Warrior of the West (27 page)

‘The cavalry has come! The cavalry has come! The cavalry has come!’

Out on the plain, Glamdring saw the massed cavalry as it burst from the trees behind him, and he screamed in impotent rage as the audacity of Artor’s gamble struck home.

Still more horsemen were pouring over the river crossing, their horses swimming strongly through the wide estuary. Glamdring could see that his forces were caught in a pincer movement between two formations of cavalry. Artor’s strategy was masterful, and Glamdring accepted, numbly, that he was caught in a fatal trap through his own impatience and stupidity.

Another horn sounded from the east and Gawayne was upon the rear of the Saxons. Glamdring saw it all, the defenders now beginning to step forward where they had previously retreated, the Otadini surging out of the river with their axes and swords swinging, and behind him the implacable warriors of the Ordovice tribe.

Trapped! There was nowhere to go. Glamdring Ironfist screamed his defiance at the sky, while the warnings of Gaheris reverberated through his head. ‘You never learn . . . you never change . . . you never learn.’

The Saxon thane realized that his only course of action was to abandon the field and to seek the safety of Caer Fyrddin.

‘To me! To me! To me!’ he shouted. ‘Retreat! Retreat! Fight your way through to the woods.’

As the Saxon force began to fall away, Artor lowered his bloody sword, for his abused chest and arm muscles were no longer strong enough to bear the weight of the huge blade. He pressed his hand beneath his leather jerkin, and discovered that Myrddion’s bandages were now saturated with blood.

‘Order the men to rest, Targo. They have achieved miracles, and the west will remember this great battle as long as these isles endure.’

He turned to face his sword bearer.

‘Take Caliburn, Gruffyd, and clean it well for it has served the west yet again.’ He gazed around at the nauseating bloodbath. ‘But first, before we take pleasure in victory, we must take care of our wounded.’

Down on the plain, Lot and Llanwith were making sport. Cavalry against foot soldiers was an unequal struggle in any battle but now, after three days of vicious fighting, the Saxons were weary and desperate to escape. Those who were still fleet of foot formed into small bands and fought their way through the horsemen to scatter into the forest like wood smoke. But many of Glamdring’s men were cut off, and they were quickly mustered into small groups where they were encircled and hacked to pieces at the pleasure of the Celtic relief columns.

Queen Morgause watched the carnage from a low mound overlooking the battlefield, with only a token guard to protect her. She hungered for Saxon blood and drank in each desperate attempt by the battered Saxons to flee from the battlefield.

Over the screams of the many small skirmishes taking place, she heard the exultation of the Otadini warriors in their fierce battle cry.

‘For Gaheris! For Gaheris! For Gaheris!’

In the privacy of her cowl, Morgause wept, and was at last content with her revenge for the loss of her son. Her heart swelled with grief and triumph as she rode through the weary lines of the Celtic defences and nodded a greeting to her brother. But she didn’t pause until she reached the top of the knoll where she dared Myrddion’s wrath by gloating over the living, the dying, and the dead. She gazed over the piled Saxon dead, more than a spear length in height, and smiled slowly.

The wall of Celtic corpses was a perfect position from which to observe the massacre of the few remaining Saxon warriors, and Morgause watched from horseback like a black basilisk or funerary sculpture made from granite.

Myrddion was revolted by the queen’s obvious pleasure in the carnage. Her spirit seemed to feed on the pain inflicted by her husband as he took revenge for the loss of their son. Myrddion would have ordered her out of his small kingdom, but he glimpsed something in her eyes below the gloating and the blood lust, something that was vulnerable and lost. He turned away from her, his stomach churning. He knew that she was doing lasting damage to her mind and to her soul.

Indeed, until her death, Morgause was never again a woman of power. Something essential to her spirit was extinguished on the battlefield beside a nameless river. The queen lived and ruled for many more years, but she had become a fair husk dressed in black-edged robes who was unable to savour the true taste of living.

‘We pay for our pleasures and our revenges,’ Myrddion murmured aloud.

‘Lord?’ his patient asked, his eyes mere pinpoints under the effects of Myrddion’s last jar of poppy juice.

‘My apologies, boy. I was merely trying to make sense out of an enigma, but I suppose it’s an impossible question I ask of myself. Now . . . your arm will always be stiff, but at least your fingers will still move at your bidding.’

As he finished stitching the wound and wrapped it securely in clean cloth, the healer glanced back at the queen. She remained a black shape against the blue sky, and her form was so still that she scarcely seemed to breathe.

‘May the gods have mercy on you, Morgause,’ he whispered softly towards her. ‘For you will pay for what you have desired on this day.’

And so the backbone of the western Saxons was smashed. The red morning was followed by an even redder day, and the Mori Saxonicus seemed to run pink with a flush of diluted blood. Crows and ravens feasted well on the stripped corpses of the Saxon dead before Artor ordered that the heaped, corrupted flesh should be burned in large communal graves to reduce the possibility of disease.

For his part, King Lot searched in vain for the body of his son’s murderer. Glamdring Ironfist had escaped, and the whole, bloody campaign would be for nothing unless the Saxon thane was found and executed. Lot ranted and swore vengeance, but Queen Morgause turned towards her half-brother and read his intention in his adamantine eyes.

‘Fear not, husband,’ she said tonelessly, ‘for Artor will not permit Ironfist to live.’

Even Lot blanched at the sight of his queen’s frozen face.

Artor ignored his sister, and focused his attention on the field of battle and the last Saxon stragglers as they were slaughtered. Then he turned to Targo.

‘Find that young Cornovii, Bedwyr, and bring him to me. We go to Caer Fyrddin, and I need his knowledge of the fortress.’

The small group of warriors who had survived the battle of the shield wall was left to guard the wounded, and to burn the corpses of the warriors who had perished.

Waiting only to have his dressings re-bound, Artor was soon on horseback, leading the cavalry to Caer Fyrddin and the remnants of the Saxon horde that sheltered there.

And Bedwyr, the Arden Knife, rode with him.

Bedwyr had survived the terror of being in the first line of the shield wall for a miraculous three days and five battle waves. Men touched him for luck after the first day, since he was covered with blood from head to toe but had not received a single scratch. At the end of the second day, they averted their eyes from his glazed face out of superstitious dread, for his eyes burned with the heat of madness in his smeared, skull-like face.

During the night attack, Bedwyr had fought like a man possessed. The very smell of Saxons turned his stomach and inflamed his rage. The real Bedwyr did not exist in that charnel house that was the first line of defence; he was Dog, and he was repaying every blow, every slight, every wound upon his companions’ bodies, and every scream that their flame-blasted throats had made.

When the battle was over and the Saxons were in full retreat, the young man gradually returned to his senses, and he was appalled at his actions during the fighting.

He stank of blood, both fresh and dried. He reeked of death, and his shorn hair was stiff with something he did not care to name. Revolted and half-maddened by what he had seen, Bedwyr bolted to the river to lie in its shallows. Even here, he could see the waters were fouled with diluted blood and the remnants of corpses that bobbed in the wavelets along the shore.

He trudged across the river mouth to the sea, his booted feet crunching over the sand and pebbles. Once there, he stripped off every stitch of wet clothing. In the salty water, he allowed the waves to suck at his flesh as it peeled away the detritus of death that fouled every crease of his body. Naked, he lay at the tideline, his limbs moving flaccidly with the surge and the tug of waves. Soon, he found himself lulled into a type of waking dream where he was back among the trees of Arden.

‘Hoi?’ a rough voice rasped out. ‘You! Bedwyr! You’re wanted!’

Bedwyr refused to stir. All he could tolerate was the movement of the sea, as gentle as the comfort of his mother’s arms.

Dirty, booted feet splashed into the shallows beside him. Unwillingly, Bedwyr opened one eye.

‘Leave me alone,’ he moaned.

‘I can’t, lad,’ Targo replied kindly, his eyes shadowed with sympathy in his stubbled face. ‘King Artor wants you, and he isn’t known for his patience. When a High King calls for our presence, we mortals obey.’

‘I’m going nowhere,’ Bedwyr stated quietly, but his eyes scanned Targo’s looming figure, and he seemed to regain some sanity as the old soldier smiled down at him.

‘Glamdring Ironfist has escaped the battlefield, and will find refuge in Caer Fyrddin. This campaign isn’t over, so we’ve no time for rest or rejoicing. You know the fortress intimately, as you boasted to us, so you’re needed, lad, and you will come, even if I have to drag you into Artor’s presence.’

‘There’s no chance of that, old man. I outweigh you and outreach you.’

Targo’s pleasant tone hardly changed. ‘I won’t have to do anything. But Odin will, and he outweighs and outreaches you.’ Targo pointed to Odin, who stepped forward and blocked out the sun.

Bedwyr sighed and struggled to his feet. ‘I have no choice, do I?’

‘Not a lot.’ Targo smiled. ‘I heard you fought well at the wall.’

Bedwyr’s face collapsed, and Targo realized that the young man was on the verge of weeping.

‘You’ve never been in a battle before, have you, lad?’ Targo put one sinewy arm round the shoulders of the young man. ‘I thought not. This battle was nearly as bad as it gets. Over six hundred men have died here in just three days. Even a seasoned warrior would be shaken by such an ordeal, but you’re new to it. One day you will wake up and think that it was all one dim, half-forgotten nightmare.’

Odin helped Bedwyr to dress in his soaking clothes, which were, at least, cleansed by the river water.

‘Try not to dwell on it, lad.’ Targo attempted to comfort the young man. ‘Most warriors carry horrors with them but we seem to put them into the back of our minds until we need some information that we’ve learned from them.’ He clapped Bedwyr on the back. ‘I think Artor will ask you to accompany us back to Caer Fyrddin. He knows that if he doesn’t kill Glamdring now, he’ll have to return in a few years’ time and go through the same killing fields again. It’s best we get the job finished, once and for all.’

Artor had already determined that half of the cavalry complement of the forces commanded by Lot and Llanwith would be sufficient to take the fortress at Caer Fyrddin and defeat the remnants of Glamdring’s forces. The foot soldiers had earned a rest, uninterrupted sleep and care for their wounds. The remainder of his cavalry would see to the burning of the Celt and Saxon corpses, and construction of a cairn to honour the Celtic heroes who died at the mouth of the river.

At least the Celtic rations and supplies wouldn’t run short, for their losses had been horrific.

Lot and Llanwith had both achieved their respective objectives, and Artor knew that Glamdring would receive no reinforcements from the Saxon villages, only refugees.

Luka would be given command of half of Lot’s cavalry and the remnants of those warriors who had fought at the shield wall. Their task would be to move the wounded and non-combatant troops back to Venta Silurum in slow stages, as well as escorting the spoils of war that had been taken from the Saxon bodies at Mori Saxonicus.

Caius was already taking inventory of the heaped Saxon weapons, torcs, golden pins and finger rings as Artor departed for Caer Fyrddin. As the High King passed on horseback, his foster-brother grinned at him as if their conversation in his tent on the eve of the last-ditch battle had never taken place.

Artor’s previous reluctance to attack Caer Fyrddin was no longer relevant. Its walls might be strong, its water and stores might be plentiful, and there were ravines that guarded three of its four sides, but unless Ironfist could man his ramparts with troops, Caer Fyrddin would be taken eventually. With the confidence born of waging a successful campaign, Artor’s cavalry took their time as they climbed the first mountain that loomed over the river valley, and smoked out isolated pockets of Saxon resistance as they rode.

On the first hill that gave an uninterrupted view of the river and sea, and the hills behind it, Artor found evidence of a once thriving community. The ruins of Roman walls, domestic houses and buildings given over to commerce edged the cracked remains of broad streets.

‘What they cannot use, these Saxons destroy,’ Artor said sadly. ‘I suppose this is all that’s left of Moridunum, where Myrddion was born. Perhaps it will rise again, and race will come to matter less than the land on which men and women live.’

‘Look, Artor. Over there.’ Targo pointed towards the slopes of a hill on the western outskirts of the ruins. ‘See? I’d swear that was once a Roman theatre. Even Glamdring couldn’t destroy it entirely.’

‘Bedwyr.’ Artor turned to the young man. ‘In what direction lies Caer Fyrddin from here?’

The Cornovii pointed to the north, towards a misty crest that lay beyond low hills. The distance, it seemed, wasn’t far, but it was mostly uphill.

That night, Artor required Bedwyr to draw plans of Caer Fyrddin again and again in the dirt. Artor absorbed every item of information he could extract from the younger man about the sheer cliffs that breasted the walls, the single wooden gate guarded by the watchtower, the hall, the well, the piggeries and the cow byres, the barracks for the fighting men, and even the deep grain stores located in the foundations of the old Roman fortress.