Sword at Sunset (74 page)

chapter thirty-seven

T
HE STORMY PROMISE OF LAST NIGHT
’
S SUNSET HAD BEEN
fulfilled in a day of soft blustering wind and squalls of rain, and the standards and the
squadron pennons flew as though already carried at the charge. Beyond the huts and the cooking fires the whole war host was already mustered, horse and foot, archers and spearmen. The wild riders
of my own mountains, sitting their small shaggy steeds as though they and the horses were one; the men of Glevum under the black hound banner of their prince; the men of the high chalk downs, with
something of the formidable steadiness of the Legions about them still. If only, among them, I could have caught the saffron gleam of Cador’s standard, but the men of the West must be still
many miles away. I wondered how near were Cynglass and Vortiporus ... My own Companions were drawn up before the rest, yellow-touched with the corn marigolds that each man wore in his helmet comb or
shoulder buckle, waiting with Flavian at their head, for me to join them. My grand old Signus had died three years ago, and the big silver stallion Gray Falcon, who had taken his place as chief
among my war steeds, was being walked up and down close by. He whinnied at sight of me, and the men shouted my name in greeting, so that it sounded like the sudden crash of waves on a sandy
shore.

I flung up an arm to them in reply, and mounting, wheeled Gray Falcon in among them, with Bedwyr at my side on a tall raking sorrel drawn from the reserves, and suddenly knew the Brotherhood
complete again. Pharic and his Caledonians, whose tribe had first loyalty with them, the traitors who had followed Medraut over to the Saxon camp, they were cut away; the familiar faces that were
lacking and long since rotted into skulls were another matter, for it was not death could break the Brotherhood; what was left was the hard core, the men who, new-joined last year or with forty
years of service behind them, chose to tuck the corn marigold in their war caps and ride into this last battle with me. These were the Companions of the Bear. And I have never loved them quite as I
loved them at that moment.

I should speak to them now; almost always before battle I had made them some kind of fighting speech, but there had been so many battles, so many fighting speeches, that there seemed nothing
left to say, and looking at their grim faces, I knew it was no time for false heartening. So I cried out to them only, ‘Brothers, you know the odds against us today; therefore let us fight so
that whether we win or whether we die, the harpers shall sing of us for a thousand years!’

I flashed up my hand to Cei in command of the main cavalry, and old Marius who led the foot, and the great aurochs horn sang harshly merry and was echoed across the camp, the notes that ordered
the march tossed to and fro on the squally wind that ruffled up and silvered the hazel leaves. And the first band of horse moved off, raising their spears to me in salute as they passed.

Hail Caesar! Those about to die ...

We rode in the usual formation for hostile country, for we could not be sure how near the enemy scouts and advance parties might be: foreguards flung out ahead, and knots of light horse
screening the flanks of the main body, and I remember that Bedwyr, riding beside me, had his harp slung on his shoulder, as he had used to ride into battles, and presently, though he did not
unsling it, he began to sing, so softly that it scarcely broke through the beat of his horse’s hooves, but I caught the breath of it and it was the first song that ever I had heard from him,
the lament for the Corn King that helps the crops to grow, the promise of his return –
out of the mists, back from the land of youth, strong with the sound of trumpets under the apple
boughs
... and I remembered the big stars and the smell of dung fires and the mule drivers listening on the outfringe of the firelight ... He must have heard himself at the same instant as I did,
for we glanced aside at each other, and he laughed and flung up his head and broke baying into a cattle-reeving song of the Berwyn Hills.

Presently three of our scouts came riding back over the skyline of the low ridge as though the red-eared hounds of Anwn were after them. The foremost reined up in a smother of dust almost under
Gray Falcon’s nose so that the big horse snorted and danced in his tracks. ‘Caesar, the advance guard is tangled with the Saxon outposts! They’re falling back—’

I sent the three of them out again, and rising in my stirrups shouted to the Companions to come on. The trumpeter beside me raised the great aurochs horn to his lips and sent the echoes flying
out over the marshes, and we broke forward at an increased speed, the whole war host changing pattern and deploying for action at full march, so that we became, as it were, two advancing battle
lines one behind the other, each with its own spear center and cavalry wings, and the small free bodies of light horse that flanked and partly joined the two together.

Just below the crest of the shallow ridge I checked them, and with Bedwyr and two of my captains rode forward through the furze to get a view of the Saxon position. It was a spur of the same
ridge from which, farther back into the hills, I had seen the Saxon watch fires brightening under last night’s sunset.

On the very fringe of the marshes, where soft ground and winding waterways must limit the use of cavalry, the enemy battle line was drawn up not much more than a mile distant. Medraut, with the
war training that I had given him – and the inborn skill that I had given him too – had chosen his ground well. In the clear between the soft showers of blowing mizzle, the Barbarian
battle line was sharp-edged and pricked with detail; I could make out in their center the horsetail standard of Cerdic, where the Saxon leader held his heavy shield warriors, his hearth companions,
white as a gleam of bog grass against the blurred greens and grays of marsh and reedbed; more white, that was the lime-washed Scottish bucklers; the dull glint of shield boss and spear blade and
war cap splintering into sudden light where a gleam of wet sunshine fled across the marshes and the northward swell of the hills. No sign as yet of the pied and checkered standards of the traitors
Cynglass and Vortiporus. God be thanked for that at least. Above all I saw the blood-red gleam on the right flank where the main part of the enemy cavalry was posted. (Cavalry wings on a Saxon war
line!) Medraut was flying the Red Dragon of Britain for his battle standard, and my gorge rose at the sight.

Between the Saxon host and the ridge from which we looked toward it, our advance cavalry was falling back, scattered and pursued by a flying mob of light horsemen and running spears, and even as
I looked, another band of riders appeared from behind some thick hawthorn scrub, and came curving across like a skein of wild geese in flight, to cut off our men from all hope of retreat.

I had hoped to draw the enemy up from their chosen position onto ground that would allow us better use of our advantage in cavalry, but to delay for that now would mean the sacrifice of the
whole of our advance force. Again I spoke to the trumpeter, and again the notes of the war horn sang thin over the western countryside. The tramp of feet and the smother of hooves came sweeping up
behind me, and I swung Gray Falcon into place at the head of the Companions as we spilled like a wave over the comb of the ridge, and on down to join with the advance guard. The enemy broke off as
they saw us nearing, and scattered back to their own battle line, and we swept on and down, the advance troops wheeling about once more to join with us. It is seldom good to take foot any distance
at the full charge, lest they lose formation and breath together; but there were bowmen among the ranks of the great Saxon battle line, and I must get them across the open ground as swiftly as
might be. The first flight of arrows thrummed out at us as we came within range, and men pitched in their stride and went down; then our own horse archers opened up in reply, and in the enemy
ranks, also, gaps darkened for an instant, until each was closed up by the springing in of the man behind. Forward and away at the canter and the long loping run, the standards lifting and flying
on the air of our going, the war horns yelping, and under the horns I raised the war cry: ‘Yr Widdfa!
Yr Widdfa!
’

The enemy also had broken forward, to the booming of their own bulls’ horns and the long-drawn shuddering German war howl, having learned the unwisdom, I suppose, of receiving a cavalry
charge while at the halt. And so we swept together, yelling at the speed of both armies.

Far on either side of us spread the Barbarian wings, and I glanced back once as we rode, to make sure that the second line on which our hope depended was keeping station, and saw the solid wave
of men and horses sweeping after us, under the standards of Powys and Glevum. So far, so good; but in this country where there could be little free maneuvering for cavalry, to engage solidly all
along the line would be to ask to be engulfed, and I began to swing the whole war host slantwise so as to bring the Companions and the flower of the spear ranks against, as I judged, the weakest
span of the enemy battle line, that held by the Scottish warriors. The spears were flung, a dark whistling shower, and we charged home with drawn swords. War front and war front rolled together
with crash of meeting shields that filled the marsh skies with wheeling and calling clouds of birds, and instantly there rose the clash and grind of weapons, the full-throated roar of war cry
against war cry, the screams of horses, all blended into the great formless smother of sound that is the voice of all battles.

The line of white shields wavered, and clouds of lime dust rode into the air, choking and blinding friend and foe alike, and in the midst of the sharp white haze we were hacking and trampling
our way forward. Almost it seemed, in one short triumphant burst of time, that we should break through to take them in the rear before our own weaker left wing, which I had held back somewhat by
the slantwise charge, became fully engaged. That was when Medraut’s cavalry took us on the flank. The charge was brilliantly timed and handled and, save for the unmounted spearmen I had set
amongst us, we must have been crushed in by it. As it was, our outer ranks were forced back, and the thing that I had dreaded and prepared for began to happen: the enemy’s longer flank was
curling around our own to engulf us. Behind me I heard the trumpets sounding, and knew that our second-line warriors were wheeling about to make their stand back to back with us, while the farthest
right of my own wing, withdrawing under the crash of Medraut’s charge, were linking shields with them.

Now we were a long narrow island, thrust and driven at from all sides, but an island that stood like rock, while again and again the dark waves of destruction came roaring in on us, and again
and again we flung them back. I had pulled back the Companions into the slim space between the two fighting lines, to re-form them, and that I might have freedom of movement to come at any part of
the war host. And I remember Flavian grinning at me from under the standard. He had lost his helmet and his forehead was streaked with blood, and he shouted to me above the furnace roar of battle:
‘A hot day, and somewhat dusty!’ I saw Cei with every cheap glass ornament he possessed bright upon him, standing like a giant in his stirrups in the midst of a battle all his own. I
saw men going down, and others stepping forward to fill their places, and knew that soon the lines would grow perilously thin; soon the island, the British shield-burg, must begin to shrink.
Constantine and his war bands could not be far off now – and nor could the traitor Cymri ...

In the spot where the Barbarian host had come together, encircling us, it seemed to me suddenly, more by a kind of hunter’s instinct than by anything I could see, that the joining place
was weak. I sent the order to Tyrnon and saw him unleash the flower of the war host’s cavalry. They rolled forward, not fast, but remorseless as a wave, the spearmen parting to let them
through ... And suddenly the pressure against us on that side began to slacken. I heard the triumphant yell as it was torn apart and flung off, and the whole battle mass that had been knotted fast
seemed to shake free of the bonds that had held it and grow fluid again. With the incredible swiftness with which the entire nature of a battle can change, the whole field had opened up and was now
on the move. The fighting lines were swaying to and fro over ground that had been fought over all morning and was cumbered with dead men and dead horses, slippery with blood, stinking. Our hands
and war gear were stained red, and here and there a man with his shield torn away would lift a battered corpse in front of him to receive the enemy spears. In the midst of the swifter swirl of
cavalry and light troops, Marius with the heavy spearmen had made for the white horse standard, and was locked with Cerdic’s troops like a pair of tusk-locked boars, while again
Medraut’s flying squadrons were sweeping down upon us.

The Saxons had unleashed their berserkers some time before, and when a shadow slid up from the undergrowth of battle almost under Gray Falcon’s breast and turned about with knife in hand,
my heart jumped cold and I had already flung myself sideways in the saddle in desperate essay to cut the creature down when I saw that it was no drug-maddened Barbarian, but one of the Little Dark
People, and turned the sword point just in time. He cried out something to me, but in the tumult I could not hear and shouted to him in return, ‘Up! Come up here, then!’

And he set one foot over mine in the stirrup, and next instant was clinging to my saddlebow for support, his narrow face streaked with the clay and ochre war patterns on a level with my own, the
three buzzards’ feathers thrust into his knotted-up hair bowed and shivering sideways in the squally wind. ‘My Lord the Bear, the men from the North are near, those that come to join
with the Wolves.’

‘How near?’

He held up a spread hand. ‘As many bowshots as there are fingers on my hands and toes on my feet, maybe less – they come swiftly, swiftly, like a wolf pack on the trail.’