other helmeted heads.

  ‘I say it,’ Merlin said, as if those three words alone wove prophecy.

  ‘Shieldwall! Shieldwall!’ Gawain roared, and those of Arthur’s warriors who were still fighting, some fifty men I guessed, drew together like a clenching fist. Those who could broke off from their individual fights and many who did not have shields snatched them up from the dead or wounded and closed shoulder to shoulder with their companions. ‘Hold them!’ Gawain yelled, his horse standing tall and imperious and dauntless in the midst of havoc.

  ‘We must go now, Arthur,’ Merlin warned, turning away from Benesek. ‘If we do not, all is lost.’

  ‘Go, lord,’ the big dark-skinned warrior said, looking over his shoulder and blinking sweat from his eyes. ‘We will hold them. Go now!’

  Arthur’s teeth flashed in his neat golden beard and he looked like a wild animal that would rather die than flee.

  ‘For Dumnonia,’ Merlin told him. ‘And for Britain.’

  ‘Bedwyr!’ Arthur called and the big, sun-darkened man who had led us in Arthur’s absence raised his shield to the enemy and turned his face to Arthur.

  ‘Lord?’ he said.

  ‘Hold them just until we are away,’ Arthur said, his left hand going to the wound above his left hip, which had opened again by the looks of the crimson amongst the bronze scales of his armour. ‘Then disengage and retreat. Find Cai and wait for me.’ He spat the words, hating leaving his men to fight while he slipped away. ‘Do not fight this out, hear me! Get to Cai and his horses.’

  Bedwyr nodded. ‘Lord,’ he said, then turned back and yelled at his men to keep their shields kissing and gut any Dumnonian dog foolish enough to come close enough.

  Arthur went back to the wounded horseman, who was deathly pale now and blood-slathered, though his lip was still hitched in a snarl which showed his contempt for the wound and his refusal to let the darkness flood over him.

  ‘Leave me,’ he growled as Arthur took him under the arm, nodding at me to help him, which I did.

  ‘I won’t do that, Herenc,’ Arthur said, ‘just as you did not leave me to ride into this mess alone.’

  Herenc grimaced and nodded as we hauled him onto Arthur’s shoulder and Arthur braced his knees and found his balance with the weight. Then he turned eyes the colour of storm clouds on me. ‘You’re coming with me,’ he said.

  I nodded at him and glanced at Benesek, who took off his helmet to reveal his sweat-drenched grey stubble, and in that moment he owned all the years on his back. ‘Here, take this,’ he said, giving me the helmet. I started to protest but he spoke over me. ‘What chance have I got of keeping up?’ he asked, making no mention of the blood on his mail above his hip. ‘You lost my sword once,’ he said. ‘Don’t lose my helmet.’

  ‘We must go now, lord,’ Merlin said. Arthur nodded, spat a curse towards the Dumnonia
ns and, with Herenc folded over his shoulder like a rolled bear fur, he turned to follow Merlin and Oswine eastward towards the men of Rheged, who had formed their own shieldwall, their backs to the rising rocky outcrop which encircled the plateau.

  Bors was staring at me. ‘Well?’ he said, his eyes wild in his blood-daubed face.

  I looked at Benesek. ‘Go,’ he said, and pointed his sword in Constantine’s direction. ‘Those wet-behind-the-ears bastards won’t get past me.’ He grasped my shoulder and there was a sturdy strength in it that said more than words could have. ‘Go, Lancelot,’ he said. ‘And send word when you can.’

  I nodded, putting the helmet on and enclosing my face within its silver-chased cheek guards. Then Benesek turned and strode towards the shieldwall, where Bedwyr moved aside to make room for a warrior who had earned his respect. And Bors and I ran after Lord Arthur.

  ‘We should have stayed,’ Bors said when we had caught up with the others, even though the clash of swords on shields told us that behind us the Dumnonians were pressing their assault, trying to break through Bedwyr’s line to reach Arthur. For in front of us, dominating the higher ground and thus cutting off our route to the land bridge and the mainland beyond, were sixty spearmen of Rheged. Their shields overlapped and in their centre stood King Meirchion Gul. One could not miss him for his enormous girth, and his florid face glistened with sweat beneath a helmet which was set with amber and red garnets, green peridots and other gleaming precious stones.

  ‘Keep going,’ Merlin called over his shoulder and I saw Arthur and Gawain exchange dubious glances, yet they did not stop, and Gawain even dug his heels into his mare’s flanks as if warning her that they might have to charge again. It would be the last time they ever did, I thought as we came within spear-throwing range and started up the slope towards that new wall of limewood and steel.