Camelot

by Giles Kristian

  ‘Are your men ready to fight?’ I asked him. For a heartbeat he looked at me askance, as though not sure I had enough years on my back or blood under my fingernails for him to take orders from me. But then he grinned, which was all the answer I needed. For Gralon was eager to emerge from the shadow which his lord, Cyndaf, had cast upon the men of Caer Celemion, and so I told him what we would do.

  When he brought his men into position, Gralon was like a war dog wrenching at the leash. His beard was spittle-flecked and his eyes were bulging in his head and I saw him thumping his plain iron helmet with the heel of his hand, working himself into a rage while his men formed a column four abreast behind him, gripping their shields two-handed before them.

  ‘Now, Gralon!’ I called. ‘For Caer Celemion!’ I turned to Iselle, who had come up beside me and put half of her shield behind mine. ‘Take a deep breath and hold it,’ I said, then Gralon’s men behind us struck, driving the air from my lungs like a gush from a smith’s bellows. The pressure against my back was immense and I saw Iselle’s face gripped in a rictus of pain which even the cheek irons of her helmet could not hide. But we were moving. Forward. And if we’d lifted our feet we would have been carried like flotsam on the tide, but as it was we tried to stamp down, some vain attempt at control, as Gralon and his column of spearmen drove on, crushing us, driving the breath and the life from our bodies but driving the Saxons back too.

  I tried to tell Iselle to hold on, to breathe, but I could not make the words. I was seeing black motes floating through my vision like ash, and I thought I had killed us both and even then, I could not tell Iselle that I was sorry. Her eyes were heavy-lidded. Closing. I felt her body going limp against mine and I cursed the gods, if only in thought, but then the enemy gave way, crumbling before us like rotten wood before the driven nail, and in three heartbeats we broke out from their rear rank into the empty, grey, rain-washed day.

  Stumbling, I sucked in air and rain, and my vision sharpened again as my senses returned in a flood tide of noise and stench and the warm hardness of the sword hilt in my hand and the weight of the scale armour on my body. Iselle had fallen to her knees but she was up again now, though bent over, gasping for breath, and she nodded to let me know that she was unhurt, then followed the direction of my gaze. And there, an arrow-shot away, were the horse lords of Britain, fighting for their lives.

  A roar behind me. The warriors of Caer Celemion pouring out from the channel which they had forced through the Saxons.

  ‘Keep going!’ Gralon roared at them, at those who were hacking at the backs of Saxons at the rear. ‘Keep going, you bastards! On, Galahad!’

  I pointed Boar’s Tusk across the field. ‘To the horses! To Lord Cai!’ I called, and then Iselle and I were running across the torn and muddy ground, over flattened flowers and past corpses which stared with dead, lidless fish eyes at the world of which they were no longer a part.

  I was young. Not yet a lord of war as my father had been. But I could run, even in my war gear, even with lungs still screaming from having been starved of air, and I killed the first Saxon before he had fully turned to face this unexpected threat. Iselle was close behind and she hammered Excalibur against a Saxon shield, but then two big Caer Celemion men jumped protectively in front of her and hacked the Saxon down.

  It was madness. Lord Cai’s men were wheeling their mounts, their long horsehair plumes dancing as they struck down with their swords, cleaving heads and lopping arms off at the shoulders, and even the horses themselves were fighting, biting men’s faces and swinging their armoured heads down to break noses, cheeks and necks. And now Gralon and his men were on these Saxons whose fine mail and helmets could not intimidate the men of Caer Celemion. Having been held in reserve, Gralon’s warriors fought now with the savagery of hounds kept too long from the meat.

  Through the swirling maelstrom I saw Gawain, twisting in the saddle, hacking down at men on either side, crimson spraying, shrieks ripping the air. I saw Parcefal on his big mare, Lavina, lean out of the saddle to drive his sword down into a Saxon’s back. Saw the sword’s tip burst from the man’s chest before Parcefal hauled it free and the body fell forward to be trampled beneath hooves. Lord Cai was on Parcefal’s other side, and together those three were driving their mounts towards King Cerdic, who gripped a long axe now and stood his ground with the last of his bodyguard, three Saxons who were tall and wide and grey as cliff faces in their iron ring mail.

  ‘Crow-shields.’ Iselle pointed Excalibur towards the ridge where we had planted our banners that dawn.

  ‘Too many,’ I said. They were swarming over the embankment, too many to count, and I caught sight of Melehan at the fore, leading Lady Morgana’s men to save the Saxon king.

  Gawain had seen them too. He bellowed a challenge at Cerdic and dug his heels into his mare’s flanks and scythed his sword against a shield.

  But there was no time. The crow-shields were almost upon us.

  ‘We can hold them,’ Gralon grunted, in between gasps for breath. His greying beard was speckled red. ‘Get the lady away.’

  I looked back to where the shieldwalls were battling. We had broken through, but we had not broken the Saxons, and now, rather than two shieldwalls, the lines were less distinct and at several places huge melees raged.

  ‘Gawain!’ I called. He looked up at the crow-shields and I saw the desperate, hopeless fury in his face, because he knew we had failed. King Cerdic would live and we would lose.

  ‘Galahad, get the lady away.’ There was no fear in Gralon’s face. His men stood around us, bloody and breathing hard and wide-eyed, waiting for Gralon’s orders. I nodded and he nodded back, then he growled at his men of Caer Celemion to make a shieldwall two men deep facing the oncoming tide of crow-shields.

  Seventeen of Cai’s men still had their mounts. Gediens was dead. I saw him lying there in the mud, eyes looking up at the sky, rain bouncing off his pale face.

  ‘Take my horse, Galahad,’ Medyr said, limping towards me, leading his stallion by the reins. His helmet was gone and there was blood in his black curls, washing down his face with the rain. His right arm was slashed below the short sleeve of his scale shirt. ‘I can’t ride.’

  ‘No, Medyr,’ I said. ‘No.’

  ‘Do what he says, Galahad.’ I looked up as Gawain’s horse made its way to us, plumes of hot breath pouring from its nostrils beneath the leather shaffron. ‘Get Iselle to safety.’ Iselle was staring at King Cerdic, who had his back to us as he beckoned the crow-shields on with the long axe, hungering to avenge his slaughtered hearth men. ‘We have to get you away now, lady,’ Gawain said, the words hurting him.

  Iselle did not seem to hear him. She was still watching King Cerdic, hating him across the distance. Knowing how close we had come and knowing it all meant nothing now. Then she swung her gaze to Gawain and then to me. ‘I won’t run while others stay and fight,’ she said, and my stomach clenched with pride but with fear too.

  ‘The tor,’ I told the others. ‘We’ll make our stand there.’ There was a clash of shields as Lady Morgana’s men struck Gralon’s small force.

  Parcefal wheeled his horse around, peeling away from the rest of Lord Cai’s riders, who were milling nearby, encouraging their mounts with words and familiar touch as they awaited their commander’s order. ‘We can punch our way through. There.’ He was pointing beyond us towards the far right of the Saxon lines. He shrugged at Gawain. ‘Can’t stay here,’ he said. And he was right, because the crow-shields were already swarming around Gralon’s pitiful shieldwall and would be upon us soon.

  I picked up a heavy Saxon spear and mounted Medyr’s horse, and Iselle climbed up behind me, while Lord Cai pulled Medyr up behind him because he refused to leave any of his men behind.

  ‘I’ll lead,’ Parcefal said, and no one argued with him as we started to move, the rest of the horse warriors forming into an arrowhead shape as easily as geese in flight, most with spears they had recovered now couched under their arms in readiness
for the charge.

  The wind was gathering now, sweeping the shrouds of rain east and into our faces, so that we had to squint against it. Some of the Saxons in the rear ranks were turning or casting nervous glances over their shoulders because they knew Lord Arthur’s famed horse warriors were behind them, though they could not have imagined we would try to charge into such a dense mass of shield-bearing men, not least because they knew that to reach safety we would have to pass through our own lines too.

  ‘Gawain once told me that the horses won’t charge a proper shieldwall,’ Iselle said. Her left arm was around my waist, her hand a fist around my belt buckle, while in her right she gripped Excalibur. Somehow, she had wedged herself between me and the two rear saddle horns, so that we both sat high, and Medyr’s stallion whinnied and complained but I leant forward and stroked his muscled neck where it was not covered by his shaffron and told him we were friends and that all would be well, but that we needed him to be brave and to run and not to stop until I told him to. In my legs I felt the tremble in his flesh and the great strength in him, and I knew he had Tormaigh’s spirit and would not let us down.

  We trotted at first, towards the centre of the Saxon line because we did not want those men on the far right to know our intentions and form a rampart of shields facing us. Besides which, seeing us coming towards them, the Saxons in the centre turned to face us, which relieved some of the pressure on Lord Constantine’s men facing them.

  Hooves drummed the earth and my pulse drummed in my ears, and even through her leather armour and my bronze scales, I felt Iselle’s heart thumping against my back as we left the carnage behind us, moving towards the greater butchery ahead. Then, without warning, Parcefal cut across the field at a diagonal, and we followed, Cadwy on our left, Gawain on our right, the horses’ two-beat-gait becoming the three beats of the canter.

  Helmet plumes jumped and shattered. The horses’ breath trailed in tendrils through the cold rain. We had come almost to the northern edge of the land bridge, almost to the reed-beds into which the rain hissed like some malevolent serpent, when Parcefal straightened his course and kicked back his heels and we all did the same, and then we were flying.

  Realization spread across the Saxon line like a ripple through a pool, and some were turning, bringing their shields up, a few even making ready to hurl their spears at us in the hope of emptying a saddle or two before we closed.

  ‘Artorius!’ a rider behind me yelled.

  ‘Artorius!’ another echoed, then, ‘Iselle!’

  And others took up that battle cry. ‘Iselle! Iselle!’

  We flew. Still we did not know if our horses would carry the charge, but we had to ride as though we had no doubts at all.

  ‘Iselle!’ I called. Not a war cry but a declaration, to gods and to men. That should I die, it would be for her. And then Parcefal’s mare struck the line with a clatter and shriek and Lavina did not slow and we poured into the breach. The noise was like the ending of the world. Screams of horses and men. Shields and spears and bones splintering. Iron and steel rasping and clanging and singing in long, clean notes which rose to the grey sky. Grunts and roars and breath punched out of bodies, and iron hooves sending thunder rumbling through the ground.

  I put the Saxon spear blade through a man’s neck and pulled it free as we rode on. Iselle swept Excalibur and took a head clean off. I saw a Saxon thrust a spear up at Cadwy but the impact drove the butt of the spear straight back into the Saxon’s chest and Cadwy galloped on.

  Most tried to escape, throwing themselves into their companions, screaming at their countrymen to move so that they might live, doing anything to not be in our path. At least the men of Powys had some warning and they moved left or right, forcing a channel as best they could, while the horse lords of Britain manoeuvred into a column two abreast, so that we passed through our own ranks as neatly as an arrow through tall grass.

  I pulled the reins to the right and we rode to where Lord Geldrin seemed about to commit his reserve to help the men of Cynwidion, who were being overrun now that they had no king to lead them.

  ‘Nice ride, Galahad ap Lancelot?’ Lord Geldrin asked me.

  I pointed my bloody spear to the west and the hill I knew so well. ‘Get your men up the tor,’ I said. ‘We’re falling back.’

  His brows gathered. Rain dripped from the ends of his long moustaches. ‘We can hold them here,’ he said, gesturing with his own spear to the chaos in front of him. He wanted to fight.

  I shook my head. ‘No!’ I could feel the impatience of the horse beneath me, his need to run. His anxiousness because I was holding him still. Or trying to. ‘The crow-shields and the rest of the Saxons are coming.’ I did not want to think of Gralon and his brave men of Caer Celemion. By now they would all be dead. ‘Get to the summit and make a shieldwall. We’ll plant our banners there.’

  Lord Geldrin turned his gaze onto Iselle behind me. ‘What say you, lady?’

  ‘They call you Lord of the Heights, don’t they?’ she answered, and I imagined her teeth white against a mask of blood. ‘We make our stand on the tor.’

  Geldrin smiled at that, gave a shallow bow and turned to bark the order at his men, who hefted their shields, turned west and set off at a run.

  I looked back at Lord Cai and the others. Not all of them had made it through, but I caught Gawain’s eye and he gestured to the tor as he mouthed the word, Go.

  And so I rode to where Iselle’s banner had been planted, so far from where it had begun the day. Not planted, really, the two spear butts thrust into the ground in haste and not deeply enough, so that the whole assemblage leaned like a storm-beaten tree and might fall to the next gust. I pulled one shaft free, walked Medyr’s stallion forward and snatched the other spear from the soil, trying not to think of the chaos and struggle at my back, whose clamour flooded over me, growing louder with every passing moment.

  There was no sign of Merlin, I noted, and I wondered if, smelling our defeat on the air, he had vanished again, deserting Iselle as he had deserted Arthur at the last. I said nothing to Iselle about it, but I knew she would be aware of his absence.

  ‘Are you sure about this?’ I said over my shoulder, laying the long spears and Iselle’s sodden, heavy wolf banner in front of me across the saddle and the stallion’s strong neck.

  ‘Do you really need to ask?’ she replied.

  ‘Once we’re up there, we’ll be trapped,’ I said. ‘We might never come down.’

  ‘I know.’

  Those two words were like the shutting and locking of a door, and there could be no going back. And for the first time in my life, I envied my father. Before that day when he chose to leave me, knowing we would never see each other again in this life, he had lived according to his own will, his own nature. He had loved and that love had been a deep wound which had never healed. It had tortured him until the moment of his death, and yet he had been able to love. But if Iselle and I planted the wolf banner at the tor’s summit now, we would give up love, its anguish and its joys. There could be no future, for we would not live, and so I would never have what my father had. Not even that.

  The stallion whinnied and tossed its head, and I let these thoughts untether themselves from me and be carried off in the gusts. Iselle had given her answer and whatever our fate, neither of us could turn from it now. So I pressed my right knee against the stallion’s flank and whipped the reins and we rode towards that rain-veiled hill which had loomed above me for so much of my life, while Gawain and Lord Cai rode behind our shieldwall, yelling to the kings and lords of Britain that they must give up the ground they had fought long and hard for and retreat to the tor, where we would make our final stand. Where we would bleed our enemy until that hill’s terraced slopes ran with blood and the corpse halls of the Saxons’ gods were so glutted with souls that the dead could not feast with their ancestors.

  We rode up from the south, along the whale-backed ridge, the rain gusting against the left cheek irons of our helmets with
enough vehemence to make us turn our faces away, while Lord Geldrin’s men had taken the direct approach and were climbing the steeper eastern side, their shields slung on their backs as they pulled themselves up with the help of the long grass. So few of them that they were almost lost on that hillside.

  The stallion was blowing hard, for we were a far heavier burden than he was used to, and I told him I was sorry I did not know his name. Then I asked Iselle what she could see to the east, over the brow of the ridge. I had an idea myself, but I hoped I was wrong, that the rain in my eyes and the greyness of the day were making me see things not as they truly were.

  ‘Well?’ I said.

  ‘Just ride,’ she said. And so we rode.

  23

  A Flame in the Dark

  ‘SO, THIS IS IT, Galahad,’ Merlin said, looking out over the struggle, as our men scrambled up the hill, breathless and sodden, fugitives of the slaughter, taking their places in the shieldwall which stood upon the crest like a bloodied crown. ‘This is the fire in which we shall recast Britain.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have brought the boy up here.’ I nodded at Taliesin, who stood beside the druid, pale and wide-eyed, his hair flattened against his head. Looking lost in the midst of that desperate chaos.

  When we had gained the summit, where the old Roman ruins stood, Iselle and I had both been surprised to find the druid and the boy there, as if they had been waiting patiently for us. As if they had known we would come. We’d been even more surprised to see the Cauldron of Annwn sitting there, shining dully in the rain which was sploshing inside it.

  ‘In my experience, boys do not like being left behind.’ Merlin turned an eye on me. Did he know how often I had lain in bed in the monastery dormitory, waiting for sleep to come, trying to fashion a dream in which I shared my father’s saddle and we rode together, my arms around his waist as Tormaigh carried us down to Arthur?