‘And they want women,’ he added, then glanced at Guinevere, though if a blush of red came to his cheeks, Guinevere’s remained pale as marble. ‘The Roman general who sent his men up this hill wanted more,’ he said, and I saw men and women flinch under his gaze. ‘He craved a power that would make the Pendragon’s dominion in Britain look like a game between children. He wanted immortality, and to achieve this he made sure that his men were more afraid of him than they were of our forebears who waited for them up here on this hill.’
‘We don’t have the spears to man two walls, let alone four,’ a man with long white moustaches said. Old as he was, he looked gnarly and experienced. A man who could still cause mischief with a spear.
‘The banks are higher now. The ditches deeper, the walls stronger. You or I wouldn’t lead men up this hill, Tudual,’ Ector said. Arthur had given Ector command of Camelot in his absence. It had occurred to Arthur, or perhaps Gawain or one of his other men had whispered in his ear, that Ector was getting too stiff of limb, too short of breath, to be sleeping beneath the winter stars and riding spearmen down next day.
Arthur turned to Ector now. ‘Any trouble, you light the fires,’ Arthur said.
Ector nodded. ‘You’re the one who’ll be causing the trouble, Arthur,’ he said. ‘I just wish I was coming with you.’
‘I need you here, Ector,’ Arthur said, and Ector made a convincing show of looking disappointed, though both men knew the game they played. Ector’s reward for his long and faithful service was for Arthur to publicly command him to stay behind and defend Camelot from the comfort of his own chair by the hearth.
But we had felt like lords of war riding out, our bear shields freshly painted, our spear blades gleaming dully in the grey day and our horses’ boiled leather shaffrons and breastplates cleaned and rubbed with beeswax so that they looked like polished oak.
Tormaigh had not cared for the armour, which I had made him wear as I got to know him, riding up and down the practice yard at the foot of the northern slope, impaling and hacking straw targets with spear and sword. He did not seem to mind the hide and ringmail coat which protected his flanks, but the head protection he could not abide and would toss his head and try to bite at the leather. He would even rub the shaffron against the wall of his stall when I left it on to get him used to it. And yet when we rode out through the south-west gate to the muffled sobbing of women and the excited chatter of children who strode beside us, as if they too were off to war, Tormaigh was rightly proud of his accoutrements.
‘He is Achilles in horse form,’ Arthur had told me when he gave me Tormaigh. ‘A fighter like you, Lancelot. And young like you.’ His smile had been as broad as I had ever seen it, for he was pleased with his gift, though surely not as pleased as I was. Most of Arthur’s men rode mares or geldings because they are less given to ill temperament and more governable than stallions. Nor would it be sensible to have an equal number of mares and stallions in his stables for the chaos that would ensue when the mares were on heat. But Arthur had liked Tormaigh, given to him as a colt by Lord Leodegan as part of Guinevere’s dowry, and thought the horse and I were a good match.
If I’d known that before he gave me the horse, about the dowry, I might have hated the stallion, or even contrived some reason to refuse the gift. But it was too late now. I had fallen in love with Tormaigh and the stallion tolerated me.
‘It takes most of them a summer to get used to the noise and the armour, the iron shoes and the chaos of the melee,’ Arthur said, patting Tormaigh’s muscled neck where the bulging veins were beginning to get lost beneath his winter coat. ‘But war is in this one’s blood.’
On the fourth day out of Camelot, when Bors called out to draw our eyes to black smoke in the grey sky, I knew we would find out if Arthur was right about Tormaigh.
We could not see the source of the fire, for it lay beyond the swell of a hill to the east, but no one thought it was hearth smoke leaking through roof thatch. It had that sickly yellow tinge you see when the thatch itself is burning. When old wattle and mud walls and wool and other things that should not be on fire are on fire.
Following Arthur’s lead, we sped to a trot, leaving the spearmen behind under the command of a huge warrior called Geraint, whom I had never seen sit a horse, perhaps because no horse would willingly endure such a burden. And when we came over the hill’s crest we saw our first Saxons. There were forty-six of them and they were on foot, though they had some draught animals with them, including a pair of oxen hauling a cart which swayed, creaking beneath the weight of plunder piled on it.
The round they left behind was a slaughter yard. A section of palisade had been torn down and that was where most of the unmoving bodies were. From the high ground we could see, even through the smoke from the two buildings which the Saxons had torched, the dead lying where they had fallen. Mutilated and despoiled. Still and pale against the mud, like wind-scattered leaves.
Those dead were not our countrymen. We were deep into Caer Gwinntguic and so those slaughtered folk had bent their knee to King Deroch. But to look at Arthur anyone would have thought he was gazing at the corpses of men and women he had known, folk with whom he had eaten and drunk and danced. And now the sight of them, and of the fire and destruction wrought by Saxon hands, fanned the forge that was Arthur’s great heart into flames.
‘Kill them!’ he roared. ‘Send them lame and sightless and screaming to their gods!’ he commanded, and we roared our fury from that hill as we kicked our heels and flicked the reins and rode.
The Saxons did not know how to fight us. It seemed some of them didn’t want to fight us at all, a group of fifteen or so turning and haring back to the round. Or else they intended to mount a defence in the gap they had torn in the palisade. Whatever, we flew down that slope and thundered across the winter meadow, Arthur’s silken dragon wind banner streaming from Cai’s spear blade which pointed at the leaden sky.
‘We’d never have done this had we stayed on Karrek,’ Bors beside me yelled, his eyes wide and wild and his mare already slathering at the bit.
If my cousin looked at me, all he would have seen was a wild grin between the cheek guards of Benesek’s helmet. And then the knot of Saxons who had stayed to face us, perhaps rooted by fear, broke apart bit by bit, like a child’s sand tower besieged by the incoming tide. They discarded shields and ran for their lives and most of them died never seeing the savage joy in our faces.
I took a Saxon square between his shoulder blades, pulling my spear free of his flesh before his dead weight could wrench it from my grip. I saw Arthur ride a man down and spear another Saxon in his open mouth as the man turned to face his doom. Beside him Mordred, dressed in scale armour like his father, turned this way and that, looking for his kill but not finding it. Arthur had ordered Mordred to stay close to him, but the enemy fled from Arthur like rabbits from a swooping hawk and Mordred was enraged, so eager was the young man to prove himself in front of his father.
I saw Bors miss the man he had gone for but bring his spear across to his left and with incredible strength swing it to slash open the neck of a Saxon who stood with a battle axe, roaring defiance. Bors rode on and I left my spear in a Saxon’s belly and drew Boar’s Tusk, which was really too short for such work. Not that there was much work left to do. All around me Saxons shrieked and tried to flee and died.
I hauled Tormaigh round, looking for a man to kill. I saw Gawain hack his big sword down and lop off an arm, the stump spurting crimson. I saw Bedwyr spear two men and trample a third, and I saw Cai cleave a Saxon’s shield with his sword, then split the man’s skull, all the while holding Arthur’s silken wind banner aloft on his spear.
Arthur had told us to send these Saxons shrieking to their gods, but our enemies must have thought we were gods, riding strange, leather-skinned beasts.
In reality they had little time to think. For a moment it had seemed they would stand, some of them at least, and show us their shields and spear points. But the sig
ht of sixty armoured fiends thundering towards them out of the grey day had stripped them of resolve. The vision of Arthur in his bronze scale armour, his red cloak and plume trailing behind him, his face enclosed in iron and silver and gold, had shredded their courage and cast it away like the mud clods flung from our horses’ hooves.
They died badly, those men from across the Morimaru, and I daresay they went to the afterlife as pathetic and wailing as Arthur had intended, yet even he could take little joy in their slaughter.
It was just too easy.
I killed one more man before Arthur called a halt to the day’s butchery. He looked my age, though unlike me he had managed to grow a beard. A thin beard it was, but he was proud enough of it to have a square-headed little iron hammer amulet tied into the end, a dedication to the Saxon thunder god Thunor, who bore more similarities than just his name to our own Taranis.
This young Saxon had been one of those men who made it into the round while we massacred their brethren. These fifteen men formed a shieldwall across the breach they had torn in the enclosure earlier that day before they had made their own slaughter of its people. And we had dismounted because we knew our horses would see that unmoving shieldwall and think it was a part of the palisade and so would not be compelled to charge it.
‘Prisoners, Arthur?’ Parcefal asked.
Arthur was still the war god in bronze, silver, gold and iron, and he roared at Parcefal that there would be no prisoners.
‘Why should these men live when they ran, leaving their brothers to die?’ Arthur asked. ‘Do cowards deserve to live?’
Men agreed that they did not, though who was to say these fifteen men had not made a tactical decision to run back to the settlement? That they had not always intended to make a proper fight of it from a more advantageous position than their companions, who had frozen in fear then broken in panic?
Not that Arthur was in the mood to consider this possibility. Not with those poor folk of Caer Gwinntguic lying ripped in the mud. And not with his own blood still running hot in his veins.
Arthur told his older, more experienced men to hold the horses, then turned to the rest of us. ‘Shieldwall!’ he yelled and only needed to give the command once. We moved with well-practised efficiency until thirty-six of us stood shoulder to shoulder in two rows, our shields overlapping so that we each had the added protection of our neighbour’s shield. We in the first row had swords or long knives in our right hands. Our task, to hold our rampart of shields steady and strong and stab at shoulders or bellies, or, if we could, lean into our shields from the crouch and thrust our blades up into men’s groins or thighs.
The men behind us gripped spears, ready to thrust them between us into enemy faces. They would do most of the killing and maiming while we shoved and strained and sweated.
‘We push them back from the palisade and they’ll die fast,’ Bors said, and I knew he was right. It had taken all of the Saxons to fill the gap, so that their shieldwall was just one man deep, whilst ours was two deep and could be four or five if Arthur gave the command. But he would not need to, for we would push the Saxons back and once inside the round we would overwhelm them and it would be soon over.
‘Make way,’ a creaking voice said. ‘Make way at the front,’ and Mordred shouldered his way into the shieldwall. Arthur must have given his permission, not wanting Mordred to feel the shame of ending this day with his blades still bright and clean. He came into position on my left and I told him to keep the rim of his shield kissing my shield boss and to keep his chin down. His eyes were round and his knuckles bone-white on his sword grip but he did not seem afraid, and I admired him for choosing to stand in the first row and he but sixteen years old. Never say that Mordred ap Arthur lacked courage.
The few grim-faced Saxons in the breach were thumping their sword hilts against their shields in a resigned rhythm that might as well have been their hearts marking out their last beats.
I looked over my shoulder and locked eyes with Arthur. He gave an almost imperceptible nod and I knew what he wanted from me and so I turned back to face those men who had thought to maraud through Caer Gwinntguic and perhaps even Dumnonia after that.
Those doomed men.
‘Forward!’ I yelled, pointing Boar’s Tusk at the Saxon shieldwall. I had never been in a shieldwall fight, though we had practised them often, and nor would this be the kind that bards sing of, but Arthur wanted me to lead his men and so I would.
‘Heads down, shields tight,’ I told the young men around me. Bors was on my right, Mordred on my left, and we all moved forward as one.
Five paces.
‘For Dumnonia!’ someone in our line shouted.
Three paces.
‘For Arthur!’ I shouted.
Two paces. The blood in my veins simmering. Then grunts and wood thumping wood and iron shield bosses thudding together and more screams as the spearmen in our second line found unprotected faces and necks, their thirsty spear blades drinking Saxon blood. The man whose shield I slammed my own into was broad and thick-limbed and for a moment he held his ground, growling and frothing at the mouth with effort, fear and hatred. But a spear blade flashed and the man beside him reeled away howling, his face streaming blood, and in that moment I got Boar’s Tusk under my shield and under my opponent’s shield and thrust it. The big Saxon bellowed and brought his shield down on my arm.
‘Take him,’ I yelled at Mordred, who drove his own blade into the man’s throat, snarling like some beast, his soul gripped by blood lust. And the Saxons broke for the second time that day. Some were already dead and these fell the moment the men either side stepped backwards. Others threw themselves at us and died well, defying us, cursing us in their tongue as the life left their bodies. The rest, some nine men, retreated back into the settlement and I told our men to hold, wanting Arthur to confirm that he did not want any prisoners. Neither did I want one of the Saxons landing a killing blow on one of our men when all we had to do was take our time and surround them three or four to a man and make sure the job was done properly.
But Mordred had other ideas. Ignoring my command, he strode forward and one of the Saxons must have thought he would kill at least one more Briton before he came to the afterlife, for he stepped up to meet Mordred, spitting onto the mud and thumping his sword against the inside of his shield in readiness to fight.
‘Mordred!’ I yelled. ‘Back. Get back.’
‘Let him be, Lancelot,’ Arthur called, urging Llamrei to walk across the threshold into the round. Arthur’s face was ashen. His son had so recently returned to him but now there was every chance he would die beneath this dangerous-looking Saxon’s sword. And yet Arthur could not, or rather would not, embarrass Mordred in front of the men by forbidding him to fight.
The other Saxons did not need to speak our language to know what was happening and they stepped back to give the two men room, muttering encouragement to their spear-brother, who might give them one last good memory to take with them to the hereafter.
The Saxon facing Mordred thrust his sword into the mud – he knew he would never have to clean or repair it again – then lifted the iron hammer which was plaited into the end of his fair beard and touched the amulet to his lips, whispering words I could not hear.
Shining in the bronze scale armour which had been a gift from Arthur, Mordred looked over his shoulder as though he sought encouragement. Arthur said nothing but Gawain growled at him to gut the Saxon son of a sow. Mordred nodded, managed a grin, then turned and stalked towards the Saxon, who had pulled his sword from the earth and waited. Perhaps he had been dedicating his own inevitable death to his gods, or perhaps he had beseeched his ancestors to fill a horn of mead for him in Woden’s hall, for such was his people’s belief: that the afterlife was one never-ending feast.
Mordred attacked first and by the gods he was fast. Strong too, given that he yet had some growing to do, and he hammered his sword down onto the Saxon’s shield, forehand and backhand, blow after savag
e blow. But the Saxon took those hammer blows, always moving, using his knees to pivot his body away from Mordred and thus lessening the impact of the blows whilst saving the strength in his shield arm.
‘He’s wild,’ Bors beside me said of Mordred.
‘But the Saxon is clever,’ I said, because while Mordred was trying to batter the man into the next life, the Saxon was learning his opponent’s strengths and weaknesses. Weaknesses such as Mordred’s tendency to drop his shield wide to the left when making a downward cut; poor form which Mordred might correct, or at least learn to hide, given more experience. If he lived through this.
The Saxon caught another blow on his shield and deflected it wide, then made a cut at Mordred’s legs and I winced but the greave on Mordred’s right shin took the blow. Yet it was obvious why the Saxon had tried that cut, for another of Mordred’s bad habits was to drop his shield to protect his legs, rather than lifting his leading leg up behind his shield. Mordred had struck a score of blows but landed not one of them, while his enemy had made just three half-hearted attacks. And yet the Saxon now knew how to win. I knew how he would win, too, and so did Arthur, who I noticed was touching the iron ring of Llamrei’s brow band for luck.
‘Keep that shield up, lad,’ Bedwyr called to Mordred, whose face was streaming sweat now, which was not surprising given the weight of all that scale armour. On horseback that armour made you feel like a god, but on foot it sapped your strength terribly.
‘Lad’s got courage,’ Cai on my left said, the long wind banner hanging limply from his spear, the dragon’s eye watching Mordred fight.
‘Courage isn’t enough,’ Bedwyr said under his breath.
Mordred launched a flurry of blows and took a piece off the Saxon’s shield, but the bulk of it held and Mordred paced backwards, dragging his sword arm across his sweat-glossed head and panting for breath. Now the Saxon, who had ignored his countrymen’s shouts to attack, saw that his moment had come. He moved fast, flying at Mordred and taking Arthur’s son by surprise with his sudden vigour. In desperation Mordred parried twice with his sword and once with his shield and then scythed his sword at the Saxon’s face, but the Saxon bent back like a linden sapling, then dropped to make a low cut. Down came Mordred’s shield but the cut was a feint, and as the Saxon’s legs straightened he swept his sword backhanded at Mordred’s face and there was no shield to stop it.
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