I was wounded early. My shield deflected the axe blow and took most of its force, but the blade still struck my shoulder and numbed my left arm, though the wound did not stop my spear from slicing the throat of the axeman. Then, when the press of men was too great for the spear to be of more use, I drew Hywelbane and stabbed and hacked her blade into the grunting, swaying, shoving mass of men. It became a pushing match, but so do all battles until one side breaks. Just a sweaty, hot, filthy pushing match.
This one was made more difficult because the Saxon line, that was everywhere about five men deep, outflanked our shield-wall. To guard against envelopment we had bent our line back at its ends to present two smaller shield-walls to the attackers, and for a time those two Saxon flanks hesitated, perhaps hoping that the men in the centre would break through us first. Then a Saxon chieftain came to my end of the line and shamed his men into an assault. He ran forward on his own, swept aside two spears with his shield, and hurled himself at the centre of our flank’s short line. Cavan died there, pierced by a lunge of the Saxon chief’s sword, and the sight of that brave man single-handedly opening up our flank wall brought his men roaring forward in a wild, elated rush.
It was then that Arthur charged out of the unfinished hall. I did not see the charge, but I heard it. The bards say his horses’ hooves shook the world, and indeed the ground did seem to quiver, though perhaps that was only the noise of those great beasts that were shod with flat iron plates strapped tight to their hooves. The big horses hit the exposed end of the Saxon line and the battle really ended with that terrible impact. Aelle had supposed that his men would break us with dogs, and that his rearward ranks would hold off our horsemen with their shields and spears, for he knew well enough that no horse would ever charge home into a well-defended spear-wall and I did not doubt that he had heard how Gorfyddyd’s spearmen had thus kept Arthur at bay in Lugg Vale. But the exposed Saxon flank had become disordered as it charged and Arthur timed his intervention perfectly. He did not wait for his horsemen to form up, he just spurred out of the shadows, shouted at his men to follow and drove Llamrel hard into the open end of the Saxon ranks.
I was spitting at a bearded toothless Saxon who was cursing over the rim of our two shields when Arthur struck. His white cloak streamed behind, his white plumes soared above, and his bright shield threw down the Saxon chief’s banner that was a blood-painted bull’s skull as his spear lanced forward. He abandoned the spear in a Saxon’s belly and ripped Excalibur free, carving it right and left as he drove deep into the enemy’s ranks. Agravain came next, his horse scattering terrified Saxons, then Lanval and the others crashed into the breaking enemy line with swords and spears. Aelle’s men broke like eggs under a hammer. They just ran. I doubt that battle took more than ten minutes from the dogs beginning it to the horses ending it, though it took an hour or more for our horsemen to exhaust their slaughter. Our light horsemen raced screaming across the heath as they carried their spears towards the fleeing enemy and Arthur’s heavier horses drove among the scattered men, killing and killing, while the spearmen ran after, eager for every scrap of plunder. The Saxons ran like deer. They threw away cloaks, armour and weapons in their eagerness to escape. Aelle tried to check them for a moment, then saw the task was hopeless and so cast off his bearskin cloak and ran with his men. He escaped into the trees just a bare moment before our light horsemen plunged after him.
I stayed among the wounded and the dead. Injured dogs howled in pain. Culhwch was staggering with a bleeding thigh, but he would live and so I ignored him and crouched by Cavan. I had never seen him weep before, but his pain was terrible for the Saxon chief’s sword had gone right through his belly. I held his hand, wiped his tears and told him that he had killed his enemy with his counter-thrust. Whether that was true I did not know nor care, I only wanted Cavan to believe it and so I promised him he would cross the bridge of swords with a fifth point on his shield. ‘You will be the first of us to reach the Otherworld,’ I told him, ‘so you will make a place for us.’
‘I will, Lord.’
‘And we shall come to you.’
He gritted his teeth and arched his back, trying to suppress a scream, and I put my right hand round his neck and held my cheek against his. I was weeping. ‘Tell them in the Otherworld,’ I said in his ear,
‘that Derfel Cadarn salutes you as a brave man.’
‘The Cauldron,’ he said. ‘I should have. .’
‘No,’ I interrupted him, ‘no.’ And then, with a mewing sound, he died. I sat beside his body, rocking back and forth because of the pain in my shoulder and the grief in my soul. Tears ran down my cheeks. Issa stood beside me, not knowing what to say, so saying nothing. ‘He always wanted to go home to die,’ I said, ‘to Ireland.’ And after this battle, I thought, he could have done that with so much honour and wealth.
‘Lord,’ Issa said to me.
I thought he was trying to comfort me, but I did not want comfort. The death of a brave man deserves tears and so I ignored Issa and held Cavan’s corpse instead while his soul began its last journey to the bridge of swords that lies beyond Cruachan’s Cave.
‘Lord!’ Issa said again, and something in his voice made me look up. I saw he was pointing east towards London, but when I turned in that direction I could see nothing because the tears were blurring my view. I cuffed them angrily away. And then I saw that another army had come to the field. Another fur-swathed army beneath banners of skulls and bull-horns. Another army with dogs and axes. Another Saxon horde. For Cerdic had come.
* * *
I realized later that all the ruses we had devised to make Aelle attack us and all that good food we had burned to entice his assault had been so much wasted effort, for the Bretrvalda must have known that Cerdic was coming and that he was not coming to attack us, but to attack his fellow Saxon. Cerdic, indeed, was proposing to join us, and Aelle had decided that his best chance of surviving the combined armies was to beat Arthur first and deal with Cerdic afterwards.
Aelle lost that gamble. Arthur’s horsemen broke him and Cerdic arrived too late to join the fight, though surely, for a few moments at least, the treacherous Cerdic must have been tempted to attack Arthur. One swift attack would have broken us and a week’s campaigning would certainly have finished off Aelle’s shattered army, and Cerdic would then have been the ruler of all southern Britain. Cerdic must have been tempted, but he hesitated. He had fewer than three hundred men, plenty enough to have overwhelmed what Britons remained on the heath’s low summit, but Arthur’s silver horn sounded again and again, and the horn-call summoned enough of the heavily armoured cavalry from the trees to make a brave show on Cerdic’s northern flank. Cerdic had never faced those big horses in battle and the sight of them gave him pause long enough for Sagramor, Agricola and Cuneglas to assemble a shield-wall on the heath’s summit. It was a perilously small wall, for most of our men were still too busy pursuing Aelle’s warriors or sacking his encampment in search of food.
Those of us on the low hilltop readied ourselves for battle and it promised to be a grim business because our hurriedly assembled shield-wall was much smaller than Cerdic’s line. At that time, of course, we still did not know it was Cerdic’s army; at first we assumed these new Saxons were Aelle’s own reinforcements come late to the battle, and the banner they were displaying, a wolfs skull painted red and hung with the tanned skin of a dead man, meant nothing to us. Cerdic’s usual banner was a pair of horse-tails attached to a thigh bone mounted crosswise on a pole, but his wizards had devised this new symbol and it momentarily confused us. More men straggled back from their pursuit of Aelle’s defeated remnant to thicken our wall as Arthur led his horsemen back to our hilltop. He trotted Llamrei down our ranks and I remember that his white cloak was spotted and streaked with blood. ‘They’ll die like the rest!’ he encouraged us as he trotted past, the bloodstained Excalibur in his hand. ‘They’ll die like the rest.’
Then, just as Aelle’s army had parted to let Aelle eme
rge from the ranks, so this new Saxon force divided and their leaders came towards us. Three of them walked, but six came on horseback, curbing their mounts to keep pace with the three men on foot. One of the men on foot carried the gruesome wolf’s skull banner, then one of the horsemen raised a second banner and a gasp of astonishment ran down our army. The gasp made Arthur wheel his horse and stare aghast at the approaching men. For the new banner showed a sea-eagle with a fish in its claws. It was Lancelot’s flag, and now I could see that Lancelot himself was one of the six horsemen. He was splendidly arrayed in his white enamelled armour and his swan-winged helmet, and he was flanked by Arthur’s twin sons, Amhar and Loholt. Dinas and Lavaine in their Druids’ robes rode behind, while Ade, Lancelot’s red-haired mistress, carried the Silurian King’s banner.
Sagramor had come to stand beside me and he glanced at me to make certain that I was seeing what he was seeing, and then he spat onto the heath. ‘Is Malla safe?’ I asked him
‘Safe and unharmed,’ he said, pleased I had asked. He looked back at the approaching Lancelot. ‘Do you understand what’s happening?’
‘No.’ None of us did.
Arthur sheathed Excalibur and turned to me. ‘Derfel?’ he called, wanting me as a translator, then he beckoned to his other leaders just as Lancelot broke away from the approaching delegation and spurred excitedly up the gently sloping hill towards us.
‘Allies!’ I heard Lancelot shout. He waved back at the Saxons. ‘Allies!’ he shouted again as his horse drew near to Arthur.
Arthur said nothing. He just stood his horse as Lancelot struggled to quieten his big black stallion.
‘Allies,’ Lancelot said a third time. ‘It’s Cerdic,’ he added excitedly, gesturing towards the Saxon King who was walking slowly towards us.
Arthur asked quietly, ‘What have you done?’
‘I’ve brought you allies!’ Lancelot said happily, then glanced at me. ‘Cerdic has his own translator,’ he said dismissively.
‘Derfel stays!’ Arthur snapped with a sudden and terrifying anger in his voice. Then he remembered that Lancelot was a King and sighed. ‘What have you done, Lord King?’ he asked again. Dinas, who had spurred ahead with the other riders, was foolish enough to answer for Lancelot.
‘We’ve made peace, Lord!’ he said in his dark voice.
‘Go!’ Arthur roared, shocking and astonishing the Druid pair with his anger. They had only ever seen the calm, patient, peace-making Arthur and did not even suspect that he contained such fury. This anger was nothing to the rage that had consumed him at Lugg Vale when the dying Gorfyddyd had called Guinevere a whore, but it was a terrifying anger all the same. ‘Go!’ he shouted at Tanaburs’s grandsons.
‘This meeting is for Lords. And you too,’ he pointed at his sons, ‘go!’ He waited until all Lancelot’s followers had withdrawn, then looked back at the Silurian King. ‘What have you done?’ he asked a third time in a bitter voice.
Lancelot’s affronted dignity made him stiff. ‘I made peace,’ he said acidly. ‘I kept Cerdic from attacking you. I did what I could to help you.’
‘What you did,’ Arthur said in an angry voice, but so low that no man in Cerdic’s approaching entourage could hear him, ‘is fight Cerdic’s battle. We’ve just half destroyed Aelle, so what does that make Cerdic? It makes him twice as powerful as before. That’s what it does! The Gods help us!’ With that he tossed his reins to Lancelot, a subtle insult, then slid off his horse’s back, twitched his bloody cloak straight and stared imperiously at the Saxons.
That was the first time I met Cerdic, and though all the bards make him sound like a fiend with cloven hooves and a serpent’s bite, in truth he was a short, slightly built man with thin fair hair that he combed straight back from his forehead and tied in a knot at the nape of his neck. He was very pale-skinned and had a broad forehead and a narrow, clean-shaven chin. His mouth was thin-lipped, his nose sharp-boned, and his eves as pale as dawn-misted water. Aelle wore his emotions on his face, but even at a first glance I doubted whether Cerdic’s self-control would ever allow his expression to betray his thoughts. He wore a Roman breastplate, woollen trews and a cloak of fox fur. He looked neat and precise; indeed, if it had not been for the gold at his throat and wrists, I might have mistaken him for a scribe. Except that his eyes were not those of a clerk; those pale eyes missed nothing and gave nothing away. ‘I am Cerdic,’ he announced himself in a soft voice.
Arthur stepped aside so that Cuneglas could name himself, then Meurig insisted on being a part of the conference. Cerdic glanced at both men, dismissed them as unimportant, then looked back to Arthur. ‘I bring you a gift,’ he said, and held a hand towards the chieftain who accompanied him. The man produced a gold-hilted knife that Cerdic presented to Arthur.
‘The gift,’ I translated Arthur’s words, ‘should go to our Lord King Cuneglas.’
Cerdic put the naked blade onto his left palm and closed his fingers about it. His eyes never left Arthur’s, and when he opened his hand there was blood on the blade. ‘The gift is for Arthur,’ he insisted. Arthur took it. He was uncharacteristically nervous, maybe fearing some magic in the bloody steel or else fearing that acceptance of the gift made him complicit in Cerdic’s ambitions. ‘Tell the King,’ he told me, ‘that I have no gift for him.’
Cerdic smiled. It was a wintry smile and I thought of how a wolf must appear to a stray lamb. ‘Tell Lord Arthur that he has given me the gift of peace,’ he told me.
‘But suppose I choose war?’ Arthur asked defiantly. ‘Here and now!’ He gestured to the hilltop where still more of our spearmen had rallied so that our numbers were now at least equal to Cerdic’s.
‘Tell him,’ Cerdic ordered me, ‘that these are not all my men,’ he gestured at his shield-wall that watched us, ‘and tell him, too, that King Lancelot gave me peace in Arthur’s name.’
I told that to Arthur and I saw a muscle flicker in his cheek, but he kept his anger curbed. ‘In two days,’ Arthur said, and it was not a suggestion, but an order, ‘we shall meet in London. There we shall discuss our peace.’ He pushed the bloody knife into his belt and, when I had finished translating his words, he summoned me. He did not wait to hear Cerdic’s response, but just led me up the hill until we were out of earshot of both delegations. He noticed my shoulder for the first time. ‘How bad is your wound?’
‘It’ll heal,’ I said.
He stopped, closed his eyes and took a deep breath. ‘What Cerdic wants,’ he told me when he opened his eyes, ‘is to rule all Lloegyr. But if we let him do that then we have one terrible enemy instead of two weaker ones.’ He walked in silence for a few paces, stepping among the dead left from Aelle’s charge. ‘Before this war,’ he continued bitterly, ‘Aelle was powerful and Cerdic was a nuisance, but with Aelle destroyed we could have turned on Cerdic. Now it’s the other way round. Aelle is weakened, but Cerdic is powerful.’
‘So fight him now,’ I said.
He looked at me with weary brown eyes. ‘Be honest, Derfel,’ he said in a low voice, ‘not boastful. Will we win if we fight?’
I looked at Cerdic’s army. It was tightly arrayed and ready for battle, while our men were weary and hungry, but Cerdic’s men had never faced Arthur’s horsemen. ‘I think we would win, Lord,’ I said honestly.
‘So do I,’ Arthur said, ‘but it will be hard fighting, Derfel, and at the end of it we’ll have at least a hundred wounded men we’ll need to carry back home with us and the Saxons will summon every garrison in Lloegyr to face us. We might beat Cerdic here, but we’ll never reach home alive. We’re too deep in Lloegyr.’ He grimaced at the thought. ‘And if we weaken ourselves fighting against Cerdic do you think Aelle won’t be waiting to ambush us on the way home?’ He shuddered with a sudden surge of anger. ‘What was Lancelot thinking of? I can’t have Cerdic as an ally! He’ll gain half Britain, turn on us and we’ll have a Saxon enemy twice as terrible as before.’ He uttered one of his rare curses, then rubbed his bony face with a gloved hand. ‘W
ell, the broth’s spoilt,’ he went on bitterly, ‘but we still have to eat it. The only answer is to leave Aelle strong enough to frighten Cerdic still, so take six of my horsemen and find him. Find him, Derfel, and give him this wretched thing as a gift.’ He thrust Cerdic’s knife at me.
‘Clean it first,’ he said irritably, ‘and you can take his bearskin cloak as well. Agravain found it. Give that to him as a second gift and tell him to come to London. Tell him I oath-swear his safety, and tell him it is his only chance to keep some land. You have two days, Derfel, so find him.’
I hesitated, not because I disagreed, but because I did not understand why Aelle needed to be in London. ‘Because,’ Arthur answered wearily, ‘I cannot stay in London with Aelle loose in Lloegyr. He might have lost his army here, but he has garrisons enough to make another, and while we disentangle ourselves from Cerdic he could lay half Dumnonia waste.’ He turned and stared balefully at Lancelot and Cerdic. I thought he was going to curse again, but he just sighed wearily. ‘I’m going to make a peace, Derfel. The Gods know it isn’t the peace I wanted, but we might as well make it properly. Now go, my friend, go.’
I stayed long enough to make certain that Issa would take proper care of the burning of Cavan’s body and that he would find a lake and throw the dead Irishman’s sword into the water, and then I rode north in the wake of a beaten army.
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