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by Helen Hollick

  Taking his hands from the table Arthur stood back, his gaze and thoughts on the map spread before him. The road stretching north; high, open moorland; thick-wooded valleys. Almost reverently, he reached forward to touch a drawn line that meandered between the position of their present camp and the great mass of the Caledonian Forest.

  “The Great River.” He spoke slowly, his mind working with the gift of battle genius. “We need to cross it. We could head for the coast,” his finger stabbed at the wide estuary, “but there it is wider, with marsh and mudflats. Also, a long ride east. The same applies if we go west, upstream, save the width will be negligible.” He paused, his hand hovering, mind tumbling with ideas, most instantly rejected. “For a fording we need the middle reaches, ahead of us.” He brought his finger back. “Neither too high, nor too low, and aware that from here,” he indicated the point, “the current is tidal.” He chewed a split fingernail. “Which means we ford the Great River where Lot wants us to.”

  Cei cleared his throat, bent to peer at the map his bottom lip jutting out. “They are holed up in those north-bank woods now, but will they not come down to meet us when we are at our most vulnerable?”

  Many nodded, that seemed most likely.

  Arthur lifted a corner of the map, retrieved a thin stick of charcoal and carefully marked in their route northwards. “We marched at an easy pace.” He was thinking aloud, planning. “Coming along the Wall and crossing the hills, to here.” He circled the position of their present camp and tossed the charcoal, catching it, holding it between curled fingers. “We made no secret of our passing and have not hurried our pace.”

  “Watched all the while.” Cei’s disapproval was rancid in his throat. “We ought to have shown them our strength afore this.”

  Arthur’s reply was indifferent. “Our archers and scouts have picked off more of their men then they have ours – and with less heat than losing our tempers would achieve.”

  “Aside that,” Hueil spoke, coming forward, a slight swagger of self importance to his step, “we needed to give my Lord of Gwynedd’s chosen scouts time – and adequate diversion – to ride north and back undetected?”

  “Precisely.” Arthur acknowledged the young man’s observation. He had hopes for Hueil.

  “You ought to have informed us of what Gwynedd was up to,” Cei remarked gruffly.

  “Must all my decisions be accountable to you then?” Arthur reacted with quick anger, facing Cei broadside on.

  “Na!” Cei shouted back. “But oft-times I wonder why I am honoured with this empty title of second-in-command! Command of what? Hollow evasions and hidden secrets.” He stood square before the Pendragon, arms animated with annoyance, adding for good measure, “What if you had been killed? What then?” He dropped his hands, raised one slowly, imploring. “God’s truth, Arthur, what is it? Do you no longer trust me?”

  “I suggest,” Enniaun said, coming around the table, diffusing the rise of temper by pointing back to the map and the matter of tactics, “that I take my men along this valley here and circle around through the trees, to come up behind Lot. With luck, he will not suspect such a move, believing us unaware of his position.”

  Arthur turned his back on Cei, the slight squabble immediately forgotten, passed over as nothing serious. “My guess is that he will attack at the river crossing, but he may lure us into the woods where our Artoriani will be at a greater disadvantage.”

  Cei, although smarting, was studying the river lower down. “What if I took two Turmae to cross here? I could circle from the right flank. With Enniaun coming from the left…”

  “That would split us into three – four with a rearguard reserve.” Arthur rolled the suggestion uneasily around in his mind.

  “It could be the end of us should Lot decide to make a full fight of it as we ford the river,” Meriaun observed.

  Arthur nodded. “That is my opinion also.” He spread his hands, a grin of expectant pleasure erupting on his face. “But that is a chance we shall have to take.”

  XXXIV

  They came down from the hills in the same easy, almost relaxed style that they had been pursuing since leaving the undulating trail of the Wall. The Cymry, a combined hosting of Artoriani, men of Gwynedd and local men, hunched against the iron bite of a salt-tanged sea wind that hustled in from the distant coast, creeping between leather and metal armour, under wool or animal-skin cloaks. As the rain that had seemed to fall continuously over these northern hills finally appeared to ease, they made their last camp five miles south of the Great River.

  It was all intentional deception. They had marched in closed ranks, bunched together, with the pack horses in the central baggage lines led on short rein; men tramping shoulder to shoulder, spear jostling shield. Fewer tents were pitched around wider spread fires, with men doubling up to snatch a few hours of restless sleep. Age-worn tactics to fool those watching eyes into believing there were fewer numbers than expected. Come the dawn crossing of the river, and by the blessed generosity of Fortuna, Lot might never notice that Arthur’s ranks had depleted overnight.

  Enniaun and Cei moved with their men after the blackness of night had settled, and were long gone come the hours before dawn when the remaining men were roused. Not knowing when they might get the chance again, they ate a sustaining meal of porridge and wheat bread, washed down with barley-ale. Horses were muzzled and hooves muffled. Through the concealing solitude of a moonless night, they moved with the stealth of hunters approaching wind-wary prey, aiming to ford the river during that mind-confusing time of pre-dawn when the new morning is neither dark nor light, night nor day. The time when long-waiting men are stiffened from the night’s damp chill and are at their heaviest, with senses hazy and fallible.

  Arthur drew rein where the thinning trees opened out onto the spread of the river’s floodplain, wide and flat on this southern side, steep and well-wooded on the other. He sat a while, one arm leaning casually across Hasta’s arched white crest, staring ahead, looking as though he saw naught but the ghost shadows of mist-shrouded bush and tree and the darker stretch where the river ran.

  Through the quietness came the ripple and rush of water; the river was high with the rain, feeding down from the hills with the many gushing tributaries. The woods smelt of peated leaf-mould, of damp earth and dew-sprinkled leaves and bark. Ahead, the mist was rising, the air fresh and sharp, as keen as a whetted blade; rich, invigorating smells driving all thoughts of half-yearned sleep from a man’s early awakened mind. Arthur had planned this, surprise being a tactic he used often and used well. For good reason had stories of his Artoriani spread from hearth to hearth, into chieftains’ Halls or peasant bothies alike. Tales of how Arthur and his Artoriani would appear from a swirling mist or rain-dripping woods on the crest of a dawn much as this. Conjured from nothing, horse and man, spears and shields raised, their war cry shrieking like the cries of risen spirits. Seeming a thousand, thousand men the storytellers said with awe and a quick breath. White horses, red; flecked blood and foam. Glinting spear and shining sword, the blue blade of death! Aieee… a thousand, thousand they seem, though they number but the nine of a hundred!

  Arthur ran his hand down the length of Hasta’s neck. The stallion’s white coat glimmered in the faint light, the sparkle of dew and mist turning the tip of each hair to a silvered sheen. To the east, the sky was tinged with a first, faint glimmer of the coming day. A half-smile twitched to the side of the Pendragon’s lip. He reached up his hand, tightened the strap of his warcap. Well had he encouraged the telling of those tales. Well did he use the discipline and harnessed nerve of his men, and aye, the useful shoulder of a hill or the slope of a woodland and the eddies of a river’s dawn mist.

  He signalled to Gweir, standing at Hasta’s head, for the muzzle to be slipped and the hoof muffles to be removed. Behind, the soft rustle of movement as other shield-bearers obeyed the same command, or men dismounted to do their own. The task finished, again Arthur nodded to the boy. “Go now lad, back
to the baggage-holding behind the rearguard. Battle is no place for a lad so green behind the ears.”

  Gweir glanced to his Lord, pleading with his eyes, but Arthur shook his head, jerked his thumb over his shoulder. Reluctant, feet and heart heavy, Gweir went.

  Night-dark sky was becoming tinged with slow-spreading fingers of pale, creeping light. The drifting mist hovered uncertain above and between the clumps of alder and willow trees. Arthur signalled to advance at a walk; the horses held in tight check, spaced wide now, to give the illusion, should anyone be able to see, of more numbers than there were. Their stride kept short, riders’ breath held, stomachs taut, the expectation at any moment of a sudden harsh shout from the far bank and the mortal swish and thud of arrows. Down through the mist, parting its caressing whiteness like a ship’s bow wave, silent shrouded hoofbeats swished through knee-high, morning-wet grass. Ahead, the black path of water where the mist danced thicker, tighter. The two leading turmae of horse eased into the cold swirl, one above the chosen crossing point to break the force, the other down-river to snare pony or man swept away. It had begun!

  As the pink-grey strip of light along the horizon broadened there still came no shout from the opposite bank, no alarmed shadows moved. A few birds were rehearsing their dawn song, tuning their voices as a harper sets his instrument. A vixen yipped somewhere up-river, answered by the deeper bark of her mate. The arch of the black sky forming the dark blue-black colour of an angry, newly acquired bruise. The fore guard of infantry, wading with steady and measured pace, crossed without incident establishing the all important bridgehead, digging their trenches with all haste and speed, hunching their wet-clothed bodies behind the thrown-up mound of mud and earth. Behind, ranked along the far bank, mounted archers waited tense with arrows notched, bowstrings and nerves taut.

  Then it came, urgent shouts from the darkness of the close-crowded trees ranged along the northern bank and the surging hiss of sudden, uprushing movement, the first sigh of enemy arrows skimming low, their deadly flight arching over and down. The cries of wounded and dying men exploded the quiet stillness and Arthur’s men into a foam of action. Expected, but nonetheless startling, the attack and defence gathered momentum with the swiftness of a single boulder tossed down a rock-strewn slope.

  No matter how many precautions, how organised, the crossing of a river of this width, depth and flow would always leave men open to attack. A river left a man vulnerable with nowhere to hide or run, the current dragging at feet and thigh, hampering movement. A place to meet death, a river crossing.

  The one satisfaction: the fight was as Arthur had thought it would be. Lot’s war hosting swept forward in a sighing rush from the steep wooded hills, coming like an east wind from nowhere, sweeping over a summer-ripe cornfield. But the dawn crossing had been right, for Arthur’s men had achieved those first, few, precious minutes to throw up a defensive line. As Arthur had intended, Lot had been caught unawares.

  Horses belly deep in water plunged forward, or tried to turn back, held in check by determined riders. Animals screamed in pain or fear, or anger. Some fell as arrows pierced, finding those places that maimed with a burst of maddening agony. Men fell too, the force of water sweeping them away, their hands clutching desperately for a hold that was not there. The first few were lucky, the down-river line of rope held firm by the chain of riders stretching from bank to bank caught them, bundled them spluttering and gasping ashore, but then a horse, riderless, maddened and blinded by an arrow shaft deep in its eye socket, entangled with one of the stretched ropes.

  The animal plunged. Men swore as the line pulled taut and ripped through their hands. The rope severed, curling back with the sharp hiss of a loosed whiplash, its sodden weight adding velocity. Two men were knocked from their horses, both thanked God for the sense of extra lines securing them to their mounts, but the barricade was broken and the enemy was swarming along the far bank, coming down from their hiding places among the trees and shadows, fighting sword to shield with the British.

  The centre of infantry, flanked by cavalry, was pushing forward, battling for each precarious step across the churning flow, the water coming at its deepest almost up to their armpits. A steady arrow-cloud hissed above their heads from their own archers, forcing Lot’s men to keep low. The fore defence was swelling on the opposite bank, scrambling up the steep slopes, as more and more infantry ploughed across, fighting hand to hand. And still the enemy, some dazed, a few sleep trodden, were bursting from the woods, spears raised as high as their war song. Dawn had come and gone. The sun, a ball of red-orange was rising, chasing away the last cobwebs of white mist.

  Arthur sat with his own turma of men, watching. It would be his turn to cross soon. Was this fighting a bluff, or the real thing? Was it to be settled here at this river fording or were Lot’s hounds to be called off at some moment, some time soon, to run seemingly with tails tucked low into… who knew what?

  A Picti spear cast in a wide arc above the reddening water thudded into a soldier’s shield. The man staggered, almost lost his footing to the cling of rushing water, righted himself, plunged onwards. Arthur saw another well-cast spear knock a man from his horse, fall, go down beneath the churned water. And another, and another.

  Soon it would be time for the last of his men to cross.

  Were a wing of these northern wildmen to appear on this southern bank now… Arthur shuddered, thrust the thought aside, yet unease tightened like a clenched fist deep inside his belly. He narrowed his eyes to look across the stretch of water, scanning the standards of the enemy bobbing beneath the lush greenness of foliage. Lot’s emblem was the purple thistle that grew in abundance on these northern moorlands. He could not see it. Suddenly his heart lurched, his throat clamming dry and tight. There it was! Near the centre!

  “Oh God, whether you be pagan or Christian,” he breathed aloud, “let my judgement not be wrong in this!”

  If Lot did not break; if he did not soon make a run up that slope, through those woods of oak and ash and beech, then this campaign, all Arthur had built, would end here, at a butchering by a river for there was not enough room to manoeuvre on that far bank. Already the fighting was spilling over, back into the water. His cavalry were hampered by the slope, the press of trees. Come on! Move! Make your pretence at running!

  Five out of the seven of Arthur’s scouts had slid easy into the marching column late yesterday. Aye, they reported, there were archers and swordsmen waiting on the far bank, sound in their ease, waiting at the ford; and aye, many more were secreted near a large clearing to the north. There was a woman there too, they said, waiting beneath a spread-winged, raven banner. Arthur’s guts had churned at that. Sa, she was here then, Morgause.

  A new worry knotted in his throat. What if this was how they had been supposed to think? Could Lot know that Arthur had sent men so far ahead to watch and report back? Then, had Enniaun and Cei made their crossings safe? Were they even now working their way inwards from left and right flank, drawing the net tighter, only to find Lot, too, had silently moved his men under the cover of night to take Arthur at the fording? Where in the Bull’s name, were those final two scouts? They had orders to stay and observe throughout the night hours, to return in that last essential hour before dawn. They had not come.

  Could they have fallen to the same fate as the unsuspecting enemy watch? All five of Lot’s men lay wide-eyed, unmoving, with throats silently slit. The story could read as easily the same for Arthur’s scouts.

  Someone was shouting his name. Arthur turned Hasta, cantered fast to meet the Blue Turma Decurion, the last remaining, save for the rearguard reserve.

  “We are ready to go, Sir.”

  Arthur nodded. “No sign of those last scouts?”

  “None, Sir. I have seen Lot’s banner over there.” The Decurion ducked his head in the direction of the far bank, pointed with his spear.

  “As have I,” Arthur replied, setting himself deeper into the saddle and mustering composure into his t
one. “The man who titles himself King of the North has chosen to fight personally at the river. That is fine with me. I shall have his end the sooner. Come, it is time we joined our companions!”

  Arthur whistled Cabal; the dog ceased his meticulous scratching at some irritant behind his left ear, and raising himself, ambled to stand at Hasta’s nearside foreleg.

  Unexpectedly, Gwenhwyfar’s face flickered before Arthur’s eyes. Angry, impassioned. “Why take Cabal?” she had chided. “He is too young, too raw. You expect over-much of his loyalty, as you do of all who walk within your shadow.”

  Too young? His right ear was already scarred from some dogfight and two bitches had borne his pups. The dog whined, not understanding the delay. Untried he might be, but he came from a line of warrior dogs and recognised by instinct the scent and sound of battle. Arthur unfastened a loop of rope from his belt. “Ah,” he said, leaning from the saddle to thread it through Cabal’s bronze-studded collar, “it is hard enough to leave my woman behind. How could I leave you also, my young friend?”

  The Pendragon swivelled in his saddle, cast a weather-eye over the drawn ranks of the waiting rearguard. The mist had full lifted now, the sun, shining briefly through parting cloud to show a flicker of blue-washed sky. Faces stared at him, boys mostly, younger sons of chieftains, the shield-bearers. Boys. Among them, to Arthur’s sudden rise of annoyance, Gweir. Damn the lad, what was he doing there?

  He stood, clasping Arthur’s third-best spear, for all the world as though he were some seasoned warrior. Little fool! A smile gathered to Arthur’s mouth. Little fool. He flashed a grin at the Decurion by his side, round to the last waiting men, Blue Turma, the King’s Turma of Artoriani.

  Arthur urged Hasta down the muddied bank into the turbulence of water, with Cabal close at the horse’s shoulder, the length of rope keeping him from being swept away. The dog was immediately swimming strongly, his head lifting high, tail floating like a rudder, air snorting through his black, scarred nose.