by Sarah Zettel
Then, the stars began to fall.
• • •
The arrow flew fast and flew high. It was long and keen, with one purpose only. Her shadow nemesis, her target, the focus of all her will, soared aloft. It thought itself safe on the winds, but these winds were her winds and they propelled her forward. They rushed and sang about her, keeping her path straight and true.
When at last the shadow saw her, it was too late.
She bit deep, sinking hard, revelling in the blood that flowed free. She was falling, falling towards the green and stony ground. She fell short of the surging waters. It did not matter. The shadow, her prey, her enemy fell helpless with her.
Arrow falling to earth, I am the badger, and I catch you up in my mouth and crush your body in my jaws.
Earth beneath her. Green trees overhead. Light and shadow playing with the wind that glided over her body. The wind was weak here without the salt sea to strengthen it. She lay helpless on the soft loam.
She could not move.
• • •
The mists shifted and blurred before Agravain’s eyes as he spurred his stallion on. The horse whickered its terror but it obeyed, racing forward half blind. The wind blew the stink of sulpher, piss and burning fleshto them. The horn sounded, again and again, urging the men to follow. For the first time since the battle began, Agravain could see as well as hear the men tearing along with him on either side. Fire burned ahead, terrifying the horses, terrifying the men. But the men swallowed their fear, and forced their beasts to do the same, and they ran.
The whooping, jeering cries burst out of his company, the sounds of courage and feral cheer, and his cold heart warmed as he bent low over his stallion’s neck.
The stinking wind blew and the mists shredded, and he saw for one brief moment where they were, and the chaotic mass of the enemy that was before them. They ran from the fires, ran from the approaching enemy. Ran without thought or plan or command. Horses screamed and mud flew, men shouted to each other and to God and heaven and curses rang up with the sounds of the horns.
Cold calm descended, and Agravain lowered his spear.
“Gododdin!” he cried. “Gododdin!”
Digging his spurs hard into his horse’s sides, he charged towards the darkest shadow, all the roar and thunder of his men echoing off the great rock at their back.
Battle in all its fury surrounded him in an instant. A confusion of shouts and clashes, men and horses careening in and out of thinning mists. The jolt of blow on shield, the jarring as his lance drove against shield, against flesh. The screams; triumph, fear, pain, the hoarse shouts of the crows. He could see nothing but the men around his knees, and Ruadh holding the banner at his right.
The arrow, spent upon the ground, could not move. She had no limbs, no will and the wind was not strong enough to lift her up.
Something, some animal snuffled nearby. Its nose touched her, wet, caressing, imperious, intruding. It cared nothing for her fear as it prodded and probed. Hot spittle dropped onto her rigid form. She could not even shudder at the burning breath that wafted over her, or the teeth that closed around her.
Wrong. This was not as it should be. She could not allow this to be.
Badger, I am the wolf, and I am far swifter and more silent than you; my teeth longer, my senses more keen.
She was great and strong, and her blood sang strong within her. The wind blew hard, bringing her all the news of the green world around her. So much life. So much death. Turmoil, treachery, peace and struggle surged around her. But none of it was what she sought.
She crept forward, hunting.
• • •
Pedair stood on the battlements, straining his eyes to see through the tattered mists. Sometimes he saw the battle below, sometimes he only saw the most persistent clot of white fog rolling this way and that. He clearly heard the thunder, clash and the roar that was louder than the ocean in the midst of a gale, but the fog would not clear. How the hell were they to fire these ungainly, dishonourable engines with their smoldering, stinking missiles if they couldn’t see!
His fingers clutched at the stone until he felt his bones would split.
“My lord Pedair!”
Pedair whirled around, coming within an inch of losing his balance. Lawren, greying, slump-shouldered, skinny-legged, one of the few who’d stayed the long course of Lot’s decline, came pounding up the parapet’s stairs.
“My lord,” he wheezed. “The Pict men … ”
Pedair did not need to hear any more. Forgetting the ache in his bones, Pedair raced along the narrow way to the western wall that overlooked the precious pass. Devi, Sir Devi, knighted and given charge of the battle engines, was already there. For a moment, their eyes met and Pedair saw the younger man was grey with ashes and fear.
Together they leaned out over the parapet.
The wind blew hard, dragging open the curtain of mist. Pedair saw the Picts with their brown skin and blue tattoos. He saw how their hands and bare chests were spattered with red blood. He saw how the ground beneath them and the stones around them was splashed with yet more blood.
He saw the corpses at their feet. Two, six, ten, a dozen.
All.
All done in the blink of an eye, and without a sound.
The blood drained from Pedair’s heart as he looked down on defeat. The pass was taken. The retreat was gone. The thing they had most feared was already done. The king and all his company was cut off.
“Can we re-angle your damned engines?” He demanded.
“Not without killing our king and all the men down there.” Devi clutched at his head with his one good arm. “When the retreat comes, we have to be able to fire onto the plain again, especially now.”
Pedair’s thoughts raced. The clashes, screams and bellows beat upon his skull. It was the oldest of his hard-bought soldier’s instincts that enabled him to push all that aside and think.
These were the Picts. He’d fought them off before, fought them long and hard. He knew these bloody-handed men. He knew what they were, and what they weren’t.
What they weren’t.
He had it. Pedair faced Devi, wishing with all his heart this was Ruadh who stood beside him now, as he had for so long. “Get me every man who can hold a sword and break open the treasury. We’re going down there.”
Devi gaped at him, his withered arm twitching as he jerked back. “We’ll leave the fortress open. Who … ”
“If our king cannot get back here, what will it matter?” Pedair roared. “Find me ten men who can hold a spear and get them armed! I don’t care if it’s with carving knives and buckets! But deck them out with all the gold and silver they can wear. And get me one of those stinking jars of yours, one small enough for a man to carry.”
Realization that there was a plan behind this insanity flickered in Sir Devi’s eyes. “What are you doing?”
Pedair licked his lips. “Those are the Picts down there. I’m going to show them some plunder, and then I’m going to pray to God they forget whatever training that Black Knight of theirs has given them and come after it. Right into the gates, which I’m going to foolishly open behind me.”
Not enough. What else do we need? What else? God grant me some of my king’s wit, just for a moment …
“Get some of those spare ropes in use. Every man you don’t need this instant, every boy, every girl, if that’s who can do it, goes over the walls out of their sight and comes up behind the Picts while they’re looking at my company. If we can distract them, we can make an ambush. Turn their game against them. There’s still a chance.”
Devi met Pedair’s eyes, both of them making the swift and terrible calculation of slender chances done by every fighter in every war since the first man lifted the first stone against his brother.
“Yes, my lord.” Sir Devi turned, and led the way down the stairs.
• • •
Ferns and bracken touched the wolf, tickling the ends of her fur as she slunk low be
neath them. She must not be seen. She could make no ripple in the wood’s shadows. Her prey was sly, but slow. Her prey had a bolt nearby, but her prey was near. The wind, her friend and advisor, told her that. It brought her the rank, blood-tinged scent of the deep earth that clung to her prey.
One cautious step after another, she crept forward. She paused between each silent stride to listen and to drink in the changing news that the wind brought her. Her prey was closer now. The earth smell grew heavier, drowning all the smells of green and earth and more distant life.
There. Its bristling, striped back showed plainly behind the screen of ferns and herbs. It thought the green scents would keep it hidden as it worried at the earth. It did not know the wind was her ally. She bared her strong white teeth and gathered up her muscles to spring.
But her prey whipped around with a speed it should not have possessed, snarling in fury as it bared its yellow teeth.
Wolf, I am the bear, and there is none on land stronger than me.
The world shrank down. She was small and weak, and whimpering as she backed away from the mountain of hair and teeth and claws. The bear rose up over her like the night itself given form.
• • •
Fool! Fool! Mordred cursed himself. He should have known, should have seen. Agravain retreated too fast, too easily, and now with the fires blazing in their midst these fool northmen who knew nothing of the Romans and their war engines were screaming about witchcraft and were more interested in running than fighting.
But Durial and the rest had got behind the cowards, and lowered their lances. So those who would retreat had to choose quickly to either fight the enemy and live, or fight their allies and die.
It was a weak feint, but it worked, and the raging sea of battle crashed and crowded around them. They held this new line. Barely. But the rain of fire had stopped now that the melee tossed the men of Gododdin together with his own. It would not do to kill your own.
Mordred stood in his stirrups, straining his eyes, looking up the pass. Had the Picts done their work? Had they? He made a target of himself and he didn’t care. Everything depended now on whether the Picts or Agravain’s men held the pass.
There! There! The flash of blue, and the soaring black of a raven’s wing. Mordred dropped onto his horse’s back again. He wheeled his mount around and plunged back into the thick of the fight, one eye on Agravain’s distant figure, bobbing like a cork above the sea of battle.
All they had to do now was hold. Agravain’s clever engines had not been enough. He, Mordred, had been right about that after all. Agravain was still in Mordred’s net. That net could still be drawn tight. For all the hellish damage the fires had wreaked, his company still outnumbered Gododdin’s pathetic hundred horsemen.
It would be hard, but it could be done. They just had to hold. Just a little longer. They just had to wear Agravain down until he had to retreat, and found out there was no place to go.
Grinning behind his black helmet, Mordred set his will to his work.
• • •
The bear spread its brown and wicked claws, and the wolf backed away, whining. She dodged, but felt the hot pain as a claw caught her silver coat.
Run. Run!
The bear’s crashing charge and its roar filled the world. The scent of it was pure panic driven into her senses by the wind turned suddenly traitor.
Run. Run! Only speed could save her now. Only speed.
Speed. She needed speed. She could be speed …
Bear, bear, I am the boar, and my tusks are sharp and my feet swift. Not even you can stand against me.
And she was sleek and small no more. She was a mountain herself, heavy and unyielding. Why should she run? There was nothing to run from. Her very teeth were curving swords, and it was only bear; a lumbering coward.
She turned, bearing her needle-sharp teeth, showing her stained swords so eager for the fight. Her enemy slowed, uncertain now that it saw her. She shrieked in her delight.
This time. This time she would have her prey.
• • •
Pedair rode out of Din Eitein’s gates adorned as a warrior in the old style. He was the image of the man his father had been, so long ago, before Arthur, before Uther, before the southerners and their damned grasping hands had come up to seize hold of this land. Gold cuffs weighed down Pedair’s wrists, and gold chains gleamed on his breast. Even the spear in his hand was gilded. He had to guide his sway-backed mount with his knees, because his other arm cradled an undecorated jar of plain, red clay.
Slowly, Pedair rode down the narrow pass. Heaps of stone rose up on either side. He felt, rather than saw the old men behind him. He ached. The gold was too heavy. His arm hurt as he tried to keep his horse’s rocking gait from jarring the urn he carried. He fixed all his attention on the Picts.
They did not even bother to keep watch. Instead, they were busy heaving corpses aside to give themselves more room to maneouvre.
There was Barra. There, Oisian. Machan lay over there, and young Torradan with him, waiting to be tossed aside like inconvenient driftwood.
Pedair filled his lungs. “Halt!” he bellowed.
The Picts did halt. Startled in the midst of their gory work, they turned to see what old man raised such a feeble shout. For a moment, he saw fear on their sunburned faces. But it was only for a moment. They soon saw who had come down to face them in this too-narrow pass. They saw a dozen men on horseback, all too old, or weak or sick for battle, all decked out like princes in gold and silk and silver. As a final joke, their leader carried a ridiculous clay pot.
One of them, a squat, broad fellow with a maze of ribbons on face and arms, grinned.
Look, look, thought Pedair towards the Pictish captain. Here’s a body to strip. Rich pickings for the one who can take it. Come on, come on, you bastards. Come get it!
The squat fellow shouted something, and another of Pict sauntered forward. Taller than the first, he wore a wealth of white scars over his swirling blue ribbons. Leather banded his throat and wrists, and his bronze sword was in his hands and his stone hammer hung from his belt. Behind him, another Pict straightened his back, and brought up his knife. Another hefted his hammer, and another and another.
Pedair’s horse snorted, and strained to back away, to take shelter among its skinny, lame, broken-winded herdmates.
Hold, hold, just a little longer. Let’s see who will join these stout fellows.
Look, look, we’ve left the gate up. All this gold came from in there. There must be more for the taking. Those southerners down below will just keep it for themselves if you don’t get it first. Come on. Come on.
The lead man grinned, showing all his yellow teeth, and raised his bloody stone hammer. Pedair let his horse back up a full four paces.
The Pict shouted something to his followers, and they charged up the hill, a roaring wave of brown and blue, leather, bronze and stone.
Slowly, slowly, Pedair backed his sweating horse, and the Picts screamed in delight. There was no room to fight, barely room on horseback to turn. They were engulfed, a wave of bodies and terror and the maddening stench of offal. Bloody hands grabbed Pedair’s reins as his horse tried to run. He clutched the ungainly jar to his chest and fought to keep his seat. His horse screamed and tried to rear, but there were too many of them. He was trapped in the flood of bodies, and his spear was gone and his horse bucked and danced and screamed.
The brown river poured up the pass, into the waiting shadow of Din Eityn.
You must finish it for us, Sir Devi.
The hands got hold of him, fingers digging into leg and arm, neck and chest. As the world began to shudder and his grip began to loosen, he saw the first of the hands come up over the mound of boulders that lined the pass. The youth and the aged of Din Eityn clambered into the pass. Untrained, unblooded, too young and too old together, sisters beside brothers, wives beside husbands. But they’d armed themselves with knives and smith’s hammers and meat hooks and the courage born of
fighting for their home.
Enemy hands dug into his arms, clawing at the gold to tear it from his body.
With the last of his strength, Pedair raised the jar he had brought. The stench of it was like the sulphurs of hell. He flung the jar down at his feet, and those same fires erupted around him.
“Gododdin!” he screamed as agony and fire took him. “Agravain!”
Fire ahead and Gododdin behind, the Picts tried to fight, and, swiftly, they began to die.
The bear retreated before her. The whole world stank with its fear. She narrowed her eyes and squealed in her delight. The bristles on her back stuck out straight and proud in her ecstatic fury.
She began to run. Head down, tusks out. Faster, and faster she barrelled forward. Nothing could stop her. Nothing could turn her. She had her quarry that had eluded and tormented her for so long. She would spit the cowering mountain of stinking fur on her tusks, toss it past her shoulders, trample it with her hooves …
Boar, I am the hunter, and my spear is as stout as my heart.
There was no mound of hair before her. The scent of fear vanished as if had never been. There was a man, a pathetic little man, kneeling calmly behind a sharpened stick, the end of which glistened with black iron. Black iron pointed at her onrushing heart.
And she could not slow down.
• • •
They were being driven back, one slow, bloody, cacophonous inch at a time. Through the sweat and blood that stung his eyes, Agravain saw the Black Knight on his black horse, here and there, death’s own shadow wielding a bloody spear. Agravain struggled to turn his horse towards the knight, towards the youth in a man’s disguise who did Morgaine’s will. Anger turned his vision red as he strove to reach that shadow. But a world of battle blocked his path time and again, forcing him to duck and strike, wheel and plunge forward again, only to find he had lost sight of his quarry.
The clouds were gathering overhead and the cold wind was damp against his sweat-drenched skin. There’d be rain soon, making more mud to mix with the stench and screams and blind them all as surely as the morning’s fog had.
Didn’t matter. Stay alive. Stay alive. His spear had shattered long ago. He gripped sword and shield, raining blows down on every side, protecting horse, protecting self, one eye on the rising ground behind him. Agravain marked where he was, and cursed.