Mordred turned his head and the blow struck his helmet’s left cheek guard, cutting it in two and sending Mordred spinning to land in the mud. The Saxons cheered as the young man with the Thunor’s hammer knotted in his beard ran forward to finish Mordred where he lay dazed.
‘Mordred!’ Arthur yelled.
The red snake banner flew through the grey day and the spear it clung to took the Saxon mid run through the neck, so that he staggered wide of Mordred and fell on his side, the spear shaft pointing at the leaden sky.
‘Balor’s breath, Lancelot,’ Cai said, his arm still outstretched as though waiting for someone to return the wind-banner spear to his hand.
‘Kill them!’ Arthur roared, kicking Llamrei forward and swinging his sword. Thus did the Saxons die in a welter of blood.
It was over before the young Saxon with the iron hammer in his beard finished choking to death in the mud. But when it was over, Mordred flew at me.
‘Peace, Mordred,’ Bors said, stepping between us, but Mordred tried to get around him and it took Bedwyr to help Bors keep him off me.
‘What did you do?’ Mordred spat, wild eyes accusing me. Blood ran down his left cheek, dripping from his chin. ‘What did you do, Lancelot?’
‘You’d had the wits knocked out of your skull, lad,’ Bedwyr said. ‘You’d be dead now if not for Lancelot.’
‘You lie,’ Mordred accused Bedwyr. ‘Get your hands off me.’
Bors and Bedwyr kept hold of him.
‘You’re clumsy, Mordred,’ I said. ‘The Saxon played you.’
‘Lies!’ Mordred spat again. ‘I would have beaten him. You had no right. You cheated me of my kill. You cheated me.’
And perhaps I had. Only the gods can say. But I had thought that Saxon would stave in Mordred’s skull. That Arthur would watch his boy be butchered in the mud. And so I had snatched Cai’s spear and cast it and the Saxon had died. But now Mordred was furious.
‘Peace, Mordred,’ Arthur said, striding over, gesturing at Bors and Bedwyr to release the young man. ‘Peace, my son,’ he said. ‘Lancelot acted nobly. On my word. Come now, let us see to that wound.’
Mordred glowered at me, blood dripping still, then let Arthur send him off with a man named Gofan who was skilled in the treatment of cuts.
‘So, no prisoners?’ Geraint said, having led the remainder of Arthur’s spearmen into the round to see the extent of our massacre for themselves.
‘No prisoners,’ Gawain admitted, using a swath of wool ripped from a dead Saxon to clean the gore off his sword.
We looked around. The victory was complete but we had left no Saxons alive to carry word of Arthur and his horses back to sow fear among their people. Still, we had made a great slaughter and lost just one man, killed by a Saxon spear after his mare had thrown him, though several others and two of the horses had taken wounds.
And yet we had been too late to save the people of that settlement, and it was a chilling thought that Saxon war bands were free to kill and burn this far west with King Deroch unable to stop them. No doubt we would learn more when we rode to the king’s fort of Venta Belgarum.
I had cut the little iron hammer amulet from the young Saxon’s beard and was examining it when Bors came over to get a closer look. I had not wanted the Saxon’s war gear, which was mine by right. Not because I thought Mordred wanted it, or because he might resent me even more for taking it, but because I had not fought the Saxon. I had killed him but I had not fought him. Perhaps I had acted dishonourably by interfering in a fight that was none of my business. But I liked that little iron hammer and decided to keep it, and now I handed it to Bors, who held it up between finger and thumb.
‘Benesek could not have made that throw,’ he said.
‘He could have made it with his eyes closed,’ I said, watching Cai pull his spear free of the dead Saxon. There was blood on the dragon banner but it would not show against the red silk when it dried.
Seeing Arthur walking towards me, Bors gave the little hammer back and slapped my shoulder before walking off to join the others looting the enemy corpses. Even without the helmet enclosing his face, to look at Arthur I could not guess if he was angry or pleased.
‘He fought well,’ I said and meant it. I had seen enough of Mordred to know that the heads which he’d brought to Camelot tied to his saddle had been taken from men killed by his own hand.
‘He’s reckless,’ Arthur said, ‘and gives himself away. He lacks experience.’ Then he gave a half-smile. ‘But he does not lack courage.’
‘He does not,’ I agreed.
Arthur turned his face and let his gaze linger on the Saxon who had so nearly killed his son. The young man had been stripped and left half naked. Soon the crows would come. Wolves too.
‘If my cousin still lives, we cannot afford to lose men fighting him,’ Arthur said.
This took me aback. ‘You would make peace with Lord Constantine?’ I asked.
Arthur looked back to me. ‘Look how close the Saxons are to Dumnonia, Lancelot,’ he said. He was right, of course. The men we had killed were just one band of raiders. There were doubtless more such bands and Arthur knew that he did not have enough men to be in several places at once. ‘We will need Constantine,’ he said. ‘If he lives. And if he will accept my leadership.’
I frowned, reluctant to accept the truth he spoke.
Then Arthur took hold of my shoulders and when he looked into my eyes Arthur the Prince of Dumnonia and lord of war was gone. In his place was Arthur the man. The father who had been complicit in the attempted murder of his son and who had lived with that guilt ever since.
‘Thank you, my friend,’ he said.
I did not know what to say and so mumbled something about us having to teach Mordred to lift his leading leg behind his shield. Arthur nodded, still holding my eye.
‘Thank you,’ he said.
Then he went to help Gofan treat our wounded.
21
A Storm of Blades
THE WEATHER WAS foul when we came to Venta Belgarum. Freezing rain flayed Caer Gwinntguic and a thin wind, thin as a blade, cut through wet clothes into our raw flesh and the bones beneath. We rode round-shouldered, heads pulled in, rain spilling from helmet rims and dripping from sodden cloaks, our hands on the reins blue and numb from cold.
Worse than this, when the walls of the old Roman town came into view, we saw no sign of Aella’s main army, which we had been told was encamped to the west of Venta Belgarum.
Above the town, smoke from hearth fires shredded on the wind. We could just make out the figures of spearmen on the ramparts peering westward through the foul day. But between them and us, where we had expected to see a great swathe of tents and Saxons and smouldering fires hissing sullenly against the rain, we saw nothing.
‘Aella has withdrawn,’ Bedwyr said, spitting from the saddle in disgust. Rain sheeted from his helmet and dripped from his beard.
‘No, Bedwyr,’ Arthur said, his keen eyes taking in the great ruins of Roman buildings and those parts of the outer wall which had fallen long ago or been robbed for its stone and replaced since with wooden stakes. ‘He’s taken it,’ he said, meaning that Aella had taken Venta Belgarum.
‘How do you know?’ Gawain asked.
‘Because if you were King Deroch, would you have let us venture this close without sending riders?’ Arthur said, sweeping an arm behind him towards the mass of spearmen who had formed on a ridge of high ground, their bear shields announcing that Arthur had come.
‘No,’ Gawain admitted. ‘I’d be scolding you for bringing an army into my kingdom without my invitation. Then I’d make you pay your respects, you being a mere prince, and after all that I’d be thanking you for coming to save my royal arse.’ Gawain winked at me.
‘So, if Aella has taken Venta Belgarum, then where in Balor’s ballbag is King Deroch?’ Bedwyr asked, still looking aggrieved at being cheated of a fight.
‘And where is Lord Constantine?’ Parcefal asked.
‘What do we do now?’ I asked Arthur. I was clenching and unclenching my hands to get some life back into them. It was just as well we weren’t going to fight that day, for I couldn’t have been sure my numb fingers would be able to grip sword hilt or spear.
Arthur was still looking at the old Roman town, perhaps admiring the workmanship of the buildings which yet stood, as much as he was wondering what had happened to the king of Caer Gwinntguic.
‘We take it back,’ he said.
Arthur’s magnificent horses would be of no use in the fight to retake Venta Belgarum and Arthur blamed King Deroch for giving up his fort. That was, until the day after we arrived before the walls and the Saxons hauled a man onto the ramparts, barking at us until they had Arthur’s attention.
‘Don’t give them the pleasure,’ Gawain said, but Arthur watched anyway as they hauled the prisoner’s head back, cut his throat and pushed the body over the wall to land in the mud. We had no intention of putting ourselves in range of arrows and spears just to get a closer look at the corpse, but we did not need to. A tall oaken chair followed the dead man over the wall, landing on its back in the filth beside the man who had used to sit in it when passing judgements on his people. It was King Deroch’s high seat and the sight of it lying there in the filth, outside the fort, was as poignant as it was ominous.
I heard Arthur whisper an apology to the corpse lying there, throat cut and paling, or perhaps to the man’s ghost, for the King of Caer Gwinntguic had not given the place up as we had thought. He had fought for it and lost and now he was carrion, so it was up to us to take Venta Belgarum back, war horses or no, or else invite yet more Saxons to stalk Dumnonia’s eastern border like wolves edging the herd.
‘We’ll do it at night,’ Arthur said, ‘before the new moon.’ His face in that enclosed helmet was grim in the dusk and I knew he burned to avenge the Saxons’ ill treatment of a king of Britain.
‘The Saxons are in a foreign land,’ Merlin added. The druid had reappeared the night before we rode out of Camelot and now took his accustomed place among Arthur’s war council. ‘A land of unknown gods.’
We had gathered around the great stump of an ancient oak which must have been an awe-inspiring sight for hundreds of years, until age or storm or man had laid it low. Merlin had etched a triskele on the stump, like the one on his hand, the triple spiral lit now by a lamp horn which cast its glow on the faces of Arthur’s most trusted. Men such as Gawain and Bedwyr, Cai, Parcefal, Gofan and Mordred.
‘Our enemies find themselves in a land stalked by unfamiliar spirits. By terrors that come in the night,’ the druid said, his eyes shining by the lamplight.
‘And by men who know how to kill Saxons,’ Parcefal said, grinning as others agreed with that.
That night, the moon was waning crescent, its glow seeping through breeze-swayed boughs, so we would not have to wait long, though a day or two was all to the good, because Merlin needed some time to make his own preparations. And three nights later, when the sky was black and the air was cold and so still that the smoke from our fires just hung amongst us in veils, we attacked Venta Belgarum.
We did not try to surprise the enemy. On the contrary, we told them we were coming. We did not tell them in their own language or even in ours, but we told them.
When Merlin had a score of Arthur’s horsemen ride out to the nearest rounds which had not yet fallen prey to Saxon war bands, and bring women back to our camp, there were whispers of some dark blood ritual. Some said the druid intended to sacrifice the women to win the favour of Balor, god of death. But the fifty or so women came willingly enough, it seemed to me. Besides which, I knew Arthur would not agree to any such sacrifice of innocents, not even to win over a god.
Now, as I stood in my war finery preparing to lead men through the darkness, I understood why Merlin had brought women to Venta Belgarum. The druid positioned them in a loose ring facing the palisade but beyond spear range. I could not see them, and neither could the Saxons, but we could all hear them, wailing and moaning in the darkness. It was an eerie sound, like that of seals keening on some offshore spit of rock, or even like the lament of so many tortured souls.
With this strange moaning rising in the night like a wind which could not be felt on the skin, Arthur gave the order for forty men on heavy, armoured horses to ride up and down along the palisade. These men were taking a risk, being so close, but the darkness was itself armour and I did not hear of any being struck by arrows or spears. Back and forth they galloped, the noise of the hooves like thunder rising from the earth. Added to this, sixty of our spearmen stood scattered around the fort in knots of five, all singing the Slaughter Song of Taranis, master of war, and thumping their spears against their shields in time with each other.
Arthur and Merlin’s aim was to put terror in Saxon bellies and I daresay they did just that. Even Bors beside me was tight-jawed and heavy-browed, and though part of that must have been pre-battle nerves, I knew the weird cacophony chilled his blood as it did my own.
Yet even with so many trying to sow dread and doubt in Saxon hearts and make them fear the darkness of the land they coveted, there were some fifty of us who were as quiet as King Deroch’s corpse, which still lay beside his high seat in the mud.
Thirty, including Mordred, Gawain and Bedwyr, waited with Arthur in the shadows by the main southern gate. Twenty, including myself, Bors and Gofan, waited under Parcefal’s command beyond the eastern palisade on the fortress’s far side. We waited for Cai, who was with a small group of spearmen by the western wall, to blow his blast horn, at which moment we would turn the black night red.
We stood with our cloaks wrapped round us, even though there was no moonlight and it was too cloudy for glint from blades, strap-ends or helmets. In that silence, each of us was alone with our own thoughts. And so I ached for Cai to give the signal.
When it came, Bors and I looked at each other unsure, and I saw the whites of other eyes around me as men strained their ears. With the women’s wailing, the galloping horses, the spearmen singing and the drumming of spear shafts on limewood shields, I could not be certain that the sound I’d heard was Cai’s horn.
‘Listen,’ Parcefal said, his head cocked towards the west, and there might have been another drone amongst the eerie chaos, but it did not matter because the next thing we knew there was fire in the night. We saw it as a glow above the town walls in the west and I knew that Cai’s men were hurling faggots of burning wood across the ditch to land against the wooden enclosure. We heard the Saxons yelling, heard their own war horns bellowing as their spearmen rushed to deal with the threat of fire and spears. And so we ran, hunched and bent, spears held low, towards the section of stone wall on the east.
For Merlin’s women and Arthur’s horses were not only sowing chaos to grow fear in our enemies’ hearts. They were soaking the night with noise and strangeness so that in the confusion the Saxons would not know from where our attack came. They saw our spearmen flinging bundles of sticks soaked in pitch at the western palisade and they saw Arthur’s warriors gathering at the south gate, shields raised, teeth bared, blades and eyes glinting by flamelight. And perhaps the western palisade would burn and our men would kick aside the flame-eaten timbers and there would be a great slaughter in that gap. Or perhaps Arthur would somehow breach the main gate. But we twenty were the real threat.
The Saxons were no fools. They might have suspected that the fire was a diversion, and no doubt they kept warriors at the ramparts all around the town; men peering into the dark, hands tight as knots on spear shafts, some of them perhaps beginning to wish they had never left their homelands across the grey sea.
Even so, it was only natural that they would be more protective of the wooden stake sections of wall than those of Roman stone that still stood. They would fear axes hacking through the palisade. Fear ropes hauling the stakes down into the ditch.
Which was why we were running up ladder
s set against a section of that Roman wall which Arthur so admired.
Parcefal went up first, disappearing over the top of the wall without a cry of alarm sounding on our section. I was next and I waited four rungs from the summit, my spear in one hand, my shield slung across my back.
I heard a grunt followed by the crump of a body hitting the stone and three long heartbeats later I saw Parcefal’s horribly scarred face leering down at me. Up I went, Bors behind me, and we were down the earthen bank and deep into the town before the first Saxons saw us.
‘Keep going,’ Parcefal roared in reply to the harsh cries which told us there was no need for stealth now, and we ran for the southern gate beyond which Arthur waited with thirty men. Two Saxons appeared in front of us, wide-eyed and doomed. Parcefal swept his spear across, ripping out the first Saxon’s throat, and I leapt, thrusting my spear over the other man’s shield through mail and leather into his chest.
A spear streaked out of the dark and I batted it aside with my shield without breaking stride. I heard an arrow tonk off a shield boss and Bors laughed and we ran through the shadows like wraiths on Samhain.
Even with more Saxons hurrying towards the fire glow at the western wall there were still two dozen Saxons guarding the south gate. But when they saw us running towards them these men must have been struck by the terrifying prospect that we had already taken the town, for some of them turned and scrambled up the earthen ramparts, instinct driving them to higher ground. The remaining men were too late to lock shields and we were amongst them, stabbing and cutting with savage efficiency. We knew that we had only moments to kill them and open the gates. Because if our enemy rallied, we would die in the flame-gilded darkness and the Saxons would hold Venta Belgarum.
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