Sword at Sunset (38 page)

‘But this goes beyond the woman, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘This is more than any woman.’ And then he swung around on me, his nostrils flaring, his eyes brighter and more fierce than I had ever seen them in his
twisted, mocking face. ‘You fool, Artos! Don’t you know that if you were deservedly frying in your Christian’s Hell for every sin from broken faith to sodomy, you could count on
my buckler to shield your face from the flames?’

‘I believe I could,’ I said. ‘You are almost as great a fool as I.’

And we went up past the horse lines together, through the salt-tasting mist that was thickening across the high moors.

Two days later, Gault’s squadron was ambushed and cut to pieces by a Saxon war band. They rode back into camp – what was left of them – battered and bloody, their dead left
behind them, the more sorely wounded roped to their horses.

I saw them ride in, and the rest of the camp turn out with grim acceptance of the situation, and few questions asked, to rally around them, help down the wounded and take charge of the horses. I
bade Gault see to his men and get a meal, and come to me with a full report afterward – he looked very white and staggered for an instant in dismounting, as though the ground had tilted under
his feet; but to see one’s squadron cut to bits is enough to account for that in any man. Then I went back to finish looking through Bedwyr’s muster lists, in the half-ruined
shepherd’s bothy that I had taken for my own. It is good for a commander to have some such place when he can, he is easier to find at night, and matters which are not for the camp’s
ears can be spoken of in private.

I was sick at heart for the dazed and tattered remnant of my fourth squadron now gathering to the fire and the hastily brought-out food, sick for the loss of so many of my Companions, but it
would serve no useful purpose to neglect the muster lists. So I crouched on the packsaddle which generally served me for a seat in camp, and returned to the work in hand. I had just reached the end
when a figure loomed into the opening where the door had been, shutting out the blue dark and the flare of the campfire beyond; and looking up, I saw that it was Gault.

He moved in from the doorway, and there was no doubt that he staggered now. ‘I’ve come to report, sir,’ he said in a strained voice that was not like Gault’s at all, and
stretched out his hand to the crumbling turf wall and leaned there. I could see the sweat on his ashen face in the lantern light. ‘But I think I’ve – left it too late.’

I sprang up. ‘Gault, what is it? Are you wounded?’

‘I’ve – got a Saxon arrow in me,’ he said. ‘I broke off the shaft so that the rest shouldn’t see it, but I—’ He made as though to push aside his
cloak, and in the act of doing so, pitched head foremost into my arms. I laid him down and hurriedly thrust back the concealing folds of his cloak and found the short bloody stump of an arrow shaft
projecting from just below the cage of his ribs. The horn scales of his war shirt had been split there by a glancing axe blow some while since, and for days he had been intending to get the weak
place mended. Now it was too late. He was quite unconscious, not much blood on him, but he must have been bleeding inwardly for hours. I sat for a few moments on my heels beside him, then got up
and strode to the door and shouted to the man who stood outside leaning on his spear against the light of the nearest watch fire. ‘Justin, go and fetch Gwalchmai; no matter what he’s
doing – he must have finished with the worst wounded by now. Get him here at once!’

‘Sir,’ he said, and I turned back to the lantern-lit bothy and the still figure crumpled on the floor. I thrust away Cabal’s inquiring muzzle, and ordered the great hound to
lie down in the far corner. I felt Gault’s heart and found it still beating faintly, and straightened him into an easier position, thinking as I did so, that it was so that one straightened
the crumpled dead.

Gwalchmai came very soon. I heard his uneven step outside, hurrying, and next instant he was in the doorway. ‘What is so urgent, Artos?’

‘Gault,’ I said, and moved aside to give him more space. ‘He’s taken an arrow under the ribs.’

Gwalchmai limped forward and knelt at Gault’s other side. ‘Reach down the lantern and hold it for me. I can’t see in this gloom.’

I did as he bade me, and we leaned together over the wound in the pool of yellow light. ‘Who broke off the shaft?’ Gwalchmai demanded. He had already drawn his knife and was cutting
the lacing of Gault’s war shirt.

‘He did it himself, so that his men should not know.’

‘So – well, I daresay it will make little difference in the long run. It would have given me a better purchase ... ’ He cut the last thong that held the battle shirt together on
the right side, and lifted it back, with the blood-sodden linen tunic beneath; and was silent, looking down at the wound that was laid bare. At last he raised his eyes to mine. ‘Artos –
what am I to do?’

‘Light of the Sun, man, that’s for you to say. Get the barb out, I suppose. Why else should I have called you?’

‘Not quite so simple. If I leave the barb where it is, he’ll be dead in three days – an ugly death. If I try to get it out, the chances are around a hundred to one that I shall
kill him here and now.’

‘But there is the hundredth chance?’

‘There is the hundredth chance.’

We looked at each other across Gault’s body. ‘Do it now,’ I said, ‘while he is unconscious. At the worst, death will be quicker and kinder that way.’

Gwalchmai nodded, and got to his feet, and I heard him shouting from the doorway for hot water and barley spirit and more rags. He remained there until the things were brought, then returned and
knelt down, setting out the tools of his trade beside him. ‘Get something to put under his back – we must have him arched backward to draw the belly taut.’

I grabbed the old cloak and an armful of bracken from my bed, and made them into a firm roll, then lifted Gault while Gwalchmai arranged it under him, so that when I laid him down again his body
was bent backward like a half-drawn bow, the skin drawn tight over breast and belly.

‘So, that will serve. Now the lantern again.’

I knelt there for what seemed as long as a whole midwinter night, intent on holding the horn-paned lantern perfectly steady, that no tremor of light might confuse eye or hand at the crucial
moment, while Gwalchmai, working with the complete absorption that shut him off from all men at such times, bathed away the blood so that he might see exactly the edges of the wound, and again took
up his knife. I watched the sure, intent work of his hands as he began with infinite care to enlarge the wound. Later, he laid down the knife and took up a fierce little probe, then another, and
later still, returned to the knife again. It seemed to grow unbearably hot in the bothy, I could feel the sweat prickling in my armpits, and beads of it shone on Gwalchmai’s forehead, and yet
the night was a cool one, and I had no fire under the turf roof. From time to time, whenever Gwalchmai bade me, I felt Gault’s heart. His upturned face was frowning, the teeth bared as though
in intolerable pain, but I think that in truth he did not feel anything. I hope to God that he did not. At one time I thought his heart was stronger and his breathing more steady, but maybe it was
only my own desire that deceived me; or maybe it was a last flicker of life ... Quite suddenly, both began to grow fainter.

By that time we must have been working on him for the best part of an hour, and the thing was almost done. ‘Gwalchmai – can you give him a respite? His heart is fading.’

Gwalchmai gave an infinitesimal shake of the head. ‘Respite will not serve him now. Moisten his lips with the barley spirit.’

And only a few moments later he sat back to draw his own breath, then leaned forward once more and took hold of the short end of arrow shaft which now lay in a little oozing blood-filled hole. I
shut my teeth and for an instant my eyes. When I looked again, he was laying a reeking arrowhead on the ground beside him. Blood gushed out in a red wave, and Gault drew a great choking breath that
seemed to tear itself free of breast and rattling throat, while a convulsive shudder ran through his whole body – and we, kneeling alive in the lantern light, knew that the hundredth chance
had been denied to us.

Gwalchmai sat back on his heels, and said with a great weariness in his voice, ‘Hang up the lantern again. We shall not be needing it any more.’ He rubbed his hands across his face,
and when he took them away, his forehead was smeared with Gault’s blood. ‘We know so little – so hideously little.’

‘Better he should go now than in three days’ time,’ I muttered, trying, I think, to comfort myself as much as him. I got up, suddenly as tired as though I had just come out of
battle, with no glow of victory to sustain me, and turned to hang the lantern again where it had hung before. And even as I did so, the pad of hurrying footsteps sounded outside, and Levin was in
the doorway. ‘Gault bade me take over and see to the men while he made his report,’ he began in a rush, ‘and so I could not come before. I—’ His gaze fell on the body
on the ground, and the rush broke off short, into silence. Then he said, slowly and carefully, as though he were a little drunk, ‘He is dead, isn’t he?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘I knew something was amiss, but he would not tell me. He said only to see to the men while he came up here to make his report. So I could not come before.’

He came a step nearer, and saw the bloody arrowhead and the few surgeon’s tools that Gwalchmai had begun to gather up for cleaning, and looked at Gwalchmai, his mouth flinching. ‘You
killed him, you bloody butcher!’

‘We both killed him,’ I said. ‘Gwalchmai will tell you that if the barb was left in, he must die within three days; if it was cut out, there was one chance in a hundred of
saving him. That’s long odds, Levin.’

‘Yes, I—’ He pressed the back of his hand across his forehead. ‘I am sorry, I – n-not sure what I’m saying ... Did he – say anything?’

‘He was already out of his body,’ Gwalchmai said, getting to his feet.

But the other had knelt down beside his dead, bending forward to look into the set frowning face, and I do not think he was aware of us any more. He cried out sharply and shudderingly,
‘Why didn’t you wait for me? – Gault, why didn’t you wait for me? I would have waited for you!’ and slipped down full length with his arms around the body as a woman
might have done.

Gwalchmai and I looked at each other, and went out of the bothy.

Outside the door hole, he said, ‘I’ll send a couple of men to carry the body away.’ And then, ‘Best have a care, or we’ll be needing a grave dug broad enough for
two.’

‘Not if I can help it,’ I said. I heard his footsteps die away into the darkness between the watch fires, gauging his tiredness by the slur of sound as he dragged his crippled foot
after him. I stayed where I was, under the Red Dragon on its lance shaft beside the door hole, listening for any sound from within the bothy, until I heard the feet of the men Gwalchmai had sent;
and then turned back into the lantern light. Levin was kneeling beside the dead man, staring down at him, and seeing them there with the lantern spilling its pool of dim yellow radiance on the two
wild-barley-colored heads, I realized as I had never quite done before, how alike they were. It was as though the link between them was so potent that even in their outward seeming they could have
nothing apart from each other. ‘The men are coming up from the camp to carry him away,’ I said.

Levin raised his haggard gaze to my face. ‘I must help bear him.’

‘Very well, but return to me here, as soon as all is done.’

He did not answer, but in the last moment before the men were at the door, he ripped his sword from its wolfskin sheath.

I sprang forward. ‘Levin! No!’

And he looked up again, choking with an ugly laughter. ‘Ah no, not yet. Time for that later,’ and with a movement as swift as the other had been, he drew the blade that lay by
Gault’s side, where I had put it down when we cut away his harness, and slammed it home into his own empty sheath. ‘You’ll be returning one sword to store, but I’ll have the
one
he
carried,’ and got to his feet as the newcomers ducked in through the doorway.

When the heavy tread of men carrying a burden had stumbled away into the night sounds of the camp, I sat down again on the packsaddle to wait, and Cabal shook himself clear of the shadows and
came, a little uncertainly, as though questioning whether the reason for his banishment was yet over, and collapsed with a gusty sigh in his usual lying place at my feet. After a moment he raised
his head and looked up at me, whining and uneasy, and as I reached my hand down to stroke his head I felt the harsh hairs raised a little on his neck. He was a war dog, and killing in battle he
understood, but not this. The lists that I had been working on lay scattered beside me. There was blood on them now, the stains turning brown around the edges as they dried. There was blood soaked
into the beaten-earth floor, and the smell of it was everywhere, and the smell of death. It is one thing to have the friend killed beside you in battle (though that strikes sore enough), but quite
another to feel him die under your hands in the cold blood that comes afterward. I wondered whether Levin would come back, or whether I should have to send for him, for I was not sure that he had
even heard my order.

I had waited a long time, and was on the point of sending, when he appeared once more in the doorway.

‘You have been a long time, Levin.’

‘The ground is hard and stony in these parts,’ he said dully. ‘What is it that you wish with me, Artos?’

‘Gault should have furnished me with a full report of what happened, but he had no time. Therefore, as his second, the duty falls to you.’

He got through it quite creditably; there was not, after all, so very much to tell, and then, when it was finished, he broke down, with his arm along the rotting roof beam and his head on his
arm. I gave him a little time, and then said, ‘A sorry business, and has cost us dear in men and horses. But it seems that no blame clings to Gault.’