Pendragon's Banner

by Helen Hollick

  Flinging his arm wide, Arthur signalled his men to halt. Instant stillness; silence, save for the steady drip, drip of several days’ rain from tree and bush. A crow somewhere cawed once, a harsh, lonely call that when stilled left the place eerily quiet. Hasta snorted again and Arthur laid his hand reassuringly along the horse’s neck.

  Wolf, he thought, his own ears and eyes, all senses, alert. Animal wolf or human wolf? Ahead, the trees thickened and the deer trail they had been following curved sharply to the left around a tumble of boulders that had slid down the steep incline of the valley, piling in a straggled heap at the bottom. The landslip must have occurred years past, for vegetation had reclaimed the hillside and jumble of rocks. One or two sapling trees were pushing a determined way through gaps between the displaced terrain. Over his shoulder, Arthur caught the soft movement of bows being made ready, could almost hear the thud of hearts pumping a mixture of apprehension and excitement.

  The patrol had been routine up until now, almost a pleasant day’s ride. Scouts yesterday had reported no activity this side of the Roman road.

  There had been no sightings of the small, roaming warbands from Lot’s gathered army for two days. Who was ahead?

  They waited long minutes, expecting at any moment the swish and thud of an arrow, or a blood-chilling, attacking war cry. Lips compressed in grim decision. Arthur drew his sword, the blade making a soft, menacing hiss as it eased from the sheepskin-lined scabbard. He touched his heels to Hasta’s flank, and the stallion, as unnerved as the men, lifted his head and whinnied, a shrill, unexpected sound in the tense silence. Arthur’s body jerked with taut surprise and jagged the iron bit. Hasta’s tail swished at the sudden pain, his head tossing, ears flattening along his skull, angrily danced sideways, crab-stepping.

  Hoofbeats coming at a fast gallop! Then a savage, fiercesome yelling and from around the concealing bend came four riders with swords drawn, mouths open screaming their war cry – Artoriani scouts!

  Hasta shied violently; several of the patrol horses swung away snorting, frightened by the apparitions coming from nowhere and making such a terrible noise.

  “Sweet Jesu!” The foremost scout cursed, desperately hauling his mount to a skidding halt. The animal plunged, almost went down. The three others, a neck’s length behind, swerved to avoid the leader, one rider catapulted over his mount’s shoulder, lay winded in the churned ground, a second grabbed hold of his horse’s mane, valiantly attempting to remain seated. Two of Arthur’s patrol were unhorsed. One sprang immediately to his feet, the other, face chalk pale, lay with his leg bent beneath him, the bone shattered at the thigh.

  “We took you for northern curs!” one of the four riders explained through panting breath, scrambling, embarrassed, from lying half across his mount’s neck into the security of the saddle.

  Arthur had steadied Hasta and was swearing profoundly, the curses riddled with explosive anger. “Call yourself scouts?” he yelled. “You incompetent curs, whoreson imbeciles! You deserve not the name Artoriani! Dung-midden whelps – if we had been a raiding party you would have your guts split open by now!”

  The Artoriani scout before him reddened. To hide growing embarrassment, he said over-quickly, “We were riding hard for camp – Lord Enniaun is a handful of miles over yonder, coming up from Caer Luel.” He twisted around in the saddle, pointing back up the heavily wooded valley. “His men were riding easy, well in the open, making no attempt at concealment.” He frowned momentarily. “Why have they taken so long to join us, my Lord?”

  Arthur’s head came up, eyes squinting keenly against the sudden burst of brilliant sunshine, his body tense with anticipated excitement. If his own men were asking questions…!

  Lot’s army, having swept south as far as Eboracum, carving a bloody trail of murder and destruction, had retreated northward again, lying nearer their own hunting runs, leaving only scattered warbands to watch for Arthur’s coming. Lot had good officers who knew of the Pendragon’s whereabouts and his every move – Arthur had made no attempt at concealment. They were marching in easy stages into a baited trap. Lot wanted a fight with Arthur, needed to win if he were to hold the north as his own. For he was too often weak of mind and will, was too content to sit by the warmth of his hearth. If he was to remain King, he needed this chance to prove those who whispered against him wrong. And Arthur knew there were those who made the whispers. He paid them handsomely to do so.

  The Pendragon had gone along with the pretence of innocence these past weeks, appeared seemingly fooled, heading blindly into waiting destruction – had deliberately delayed because he was waiting for Enniaun. And at last he had come! With his young men of Gwynedd eager to blood their new spears, and with the older men: men who, when young, had hunted as the Votadini over these same high, windswept hills and along these same deep, tree-cluttered valleys. Men who had an intimate knowledge of these northern lands where the wind swept as sharp as a dagger’s blade. Land over which the great Lion Lord, Gwenhwyfar’s father, Cunedda, had once ruled, before Vortigern forced him south to Gwynedd.

  Enniaun’s war-host had marched leisurely and conspicuously up from Caer Luel, giving Lot’s scouts ample chance for a good look at their strength and numbers. Except the scouts had seen only what they were meant to see. Were unaware of a band of hand-picked men who had followed the hidden routes, travelling by night and following the wolf runs through the hills and the secretive deer trails along the wooded valleys; circling with stealth around and up behind Lot and his waiting host.

  The Pendragon, despite his air of good humour and indifference, had been growing more anxious with each nightfall, had expected Enniaun, at the latest, yester-eve. If Enniaun’s secretive band of men were discovered then all would be lost. Lot must not know that Arthur was aware of what lay ahead, must believe the Pendragon was overstepping himself, was too cocksure of his past successes.

  “You have spoken with my Lord Enniaun?” Arthur’s question to his scout was edged with the sharpness of a new-whetted blade.

  A second scout shook his head in answer. “Na, Sir, we but saw him and his men in the distance. We showed ourselves and they signalled reply.”

  Arthur nodded vague approval and swung Hasta round. He rode to the injured man, watched a moment as a comrade axed two sapling trees and stripped the branches to fashion a stretcher.

  “See him comfortable, and you two,” Arthur indicated two men, ‘stay here with him. We’ll collect you on the way back. I ride to welcome Gwynedd.” He grinned suddenly, showing white teeth against weather-browned skin, his eyes wrinkling with delight. If his own men assumed that Gwynedd was coming up direct from the Wall, then Lot too, with Fortuna’s blessing, would assume the same. He dismounted, went to the groaning cavalryman, laid his hand, concerned, on the young man’s shoulder; said, “Easy lad, we shall not be long away.”

  The Wall, with the exception of Caer Luel to the west, had long since been abandoned as a military viability, there simply was not adequate funding or men to patrol it efficiently. The wealthy towns, like Eboracum and Lindum, with their pompous Governors backed by the bigotry of the Church, refused to supplement the pay and keep of a permanent garrison of Arthur’s rough-voiced and equally rough-mannered men, choosing instead to raise their own local militia in times of threatened trouble. That had, it seemed, proved insufficient.

  North of the Wall the territories had been abandoned by Vortigern for the same untenable reasons, left to rot under the shifting power surges of petty overlords: Saex, British, Scotti or Picti leaders who came and went as often as the wind changed.

  The scattered common-folk—the sheep herds, the poor farmers, the wolf and deer hunters, the few surviving traders—cared little who ruled over this desolate, uncared-for land. They scratched a living from one harsh winter to the next and prayed that whatever present warrior band was besieging Dun Pelidr would leave the farmsteadings alone. What did it matter to a poor man who occupied the royal place? Tithes had to be paid to whoever decid
ed to call himself lord.

  Arthur had not been surprised at Lot’s rise to power. Once the father had died, it had been inevitable that the son would grope for an ambition held long in check by an old man who had advocated fealty to Rome. Would seek to become Lord over more than one poor, wind-burnt estate. These abandoned lands of the Votadini were ripe for the harvesting, waiting for a man to emerge to wield the scythe. Lot was a bull-head of a boy turned to an ox of a man, thick of muscle, and in Arthur’s opinion, of sense. But with someone now behind him to guide the sword arm; someone nurturing the seeds of greed into fruition, a man who could achieve much. Especially if such a man had a wife named Morgause. An ox that plodded along sedately for mile after mile was more than capable of becoming highly dangerous if goaded into a rampaging temper.

  Riding down the valley to meet Enniaun, Arthur found himself thinking profoundly of Morgause. Witch, he called her. Witch-Woman. The speculation came, was dismissed, but came again: was it Lot he was so anxious to face and defeat, or Morgause? So many evils had she put upon him, so much of her vile scent still clung, like the lingering stench of midden-muck, even after all these long years.

  As he approached Enniaun, Arthur raised his hand in salute and welcome. Spurring Hasta to gallop the last few yards, he leapt from the saddle as they came up together, Enniaun too, jumping from his horse, arms outstretched, calling a greeting. Embracing, the men held together a moment, close in kinship and affinity; pulled a little apart to exchange wide grins and a hurried, most private words.

  “It is done?” Arthur asked, his eyebrow rising slightly with the anxious questioning.

  Enniaun playfully cuffed the Pendragon’s shoulder, beamed, “A trap is none so dangerous when you carry a stick with which to spring it!”

  XXXII

  Concentrating, lips parted, eyes wide, Llacheu stealthily brought the two carved wooden horses from behind a stool leg. He waited an agonising moment, then, letting loose a fierce, piercing yell, plunged them forward one in each hand, stumping their legs on the stone floor, making clicking hoofbeat sounds with his tongue. “Charge!” he screamed as he brought the horses crashing forward into his brother’s lined row of crudely carved Roman soldiers.

  Shouting as loud, Gwydre protested as his men were swept to each side by Llacheu’s scything hands. “You didn’t give me a chance to fight back!”

  “That’s the point of battle,” Llacheu retorted with a knowing sneer. “Do not give the enemy a chance to attack you first.”

  “Well it’s not fair!”

  And they were fighting, the toys forgotten, both boys tumbling over and over, fists and feet hammering at each other; the battle game suddenly for real.

  Nessa, hurrying from her sewing, tried to pull them apart and screeched as teeth sank into her arm. Enid ran to separate the boys – and Gwenhwyfar came into the room, her arms full of white cloth freshly cleaned and collected from the fullers. The fight stopped, the boys backing from each other hurling accusations; Nessa was crying and scolding both at once and nursing her arm; Enid was standing, hands on hips, also scolding.

  Enduring the combined noise a moment only, Gwenhwyfar shouted for quiet. It settled reluctantly, lumbering like a rock fall. Gwydre had the last mutter.

  “I do not care who started it,” his mother retorted, sweeping across the room to lay the cloth on a table. “I want to hear no more of it.”

  “But he… ”

  “I was only… ” the boys tried together to explain.

  “No more!”

  Llacheu hung his head. “Na, Mother.”

  Gwenhwyfar raised an eyebrow at her other son. Gwydre glowered – looking for all the world like his father – climbed down, reluctant, from his anger. “Na, Mother,” he repeated.

  Showing her arm, Nessa expressed her indignation. “Look what they did to me, the heathens!”

  Inspecting the bruising, Gwenhwyfar crooked her finger at the boys, made them stand before her. “Which one of you bit Nessa?”

  “He did,” they said simultaneously, pointing at each other.

  “Then you will both be punished. You will not ride this afternoon.” Turning her back on them, Gwenhwyfar unrolled the cloth. There was more than she needed here but it was good cloth, worth its buying. She measured with her fingers, planning with her eye. Aye, a dragon embroidered in scarlet red, decorated with gold thread, it would make a fine new banner for Arthur. She sauntered to the unshuttered window, peeped out. The boys were standing gloomily, Llacheu chewing his lip, Gwydre trying not to cry.

  “What a shame,” she said, “the first afternoon it has not rained.” Again, she looked out, her gaze going north to the fuzzed line of distant hills. Did the rain fall where Arthur was? Had the two armies yet met? Was Arthur unharmed?

  “Come with me, Gwen.”

  “No. I am not yet ready to face more dying.”

  Yet was it any easier to not know what was happening, up away beyond those hills? He had sent only one letter to her three. Was he still angry with her? He had so wanted her to accompany him. She had been so determined not to do so, and their argument on the matter had been heated and bitter. She sighed, a slight sound. That was unfair; he would not have the time to write. Too late for regrets. She wished she had gone with him. But then, life was stitched together by regrets.

  “What will you do if Morgause is there?” she had asked Arthur, curled against him in bed two nights before he rode away north. He had not answered immediately and when he did, it was with uncertainty. “Hang her? Behead her? I don’t know.”

  Llacheu had come to the window, was looking where his mother watched. His hand slipped into hers, gripped tight.

  “Will there be much fighting, Mam?”

  “I expect so.” She forced a smile for him. “Your da is almost as keen as you when it comes to fighting.”

  Her son grinned back at her, “And almost as good!”

  She laughed. “Aye, almost.”

  XXXIII

  The Artoriani. A brotherhood of nine hundred permanent, elite cavalry under the direct command of their King, Arthur, the Pendragon. Professional men doing a professional job.

  The marching camp had swelled with the arrival of Gwynedd, the newcomers settling their weapons and personal bundles around their own fires to the western edge, billeting their horses to their own picket lines. With the gathered infantry, the local militiamen, the number of fighting men came close to three thousand. The Cymry, the Companions. Arthur was aware they might not number enough, but he held one advantage – now that Enniaun had come.

  It was evening, time for the nightly gathering of officers and allied lords to discuss details of the morrow. The rain had begun again, pattering softly on the oiled leather of Arthur’s command tent and a slight wind outside found holes and openings to cram through, causing cross-draughts and currents that fanned the torches and braziers, trailing the smoke in crazy spirals.

  “I suppose,” one of the older Artoriani officers asked, “it would be too much to hope that Lot will not be able to hold his men together much longer? As much as I would regret a wasted march, it would be somewhat agreeable to find they have gathered their spears and gone home to hearth and women-folk.”

  But the men who, beyond the King’s tent, settled themselves to sleep, rolling themselves into blankets and under cloaks, eight men to a tent, would have been disappointed had that officer’s words come true. Hearts were high, even through the drizzle of fine rain, tempers good, the mood expectant, excited. They were to march in earnest come morning; no more paddling around among these mire-drenched, mist-bound hills.

  Enniaun accepted beer from the boy Gweir, pointed to a parchment map spread across the table, cleared for once of Arthur’s accumulated muddle. He moved a broad finger up the line representing the long sweep of the Roman road, stabbed his nail into a point slightly to the west where crudely drawn trees were marked.

  “Here,” he said, with a hint of finality, “the hills that we now occupy drop down to
the flat plain of the Great River. To the north bank, the first fringes of the Caledonian Forest stretching from here,” he ran his spread fingers a long way up the map, “into the highlands.” He folded his arms across his chest and for emphasis stepped one pace back from the table. “Lot waits for us one mile north of the river, within the cover of dense woodland.”

  “How many to his name, my Lord?” That was Hueil from Alclud. “Did you see enough to estimate?”

  Enniaun, a deep frown of concentration etched beneath his bush of red hair, pondered a reply. He regarded Arthur, who stood with hands resting flat against the edge of the table, steady eyes answering his hesitant gaze. The Pendragon nodded once, giving permission for him to continue.

  “It is my guess… ” Enniaun spoke slowly, thinking as he formed the words. His eyes flickered around the allied Lords and officers of the militia gathered men, assessing their courage. They led good men, wholehearted loyal to Arthur, but they were not disciplined Artoriani; some held no experience of a real fight. Cattle raiding, minor squabbles, the odd skirmish – what was that to full battle? “Close to five thousand.”

  There came a series of low, unbelieving whistles. Those who had been at the back, leaning against the tent poles or squatting by the braziers, came alert to attention, stepped nearer those grouped around the table. The older and wiser among them shook their heads. That was a lot of men to fight!

  “Their numbers may be many, but I doubt their hearts are as strong, or their skill as great.” Meriaun spoke plain, hands tucked beneath his armpits, legs spread wide. His father had been Cunedda’s eldest-born, butchered as an example against rebellion when the north, in support of Uthr Pendragon, rose and lost to Vortigern. It was some small portion of personal pride this, the reclaiming of a land that ought to have been his own one day.