by N. M. Browne
‘She killed Medraut. She is a brave girl, braver perhaps than he was. She deserved Macsen’s trust. And yours,’ she added, looking into Dan’s haunted face. ‘She would not leave you.’
Dan looked at Rhonwen in surprise. She had dropped the illusion that had disguised her scars from all but Ursula. She looked tired, grief-stricken, and suddenly old.
‘How many Combrogi dead, Princess?’ said Taliesin bitterly. ‘You have killed off Macsen’s heritage true enough. Are you satisfied?’
Rhonwen said nothing.
Dan was checking Ursula for a pulse. She still had one, but it was weak.
‘I don’t care about that, Taliesin, this is no time to talk.’ Dan’s voice was sharp with grief, raw and wretched. He was willing Ursula to hang on, trying to lend her his strength without losing himself in her pain.
‘Rhonwen, please, raise the Veil! Please! By all you hold dear, she was never your enemy. Let us go home. We fought for your brother and we’ve fought for the Combrogi. We did all we could. Help her now! Let us go!’
Rhonwen silently turned her back on Taliesin. Dan thought she was crying; he could spare no empathy for anyone but Ursula, his fear for her blotted out everything. Rhonwen walked a small distance away and began to chant. To Dan’s eyes it looked at first as if nothing was happening. Every instant they remained in Arturus’s world the life ebbed away from Ursula. Then the first yellow tendrils of mist appeared and began to grow. At the use of magic, Ursula’s colour brightened, almost as if she drew strength from Rhonwen’s power. She found Dan’s hand and squeezed it. It was a weak squeeze, the slightest of pressures, but it was something. Dan dared to hope she might live. Taliesin and Dan lifted her between them and carried her into the growing vortex.
‘I love you, Dan. You came for me – fought for me?’Her mental voice was quiet but present. He clutched her hand, willing her to hang on, his tears uncontrolled and unnoticed running in rivulets down his face.
‘Of course I fought for you. I love you, too, Ursula. Rhonwen’s going to get us home. You’ll be fine. I’ll take you to hospital. You’ve only lost blood. You’ll be fine!’
He’d said what had seemed so impossible to say, now it seemed as easy and natural as breathing. Of course he loved her. He would not let her die. Frontalis and Bryn were on their knees praying.
‘Will you come, Bryn?’
He shook his head. ‘I have a son and I cannot leave him. God bless you, Dan, and know that in spite of everything I do not regret a moment spent in your service. You have been a worthy Lord.’
Dan could not speak in reply; his throat was constricted by tension and grief. He nodded and hoped that Bryn would understand and forgive as he had understood and forgiven so much else.
Braveheart stepped into the mist to stand beside Dan and pushed his nose into Dan’s hand, licking Ursula’s bloodied body.
‘Rhonwen?’ Taliesin met Rhonwen’s eye. ‘Will you come home?’
She shook her head. ‘Who is left to make sure the Combrogi are never forgotten if I go? You are ready to go now aren’t you?’
Taliesin, abashed, nodded.
‘Arturus is dead, Rhonwen. The Bear is no longer on the hillside and I fear it is over for us. We Combrogi had twenty more years because of him. That is better than nothing and perhaps it is enough to keep our memory alive. I have one remaining duty – to help take Ursula home. Her injury is my fault. She needs me now.’
Rhonwen nodded. It seemed as if Taliesin and Rhonwen understood each other very well, in spite of their differences.
‘You are right – there is no one left here I would trust to boil water. Cerdic cannot even make the battlefield on time. Tell Macsen I will make sure that the Combrogi are remembered here. I made a mistake, I see that now. I have hastened our end.’ She sighed, a sorrowful sound. ‘The Aenglisc have a word for fate, wyrd. It is my wyrd to put right what I have helped make wrong. That is what you want isn’t it? Isn’t that what you said this world needs?’
Taliesin nodded. ‘The Bear must be remembered too, the Bear of the prophecy – that’s important. He must be remembered as a good man. Maybe the memory is as important as the deeds. The Bear must be a beacon, bright in the dark chaos of this new Aenglisc world.’
Rhonwen was ashen faced, but more sincere than Dan had ever heard her. ‘I will see to it. Though it seems to me that this Ursula is as much the Bear as your Arturus Ursus. She is all that the Combrogi crave in a hero – and more, she leaves the field still breathing – maybe we can call on her again, when next we stand on the brink.’ She spoke with the strange cadences of a prophesying Heahrune, then stopped abruptly. ‘Do not worry, Taliesin, I have heard of the prophecy and I will ensure that the Celtic Bear is remembered. You have my triple oath.’
Taliesin nodded again, his eyes misty. ‘I will tell Macsen, if I should see him again, that he yet has a sister to be proud of.’
Dan was not interested in Rhonwen’s reputation; he only wanted to get Ursula home.
She seemed better, touched by the mist, but even so they had no time to waste.
‘We haven’t time for this, Taliesin. Can you direct the Veil to get me home?’ Dan no longer cared about anything but returning Ursula to their own world.
‘Goodbye, Rhonwen, my dear Brother Frontalis, Bryn.’ Taliesin sounded sad, chastened.
Dan grabbed Braveheart’s collar with one hand while, with the other, he helped support Ursula’s weight. The sadness was oppressive. Dan’s eyes were wet with tears. He would have liked to embrace Bryn and Frontalis, but there was not time. Dan placed his hand on Taliesin’s shoulder and thus joined, he allowed Taliesin to lead them all, Ursula, Dan and Braveheart, forward, through the yellow Veil, to home?
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank: my test readers, William Browne and Jessica Liebmann, for their helpful comments, Dan Shadrake of Britannia, the Arthurian Society, for his insight into the military and other details of the period, and my agent Mic Cheetham for her ever sound advice. Thanks are also due to my husband Paul for his boundless support and enthusiasm and, of course, my editors at Bloomsbury. All mistakes are, as ever, entirely my own.
Afterword
No one knows for sure what kind of a man might lie behind the legend of Arthur but if there really was one great leader who turned the tide of the Saxon settlement of Britain in the fifth century he may well have been a War Duke (Dux Bellorum) of Britain struggling to maintain the remnants of Roman civilisation after the departure of the legions and much of the Roman hierarchy. It is a period of British history in which hard facts are few and far between. Though Warriors of Camlann is definitely fiction, I have tried to re-create the time as realistically as I can and have included historical figures in the story. Hengist and his sons Aelle and Aesc actually existed, as did Cerdic, though he is generally thought to have been a Saxon of Celtic descent and not, as in my story, Arturus’s half-brother. He did, however, settle in Gewisse (Southampton). Ambrosius Aurelianus who ‘wore the purple’ (i.e. was an Emperor) and Vortigern (the British leader who invited the Saxons to Britain as allies to fight the Picts) are both mentioned by Gildas in Of the Fall and Destruction of Britain, a near-contemporary history.
I have tried to make the weapons, armour and strategy of the time as accurate as I can and I’m grateful to Dan Shadrake for his help, though he is not in any way responsible for any of my errors! There is a tradition of Arthur being a cavalry leader and from the late Roman Notitia Digitatum it is known that Sarmatian armoured cataphracts were stationed at Ribchester in the ancient Kingdom of Rheged in the late Roman period. They carried a dragon standard and brought their own myth of a sacred sword pulled from a stone. They were descendants of the 5,500 cataphracts brought from their native Hungary in AD175. I like to think of them as Arthur’s most powerful weapon.
There are many competing theories concerning almost everything about the Arthur story and not least the location of Camelot, but two favourite contenders are Camulodunum and Ca
dbury Castle, the site of my Fort Cado. No one knows the location of the decisive battle at Mount Baddon either, though it ended the Saxon advance for a generation and is supposed to have lasted three days. There is evidence to suggest that it may have happened where I place the battle site, just outside Bath (Aquae Sulis). I also place the last battle at Camlann (crooked valley), one of the many possible sites, and according to the Annales Cambriae, it is where both Medraut and Arthur died. King Arthur, A Military History by Michael Homes inspired my ideas on the military campaign, though the battles and tactics in the story are my own invention. Arthur’s burial site has, of course, never been found.
N. M. Browne
Bloomsbury Publishing, London, Berlin and New York
This electronic edition published in September 2011 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
First published in Great Britain in 2003 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 36 Soho Square, London, W1D 3QY
Copyright © N.M. Browne 2003
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Contents
Map
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Acknowledgements
Afterword
Imprint