by David Drake
Lancelot's fine armor had drawn more than its share of attackers. The Gaul was handling them in easy—almost leisurely—fashion, striking with both the head and the butt spike of his lance. As Mael watched, Lancelot cleared a Saxon from his left side with a jolt from his buckler.
Arthur's own style was as lethal, though more frantic than that of his Master of Soldiers. The king was wheeling his horse in a tight caracole that intimidated footmen while he slashed at them to either side with his sword. Arthur's silvered armor danced as he moved. A blow of some sort had severed one wing from his helmet and scarred the plating beneath it. The war-horse foamed as it trampled over the bodies of two slain Saxons. Nearby lay the British standard bearer, his teeth locked in the throat of the berserker who had killed him. The red dragon lapped over both men like a shroud. Cei was nowhere to be seen, but his horse trotted riderless at the edge of the woods.
Below, the melee begun when Starkad had struck the foremost Saxons had expanded into a full battle. Men had flowed together from both sides. Now the lines were beginning to disintegrate again from attrition. Aelle, the Saxon king, traded spear thrusts with two Companions. Twenty feet away, Starkad and a Gothic swordsman fought a trio of Saxons. As Mael wrenched his own weapon free, Starkad finished one opponent by chopping through his left thigh. At almost the same moment, the Gothic Companion doubled over with a surprised expression and both hands spread to catch the intestines spilling out of his torn jerkin. Starkad turned to block the bloody sword which had killed the Goth, leaving his right side and the Saxon there unattended.
Mael took a step forward with his spear cocked in his right hand. He loosed. The Irishman's legs were rubbery from exertion and the heat, but they held him. The shaft flew straight. The Saxon's upraised sword glanced off Starkad's shoulder, but dead fingers had released it even as the blow had started. The impact of Mael's spear punching into his chest drove the Saxon a step backward. He fell there, hemorrhaging bright streams from mouth and nose.
Mael knelt, panting hugely against the weight and constriction of his armor. His eye settled on the Saxon king. Aelle was not a young man; his beard was a grizzled red like the fur of an old fox. But the Saxon was as cunning as a fox as well, survivor of more battles than most men could dream of fighting. Mael saw him thrust one Briton through the thigh and drag him like a harpooned fish into the path of the second. When that Companion stumbled, Aelle's shield boss laid him out as surely as a club to the head could have. Pulling his spear point free, the Saxon king stepped over the litter of bodies and hurled his spear at Arthur.
Arthur had just dispatched the last of his attackers. He was shouting with triumph when the Saxon spear took his horse in the right ham. The beast gave a whinny that was almost a scream. It reared. Arthur, terrified of being afoot, screamed himself. He dropped his sword and clutched his saddle with both hands.
Lancelot's eyes were as cold as the iron frame of his helmet. He spurred his horse from a walk to a gallop. His lance was couched under his arm, the point aimed at the center of Aelle's breastbone where the impact would knock the Saxon down even if he managed to interpose his shield to the blow. Aelle had drawn a hand axe from his belt. With a feral grin and the timing of a man who had seen thirty years of battle, Aelle brought his axe around in an overhand arc. It intersected the lance an inch behind the head. The wood sheared and the point flew away, its sharpened edges glistening like the facets of a gemstone. The shaft, swung downward by the blow, drove into the ground and lifted Lancelot by directing his own momentum onto the sudden fulcrum. With hideous perfection, Aelle made disaster certain by sweeping his target around. Its boss took the horse on the left eye as the beast drove past him. The horse shied. Its feet skidded out from under it, narrowly missing Aelle as the hindquarters slewed around. The beast's weight pinned the struggling Lancelot's right leg against the turf beneath it. The animal's rib cage thudded like a drum. Man and horse cried out together.
Aelle, midway between Arthur and Mael, regained his balance. He cried, "You at least will get your death this day, Unfoot!" As if in response, the legs of Arthur's wounded mount collapsed. The king slid to the ground despite his screams and his grasping at the mane and saddle. Brandishing his shield and hand axe, Aelle ran toward his fallen opponent thirty feet away.
To either flank, lancers were riding uphill to help finish the Saxons, but there was no Briton as close to the two kings as Mael was. The Irishman grunted and took a step toward Aelle. The Saxon was moving away from Mael, and besides, Mael had no weapon left but his target. He slipped his left arm out of the loops and gripped the rim with both hands. The shield was five layers of birch plywood, faced with leather and locked together by an edge band of iron. Slightly convex at the face, it weighed almost forty pounds. With all his remaining strength, Mael brought the shield up from his left side and released it. The target spun like a huge discus, curving uphill toward the point at which Aelle and Arthur were about to meet.
Aelle was raising his axe high overhead and shouting down at Arthur when the shield caught him in the back of the neck. It killed him instantly. The Saxon's cries snapped off as his spine parted. His head scissored back and met his shoulder blades while the target spun off to the side. Aelle's axe flew high over Arthur to stick in the ground near the fallen standard. Aelle's flaccid body slammed face-first at the feet of the British king.
Arthur stood up very slowly, bracing himself with a hand on the ground. His eyes were on Aelle, ignoring Mael and the riders spurring toward their Leader from both flanks. The Pendragon's face was white except for his moustache and the blood trailing from his bitten lip. With his twisted foot, Arthur kicked at Aelle's head. It lolled on the broken neck. The helmet rolled off and the sun gleamed on the Saxon's bare pate. Arthur kicked him again and spat. "Swine!" he shouted. "You Saxon swine will all kiss my feet or burn, burn!"
Arthur suddenly straightened and glared at the men around him. The Companions had paused when their Leader rose. Now the naked fury of the king's stare drove at them like a gust of chill wind. "Lancelot! Where are you, Lancelot?" the king shouted.
Mael turned. Lancelot's horse had scrambled to its feet. The Master of Soldiers raised himself to his left knee. Blood was dripping from the top of his other boot. Though Lancelot's leg had not been broken, its flesh, pinioned against the bone by the horse's half ton of weight, had been torn as if by an axe. When the Gaul tried to stand, his face went sallow and his right leg buckled under him.
"God damn you, Roman!" Arthur shouted. "You always fail when I need you!" Mael's own expression blanked. The Irishman had a momentary urge to put a sword through Lancelot's heart as a mercy, despite his hatred for the tall captain.
The king's eyes flicked aside. They focused for the first time on Mael. "You, Irishman, you'll not fail me. I need you to ride to Merlin. Tell him to loose the dragon now." Arthur's face was growing red. He paused, then the words began to spatter out again. "Tell him it must kill and burn and waste the whole land from here to the seacoast. Tell him to sear the Saxons until they either wade into the sea or beg me, beg me, for mercy! And that mercy I may grant or not grant!"
Mael licked at the sweat rimming his upper lip. "I—I'll need equipment—"
"Yes, yes," Arthur snapped, "anything, horses . . . Lancelot, write him out a warrant to take whatever he needs along the way. Hurry!"
Two men were helping Lancelot sit up. He had taken off his helmet and was sucking wine greedily from a skin bottle. He winced. "In my saddlebags," the Gaul muttered. "There's parchment there and an ink stick."
One of the pair holding the Master of Soldiers leaped up and caught the nearby horse before Arthur could flare again in rage. The Companion rummaged in the bag for the materials, then brought them back quickly. Lancelot spat on the ink and began to scratch words on the scroll with a reed pen.
Arthur had unlaced his helmet. He mopped his face with a towel soaked in water. There was a long welt on the left side where the cheek piece of his helmet had been driven i
nto the skin. Otherwise, the king had his normal color back. "There'll be Saxons scattered from here to Glevum," he said to Mael.
The Irishman was examining the sword he had just taken from Aelle's body. It was a long horseman's blade of Roman pattern and Spanish manufacture, old and well cared for and deadly.
"Plenty of British cutthroats, too," Arthur was saying. "Battle draws them." He looked back down the slope. Some Saxons were still writhing amidst the crows' feet, trying to crawl away from the squads of Companions who carefully picked their way in to finish the wounded. Nearer the river, there was a denser carpet of men with arrows and sometimes broken lance heads protruding from their vitals. The Dubglas still choked on bodies. Its current had not yet washed all the blood away from them.
With unexpected insight, Arthur added, "Maybe that's the only kind of men that battle does draw. But I'll send Gawain with you. I want the message to get through."
Mael looked up. "Leader," he said, "send Starkad along instead of Gawain."
The king glared at the Dane who was now shambling up the hill to his friend's side. Starkad's smile was contented. He had lost his steel cap somewhere, and blood, slung from his axe head after his first stroke, speckled him all over. He himself appeared to be uninjured. "The Dane?" Arthur said. "He rides a horse like a sack of grain."
"He fights like any three of your Companions," Mael said, with no attempt to keep the edge out of his voice. "Send him with me or send someone else in my place."
The good humor of victory held. Arthur shrugged and called, "Lancelot, add the Dane to the warrant."
The Gaul's face was impassive as he scratched a flourish on the parchment. He handed the document and pen to his Leader. Arthur signed his name laboriously, chewing at the corner of his lip as he formed each letter. He gave the result to Mael. "Don't fail me, Irishman," the king said. "Don't even think of failing me."
Chapter Fifteen
Mael led a pair of remounts while Starkad rode alongside him unencumbered. The two of them were on the best horses available after the battle, steeds which had carried longbowmen to the site and had seen no further use that day. It was late afternoon. Even with hard riding, it would be a full day before Mael and Starkad could reach Moridunum.
The pace that Mael set was jolting and would wreck the horses in thirty miles. That was expected, and the mounts were replaceable. Starkad was riding as clumsily as Arthur had suggested he would, clinging to the saddle as if it were a spar and he a shipwrecked sailor. Each step hammered the Dane's spine and the insides of his thighs. He treated the punishment as he had that which he had received in the battle: something to be ignored or, if it could not be ignored, endured. At some point, even Starkad's strength would fail him and he would roll out of the saddle like a bundle of scrap iron. Until then he would ride.
As when they hiked toward Winchester, the two men kept general silence. Hoofbeats sounded on the metaled highway and their harness creaked around them. At a patrol station west of Lincoln, they left the horses they had been riding. There were no mounts there to exchange for them because the stables had been stripped for the field army. Trusting that stations farther west would have a better selection remaining, they pushed on astride the remounts the Irishman had been leading.
Night fell. At the post at which Mael and Starkad next stopped, the keeper's wife—her husband had been carried along with the army as a horse holder—demanded to know how the battle went. "Dead Saxons," Mael said, thrusting his head in a horse trough to clear away some of the grogginess. "All shapes and sizes, all dead. I doubt thousand of them got away." The woman was chortling with joy as they remounted and rode away. Mael thought of the thousands of piled bodies, men he had never known and whose families would never know them again.
There were three more watch stations in the War Zone. Mael and Starkad changed horses at each of them. In the more settled country to the west, there were no longer military posts and stables to supply remounts, but the farms were more spacious. Privately owned horses were available. At a villa near Mancetter, they traded their blown army steeds for a pair of gangling bays, draft animals but the best that circumstances offered. They rode them twenty miles until they met a landowner rich enough to be accompanied on the rounds of his estate by a mounted bodyguard.
"Hold up," Mael called to the pair. He rode alongside the civilians and fumbled in his scrip for Arthur's warrant. Rubbing his eyes with his free hand, he held out the paper to the landowner.
While the bodyguard, a lanky man whose tunic half hid a mail corselet, lowered at his side, the magnate read the warrant. "We need your horses," Mael said. "Arthur will make it right in a few days."
"We'll exchange horses on Arthur's say-so?" the landowner asked, his eyebrows rising with his voice. He had a cultured Latin accent. "And what has that barbarian ever done for me?"
Behind Mael, Starkad grated out his first words in ten hours: "He left your head on your shoulders, scum. I won't, if I hear your voice again." Mael glanced back at his friend. The Dane was hunched forward in his saddle. The morning sun was low enough to throw his hulking shadow across both the Britons. Because Starkad had not taken time to clean it, the axe in his hand was crusted with dried blood.
The bodyguard was already swinging out of his saddle by the time his blanching master ordered him to dismount.
Starkad did not speak again until mid-afternoon of the day after the battle. They had exchanged horses for the tenth or twelfth time—Mael had lost count—and were on the last stage of their ride. Sounding surprisingly hoarse, the Dane croaked, "Brother, what do we do after we get where we're going?"
Mael opened his mouth. Though he tried to speak, his tongue did not want to bend. He spat toward the roadside and made another attempt. "We'll give Merlin the message. Bathe. Sleep. Drink. Drink first, yeah. Maybe Veleda will be waiting for me. . . ."
"Then let's stop here for a few hours."
"What?" Mael turned to stare at his friend. Starkad gripped both front pommels of his saddle. His legs hung straight down, toes pointing to the ground. The Dane's face and beard were white with dust except where tears had broken paths from the corner of each eye. "Are you all right?" Mael asked. He reined up sharply and reached out a hand to steady Starkad.
"I said these dwarf-begotten horses would have to kill me before I fell off," the Dane said very softly, "and neither thing has happened yet. But if we ride straight in there now, my friend, you won't have a man behind you. Only meat, raw and tender. And they'll see me like this, those women and the burned-out men we left behind. And I'll be no better than they, Mael, no better at all, and I don't . . . want that.
"Please."
"Manannan, you didn't have to ask," Mael lied in embarrassment. "I was going to suggest we lay up here myself. I figure there's a good chance they aren't going to believe us right off—Merlin or the rest of the crew, either. If I stumble all over my tongue and can't remember what day it is, which is the kind of shape I'm in right now, we'll be thrown in the hole as deserters until the rest of the army gets back."
The friends dismounted in a willow coppice near a stream which they muddied in washing themselves. Mael kept his back turned so as not to see the agony on the Dane's face as he forced his legs to move again. Mael's own thighs could not have been more painful had the femurs been broken. He could imagine how the less experienced Starkad felt. Stretched on the ground in front of their tethered horses, the men slept for five hours to the rim of twilight. Then Mael lifted his head from his pillowing saddle. Starkad, aroused by the creak of the leather, crawled to his feet as well.
"Feel okay?" the Irishman asked.
"Weak as a baby," grumbled Starkad. He grasped a two-inch willow beside him and tried to break it off with one hand. The supple trunk bent but would not part. Suddenly the root end flew up, spattering mud over both men. Mael cursed. "Maybe not quite as weak as a baby," said Starkad with a grin.
They rigged the horses and rode on at the same savage pace as before. The exercise
loosened Mael's sleep-tightened muscles as lard loosens before a fire. The touch of the saddle was fire indeed to his bruised thighs.
With the sun low and in their faces, the riders approached the villa. The women in the enlisted lines high-built behind the main building, caught the glint and jingle of harness first. The watchers began to drift toward the flagged entranceway. The women had been sitting in little groups in the cool of the evening, talking and mending garments. A few of them ran inside, shouting on rising inflections to their friends within. Those, wives and mothers and daughters, tumbled downstairs and out of doors, stumbling in haste and pinning on their cloaks as they ran. The gentle motion became a rush akin to panic. A hundred yards from the doorway of the villa, the crowd struck Mael and Starkad like hens around a farm wife at feeding time. "Is my man—" "Tell me about—" A hundred variations on the theme sounded in as many languages.
Over the babel, using his spear shaft as a lever to thrust away the hands groping for his reins, Mael cried out, "We won! We won! But let us through, women. . . ." Then, "We don't know the names of anybody, anybody, and we've brought a message for Merlin."
The Irishman had to shout the same thing repeatedly since only the nearest of the crowd could hear in the clamor. As some melted back like ice in a torrent, other women as quickly took their places. Starkad was unexpectedly gentle himself. He said over and over, "Unless your man was a Saxon, he'll be back in a few days. It was no more trouble than a pig killing, it was."
The two spearmen at the door of the villa were a twenty-year-old with blond hair and one leg and an older veteran still weak with the dysentery that had kept him back from the campaign. The youth held out a flaring torch toward Mael to see him more clearly than the waning sun allowed. "Merlin," the Irishman demanded. "Where is he? We've got a message for him from the Leader."