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

by M. K. Hume

  ‘Aye. My father Bedwyr stood on that line beside Cadwy Scarface when they were young men,’ Arthur chipped in. ‘I’ve heard the tale a thousand times, and now I’ll know what it feels like.’

  Then, as they waited for the call to arms, Arthur had shown his companions the sharpened upper rim of his shield. He explained how Bedwyr had used that deadly edge to slice open unwary throats from below. Silently, Germanus and Gareth decided to sharpen their shields as soon as they were free to do so.

  Now, tense and sick of waiting, the line crouched at the ready. Almost every man jumped when an owl called from the coppices where the cavalry waited in the darkness, its scream unnaturally loud in the silence of the night. Meanwhile, a heavy blanket of fog began to roll across the frozen ground so that the waiting warriors could barely recognise the faces of the men beside them. Silence hung heavily around them, as dense as the fog itself, while the earth seemed to hold its breath.

  Then an arrow sang over their heads, followed by another. The arrow heads were wrapped in oily rags that were burning fiercely, aimed to land about a hundred yards ahead of the waiting line of Celtic warriors, and dimly lighting an area of about six feet around them. Shadows appeared in the area where the arrows were landing, large shadows that moved quickly until the flames were extinguished.

  ‘Here they come,’ Germanus said in his normal voice as the front defensive line rose swiftly, locked shields and braced for the coming impact. More flaming arrows hissed overhead with a sound like the whirr of giant gnats and lit the flat ground between the Britons and the north-western wall of Calleva, which had suddenly become alive with running figures that loped through the fog like golems or spirits of the dead as they hunted down anything with red blood pumping through its veins. For a moment, Arthur’s heart almost stopped with sudden, superstitious panic.

  ‘Breathe through your nose as deeply as you can, Arthur.’ Germanus’s voice was steady and calm as he sensed his student’s sudden panic. ‘Now! Brace your legs, because a running man the size of these devils can knock you off your feet if you’re not ready for him.’

  A scream, primal and shrill, cut through the unnatural silence. ‘One of the Jutes has found a fire-pit. May he enjoy the warmth,’ Gareth hissed callously. On cue, another brace of arrows streaked through the fog. One of them struck the pit and a vicious fire fuelled by pitch and oil leaped up to turn one scrambling figure into a pillar of flame, hair streaming like a red comet and highlighting the mass of men who were pouring past him, oblivious of his agony. Another man fell as the ground opened up under his feet and another who had been running at his heels tripped over him. Soon the falling arrows were lighting human torches who capered and danced in a blur of moving, blazing flesh until a casual knife thrust or axe blow from their peers put them out of their misery.

  And then the Jutes were upon them, coming out of the fog like wraiths that seemed twice the size of mortal men. The shock of their meeting, round Saxon shield against rectangular Roman one, shook the line until it seemed the defence would crumble.

  Arthur had been well taught. Ignore everything but the man who came for you. Stab, slash and push with every ounce of muscle until the enemy slipped on the icy grass and fell. Without pausing to think, Arthur stabbed down with his new sword and felt it cleave through mail, ox hide and flesh before he wrenched it free, and a great spurt of blood sprayed up from slashed arteries. Then, concentrating on the next comer, Arthur kept his shield high to protect Gareth on his left while Germanus on his right protected him. Safe in this cocoon of repetitive movement, Arthur faced the next warrior, and the next, until the earth was slick with blood. Maintaining his footing became the difference between life and death.

  Behind him, arrows continued to sing from bowstrings, filling the lightening sky with sheets of iron-tipped wood which sent many men to their knees before they reached the waiting line of Britons, who managed, somehow, to remain on their feet under the massive weight of the huge Jutes. If one defender fell, another seamlessly took his place, for even the passage of fifteen years hadn’t changed the iron discipline and strategies developed by the Dragon King. And all the while, a weak sun struggled to rise through the fog that swirled around the dead and the dying like a river of blue-grey ice.

  In such a desperate struggle, Arthur decided it was probably best that he could see very little. The faces of his adversaries were always the same; lips drawn back over teeth in a howl of bloodlust; eyes wide and staring with that special madness of men so fired by adrenalin that they scarcely felt their own fatal wounds as they threw themselves upon the sword blades of their enemies. The screaming in his brain had resolved itself into a single voice that cried out, ‘Sword up. Shield up. Slice through to the chin. Make him bleed.’ And Arthur obeyed rhythmically, as a bloody sun rose slowly and the fog began to lift. Around him, the line of tribal warriors was becoming painfully thin, while the Jute corpses formed a wall of dead. Still, the Jutes continued to attack.

  The man directly in front of Arthur was as tall as he was, but older and battle hardened, with a face blistered raw by the flames through which he had passed. He must have strayed too close to the fire-pits, Arthur’s brain told him as Oakheart slid cleanly upward between the plates of iron on the Jute’s chest and penetrated his mail shirt as if it was made of wool rather than tiny rings of iron. Then his mind suddenly shrieked at him, and his shield was twisted out of his grasp by a wicked blow from one side.

  Immediately, Gareth used his own shield to cover Arthur, baring his body to attack, but Oakheart chose to sweep in a wider arc, seemingly of its own accord, as if it enjoyed having room to manoeuvre. The Dragon Knife found its way into Arthur’s left hand of its own volition, and the long-practised patterns of the dance of death began automatically. As the sun broke through the mist it caught Arthur in its feeble, ruddy light. Saxon and Celt paused momentarily and stared at the figure that emerged from the line of defenders to fight such a vicious individual battle. Then the warriors returned to their own deadly rituals of combat.

  But, far away on a hilltop, Cerdic saw Arthur clearly, as if his old eyes had suddenly been cleared of the rheum of old age. The citizens of Calleva Atrebatum also saw the figure in the red cloak and a wave of excitement swept through the besieged town.

  ‘The Dragon King has come again,’ the whispers began, and the word was passed from man to man, growing louder and louder with each repetition. ‘You can see him from the ramparts whenever the mists clear. He bears a knife and sword as always, and has no recourse to a shield. Our enemies are dying all around him. See! The Dragon King has come again, just as he promised!’

  On his hilltop, Cerdic cursed, coughed and spat blood on the earth as he watched the tall, cloaked figure whose weapons wove such complex patterns of death that they were almost too fast for the Saxon’s eyes to follow. ‘I know he’s dead,’ he murmured, so quietly that only his son could hear him. ‘I could dig the bastard up if I went to Glastonbury. No one, not even the Red Dragon, can defeat death.’

  But fear clutched at the heart of the Saxon bretwalda as blood and sputum caused him to spit once again so he could breathe more easily.

  Then, in a mad thunder, he heard the British cavalry come at a gallop, not to attack Havar and his sacrificial Jutes from the rear, but towards the amphitheatre, the engineers and the troops guarding the baggage train.

  ‘Let him be dead, Loki,’ Cerdic swore as the Celtic cavalry cut the sappers to ribbons and swept on. ‘Stop playing tricks with me.’

  Then the morning light dazzled his eyes and Cerdic was forced to lean against his son’s strong body for support.

  Below him, the murder began.

  CHAPTER XV

  THE FIRE THAT WILL NOT DIE

  Truth sits upon the lips of dying men.

  Matthew Arnold, ‘Sohrab and Rustum’

  As the sun began to rise over the killing fields to the west of Calleva Atrebatum, Bedwyr’s cavalry struck beyond the eastern gate. The first dozen horsemen rode
to the gate and killed the sappers there while the remaining cavalry headed for the warriors guarding the baggage train. Before them lay the well that supplied water to the Saxon forces. Caught off guard, the foot soldiers looked up at the horses, terrified by the sudden appearance of the cavalry out of the last shreds of the dissipating fog. One rider in particular was riding very carefully in the saddle as he clutched a container of raw, unglazed terracotta to his breast, his face as white as any of the enemy. His terror was written clearly in his colour, his expression and his wide, gasping mouth. Then, at the last instant before the horsemen would strike the enemy, the solitary rider veered away and hurled the cylinder towards a cluster of men who had been drawing water from the well. It smashed open on the hard ground and a spray of liquid fire engulfed the Saxon warriors.

  As he watched from his vantage point high above the walls of Calleva Atrebatum, Cerdic could scarcely believe the explosion caused by that single container of something. Clearly the fruit of the chaos demons, whatever it was seemed to set the air itself on fire and over twenty men were suddenly transformed into columns of flame in front of him.

  Then another white-faced rider appeared out of the mist with his accompanying guards. This time, in the chaos and with his companions clearing the way, the cavalryman rode towards the heart of the milling group of warriors by the baggage train and set his container soaring over their heads. As he spurred away, the lid of the terracotta urn became dislodged and the liquid hit the cold air, igniting in an arc of flame. Horses ran madly, oxen trampled men underfoot as they struggled to escape, and the earth itself began to blaze, regardless of the cold fog that should have hampered its spread – but had no effect on the raging fire from hell.

  Attempts were made to use buckets of water to extinguish the flames, but the hellfire grew, feeding on the water and claiming new victims as it spread. Meanwhile, Bedwyr’s cavalry rode back through those Saxons who had avoided the flames and were trying to flee from the vicinity of the well, their weapons forgotten in the primal instinct to be as far as possible from these unnatural flames that refused to be extinguished. Resisting the instinct to cut them down where they milled, Bedwyr ordered his troops to ride away from the eastern gateway as the fire finally started to die down, some of the more intelligent foot soldiers using handfuls of earth to smother the flames enveloping the twitching mounds of melting flesh and bone.

  From his position on the hilltop, Cerdic watched the destruction of over two hundred of his men and writhed with rage as if he too was burning. ‘Halt the attack!’ he yelled to one of his runners. ‘I must think! They have some kind of weapon the like of which I’ve never seen.’

  The Jute force pulled back to a position just out of bow-shot, and Havar sent another runner back to Cerdic, begging for some of the reserves who were waiting by the western gate. He had lost over four hundred men in his frontal attacks, and had yet to understand how this catastrophe could have occurred. He stared impotently at the British lines and his eyes burned red with the berserker rage. With difficulty, he kept some control of his reason, recognising that now was the time for cool tactical decisions. He looked towards Calleva and the oily black smoke that rose ominously behind the town. The stench, even from this distance, had carried on the freshening cold winds, and Havar’s stomach roiled with his recognition of cooked human flesh.

  Standing in a small semicircle of dead and dying Jutes, Arthur came out of an odd kind of trance. He had been conscious of everything that had gone on around him with a jewel-bright precision, but a clear glass barrier had stood between him and his emotions so that many of the horrors he had witnessed had seemed to be happening to someone else.

  The day hovered on the verge of misty rain, but so far the weather had not had any particular effect on the pattern of the battle. The fog had been clammy and every surface seemed to be damp, but the defenders of the ditch and mound had been spared the discomfort of fighting in the sleety rain that early winter often brought. Arthur stared up at some overflying geese as they moved in a wedge formation, far above the low, scudding clouds so that they were only intermittently visible. He could imagine the proud, barred wings that reminded him of old Pictish men covered with dark tattoos commemorating battles beyond counting, and he wished he could be flying with them, away from this place and the death that surrounded him.

  When Havar retreated, teams of men from the Celtic reserves poured across the causeway between the ditches and began to move the bodies of the dead Saxons into large piles. Arthur was appalled when he saw an Ordovice tribesman casually cut the throat of one Jute warrior who was still twitching, deftly avoiding the jet of blood that arced from the carotid artery.

  ‘Are we animals then, that we act like the Saxons whom we so revile?’ Arthur muttered as he watched another warrior, an Atrebate, strip massy golden arm-rings from a dead thane, and he turned his head away when the same man lifted a flaccid hand with golden rings on the thumb and index finger. Without being told, Arthur knew immediately that this corpse robber would cut the digits from the hand to collect his trophies.

  Arthur looked across at Germanus. He was still only half aware of the world around him, but sickened to the core by what he had seen. Germanus showed more sangfroid, having watched men act like brutes on the Continent for twenty years, but he understood the shock experienced by Arthur and Gareth, both of whom were profoundly ashamed of their own people and their avaricious behaviour.

  ‘Your shield, Arthur. I’d rather you didn’t go without it again. You could have been killed – or one of us could as we attempted to cover you,’ he said mildly, to draw Arthur’s attention away from the growing piles of corpses. Arthur’s fey mood made the arms master nervous, worried about this peculiar blankness that had come over his charge in the middle of a major battle. He ordered Arthur to sit and the young man did so, settling himself on a patch of soil so bloodstained it looked as if the earth itself was wounded.

  ‘What’s that?’ he asked vaguely, pointing at a coarse cloth bag on which Gareth was sitting. Germanus decided that the boy was in a kind of odd survival shock as the automatic responses to danger that had saved him during the battle slowly began to dissipate.

  ‘It’s a gift from Father Lorcan. A sand bag. We may need to use it if an accident occurs with the Marine Fire,’ he replied quietly, as if to a child. Arthur had fought like a demon in the battle, inhuman in his speed and deadliness, and the arms master was now convinced that this boy-man had been born specifically to salvage what was possible from the destruction of the west. Like a demon-spawn, he had ignored minor slashes and injuries while attacking the most crazed and vicious fighters and killing with machine-like precision. Perhaps God was allowing him this short period of confusion during the lull in the battle so he could begin to accept the blood he had shed in the early hours of the dawn. Arthur’s fellow warriors on the British line were already treating him cautiously, as if he was mad or had been blessed with the frenzy of the gods. Germanus watched Gareth cleaning the sticky, clinging mud from his pupil’s sword and the Dragon Knife until they seemed untouched and unsullied, and wished he could do the same for their master.

  At the very limit of the bowmen’s reach, Havar paced and raged as he waited for Cerdic’s orders. Havar had never felt the true sting of failure in his life, and now that he knew its taste he found the flavour to be as bitter as gall or wormwood. Worse yet, he felt as though he was a smaller man in the eyes of his thanes because of his failures. Cerdic had called them back from the enemy. Havar had been instructed to retreat. Unthinkable! ‘By the jokester god’s balls, they’re only Celts!’ he roared at a hapless warrior who was trying to replait his locks during the hiatus. ‘Where did they get the strength to do this to me? And who the fuck is the warrior in the red cloak?’

  No one answered, because no one knew. Besides, sensible men made themselves scarce when Havar lost his temper.

  From his vantage point, Havar scanned the front line of the British defenders. Finally, he found t
hree oversized men together, two of them caring for the largest of the three. In size they could have been Jute or Saxon, or even Dene, who were taller yet, but their armour showed their allegiance very clearly, now that Havar had the luxury of examining them at his leisure.

  ‘Can you see the device on that clod’s chest, Erikk? It’s something in red,’ Havar said, irritable because thirty-five years had robbed his eyes of their clarity.

  ‘It’s some form of winged creature,’ the boy answered. Erikk was Havar’s eldest son and this battle was his first taste of blood. ‘I’ve got it! It’s a red dragon with its wings outspread.’

  ‘So the White Dragon battles the Red, Erikk. It seems that legends still walk the earth.’

  Perversely, the symbol of the Red Dragon emblazoned across his enemy’s chest comforted Havar. All men knew that the dragon was the favoured beast of the gods: no ordinary adversary had defeated the Jutes.

  While Havar waited, Cerdic examined the results of the British cavalry attack in person. Men had literally cooked within their armour, and survivors were anxious to tell him that water did not quench the strange fire but seemed to feed it, sending out blazing particles that set fire to other men nearby. The fire stuck to a man’s skin, like sap or gum, and ate through skin, flesh, muscle and bones. Sickened, Cerdic knew that he was looking at the work of a demon, a force that no man or king had the right to wield.

  ‘Cynric!’ he called. More and more, he could feel fluid building in his lungs, and he knew that his life span would soon be cut short. But his brain still worked with efficient clarity, like the wooden cogs of a Roman war machine he had once seen, the wheels and great, notched gears working seamlessly together to kill and maim. Cerdic knew his mind was like that machine, only faster and sharper, and he determined to set it to work against this great evil. In a wholly northern way, he cursed those who wielded this fury – the madmen who had stolen the fires of Udgaard.