by Whyte, Jack
"No trouble back there?"
"No, not a sign of anything. Are your men ready?"
"Aye, all in place. We'll be in range of you, concealed by just the front bushes. As soon as they attack, have your men fall back this way, along the road. As soon as they've passed by, we'll step out and give your harriers a welcome they'll not be expecting."
"Fine, Huw. There will be an appearance of panic and disarray among us as we break up. Every man knows his own part. We will scatter at first and look disorganized. Some will not come back your way at all, but we'll all stay well clear of your arrows. Warn your men that when they hear my trumpeter they should beware, for we'll be coming back together to finish up the action. My men need some blooding, too. Then, when the opposition has been silenced here, we'll turn around and head back to the bridge. Your other hundred should be in place behind Ironhair's infiltrators by then, to make short work of diem. " I checked my men, who were sitting quietly, their eyes on me. "Very well, then, let's be about it. " I raised my arm in a pumping gesture and led my men forward again.
We advanced in good order, proceeding at the canter as we entered the open, grass strewn convergence of the valleys ahead of us, giving no indication to watching eyes that we expected trouble. Directly ahead of us, appearing to block our route at this point, was the flat topped hill described to us by Huw, its upper slopes and featureless top appearing empty and deserted. We bore gradually to our right, heading for the valley to the east. I passed the word back to spread out slightly, allowing our appearance to suggest a casual disregard for danger, and kept pressing steadily forward. I could feel the tension building in my chest as we passed beyond the point of the projecting hill, so that we now had threatening slopes dominating all of our left flank.
Suddenly, the first hostiles appeared on the slopes above and beyond us. They were premature, undone by their own lack of discipline. Their appearance would have given us sufficient advance notice of attack for us to have reformed and escaped the trap, had we, in fact, been unaware of the ambush. As it was, their enthusiasm caused difficulties for me, because I then had to appear to miss my opportunity for flight. I swung my horse around and saw that my men were as aware as I of the enemy's error and were swerving and cavorting madly, giving a convincing show of panic and indecisiveness.
Above us on the hilltop, whoever was in charge could see what had happened, and soon the upper slopes were aswarm with running men, leaping and bounding down towards us, the strident ululations of their battle cries shattering the quiet of the summer afternoon. Paul Scorvo, one of my best independent squadron leaders, now broke away to the rear as planned, trailing a formless squad of eight behind him as he angled his horse slightly uphill, across the front of the attackers, drawing them down and to the right to converge with his escape route. Rufus Metellus, another of the young firebrands Ambrose had promoted to squadron leader, was galloping off now to the north, leading a motley herd of sixteen more troopers down and away from the exposed slopes, to the right of the road, and making sufficient speed already to outdistance any pursuit. I put my spurs to Germanicus and aimed him back along the road we had come by, shouting as I plunged right through the middle of my own troops, who surged together in a rabble at my back and kicked their mounts into a flat out run following my panicked example. The battle screams above our heads changed now to howls of exultation as our attackers saw us disintegrate and flee, most of us back towards the other trap that now lay set for us.
I stood upright in my stirrups, balancing easily now that Germanicus had found his stride, and turned to look over my shoulder, sweeping my eyes along the crest of the hill. The entire complement of our attackers were now in full pursuit. The bulk of them were rushing in pursuit of my own party, while a small number on either flank went bounding after the two lesser groups led by Scorvo and Metellus. I saw a flicker from the corner of my eye as an arrow skimmed down towards us, and then I saw the bowman, poised on the hillside. The brief glimpse I had was sufficient for me to see that his bow was short, the standard bow in use by all save the Pendragon. And then I heard a crash and a double scream behind me as a horse went down into ruin. I swung Germanicus hard to the left, reining him in brutally as I sought to see what had happened.
One of our troopers lay on the ground, his back arched in pain, his mouth forming a gaping black hole as he screamed. His horse lay nearby, struggling to rise to its feet, the shaft of an arrow protruding from its neck. I kicked my horse forward and leaned from the saddle, my hand outstretched to pull the man erect, but he kept screaming, his staring eyes looking through and beyond me. I could see from the ungodly way his back was twisted that he was beyond my help.
Now I became aware of running footsteps closing rapidly. I reached behind me and unhooked my sword, drawing it quickly and hooking the scabbard to the ring at my belt. The weapon felt strange in my grip, feather light and almost insubstantial, and I knew that this was because I had never yet swung the sword in earnest against a living enemy. I heard coarse breathing and a muttered curse. I turned to my left to see an enormous man throwing himself towards me, his short sword drawn back for a killing chop. With no time to do anything else, I swung my own sword overhand, chopping it downward towards him and bracing my foot in the stirrup for leverage. The hasty blow missed my assailant's head but came down on his right arm, drawn back for the kill, and severed it so cleanly that I barely felt the impact, even though I had cleft cleanly through bone. He screamed and fell away, clutching at the sudden stump even before it had time to begin spewing his life blood, and I pulled Germanicus up into a rearing turn, spurring him to the run as his front hooves found the earth again. Only one other was close enough to me to offer danger, and Germanicus hammered him flat to the ground.
As we began to pick up speed, surging steadily forward and slightly downhill, other shapes came hurtling towards me, none close enough to make contact. Then a spinning knife clanged frighteningly against the front of my helmet, snapping my head backwards and filling my mind with the deafening clangour of the unexpected blow. I reeled and fought momentarily for balance, struggling against my own reflexive recoil. Then I was among my own and in control again, overtaking the rearmost of my troopers, and I dimly saw the moving shapes of Huw's bowmen as they stepped forward from concealment among the trees on our left to form massed ranks on the short grass between the road and the forest's edge. Realizing that I had passed beyond the last of them, I immediately reined in again and turned to watch.
The charging mercenaries from the hilltop were skidding to a halt, the nearest of them no more than ten or twenty paces from the formidable obstacle that had sprung up in front of them. Huw's people were drawn up in three ranks, each containing perhaps thirty men. Almost before my mind could grasp what I was seeing, the first rank launched their arrows and stepped aside, each man to the right. Now the second rank stepped forward, bows already drawn, and loosed their arrows. They, too, stepped aside to make way for the fellows at their back and to fill the spaces left by the men of the first rank, who had already fallen back one pace and were now fitting arrows to their bows and drawing them, preparing to step forward into the front rank again. Almost more quickly than I can describe, four lethal flights of arrows sought and found targets among the stupefied attackers facing them, and the fifth flight was in the air before the first of the confounded mercenaries rallied enough to try to run for safety.
They had no place to run, and so they were cut down in moments. The ground was filled with squirming, writhing men kicking in agony, and the air was dense with screams and choking gurgles of pain. Every living man in the main body Of the enemy was down, and the fight was over, except in the distance to my right and left. There, the charade of indecisiveness long since abandoned, the three eight man squads commanded by Scorvo and Metellus were delivering an object lesson in military precision to the hapless survivors who had chosen to pursue them.
My own trumpeter was sitting on my left, awaiting my signal, but I waved him
down. My own group would not be needed. Moments later, I saw Paul Scorvo wave his men back towards me, and almost before they had swung into motion, Rufus Metellus and his sixteen men were cantering in my direction, too. Now I turned to Benedict and bade him send two men to find and comfort the trooper who had gone down behind me. They found him quickly, his throat cut from ear to ear.
Huw Strongarm's men assembled in front of me, their faces strangely blank, showing no pleasure in the slaughter. I was preparing to lead our party back to the bridge when I heard a commotion behind me and turned to see three more of Strongarm's men approaching at the run. The fight there was over, too, with losses of only four of Strongarm's bowmen. None of the interlopers from the ravine had survived. Thereafter, I led our party back into the convergence of the two valleys and settled in to wait for the remainder of our troops.
The cavalry came first, four hundred and sixty troopers, by the route we had followed. Within half an hour of their arrival, the blare of a trumpet to the west announced the arrival of our infantry from the coast, and soon they, too, came into view, marching along the valley bottom in columns often, led by Huw Strongarm's scouts. When all had assembled—five hundred cavalry, a thousand foot soldiers and more than two hundred Pendragon bowmen—I climbed to a prominent rock on the hillside and addressed diem all briefly, outlining what we must do next Then I led them north and east at the forced march pace towards the place where we had been summoned to meet with Uderic Pendragon.
The "king" was not in residence when we reached Moridunum. Word of our surprise must have passed ahead of us. The Roman fort lay still and vacant although the debris littering the ground and the smoke from numerous smouldering fires made it quite obvious that large numbers of men had waited here but a short time previously. Without dismounting, I dispatched Benedict and our five hundred Scouts in pursuit of whoever they might find, and then I ordered the remainder of our people to set up camp here for the night I set out on a short inspection of the old fort itself. It reminded me considerably of our former home in Mediobogdum, save that it was situated in a valley rather than on the heights. Fundamentally, it was exactly the same fort, built to the classical design of a cohortal unit and meant to house as many as six hundred men in comfort. Even the bathhouse, built beyond the walls, was comparable, although it had not been quite as lavishly appointed, and the furnaces were cold and long since dead, their flues blocked by soot and the detritus of decades. Unlike Mediobogdum, however, which had sat high and inaccessible among its mountains, remaining almost inviolate for more than two hundred years, all of the buildings here in Moridunum had been used and abused by careless strangers and were far advanced in ruin, roofless and crumbling after a mere four decades of abandonment.
I finished my tour, accompanied by Rufio, and returned to the fort's ruinous main gate, where Donuil called out to me, inviting me to come and look at something he had discovered. I could see young Bedwyr kneeling on the ground by his feet, his body partly concealed by the stone gatepost. As I stood up in the stirrups to step down from the saddle, I heard an angry, lethal, hissing noise, lightning fast, and saw a flash of movement at the edge of my sight. Then, before I could react, I was hammered by a stunning concussion between my shoulder blades and flung over my horse's head to crash to the ground, unconscious.
I came to my senses in one of the ruined buildings in the fort, beneath the remnants of a sagging roof that extended for about three paces from the gable end before giving way to open sky. As my eyes opened and my vision swam for a few moments, I saw Donuil and Rufio, Derek of Ravenglass, Benedict, Philip, Paul Scorvo, Rufus Metellus and several others, including Huw Strongarm. They were all looking at someone to my left and their faces wavered in my sight during those first few, blinking moments, dissolving and reshaping themselves as my eyes struggled to adjust to the brightness that filled the room. As I lay there, my head ringing, the memory came back to me—the crashing blow against my back, the clang against my helmet and the swooping vision of my horse's ears looming in my face and then passing beneath me. No one had seen my eyes open, and now I heard the sounds of their voices, unintelligible for a time, then sharpening into a babble of discrete words.
It was Donuil who glanced down and saw me watching him, and his shocked reaction, uttering my name, silenced everyone else and brought them closer. Slowly, fuzzily, I raised my arm and waved them all away and they moved back, tentatively, watchful and wary. A new face now bent close to me, that of Mucius Quinto, our senior surgeon since the death of Lucanus and himself almost as old as Luke had been. He laid his hand on my forehead, pressing me back down onto the pallet, and asked me if I knew him. I was astonished to discover that my voice would not respond when I sought to answer him, but I swallowed, then breathed deeply several times and tried again. This time my tongue worked.
"I'm fine, Quinto, " I rasped, in a voice unlike my own. "What happened? Something hit me. Did I fall?"
He nodded, the frown fading from his face as he concluded I was no longer at death's door. "Aye, " he answered. "You fell on your head, from your horse. You were shot, with a Pendragon arrow. "
"A Pendragon arrow?' I digested that for the space of several heartbeats. "Then I should be dead. "
"Aye, you should. " This was Derek's voice, and I could see the concern stamped on his ruddy, bearded face "On two counts, you should be dead, but the arrow hit the blade of the sword across your back, and apparently that's even harder than your head."
Donuil, it transpired, had saved my life by noticing that there was still grease in the pivot wells of the lintel that held the great gateposts. He was amazed that the lubricant had remained in place for more than forty years, and that was what he had wanted me to look at. In standing up to go to him, I had moved my neck out of the bowman's sights, replacing it with the cross slung upper blade of the long sword that hung between my shoulders. Only that sword, made of the skystone's metal, could have deflected the hard shot Pendragon arrow. A mere cuirass would have been pierced and I would have died instantly. Instead, the arrow struck the blade exactly in the centre and shattered upon impact, the force of it slamming the cross hilt of the sword against my helm, concussing me and hurling me forward between my horse's ears, so that I fell to the stony ground head first and remained deeply unconscious for more than an hour. The blade of the sword, when I examined it later, showed not even a tiny scratch, although the thin iron cladding of the scabbard that had housed it was mangled and ruined.
I grunted and grimaced, feeling a stabbing pain now at my right shoulder. I tried to sit up but fell backwards again, my head swimming. Quinto leaned over me immediately, his face crumpled in solicitous concern, his hand reaching for my forehead, but I brushed it away. "Don't do that, Quinto, there's nothing wrong with me but vertigo. Help me sit up. "
He supported me with his right arm, and I leaned on him. Once I had taken several deep breaths, the room settled down again and I could see clearly. I began to feel better, and my deep breathing soon dispelled the nausea that had threatened to overcome me at first. Finally I felt strong enough to sit fully erect, moving away from the support of Quinto's arm. I drew one more deep breath and then looked around at the small group hovering in front of me, watching me with varying degrees of concern on their faces.
"Very well, then, I'm not dead and I do not intend to die, so will someone tell me who it was that shot me?"
Several heads turned towards Huw Strongarm. He stepped forward, flushing slightly, and threw a Pendragon longbow onto my bed, where it landed across my legs. "Owain, " he growled. "The Cave Man. "
Owain of the Caves, the traitor who had deserted us to join with Ironhair, the man I had eventually come to suspect of complicity in the attempt on Arthur's life. I looked into Huw's eyes, knowing the answer to my question even as I asked it.
"Where is he now?'
"He's dead. I wish I could say I killed him, but mine was but one of seven arrows in his corpse when I reached him, and Llewellyn had struck off his head
even before I arrived. " Huw paused, and no one else sought to speak during his hesitation. "He had lain hidden, here, in one of the wall towers. He must have hoped to get a shot at you and thought his life well worth the risk, for he knew he'd never get away alive, once he had shown himself. He hit you from no more than sixty paces. Don't know how he missed you the first time, but the second shot was right on target. He must have died happy, thinking you were dead. "
The man had sacrificed his life simply to kill me. Why? And then I recalled what I had seen last, and I knew.
"Where's Bedwyr?"
It was Philip who answered me. "He's outside, trying to mend the covering on the scabbard of your sword. Why, do you want me to send for him?"
I sank back immediately, only then aware of how much I had stiffened in protest at what my mind had told me. "No, leave him. " I looked back at Huw. "He wasn't only after me. He wanted the boy, too. They thought he was Arthur. "
Huw was the only one there who did not yield in the general buzz of speculation. His eyes narrowed, and then he nodded. "Aye, " he growled. "That makes sense. He didn't miss you with his first shot, then. From that distance, the Cave Man never would have missed a mark as big and plain as you. His first shot was for the boy. But the lad was on the ground, and kneeling half behind the gatepost, looking down at the shit in the hole there—people moving between him and Owain, too. First shot missed, hitting the gatepost. Second shot for you, knowing that everyone would run to you, leaving the boy as a clear target. Except that Llewellyn just happened to be looking in the right direction at the right time. Suspicious whoreson, Llewellyn One-Eye, trusts no one and likes no strange places. He never lets his guard down, and he sees more than most people do with two good eyes. He saw Owain move to make his first shot, and by the time the second was on its way, Llewellyn had already fired and death was on its way to Owain of the Caves. Good man, Llewellyn, for a suspicious, one eyed, ugly whoreson. "