M. K. Hume [King Arthur Trilogy 04] The Last Dragon

by M. K. Hume

  ‘We’ve won, Germanus, we’ve really won.’ Arthur leaped into the air like a boy cheering his friends after a game of physical skill.

  ‘Aye, we’ve won, but the healers will fight for the rest of the night.’

  Boy and man turned to look at the tents set up behind them on the brow of the hill. Since Myrddion Merlinus had first trained battle surgeons in the reign of Uther Pendragon, the role of healer had become a respected profession. Not far from the commanders’ pavilion, a full tent hospital already housed wounded soldiers being treated by a highly trained corps of healers and herbmasters; another tent was used solely for field surgery.

  ‘I’ll say one thing for your tribesmen,’ Germanus murmured admiringly. ‘Your field hospitals are as good as anything I ever saw in what was left of the Roman armies in the east. Your Merlinus must have been almost as good as your warriors swear he was.’

  Arthur shrugged. ‘I was much too young to have met him, but if Taliesin and his brothers are any indication of their sire, then the old man was a brilliant healer. Taliesin hasn’t been in Arden for years, but he came every spring when I was a little boy. I wish he’d come again. He sings so beautifully, Germanus, and I would love you to hear his songs about the High King. He is said to look like his father, but all I remember is that he had long black hair with a white streak at the temples. King Artor is reputed to have loved Myrddion dearly and held him in high regard. Taliesin too, according to Mother.’

  The pair stood quietly as a squad of six heavy-set peasants trotted past them, bearing lit torches and simple stretchers consisting of two poles with stout oiled cloth strung between them. As in the original system devised by Myrddion Merlinus, these bearers were the first of a band of strong young workers whose task was to bring the wounded back to the hospital and to do the heavy work required in nursing the sick. Only strong muscles could restrain a warrior requiring amputation of a leg or an arm, for no amount of poppy juice could deaden a man’s nerves when the surgeon’s knives began to saw through skin, muscle and bone to save the rest of the breached body.

  Earlier that day, Arthur had heard the screams coming from the surgeons’ tent and had paled when Germanus insisted that he should watch battlefield surgery at first hand. Viewing the effects of combat on healthy human flesh would stiffen the boy’s sense of responsibility in conflicts that were yet to come, for most of the decisions he made as a commander would result in injury to those warriors who served under him. The whole experience had left Arthur shaken, pale and awed by the skill of the men who sliced into human bodies to retrieve arrow heads or cut away compromised limbs. He had always imagined that healers were unsuited to serve as warriors, but he now saw that they must be as strong and authoritative as any military officer. A strong stomach and a vast store of knowledge were also essential.

  The surgeons stood in pools of blood and other detritus from the human body that Arthur preferred not to recognise, while the women who assisted them toiled ceaselessly to clean the folding surgical tables and nurse the injured as best they could. Stripped almost naked, and streaked with blood that squelched in their sandals, the healers seemed to be dyed scarlet under the sanguine light of the torches that permitted them to continue their work long into the night. Some wore their unbraided hair long in imitation of Myrddion Merlinus, while others chose to shave their skulls for cleanliness. Regardless of their choice, they were eventually covered in blood from the top of the head to their toes.

  Now, as he looked at the healers’ tents in the twilight, Arthur had a nasty thought. ‘If I were a Saxon thane, I think I’d have held men in reserve to attack the hospital now that the battle is finally lost,’ he whispered, his eyes darting to the furthest reaches of the darkening hilltop. ‘While the army is occupied down below with mopping up survivors, a small troop could badly hurt Bran and Ector’s cause by killing the surgeons. How many warriors would perish if there were no healers available to treat their wounds in the next battles? Besides, such an attack would be a strategic victory, because it would strike at our hearts and mock our security.’

  Against his will, Germanus’s eyes began to search the undergrowth of the summit around them. ‘You speak nonsense, lad. Saxons would consider war against unarmed men and women to be dishonourable. Besides, they never attack at night, and I can’t imagine any of them having the discipline to hold back from the main engagement simply to strike a stealthy blow at us. They don’t have the self-control.’

  ‘Really?’ Arthur replied doubtfully. ‘But they kill priests and rape nuns willingly enough when they want to weaken our resistance, knowing that the murder of unarmed religious folk will always shake our confidence. So what’s the difference? We change our strategies from time to time, so why shouldn’t the Saxons change theirs if they think it would help them? Everyone used to say they never attacked in winter, but look at what happened at Crookback Farm.’

  Germanus pretended to look scornful, but there was a nervous glint in his eye. Although he never spoke of it, he realised that his pupil had occasional flashes of brilliance when he grasped strategy in ways that were far beyond his years. Accordingly, the arms master stalked away from his charge and whistled piercingly into the darkness. A young warrior, barely sixteen years of age, came running with his sword clutched firmly to his side to prevent it from flapping against his knees. His young face was pale with excitement and the orange-brown freckles across his cheeks and his nose stood out in contrast.

  Arthur couldn’t hear the whispered conversation between the two warriors, but Germanus had obviously issued orders of some kind. As his fist thudded onto his new leather tunic in a hurried, self-important salute, the youngster began to run towards a picket line where several horses were tethered on a length of rope tied between two tree trunks.

  ‘What was that all about, Germanus?’

  ‘I’ve sent word to Bran to organise the deployment of half a dozen horsed warriors to patrol the margins of this hill – just in case you’re right and the Saxons are brighter than I think they are. The hospital would be an easy target for an attack by stealth.’

  Flattered, Arthur returned to his concentrated observation of the carnage below them. The bearers were working their way from the edge of the battlefield towards the central point where the resistance had been most intense, checking each body for signs of life. Bran had issued orders that wounded Saxon or Jute warriors were also to be taken to the surgeons’ tent, although British warriors were to be given precedence over the enemy. He had learned at King Artor’s knee that killing wounded enemies after a battle was a barbarian practice. ‘We must portray ourselves as a civilised race,’ Artor had told him. ‘The only time when such barbarity should be permitted is when there are no other options, or we endanger our own warriors by saving the lives of our enemies. Only then is it expedient to kill wounded men.’

  Bran had accepted his grandfather’s words. The idealism that underpinned the pragmatic order affected him deeply, and ensured that many tribesmen survived after the last, ruinous battle against the Brigante who now fought against the Saxons at a time when they were truly needed.

  The twilight was long and the healers laboured hard to save those men they could, until the night came quietly out of the east and the camp on the hill gradually became still and silent. Arthur could see the dim shapes of horsemen patrolling the perimeter of the field where the battle had taken place, for many dead lay where they had fallen and the next day would be occupied with burning and burying their remains. In the meantime, scavengers would be drawn to the reek of fresh blood and the dead were owed the dignity of protection from nature’s cleaners. The soft jingle of harness gave Arthur comfort.

  Germanus had instructed a small troop of warriors to wrap themselves in their saddle blankets and sleep beside the field hospital, where they could defend the tents if they should be threatened during the night. Even without a planned attack on the hospital itself, the large, colourful pavilion pitched on the top of the mound would make a tempt
ing target to the Saxons and Jutes. A small party of enemy warriors might wish to recapture some shreds of honour by killing a British king, even if they should die in the attempt. In fact, Bran, Ector and Bedwyr had chosen to stay with their men on the battlefield, devising the terms they would ask for the surrender of the enemy dead. The Jutes, superstitious as always, were prepared to pay for the return of the bodies of their warriors so that their souls could journey to Asgaard and the home of the gods, and gold would soon change hands.

  Arthur had stripped off his armour and attempted to find a comfortable position on the stony earth, but sleep eluded him. He was overly excited, as any lad of thirteen would be after viewing his first battle, so his mind was churning and racing with what he had seen during that long and bloody afternoon. The sounds and smells of conflict had been a revelation, and now that he had time to reflect Arthur realised that he had nurtured a child’s idealised vision of combat as something noble and heroic. The actuality of the stink of hot blood, voided bowels and vomit had shocked the boy when he smelled it for the first time in the tents of the healers. He was both horrified and fascinated by how much blood coursed through the human body. Death was a messy, undignified business which Arthur had never expected, for the singers glorified warfare and ignored the unpleasant physical side effects of violence. From what Arthur had seen, the warriors who received gross sword wounds emitted groans and pleas for release from their agony rather than grandiose speeches that tugged at the heartstrings. He would never again think of warfare in quite the same childish way.

  ‘Do all men understand what can happen to them when death comes knocking?’ he asked himself softly in the darkness. Something else to discuss with Germanus and Lorcan, he decided, and added it to a rapidly growing list in his head.

  Then he heard a distinctive sound as a sandal slid across a patch of gravel and scree on the side of the hill below him. Arthur almost rose to his feet to greet one of the guards, but a sudden shriek in the back of his mind warned him that the noise was far too stealthy for a friendly warrior.

  Sliding onto his belly and conscious of the traitorous light behind him from the tent hospital, Arthur peered carefully down the slope. At first, his eyes could see nothing but tussocks of coarse grass and silhouettes of saplings growing along the narrow gullies on the hillside. A troop of horsemen went by at the foot of the hill, visible only as vague forms that passed from pools of inky darkness into the feeble light of a nacreous moon. But as his eyes adjusted to the darkness and concentrated on the areas of deepest concealing shadow, he detected a betraying sign of movement.

  There! A hump in the land that seemed more tussock than human shifted carefully for a few feet and then returned to stillness. One by one, twenty men betrayed themselves and Arthur felt a thrill of fear and excitement rush through his blood to his brain.

  What should he do? Raise the alarm, you idiot, his mind shrieked.

  Suddenly, under the pressure of reality, Arthur felt every inadequacy of his meagre thirteen years. By sheer chance, he had discovered the enemy as they made a careful, almost completely silent advance up the hill. From his limited observation of the Saxons in battle, he knew they would never surrender once he raised the alarm. They would fight until every one of them was dead, wreaking havoc on the hilltop before Bran and Bedwyr knew what was happening.

  Don’t think! Act! The order came from that instinctive part of his brain that had saved him in the past, and the young man obeyed its primal instructions immediately. Careless of discovery, he rose to his feet and rushed towards the commanders’ pavilion to collect his weapons, shouting as he ran.

  ‘Sound the alarm!’ he yelled at the top of his voice. ‘Awake! Saxons on the hillside! Alarm! Alarm!’

  At the raised tent flap, he ran into a dishevelled Germanus, sleep clouded but gripping his sword and shield in his calloused hands. To save time, Arthur pointed back the way he had come.

  ‘Twenty of them,’ he spat out. ‘Just below the brow of the hill.’

  A lesser man would have wasted time in questioning him, but Germanus was an experienced veteran so he cast off sleep and loped away, yelling to alert the guard. Inside the tent, Arthur snatched up his knife and sword before struggling to buckle his iron-plated tunic into position. Leaving it half buckled and unable to find his helmet, he turned and ran back the way he had come in time to see Germanus already involved in a deadly struggle with a shaggy Saxon who had run up the last yards of the incline. More hulking shapes were beginning to materialise out of the darkness and Arthur realised that the hospital was under serious threat. Before he had time to think, he was confronted by a heavily armed Saxon warrior who grinned at him with a flash of white teeth in the dim light.

  ‘Come to me, little boy,’ the man sneered, beckoning with his left hand so that Arthur saw the axe dangling from a long thong looped around the wrist. ‘Show me how much manhood you have.’ The Saxon swung the axe into his hand. ‘My sweetheart here will bring you dreams of peace and rest.’

  ‘You talk too much,’ Arthur replied, but his bravado was marred by the squeak in his breaking voice. His eyes darted over the huge man. The Saxon’s face held no fear of the beardless youth before him.

  The warrior laughed. Germanus had warned Arthur early in his training that most warriors used insults to unsettle their opponents and break their concentration, and that he would soon be among the walking dead if he responded by losing his temper. Ignoring the taunt, Arthur fell into the fighting crouch that the arms master had literally beaten into him with the flat of his blade.

  The Saxon made a feint designed to force Arthur to overreach himself to counter it, the axe in his left hand cocked and ready to separate Arthur’s head from his shoulders with minimal effort. But Germanus had made Arthur practise counter-moves so often that the response was second nature to him. With his feet planted firmly on the rough ground, he stepped backward to thwart the huge man’s feint, leaving his adversary with two choices. The warrior could either advance towards Arthur or he too could step back, a move which would force the younger man to come towards him.

  The Saxon’s choice was never in doubt and the cold part of Arthur’s brain anticipated it. Arthur was obviously an immature youth, so the warrior sensed fear in his backward step and advanced in a rush. One of Germanus’s maxims flashed through Arthur’s head. ‘Make big men smaller,’ the arms master had told him. ‘Cut him off at the knees, and you’ll bring him down to your level.’ Arthur already stood over six feet in his bare feet, but his adversary was at least six inches taller and twice his weight.

  Arthur stepped elegantly to one side and bent at the knee. The warrior’s axe passed harmlessly over his head and the Dragon Knife found its mark, slicing through flesh and muscle and across the bone of the Saxon’s leg.

  With a howl of rage, the Saxon fell to his knees, blood spurting from what was essentially a trivial wound. With the speed of a striking snake, he lashed out instinctively with his sword, but Arthur was very fast. With a spin on his left foot that a dancer would have envied, he evaded the blow and positioned himself almost at the Saxon’s back. The warrior had over-extended himself, and Arthur was able to avoid his enemy’s boiled leather cuirass and stab with all his strength into his unarmoured side.

  His sword slid under the Saxon’s armpit and sweetly between the ribs, collapsing a lung in its passage and cutting the great vein leading to the heart. The years of practice on a straw-filled manikin finally bore fruit, and Arthur silently thanked Germanus for the hours of effort that made his actions second nature.

  The Saxon collapsed like a felled tree, blood pouring from both his mouth and the wound. As Arthur stepped aside, sweeping his long curls away from his face, another Saxon appeared out of the darkness. Arthur reacted instinctively, raising his sword and taking the full force of an overhead axe blow on the blade. The weight of the attack drove the boy to his knees and he felt his weapon shiver in his hand before it snapped into two pieces.

  He tossed the
ruined sword hilt aside as the Saxon drew back for the killing blow. Faster than he would have thought possible, Arthur fell to the ground and rolled, careless of the blood from the first Saxon which was fouling the earth. Miraculously, the Dragon Knife found its way into his right hand and he drove upward with all his might, impaling the Saxon on the blade through the unprotected genitals, for few soldiers anticipate a blow from beneath.

  The knife was almost wrenched from Arthur’s hand by the Saxon’s paroxysms of pain, but he kept his grip on it and stabbed again from his back, using both hands as he aimed for the great artery in his adversary’s thigh. Then, drenched in the dying man’s blood, which spurted out like a fountain, Arthur clambered to his feet, appropriating the Saxon’s sword as he rose.

  Around him, the struggle was desperate. Armed only with staves and pikes, the stretcher bearers had joined the fray, led by the freckle-faced, youthful warrior and his four companions who were on guard duty. Although the stretcher bearers equalled the enemy numbers, the British men were untrained farm workers whose talents lay in their brawn rather than their fighting skills. The Saxon warriors carved through them as if they were made of straw and the night was soon alive with screams and prayers and the moans of the dying.

  ‘Ring the alarm bell,’ Arthur bellowed with a voice that broke in his mingled rage and fear. ‘Ring the damned bell.’ Someone in the hospital tent must have heard, because a bell began to toll with the desperate peal of muscles jerking frantically on the end of the rope. Suddenly, Arthur realised that Bran’s tent had been set alight and the ruddy glow was illuminating the desperate conflict, giving him his first clear view of the entire scene. Good, he thought as he countered a vicious underhand sword cut aimed at his belly. Bedwyr will see and he’ll come to our rescue.