Sword at Sunset (60 page)

The clouds blew up from the south that morning, their shadows sweeping like charges of cavalry over Badon Hill and down the long bay of the Downs; like the ghosts of armies that had fought there
when the world was young. Turn southward, and you could see the wind coming, laying over the ripening grasses in silvery-brown swathes like the waves of the sea. Turn north again, and from where I
stood on the crest of the bush-grown barrow, I could see the whole bay of the White Horse Vale with its flying cloud shadows, rising to the gentler hills again at its farther side. Badon Hill
thrust out from the main mass of the Downs a great summer-tanned shoulder, high over the Vale, so that one looked down upon it as a buzzard circling on wind-tilted wings must do. I could see the
green Ridgeway with its ragged line of hawthorn trees passing scarce the throw of a slingstone below the strong green wave-lift of our ramparts, dipping to cross the paved road from Corinium where
it climbed more gently out of the Vale, to strike southward through the pass; and beyond, where the steep swell of the Downs upheaved itself once more into the sunlight from the morning shadows of
the pass, the triple turf ramparts of our sister fort, that the garrison in Badon had always called the Cader Berywen from the sour hill-juniper scrub that speckled the ditches between its
earthworks. And everywhere, lining the mouth of the pass, among the thorn scrub of the downland flanks, and thronging the turf ramparts of the forts, was the gray blink of sun on spear blade and
shield boss and helmet comb, and the flecks and flashes of color where Marius’s standard flew with Cei’s flickering cavalry pennants above the triple-staged entrance of Cader Berywen,
or where Cador and young Constantine gathered their war bands beneath the saffron-stained banner of Dumnonia, and the tattered Red Dragon of Britain lifted and half flew from its spear shaft in the
midst of the Companions where they stood or sat at ease on the grass about me, each man with his arm through his horse’s bridle. There was plenty of time, now, and it is not good to keep men
or horses longer than need be in the last stage of waiting.

Signus, who smelled what was coming, snorted down that proud imperial nose of his, tossing his head so that my buckler clanged against the saddlebow; old Cabal lifted his gray muzzle and snuffed
the wind, and Bedwyr, who had just ridden up on his raking sorrel, turned beside me and laughed in the old fierce gaiety that had always come upon him in the time before fighting. He no longer
carried his harp into battle as he had used to do, but with the knot of moon daisies white in his shoulder buckle, he looked as though he were riding to a festival.

There was a sense of pause, a sense of rising tension, as when the wine in a slowly tilted cup comes to the rim and rises above it and hangs there an instant before it spills over. And in the
waiting moments one had time for little things, for the dark crescent-winged swifts darting along the flanks of the Downs, as unaware of us, it seemed, as they were of the cloud shadows drifting
by; the fading milky scent of the last pinkish blossom on the hawthorn trees, the way the renewed leather lining of my war shirt chafed my neck where the armorer had made a clumsy job of it. I
thrust a finger inside the neckband, seeking to ease it, and tried not to watch Medraut walking his black horse up and down at the foot of the barrow, pausing in passing to break down with his foot
the blue cranesbill that grew almost on the edge of last night’s fire scar, and grind it with absorbed precision to pulp under his heel.

The scouts had come in soon after dawn while we were snatching a hasty morning meal, to report the Saxons stirring, but it must have been within two hours of noon when, maybe two miles off along
the ridge of the Downs, there came a shadow, not much darker at first than the cloud shadows, but not traveling with the wind. The Saxon war host was in sight.

I waited a short while longer, the chiefs and captains murmuring about me; then spoke to Prosper, my trumpeter. He was growing gray-muzzled like the rest of us, but his wind was as good as ever,
and he put the silver mouthpiece of the aurochs horn to his lips and sounded the View. There was a moment’s silence, and then like an echo the call was tossed back to us from the ramparts of
Cader Berywen.

Other horns and trumpets were sounding now, the voices answering each other to and fro across the valley; and the great camp of Badon, which a few moments before had been a place of waiting,
sprang into eager life, as the fighting companies made for their appointed places, some to guard the entrances against enemy surprise, or man the northern ramparts where great piles of throw stones
waited for hurling down on the heads of the Saxon host, while the rest went swinging out through the wide gateway and downhill into the pass.

I was mounted by that time, and sitting my great old Signus on the crest of my lookout place. I was like Janus, half of me turned upon the British line that was forming like a great threefold
chain slung across the pass to the south between Badon and Cader Berywen, half of me turned with straining eyes upon the shadow that was not a cloud shadow creeping slowly nearer along the high
roof ridge of the hills, deepening to a stain like that of old spilled wine, to a spreading swarm of ants. And then, far off still, and soft with distance, came the booming of a Saxon war horn; and
Prosper beside me again raised the horn to his lips and sent the bright notes crowing their defiance across the warm summer wind. Save for those who would remain on guard, the great camp was
emptying about me like a cup. Only my own Companions were left now, and they also were swinging into the saddle, squadron after squadron with the spear pennants fluttering, heading at a trot out
through the gateway.

Bedwyr was beside me again, his horse dancing. He shouted to me that all was in order. I nodded, still watching the nearing swarm. I could see now how even as they rolled toward us their flanks
were torn and harassed by the flying knots of light horsemen that skirmished about them, and my heart went out to Maelgwn and Cynglass, to the men and the little fiery ponies of my own hills. But
it was a vast host, still, a spreading murk of men that engulfed half the countryside like the shadow of an advancing storm.

‘Sa, here comes the Darkness,’ Bedwyr said.

‘If ever you prayed to any God, pray now for the strengthening of the Light.’

He leaned a little from the saddle, and set his hand on my shoulder. ‘I have never known how to pray, unless maybe through Oran Môr, the Great Music – I will make you a song of
light driving out darkness, a song of the lightnings of the war host of Artos, when the day’s work is over.’ And he wheeled his horse and clattered off to his post with the Companions.
And I was alone with Riada sitting his horse just behind me, and the scouts and messengers who came and went.

The advancing darkness had been without sound at first, but now there began to be a soft quiver in the earth rather than the air, the tramp of thousand upon thousand feet, the faint surf of
shouts and weapon ring; the merest ripple of sound that came and went at the will of the summer wind that tossed the moon daisies to and fro, but gathering strength, solidifying into the distant
earth-shaking many-voiced thunder of an advancing war host. A fold in the Downs had swallowed the vanguard from sight, and then along the nearer ridge, maybe half a mile away, ran a dark quiver of
movement, and over it lifted the rain pattern of upraised spears and the white gleam of the horsetail standards; more and more, and then the brown of the war host, with our light horsemen wheeling
and re-forming about them and sending in their flights of arrows and slingstones – growing sparse now – as chance offered. The sun splintered into shards of light on shield boss or
spear blade, among the onward-rolling mass, and the deep crash of tramping feet and the formless surf of shouting seemed to spring forward ahead of them.

Then I wheeled Signus, and with young Riada his half length behind me, rode down from my vantage point and out by the wide three-angled gate gap to take my place at the head of the Companions.
For a few moments, as I came out onto the open hillside, I checked Signus and sat looking down to the road far beneath me, and up the slope beyond to the green triple crown of Cader Berywen, seeing
the whole battle line slung between.

Marius with the pick of the veteran foot fighting troops; and forming the center among them, clearly recognizable by their blood-red cloaks, the old royal bodyguard; on either side, the javelin
men and light horse of the irregulars, forming the wings. Seeing also, as the advancing Saxons would not see it, the glint of weapons and the small movement of men and horses among the thorn scrub
that swept about the lower slopes of the Downs and closed in upon the ancient track where it dropped toward the broad paved road into the heart of Britain.

Then I touched heel to Signus’s flank and rode on around the flank of the hill. Well back beyond the crest, the Companions were waiting, squadron by squadron, each with their captains out
in front; Bedwyr and Flavian, my son Medraut and black-browed Pharic and the rest; they tossed up their spears in salute, and my place was waiting for me as the familiar glove waits for the
hand.

Beyond, farther down the hillside and screened from the road by a dense bank of elder and thorn scrub, the main light wing of the cavalry waited, the horses fidgeting and swishing their tails
against the midges.

The sounds of the nearing Saxon host, which from here had been blanketed by the bulk of Badon Hill, began to swell and sharpen again, but much of the ragged shouting had fallen away, so that I
knew that the skirmish troops had broken off action and dropped back to their appointed stations. Yet a long time we waited, while the sounds drew a little nearer, until at last the van of the war
host came sweeping down into the mouth of the pass, and the roar of their coming burst upon us like the roar of a charging sea when a sand bar goes. We could not see them as yet, we could see only
the farther part, even of our own battle line – but the boom of war horns, the ominous roar of joining battle, told us that their van had met with our own advance troops, and the high note of
rage and furious anguish cried aloud the crossfire of arrows from the thorn scrub on their flanks, and one could sense how they checked an instant, then drove forward at an increased speed. I rode
forward alone, save for my trumpeter and young Riada, to a little spur of the hillside from which I could see what went forward.

The roar of conflict beat up to me now, with the vast impersonal roar of storm water on a rocky coast, and the whole bell-mouth of the pass was a solid mass of Saxons. At first sight it seemed
that this whole bay of the White Horse Vale had turned to armed men, a dark Barbarian tide surging up against the slim barrier of our battle line. Here and there among them men were falling under
the flights of arrows, but with such a war host as this, the hidden archers could do little save fret and thin the ranks a little, while the main rush of the Saxon vanguard swept on, their deadly
loping battle trot quickening almost to a run. Again Saxon horns and old legionary trumpets flung defiance back and forth between the hosts, and again I heard, as I had heard it so often before,
that long-drawn terrible German battle shout that began as the merest cold whisper and rose and rose until it beat in waves of sound upon brain and breast and belly, and then answering it, the
shorter, sharper yell of the British.

The Sea Wolves were within casting distance of our main first defense line now, and as the long-drawn battle howl shattered on its final beast note, a volley of throwing axes came rattling
against the British shields. Looking down from my high place as God might look down upon the battlefields of men, I saw a gap crumble here and there in our own ranks, but for the most part our men
were used to the little deadly missiles, and knew how to cover themselves, and wherever a gap opened in the front rank, the man immediately behind stepped forward to fill it, so that even as the
Sea Wolves sprang in across the last few yards, the British ranks were whole again. Next instant the forefront of both war hosts crashed together with a yell and a terrible thunder of meeting
shields that no man who has heard it can ever forget.

For an incredibly long time our first line held the full weight of the Saxon charge, but at last, slowly, they began to yield ground. Slowly, slowly, the bright stubborn lightnings of leaping
spear and sword blade never for an instant ceasing, they were giving back and back until they merged into the second line behind them, and again the Saxon thrust was held. The boil of battle that
had been concentrated at first across the road and the valley bottom was spreading now up the flanks of the Downs among the thorn scrub on either side, where no battle line could be kept; and
scarce a spear’s throw below the waiting cavalry the woods were full of struggling knots of warriors, the clash of arms and the high-panted war cry, the thrum of parting bowstring and the
squeal of a wounded pony and the death cry of men. And beyond, where the main conflict set the whole valley roaring as a narrow gorge when a river bursts together in spate, our first and second
lines, fighting desperately for every foot they yielded, were being forced back, slowly and dreadfully upon the third, the last line, the only line of reserve we had. I had given orders that the
task of the center was less to hold ground than to kill men (and truly, if I had not, I think that they would have died where they stood, and Britain gone down into the dark, that day), and most
assuredly they were killing men ... The ground that the Saxons pressed over was thick with bodies, and Saxon bodies more than British, though there were enough of British bodies, too; God knows that
there were enough and more than enough ... And always, in the midst of the ragged line, I caught the blood-red color proudly marking out the dwindling ranks of Ambrosius’s old bodyguard.

We no longer had three lines of defense, but one, one seething line that bowed and wavered like a ribband in a high wind, yet somehow never parted, one last supple barrier of gray iron through
which it seemed that the Saxon war host could not break.