Warrior of the West (22 page)

‘Ironfist won’t rest his troops, boy,’ the old man advised matter-offactly. ‘He will want to surprise you before daylight. Perhaps his fires are designed to have you think he’s still in the hills when he’s actually closer to us than we expect.’

‘Aye, Targo,’ Artor replied thoughtfully. ‘I’d consider it myself if I were in his place.’

‘No, you wouldn’t.’ Targo laughed abruptly. ‘Only a desperate fool would rush blindly on to alien ground.’

Bedwyr rubbed his tired eyes. This ancient was obviously Artor’s sword master, the man who had made his royal pupil the greatest warrior in the west. Truly, Bedwyr thought, there are legends to be found wherever I look in this desolate place.

‘Lord Pelles has the Saxon longbows, my king,’ he said. ‘I left him caressing them as if they were beautiful young girls.’

‘That Pinhead!’ Targo grunted. ‘No wonder he’s lived so long. He has a fine palate for exceptional weapons.’

‘Excellent,’ Artor said. ‘You’d best get some sleep, Bedwyr, and Odin will find some suitable armour and weapons for you. Frankly, you stink in that Saxon garb.’

Artor was, as ever, blunt and to the point when it came to battle matters.

Bedwyr washed in the river using oil and an old strigil supplied by Odin, who seemed able to magically conjure up any much-needed supplies at short notice. On the bank, Odin placed a rather worn cuirass, a helmet and clothing. He had also found a serviceable rectangular shield, a Roman short sword, a whetstone and a wicked, rather worn dagger.

Even in the dark, and in the chill of the brackish water, Bedwyr felt light-hearted as he sloughed away the last, lingering traces of his captivity. River sand scoured his flesh until it was as rosy and as clean as when he was first born. He scrubbed his hair and scraped away the first signs of his beard with his knife, specially honed for this duty. Although the Cornovii warriors normally wore beards, Bedwyr vowed to be clean-chinned like his king, although the thought of plucking his beard filled him with a frisson of horror.

Bedwyr scorned to use his discarded Saxon garb to dry his shivering body, preferring to tug on leggings, a woollen undershirt and a leather jerkin over his wet flesh. For the first time since his escape from Glamdring’s citadel, Bedwyr felt like a true Celt. Gathering up his cuirass, his Roman shield and his worn weapons, he made his way to the nearest campfire.

Bedwyr knew he should try to sleep, but his weapons were strange to him. Odin later reported to Artor that the young man sat cross-legged near the dying fire and honed his weapons to razor sharpness, even the copper edge of his metal-clad shield.

Artor grinned. ‘There’s nothing like a sharp shield edge rammed under the chin to give the enemy an instant jaw ache - if there’s any jaw left.’

Odin laughed, a rare response. The Jutlander had taken to chewing twigs and charcoal like his master, and his teeth were unexpectedly white behind his reddish beard.

‘The lad has possibilities, Odin, but he is untested in battle. We shall see how he fares.’

Odin nodded.

‘Soon, Odin, soon,’ Artor murmured and lowered his head on to his arms on the table. ‘Wake me at first light.’

Around him, the camp seemed to be sleeping, but the eyes of many men looked to their weapons or attempted to pierce the heavy darkness. The hours of early morning had come, that time when warriors dream of death, and many of the men preferred to remain wakeful.

Without the disturbance or solace of dreams, Artor slept with the intensity and innocence of a child, with only Targo and Odin to watch his back for any hint of danger.

 

Thick fog shrouded the camp, the river and the strip of land between the sea and the forests. The saturated air was clammy, like a drowned man’s touch, and Artor’s troops felt the first stirrings of fear. They suspected that Glamdring Ironfist’s army could be upon them before the sun burnt off the mist.

Artor was awake and fully armed before first light. True to his promise, he had painted his face with blue woad and white clay so that a skull peered forth at the emerging day. He had ordered his standard unfurled and it now stirred and undulated in the barely perceptible sea breeze that had brought the fog rolling down upon them. The men looked up at the rampant Red Dragon of Britain on its hindmost limbs, and took heart at the sight. Then they too painted their faces.

The High King strode, fully armed, towards the place where the shield wall would stand, with Targo and Odin dogging his heels. Wherever he passed, he ordered fires to be doused and men to hurry to their defensive positions.

Pelles had positioned his archers on the slight rise above the flat ground at the rear of the assembled force. Kneeling in rows, in the Roman fashion, they rested and waited, knowing that the prize of the first Saxon blood would be theirs. Pelles had set up his own smaller standard, a fanciful beast composed of many creatures, part snake, part horse and part snapping reptile; his men took pride in being the children of the Chimera, as Pelles called his emblem.

At the rear, immediately behind the wagons, Myrddion and his healers were stoking their fires and making preparations for their role in the coming battle. Long tongues of metal were already heated to a dull cherry red within the coals, for only white-hot metal would cauterize a bleeding wound that imperilled life. The simples and remedies of his craft were laid out in pots in neat rows on the flat bottom of one of the supply wagons. Metal bowls, pincers, some evil-looking needles and a large mortar and pestle were also close to hand. Fastidious as always, Myrddion had donned a leather apron that covered his arms, torso and legs. He knew that he would soon be bathing in blood, so his white hair was plaited away from his face in a long tail down his back. If he sorrowed already for the friends who would die, he refused to allow his sadness to show upon his serene face.

At the very edge of his defensive line, Artor’s men massed. On Targo’s orders, the warriors had formed a living wall, with the tips of their rectangular shields buried in the soft sward and their bodies crouched behind them in the fashion devised by Caesar so many centuries before.

Targo issued orders that long spears were to be thrust between the shields so that any attackers would face a wicked forest of iron.

A second row of defenders stood behind the first. Their shields were tilted to protect the heads of the first line while still covering the exposed upper bodies of their bearers. Yet a third line of men stood behind these men and their shields were raised above their heads to form a solid wedge of wood and iron. Long ago, the Roman legions had named this tactic the tortoise for its impervious shell of iron.

‘Rest!’ Targo ordered, when he was eventually satisfied that the erstwhile cavalry understood the principles of siege warfare. ‘There’s no need to tire yourselves out before Ironfist decides to make his entrance.’

Artor stood bareheaded with Targo behind the third row of defenders. Luka was positioned on the left flank, with the river at his side. Artor had sent Odin to support Caius in securing the right flank. Their orders were to hold their position at all cost, even to the last man. Caius had grinned fiercely at his brother’s orders, and Artor was disconcerted that something joyous glistened in Caius’s eyes.

Never mind, Artor thought. If blood lust makes him a better commander, then I should be grateful for his services to our cause.

The ocean formed the ultimate barrier beyond their wall of iron and the riverbanks were on their left flank.

‘Well, my lad, we’re as ready as we shall ever be,’ Targo informed his king with a satisfied smile. ‘All we await now is the arrival of our guest of honour. If he had any sense, he’d come through this damned fog like the Furies, hoping to catch us unawares.’

‘He wants us to know we are outnumbered, more to bolster his own confidence through our terror,’ Artor replied. ‘Even Glamdring Ironfist must have his doubts from time to time. After all, he is a mortal man, with the fears that afflict all leaders. We have one edge, courtesy of Bedwyr, for Glamdring has lost the advantage of surprise and that Wyrr creature who gave him such excellent counsel and balance.’

‘And where is our young assassin?’ Targo asked cautiously. He still didn’t entirely trust the Cornovii.

Artor pointed to the ranks of soldiers as they waited in a tight row, their bodies taut and their eyes constantly on the move as they probed the mist around them. Bedwyr had chosen to fight in the front row, at the very centre of the line where the attack would be fiercest.

‘That boy either yearns for death or he has a great deal of hate in his heart,’ Targo commented.

‘The latter, I should think, for he’ll bear the scar of that collar until death overtakes him. He hates near as hard as Caius.’

‘Hmph! I’d have thought him a better man than Caius,’ Targo retorted.

‘I’m sure he is. And if he should live, I will make good use of him. The Cornovii have been constant friends, and it is my good fortune that I now possess the Arden Knife.’

‘Beware of hubris, my friend,’ Targo warned, his face creased with concern. ‘Bedwyr is a man, not a tool to be used and then discarded.’

‘I am. Every day. But for now, I’m beginning to wish that something would happen.’

The pale sun rose weakly through the mist but the thick air deadened all sound except for the seabirds who wheeled and screamed as they squabbled over shellfish on the pebbled beach behind them.

Suddenly a scream gurgled out of the dense whiteness. It was abruptly cut off.

‘One of our friendly visitors seems to have found a pit,’ Artor said softly.

‘Hold firm in the ranks,’ Targo barked, although he took care to keep his voice low. ‘God rot this fog. I can barely see the first defensive line.’

‘The sun is beginning to rise now, Targo, so we should soon have better vision.’

A stiff breeze suddenly rattled the standards. Luka’s green serpent coiled and uncoiled on the left, and the eagle of Caius spread its brazen wings on the right. Abruptly, in that moment of chance that all warriors welcome, the sea breeze freshened and the cloying mist was blown away into rags of leprous grey air.

A vast horde stood massed only one hundred yards away.

‘To your positions, you sons of whores!’ Targo screamed, and Artor’s trumpets repeated the order.

Artor turned and raised his gloved fist.

‘Pelles!’ he roared. ‘Make the Saxons bleed! Remember the innocents of Y Gaer!’

The first row of bowmen stood, drew their bowstrings back to their fullest extent and sent a withering volley of arrows into the massed body of the Saxon host.

Without even pausing to see the damage caused by their arrows, the first row knelt and the second row notched their arrows and fired on Pelles’s orders.

Likewise, the third row fired in their turn.

‘Cease fire,’ Artor screamed.

The hail of arrows had done a deadly service, but the damage was mostly superficial. The first volley had caught Ironfist’s men unawares and many had fallen in that initial withering rain of bolts. The second volley had caught those warriors too callow or too stupid to raise their bull hide and metal shields, but the third volley had simply skewered the warrior’s defensive shields.

At the end of the fusillade, some fifty Saxons either lay still on the ground or writhed like broken-backed snakes in their agony.

‘Well, that’s a few less to kill,’ Targo said callously.

Artor grimaced. ‘I think there’s probably another eight hundred or so to go.’

‘Artor!’ roared a stentorian voice out of the press of Saxons that were now separating into long ranks of hulking warriors. ‘Whoreson! Interloper! Today you die! I, Ironfist, am here with a promise of death.’

‘Don’t respond, Artor,’ Targo hissed.

‘Do you think I’m in my dotage, old man?’

The Saxon warriors crouched into their fighting positions, their axes and swords bright in the strengthening sunlight.

‘Do you mean to skulk behind your warriors all day, Artor?’

The shouted words roared over the whimpers, curses and moans of the wounded.

‘We will take your miserable shield wall and hang it about your necks.’

‘You talk too much, Ironfist,’ a voice yelled from within the ranks of Artor’s wall. ‘Where is Wyrr? In what hell does he await you?’

Glamdring howled, extended one arm, and one wing of Saxon warriors suddenly charged directly towards Artor’s left flank.

‘That sounded like Bedwyr. He knows how to sting Glamdring, for he’s sending his men straight towards the pits.’ Targo chuckled mirthlessly.

A dozen Saxon warriors were killed as they fell through seemingly solid ground on to the wicked, sharpened stakes. The rest of the attackers changed course, as Artor had intended, and continued their assault on the centre of that flank, right at the point where Artor’s defences were deepest. The High King could hear Luka shouting over the screams as the Celts used their spears to cut down the maddened Saxons.

‘Let Hades take them, Pelles,’ Artor roared, and the trumpets sounded in unison. The Celts on the left flank enclosed themselves in their iron shields as Pelles’s men peppered any exposed Saxon breast, head or legs.

Glamdring attacked the right flank immediately in a direct frontal charge, but the pits were found quickly, and a vicious engagement commenced. Artor gave the order to fire, and Pelles’s second line of archers wheeled to cover the right-hand side of the defensive position.

Then, with a rush that made the ground shake, Glamdring led the bulk of his troops straight through the middle to strike the very centre of Artor’s defensive line.

They struck with the force of a wave, but the line managed to hold. If one man fell, the man behind him stepped into the breach and, periodically, Pelles was ordered to send off a volley of fire arrows that had a withering effect on both friend and foe as concealed traps of pitch were lit. The tortoise manoeuvre saved the Celts from all but superficial injury, but the Saxons were soon running red with wounds or twisting in cloaks of flame.