The Winter King

PART FIVE The Shield-Wall

“Oo it was her!” Igraine accused me. “The Princess Ceinwyn Owho turned your blood to smoke, Brother Derfel.”

“Yes, Lady, it was,” I confessed, and I confess now that there are tears in my eyes as I remember Ceinwyn. Or perhaps it is the weather that is making my eyes water, for autumn has come to Dinnewrac and a cold wind is stealing through my window. I must soon make a pause in this writing, for we shall have to be busy storing our foodstuffs for the winter and making the log pile that the blessed Saint Sansum will take pleasure in not burning so that we can share our dear Saviour's suffering.

“No wonder you hate Lancelot so much!” Igraine said. “You were rivals. Did he know how you felt for Ceinwyn?”

“In time,” I said, 'yes."

“So what happened?” she asked eagerly.

“Why don't we leave the story in its proper order, Lady?”

“Because I don't want to, of course.”

“Well I do,” I said, 'and I am the storyteller, not you."

“If I didn't like you so much, Brother Derfel, I would have your head cut off and your body fed to our hounds.” She frowned, thinking. She looks very pretty today in a cloak of grey wool edged with otter fur. She is not pregnant, so either the pessary of baby's faeces did not work or else Brochvael is spending too much time with Nwylle. “There was always talk in my husband's family about Great-aunt Ceinwyn,” she said, 'but no one ever really explained what the scandal was about."

“There is no one I have ever known, Lady,” I said sternly, 'about whom there was less scandal."

“Ceinwyn never married,” Igraine said, “I know that much.”

“Is that so scandalous?” I asked.

“It is if she behaved as though she were married,” Igraine said indignantly. “That's what your church preaches. Our church,” she hastily corrected herself. “So what happened? Tell me!” I pulled my monk's sleeve over the stump of my hand, always the first part of me to feel a chill wind.

“Ceinwyn's tale is too long to tell now,” I said, and refused to add any more, despite my Queen's importunate demands.

“So did Merlin find the Cauldron?” Igraine demanded instead.

“We shall come to that in its proper time,” I insisted.

She threw up her hands. “You infuriate me, Derfel. If I behaved like a proper queen I really would demand your head.”

“And if I was anything but an ancient and feeble monk, Lady, I would give it to you.” She laughed, then turned to look out of the window. The leaves of the small oak trees that Brother Maelgwyn planted to make a windbreak have turned brown early and the woods in the combe below us are thick with berries, both signs that a harsh winter is coming. Sagramor once told me there were places where winter never comes and the sun shines warm all year, but maybe, like the existence of rabbits, that was another of his fanciful tales. I once hoped that the Christian heaven would be a warm place, but Saint Sansum insists heaven must be cold because hell is hot and I suppose the saint is right. There is so little to look forward to. Igraine shivered and turned back towards me. “No one ever made me a Lughnasa bower,” she said wistfully.

“Of course they did!” I said. “Every year you have one!”

“But that's the Caer's bower. The slaves make it because they have to, and naturally I sit there, but it isn't the same as having your own young man make you a bower out of foxgloves and willow. Was Merlin angry about you and Nimue making love?”

“I should never have confessed that to you,” I said. “If he knew he never said anything. It wouldn't have mattered to him. He was not jealous.” Not like the rest of us. Not like Arthur, not like me. How much of our earth has been wet by blood because of jealousy! And at the end of life, what does it all matter? We grow old and the young look at us and can never see that once we made a kingdom ring for love. Igraine adopted her mischievous look. “You say Gorfyddyd called Guinevere a whore. Was she?”

“You should not use that word.”

“All right, was Guinevere what Gorfyddyd said she was, which I'm not allowed to say for fear of offending your innocent ears?”

“No,” I said, 'she was not."

“But was she faithful to Arthur?”

“Wait,” I said.

She stuck her tongue out at me. “Did Lancelot become a Mithraist?” she asked.

“Wait and see,” I insisted.

“I hate you!”

“And I am your most worshipping servant, dear Lady,” I said, 'but I am also tired and this cold weather makes the ink clog. I shall write the rest of the story, I promise you."

“If Sansum lets you,” Igraine said.

“He will,” I answered. The saint is happier these days, thanks to our remaining novice who is no longer a novice, but consecrated a priest and a monk and already, Sansum insists, a saint like himself. Saint Tudwal, we must now call him, and the two saints share a cell and glorify God together. The only thing I can find wrong with such a blessed partnership is that the holy Saint Tudwal, now twelve years old, is making yet another effort to learn how to read. He cannot speak this Saxon tongue, of course, but even so I fear what he might decipher from these writings. But that fear must wait till Saint Tudwal masters his letters, if he ever does, and for the moment, if God wills it, and to satisfy the impatient curiosity of my most lovely Queen, Igraine, I shall continue this tale of Arthur, my dear lost Lord, my friend, my lord of war.

I noticed nothing the next day. I stood with Galahad as an unwelcome guest of my enemy Gorfyddyd while lorweth made the propitiation to the Gods, and the Druid could have been blowing dandelion seeds for all the note I took of the ceremonies. They killed a bull, they tied three prisoners to the three stakes, strangled them, then took the war's auguries by stabbing a fourth prisoner in the midriff. They sang the Battle Song of Maponos as they danced about the dead, and then the kings, princes and chieftains dipped their spearheads in the dead men's blood before licking the blood off the blades and smearing it on their cheeks. Galahad made the sign of the cross while I dreamed of Ceinwyn. She did not attend the ceremonies. No women did. The auguries, Galahad told me, were favourable to Gorfyddyd's cause, but I did not care. I was blissfully remembering that silver-light touch of Ceinwyn's finger on my hand. Our horses, weapons and shields were brought to us and

Gorfyddyd himself walked us to Caer Sws's gate. Cuneglas, his son, came also; he might well have intended a courtesy by accompanying us, but Gorfyddyd had no such niceties in mind. “Tell your whore-lover,” the King said, his cheeks still smeared with blood, 'that war can be avoided by one thing only. Tell Arthur that if he presents himself in Lugg Vale for my judgment and verdict I shall consider the stain on my daughter's honour cleansed."

“I shall tell him, Lord King,” Galahad answered.

“Is Arthur still beardless?” Gorfyddyd asked, making the question sound like an insult.

“He is, Lord King,” Galahad said.

“Then I can't plait a prisoner's leash from his beard,” Gorfyddyd growled, 'so tell him to cut off his whore's red hair before he comes and have it woven ready for his own leash.“ Gorfyddyd clearly enjoyed demanding that humiliation of his enemies, though Prince Cuneglas's face betrayed an acute embarrassment for his father's crudeness. ”Tell him that, Galahad of Benoic,“ Gorfyddyd continued, 'and tell him that if he obeys me, then his shaven whore can go free so long as she leaves Britain.”

“The Princess Guinevere can go free,” Galahad restated the offer.

“The whore!” Gorfyddyd shouted. “I lay with her often enough, so I should know. Tell Arthur that!” He spat the demand into Galahad's face. “Tell him she came to my bed willingly, and to other beds too!”

“I shall tell him,” Galahad lied to stem the bitter words. “And what, Lord King,” Galahad went on, 'of Mordred?"

“Without Arthur,” Gorfyddyd said, “Mordred will need a new protector. I shall take responsibility for Mordred's future. Now go.”

We bowed, we mounted and we rode away, and I looked back once in hope of seeing Ceinwyn, but only men showed on Caer Sws's ramparts. All around the fortress the shelters were being pulled down as men prepared to march on the direct road to Branogenium. We had agreed not to use that road, but to go home the longer way through Caer Lud so we would not be able to spy on Gorfyddyd's gathering host.

Galahad looked grim as we rode eastwards, but I could not restrain my happiness and once we had ridden clear of the busy encampments I began to sing the Song of Rhiannon.

“What is the matter with you?” Galahad asked irritably.

“Nothing. Nothing! Nothing! Nothing!” I shouted in joy and kicked back my heels so that the horse bolted down the green path and I fell into a patch of nettles. “Nothing at all,” I said when Galahad brought the horse back to me. “Absolutely nothing.”

“You're mad, my friend.”

“You're right,” I said as I clambered awkwardly back on to the horse. I was indeed mad, but I was not going to tell Galahad the reason for my madness, so for a time I tried to behave soberly. “What do we tell Arthur?” I asked him.

“Nothing about Guinevere,” Galahad said firmly. “Besides, Gorfyd-dyd was lying. My God! How could he tell such lies about Guinevere?”

“To provoke us, of course,” I said. “But what do we tell Arthur about Mordred?”

“The truth. Mordred is safe.”

“But if Gorfyddyd lied about Guinevere,” I said, 'why shouldn't he lie about Mordred? And Merlin didn't believe him."

“We weren't sent for Merlin's answer,” Galahad said.

“We were sent to find the truth, my friend, and I say Merlin spoke it.”

“But Tewdric,” Galahad answered firmly, 'will believe Gorfyddyd."

“Which means Arthur has lost,” I said bleakly, but I did not want to talk about defeat, so instead I asked Galahad what he had thought of Ceinwyn. I was letting the madness take hold of me again and I wanted to hear Galahad praise her and say she was the most beautiful creature between the seas and the mountains, but he simply shrugged. “A neat little thing,” he said carelessly, 'and pretty enough if you like those frail-looking girls.“ He paused, thinking. ”Lancelot will like her,“ he went on. ”You do know Arthur wants them to marry? Though I don't suppose that will happen now. I suspect Gundleus's throne is safe and Lancelot will have to look elsewhere for a wife."

I said nothing more about Ceinwyn. We rode back the way we had come and reached Magnis on the second night where, just as Galahad had predicted, Tewdric put his faith in Gorfyddyd's promise while Arthur preferred to believe Merlin. Gorfyddyd, I realized, had used us to separate Tewdric and Arthur, and it seemed to me that Gorfyddyd had done well, for as we listened to the two men wrangle in Tewdric's quarters it was plain that the King of Gwent had no stomach for the coming war. Galahad and I left the two men arguing while we walked on Magnis's ramparts that were formed by a great earthen wall flanked by a flooded ditch and topped with a stout palisade. “Tewdric will win the argument,” Galahad told me bleakly. “He doesn't trust Arthur, you see.”

“Of course he does,” I protested.

Galahad shook his head. “He knows Arthur's an honest man,” he allowed, 'but Arthur's also an adventurer. He's landless, have you ever thought of that? He defends a reputation, not property. He holds his rank because of Mordred's age, not through his own birth. For Arthur to succeed he must be bolder than other men, but Tewdric doesn't want boldness right now. He wants security. He'll accept Gorfyddyd's offer.“ He was silent for a while. ”Maybe our fate is to be wandering warriors,“ he continued gloomily, 'deprived of land, and always being driven back towards the Western Sea by new enemies.” I shivered and drew my cloak tighter. The night was clouding over and bringing a chill promise of rain on the western wind. “You're saying Tewdric will desert us?”

“He already has,” Galahad said bluntly. “His only problem now is getting rid of Arthur gracefully. Tewdric has too much to lose and he won't take risks any more, but Arthur has nothing to lose except his hopes.”

“You two!” A loud voice called us from behind and we turned to see Culhwch hurrying along the ramparts. “Arthur wants you.”

“For what?” Galahad asked.

“What do you think, Lord Prince? He's lacking for throw board players?” Culhwch grinned. “These bastards may not have the belly for a fight' he gestured towards the fort that was thronged with Tewdric's neatly uniformed men 'but we have. I suspect we're going to attack all on our own.” He saw our surprise and laughed. “You heard Lord Agricola the other night. Two hundred men can hold Lugg Vale against an army. Well? We've got two hundred spearmen and Gorfyddyd possesses an army, so why do we need anyone from Gwent? Time to feed the ravens!”

The first rain fell, hissing in the smithy fires, and it seemed we were going to war. I sometimes think that was Arthur's bravest decision. God knows he took other decisions in circumstances just as desperate, but never was Arthur weaker than on that rainy night in Magnis where Tewdric was drawing up patient orders that would withdraw his forward men back to the Roman walls in preparation for a truce between Gwent and the enemy.

Arthur gathered five of us in a soldier's house close to those walls. The rain seethed on the roof while under the thatch a log fire smoked to light us with a lurid glare. Sagramor, Arthur's most trusted commander, sat beside Morfans on the hut's small bench, Culhwch, Galahad and I squatted on the floor while Arthur talked.

Prince Meurig, Arthur allowed, had spoken an uncomfortable truth, for the war was indeed of his own making. If he had not spurned Ceinwyn there would be no enmity between Powys and Dumnonia. Gwent was involved by being Powys's most ancient enemy and Dumnonia's traditional friend, but it was not in Gwent's interest to continue the war. “If I had not come to Britain,” Arthur said, 'then King Tewdric would not be foreseeing the rape of his land. This is my war and, just as I began it, so I must end it.“ He paused. He was a man to whom emotion came easily, and he was, at that moment, overcome with feeling. ”I am going to Lugg Vale tomorrow,“ he finally spoke and for a dreadful second I thought he meant to give himself up to Gorfyddyd's awful revenge, but then Arthur offered us his open generous smile, 'and I would like it if you came with me, but I have no right to demand it.” There was silence in the room. I suppose we were all thinking that the fight in the vale had seemed a risky prospect when the combined armies of Gwent and Dumnonia were to be employed, but how were we to win with only Dumnonia's men? “You have a right to demand that we come,” Culhwch broke the silence, 'for we took oaths to serve you."

“I release you from those oaths,” Arthur said, 'asking only that if you live you stand by my promise to see Mordred grow into our King."

There was silence again. None of us, I think, wavered in our loyalty, but nor did we know how to express it until Galahad spoke. “I swore you no oath,” he said to Arthur, 'but I do now. Where you fight, Lord, I fight, and he who is your enemy is mine, and he who is your friend is my friend also. I swear that on the precious blood of the living Christ.“ He leaned forward, took Arthur's hand and kissed it. ”May my life be forfeit if I break my word."

“It takes two to make an oath,” Culhwch said. “You might release me, Lord, but I don't release myself.”

“Nor I, Lord,” I added.

Sagramor looked bored. “I'm your man,” he said to Arthur, 'no one else's."

“Bugger the oath,” ugly Morfans said, “I want to fight.” Arthur had tears in his eyes. For a time he could not speak, so instead he busied himself ramming at the fire with a log until he had succeeded in halving its warmth and doubling its smoke. “Your men are not oath-bound,” he said thickly, 'and I want none but willing men in Lugg Vale tomorrow."

“Why tomorrow?” Culhwch asked. “Why not the day after? The more time we have to prepare, the better, surely?”

Arthur shook his head. “We'll be no better prepared if we wait a whole year. Besides, Gorfyddyd's spies will already be going north with news that Tewdric is accepting Gorfyddyd's terms, so we must attack before those same spies discover that we Dumnonians have not retreated. We attack at dawn tomorrow.” He looked at me. “You will attack first, Lord Derfel, so tonight you must reach your men and talk to them, and if they prove unwilling, then so be it, but if they are willing then Morfans can tell you what they must do.”

Morfans had ridden the whole enemy line, flaunting himself in Arthur's armour but also reconnoitring the enemy positions. Now he took handfuls of grain from a pot and piled them on his outspread cloak to make a rough model of Lugg Vale. “It's not a long valley,” he said, 'but the sides are steep. The barricade is here at the southern end.“ He pointed to a spot just inside the modelled valley. ”They felled trees and made a fence. It's big enough to stop a horse, but it won't take long for a few men to haul those trees aside. Their weakness is here.“ He indicated the western hill. ”It's steep at the northern end of the valley, but where they built their barricade you can easily run down that slope. Climb the hill in the dark and in the dawn you attack downhill and dismantle their tree fence while they're still waking up. Then the horses can come through." He grinned, relishing the thought of surprising the enemy.

“Your men are used to marching by night,” Arthur told me, 'so at dawn tomorrow you take the barricade, destroy it, then hold the vale long enough for our horse to arrive. After the horse our spearmen will come. Sagramor will command the spearmen in the vale while I and fifty horsemen attack Branogenium." Sagramor showed no reaction to the announcement which gave him command of most of Arthur's army. The rest of us could not hide our astonishment, not at Sagramor's appointment, but at Arthur's tactics.

“Fifty horsemen attacking Gorfyddyd's whole army?” Galahad asked dubiously.

“We won't capture Branogenium,” Arthur admitted, 'we may not even get close, but we shall stir them into a pursuit and that pursuit will bring them down to the vale. Sagramor will meet that pursuit at the vale's northern end, where the road fords the river, and when they attack, you retreat.“ He looked at us in turn, making sure we understood his instructions. ”Retreat,“ he said again, 'always retreat. Let them think they win! And when you have sucked them deep into the valley, I shall attack.”

“From where?” I asked.

“From behind, of course!” Arthur, energized by the prospect of battle, had regained all his enthusiasm.

“When my horsemen retreat from Branogenium we won't go back into the vale, but hide outside its northern end. The place is smothered in trees. And once you've sucked the enemy in, we'll come from their rear.”

Sagramor stared at the piles of grain. “The Blackshield Irish at Coel's Hill,” he said in his execrable accent, 'can march south of the hills to take us in the rear,“ he pushed a finger through the scattered grains at the Vale's southern end to show what he meant. Those Irish, we all knew, were the fearsome warriors of Oengus Mac Airem, King of Demetia, who had been our ally until Gorfyddyd had changed his loyalty with gold. ”You want us to hold an army in front and the Blackshields behind?" Sagramor asked.

“You see,” Arthur said with a smile, 'why I offer to release you from your oaths. But once Tewdric knows we're embattled, he'll come. As the day passes, Sagramor, you will find your shield-line thickening by the minute. Tewdric's men will deal with the enemy from Goel's Hill."

“And if they don't?” Sagramor asked.

“Then we will probably lose,” Arthur admitted calmly, 'but with my death will come Gorfyddyd's victory and Tewdric's peace. My head will go to Ceinwyn as a present for her wedding and you, my friends, will be feasting in the Otherworld where, I trust, you will keep a place at table for me." There was silence again. Arthur seemed sure that Tewdric would fight, though none of us could be so certain. It seemed to me that

Tewdric might well prefer to let Arthur and his men perish in Lugg Vale and thus rid himself of an inconvenient alliance, but I also told myself that such high politics were not my concern. My concern was surviving the next day and, as I looked at Morfans's crude model of the battlefield, I worried about the western hill down which we would attack in the dawn. If we could attack there, I thought, so could the enemy. “They'll outflank our shield-line,” I said, describing my concern. Arthur shook his head. “The hill's too steep for a man in armour to climb at the vale's northern end. The worst they'll do is send their levies there, which means archers. If you can spare men, Derfel, put a handful there, but otherwise pray that Tewdric comes quickly. To which end,” he said, turning to Galahad, 'though it hurts me to ask you to stay away from the shield-wall, Lord Prince, you will be of most value to me tomorrow if you ride as my envoy to King Tewdric. You are a prince, you speak with authority and you, above all men, can persuade him to take advantage of the victory I intend to give him by my disobedience."

Galahad looked troubled. “I would rather fight, Lord.”

“On balance,” Arthur smiled, “I would rather win than lose. For that, I need Tewdric's men to come before the day's end and you, Lord Prince, are the only fit messenger I can send to an aggrieved king. You must persuade him, flatter him, plead with him, but above all, Lord Prince, convince him that we win the war tomorrow or else fight for the rest of our days.”

Galahad accepted the choice. “Though I have your permission to return and fight at Derfel's side when the message is delivered?” he added.

“You will be welcome,” Arthur said. He paused, staring down at the piles of grain. “We are few,” he said simply, 'and they are a host, but dreams do not come true by using caution, only by braving danger. Tomorrow we can bring peace to the Britons.“ He stopped abruptly, struck perhaps by the thought that his ambition of peace was also Tewdric's dream. Maybe Arthur was wondering whether he should fight at all. I remembered how after our meeting with Aelle, when we made the oath under the oak, Arthur had contemplated giving up the fight and I half expected him to bare his soul again, but on that rainy night the horse of ambition was tugging his soul hard and he could not contemplate a peace in which his own life or exile was the price. He wanted peace, but even more he wanted to dictate that peace. ”Whatever Gods you pray to,“ he said quietly, 'go with you all tomorrow.” I had to ride a horse to get back to my men. I was in a hurry and fell off three times. As omens, the falls were dire, but the road was soft with mud and nothing was hurt but my pride. Arthur rode with me, but checked my horse when we were still a spear's throw from where my men's campfires flickered low in the insistent rain. “Do this for me tomorrow, Derfel,” he said, 'and you may carry your own banner and paint your own shields."

In this world or the next, I thought, but I did not speak the thought aloud for fear of tempting the Gods. Because tomorrow, in a grey, bleak dawn, we would fight against the world. Not one of my men tried to evade their oaths. Some, a few, might have wanted to avoid battle, but none wanted to show weakness in front of their comrades and so we all marched, leaving in the night's middle to make our way across a rain-soaked countryside. Arthur saw us off, then went to where his horsemen were encamped.

Nimue insisted on accompanying us. She had promised us a spell of concealment, and after that nothing would persuade my men to leave her behind. She worked the spell before we left, performing it on the skull of a sheep she found by flame light in a ditch close to our camp. She dragged the carcass out of the thicket where a wolf had feasted, chopped the head away, stripped away the remnants of maggoty skin, then crouched with her cloak hiding both her and the stinking skull. She crouched there a long time, breathing the ghastly stench of the decomposing head, then stood and kicked the skull scornfully aside. She watched where it came to rest and, after a moment's deliberation, declared that the enemy would look aside as we marched through the night. Arthur, who was fascinated by Nimue's intensity, shuddered when she made the pronouncement, then embraced me. “I owe you a debt, Derfel.”

“You owe me nothing, Lord.”

“If for nothing else,” he said, “I thank you for bringing me _ Ceinwyn's message.” He had taken enormous pleasure in her forgiveness, then shrugged when I had added her further words about being granted his protection. “She has nothing to fear from any man in Dumnonia,” he had said. Now he clapped me on the back. “I shall see you in the dawn,” he promised, then watched as we filed out from the firelight into the dark.

We crossed grassy meadows and newly harvested fields where no obstacles other than the soaking ground, the dark and the driving rain impeded us. That rain came from our left, the west, and it seemed relentless; a stinging, pelting, cold rain that trickled inside our jerkins and chilled our bodies. At first we bunched together so that no man would find himself alone in the dark, though even crossing the easy ground we were constantly calling out in low voices to find where our comrades might be. Some men tried to keep hold of a friend's cloak, but spears clashed together and men tripped until finally I stopped everyone and formed two files. Every man was ordered to sling his shield on his back, then to hold on to the spear of the man in front. Cavan was at our rear, making sure no one dropped out, while Nimue and I were in the lead. She held my hand, not out of affection, but simply so that we should stay together in the black night. Lughnasa seemed like a dream now, swept away not by time, but by Nimue's fierce refusal to acknowledge that our time in the bower had ever happened. Those hours, like her months on the Isle of the Dead, had served their purpose and were now irrelevant. We came to trees. I hesitated, then plunged down a steep, muddy bank and into a darkness so engulfing that I despaired of ever taking fifty men through its horrid blackness, but then Nimue began to croon in a low voice and the sound acted like a beacon to beckon men safely through the stumbling dark. Both spear chains broke, but by following Nimue's voice we all somehow blundered through the trees to emerge into a meadow on their farther side. We stopped there while Cavan and I made a tally of the men and Nimue circled us, hissing spells at the dark.

My spirits, dampened by the rain and gloom, sank lower. I thought I had possessed a mental picture of this countryside that lay just north of my men's camp, but our stumbling progress had obliterated that picture. I had no idea where I was, nor where I should go. I thought we had been heading north, but without a star to guide me or moon to light my way, I let my fears overcome my resolve.

“Why are you waiting?” Nimue came to my side and whispered the words. I said nothing, not willing to admit that I was lost. Or perhaps not willing to admit that I was frightened. Nimue sensed my helplessness and took command. “We have a long stretch of open pasture ahead of us,” she told my men. “It used to graze sheep, but they've taken the flock away, so there are no shepherds or dogs to see us. It's uphill all the way, but easy enough going if we stay together. At the end of the pasture we come to a wood and there we'll wait for dawn. It isn't far and it isn't difficult. I know we're wet and cold, but tomorrow we shall warm ourselves on our enemies' fires.” She spoke with utter confidence.

I do not think I could have led those men through that wet night, but Nimue did. She claimed that her one eye saw in the dark where our eyes could not, and maybe that was true, or maybe she simply possessed a better idea of this stretch of countryside than I did, but however it was done, she did it well. In the last hour we walked along the shoulder of a hill and suddenly the going became easier for we were now on the western height above Lugg Vale and our enemies' watch-fires burned in the dark beneath us. I could even see the barricade of felled pine trees and the glint of the River Lugg beyond. In the vale men threw great baulks of wood on the fires to light the road where attackers might come from the south. We reached the woods and sank on to the wet ground. Some of us half slept in the deceptive, dream-filled, shallow slumber that seems like no sleep at all and leaves a man cold, weary and aching, but Nimue stayed awake, muttering charms and talking to men who could not sleep. It was not small-talk, for Nimue had no time for idle chatter, but fierce explanations of why we fought. Not for Mordred, she said, but for a Britain shorn of foreigners and of foreign ideas, and even the Christians in my ranks listened to her.

I did not wait for the dawn to make my attack. Instead, when the rain-soaked sky showed the first pale glimmer of steely light in the east, I woke the sleepers and led my fifty spearmen down to the wood's edge. We waited there above a grassy slope that fell down to the vale's bed as steeply as the flanks of Ynys Wydryn's Tor. My left arm was tight in the shield straps, Hywelbane was at my hip and my heavy spear was gripped in my right hand. A small mist showed where the river flowed out of the vale. A white owl flew low beside our trees and my men thought the bird an ill omen, but then a wildcat snarled behind us and Nimue said that the owl's doom-laden appearance had been nullified. I said a prayer to Mithras, giving all the next hours to His glory, then I told my men that the Franks had been far fiercer enemies than these night-fuddled Powysians in the valley beneath us. I doubted that was entirely true, but men on the edge of battle do not need truth, but confidence. I had privately ordered Issa and another man to stay close to Nimue for if she died I knew my men's confidence would vanish like a summer mist. The rain spat from behind us, making the grassy slope slick. The sky above the vale's far side lightened further, showing the first shadows among the flying clouds. The world was grey and black, night-dark in the vale itself, but lighter on the wood's edge, a contrast that made me fear the enemy could see us while we could not see him. Their fires still blazed, but much lower than they had during the dark spirit-haunted depths of night. I could see no sentries. It was time to go.

“Move slowly,” I ordered my men. I had imagined a mad rush down the hill, but now I changed my mind. The wet grass would be treacherous and it would be better, I decided, if we crept slow and silent down the slope like wraiths in the dawn. I led the way, stepping ever more cautiously as the hill became steeper. Even nailed boots gave treacherous holding on wet ground and so we went as slow as stalking cats and the loudest noise in the half-dark was the sound of our own breathing. We used spears as staffs. Twice men fell heavily, their shields clattering against scabbards or spears, and both times we all went still and waited for a challenge. None came.

The last part of the slope was the steepest, but from the brow of that final descent we could at last see the whole bed of the vale. The river ran like a black shadow on the far side, while beneath us the Roman road passed between a group of thatched huts where the enemy had to be sheltering. I could only see four men. Two were crouching near the fires, a third was sitting under the eaves of a hut while the fourth paced up and down behind the tree fence. The eastern sky was paling towards the bright flare of dawn and it was time to release my wolf-tailed spearmen to the slaughter. “The Gods be your shield-wall,” I told them, 'and kill well."

We hurled ourselves down the last yards of that steep slope. Some men slid down on their backsides rather than try to stay on their feet, some ran headlong and I, because I was their leader, ran with them. Fear gave us wings and made us scream our challenge. We were the wolves of Benoic come to the border hills of Powys to offer death, and suddenly, as ever in battle, the elation took over. The soaring joy flared inside our souls as all restraint and thought and decency were obliterated to leave only the feral glare of combat. I leaped down the last few feet, stumbled among raspberry bushes, kicked over an empty pail, then saw the first startled man emerge from a nearby hut. He was in trousers and jerkin, carrying a spear and blinking at the rainy dawn, and thus he died as I speared him through the belly. I was howling the wolf-howl, daring my enemies to come and be killed. My spear stuck in the dying man's guts. I left it there and drew Hywelbane. Another man peered from the hut to see what happened and I lunged at his eyes, throwing him back. My men streamed past me, howling and whooping. The sentries were fleeing. One ran to the river, hesitated, turned back and died under two spear thrusts. One of my men seized a brand from the fire and tossed it on to the wet thatch. More firebrands followed until at last the huts caught fire to drive their inhabitants out to where my spearmen waited. A woman screamed as burning thatch fell on her. Nimue had taken a sword from a dead enemy and was plunging it into the neck of a fallen man. She was keening a weird, high sound that gave the chill dawn a new terror.

Cavan bellowed at men to start hauling the tree fence aside. I left the few enemy that still lived to the mercies of my men and went to help him. The fence was a barricade made from two dozen felled pines, and each tree needed a score of men to pull aside. We had made a gap forty feet wide where the road pierced the barricade, then Issa called a warning to me.

The men we had slaughtered had not been the whole guard force in the valley, but rather the picquet line who guarded the fence, and now the main garrison, woken by the commotion, was showing in the shadowy northern part of the valley.

“Shield-wall!” I called, 'shield-wall!"

We formed the line just north of the burning cottages. Two of my men had broken their ankles coming down the steep slope and a third had been killed in the first moments of the fight, but the rest of us shuffled into line and touched our shield edges together to make certain the wall was tight. I had retrieved my own spear so now I sheathed Hywelbane and pushed my spear-point out to join the other steel points that bristled five feet ahead of the shield-wall. I ordered a half-dozen men to stay behind with Nimue in case any of the enemy still lay hidden among the shadows, then we had to wait while Cavan replaced his shield. The straps of his own had broken so he picked up a Powysian shield and swiftly cut away the leather cover with its eagle symbol, then took his place at the right-hand end of the wall, the most vulnerable place because the right-hand man in a line must hold his shield to protect the man to his left and thus expose his own right side to enemy thrusts. “Ready, Lord!” he called to me.

"Forward!1 I shouted. It was better to advance, I thought, than let the enemy form and attack us. The vale's sides grew higher and steeper as we marched north. The slope on our right, beyond the river, was a thick tangle of trees, while to our left the hill was grassy at first, but then turned to scrub. The valley narrowed as we advanced, though it never narrowed sufficiently to be called a gorge. There was room for a war-band to manoeuvre in Lugg Vale, though the marshy river bank did help to constrict the dry level ground needed for battle. The first clouded light was illuminating the western hills, but that light had yet to flood into the valley's depths where the rain had at last stopped, though the wind gusted cold and damp to flicker the flames of the campfires that burned in the upper vale. Those campfires revealed a thatched village around a Roman building. The shadows of hurrying men flickered in front of the fires, a horse whinnied, then suddenly, as at last the dawn's ghostly light sifted down to the road, I saw a shield-wall forming.

I could also see that the shield-wall held at least a hundred men, and more were hurrying into its ranks.

“Hold!” I called to my men, then stared into the bad light and guessed that nearer two hundred men were forming the enemy wall. The grey light glinted from their spearheads. This was the elite guard Gorfyddyd had set to hold the vale.

The vale was certainly too broad for my fifty men to hold. The road ran close to the western slope and left a wide meadow to our right where the enemy could easily outflank us and so I ordered my men back.

“Slowly back!” I called, 'slow and sure! Back to the fence!“ We could guard the gap we had ripped in the tree fence, though even so it would only be a matter of moments before the enemy clambered over the remaining trees and so surrounded us. ”Slowly back!" I called again, then stood still as my men retreated. I waited because a single horseman had ridden out from the enemy ranks and was spurring towards us.

The enemy's emissary was a tall man who rode well. He had an iron helmet crested with swan feathers, a lance and sword, but no shield. He wore a breastplate and his saddle was a sheepskin. He was a striking-looking man, dark-eyed and black-bearded, and there was something familiar in his face, but it was not till he had reined in above me that I recognized him. It was Valerin, the chieftain to whom Guinevere had been betrothed when she had first met Arthur. He stared down at me, then slowly raised his spearhead until it was pointed at my throat. “I had hoped,” he said, 'that you would be Arthur."

“My Lord sends you his greetings, Lord Valerin,” I said.

Valerin spat towards my shield that again carried the symbol of Arthur's bear. “Return my greetings to him,” he said, 'and to the whore he married.“ He paused, raising the spear-point so that it was close to my eyes. ”You're a long way from home, little boy,“ he said, 'does your mother know you're out of bed?”

“My mother,” I answered, 'is readying a cauldron for your bones, Lord Valerin. We have need of glue, and the bones of sheep, we hear, make the best."

He seemed pleased that I knew him, mistaking my recognition for fame and not realizing that I had been one of the guards who had come to Caer Sws with Arthur so many years before. He raised his spear-point clear of my face and stared at my men. “Not many of you,” he said, 'but many of us. Would you like to surrender now?"

“There are many of you,” I said, 'but my men are starved for battle, so will welcome a large helping of enemies." A leader was expected to be good at these ritual insults before battle and I always rather enjoyed them. Arthur was never good at such exchanges, for even at the last moment before the killing began he was still trying to make his enemies like him.

Valerin half turned his horse. “Your name?” he asked before riding away.

“Lord Derfel Cadarn,” I said proudly, and I thought I saw, or maybe I hoped I saw, a flicker of recognition before he kicked his heels back to drive his horse north. If Arthur did not come, I thought, then we were all dead men, but by the time I rejoined my spearmen beside the barricade I found Culhwch, who once again rode with Arthur, waiting for me. His big horse was noisily cropping the grass nearby. “We're not far away, Derfel,” he reassured me, 'and when those vermin attack, you're to run away. Understand? Make them chase you. That'll scatter them, and when you see us coming get out of the way.“ He grasped my hand, then enfolded me in a bear hug. ”This is better than talking peace, eh?“ he said, then walked back to his horse and heaved himself up into its saddle. ”Be cowards for a few moments!" he called to my men, then raised a hand and spurred away southwards.

I explained to my men what Culhwch's parting words had meant, then I took my place in the centre of the shield-wall that stretched across the gap we had made in the felled trees. Nimue stood behind me, still holding her bloody sword. “We'll pretend to panic,” I called to the shield-wall, 'when they make their first attack. And don't trip over when you run, and make sure you get out of the way of the horses." I ordered four of my men to help the two with broken ankles to a thicket behind the fence where they could hide. We waited. I glanced behind once, but could not see Arthur's men who I presumed were hidden where the road entered a patch of trees a quarter-mile to the south. To my right the river ran in dark shining swirls on which two swans drifted. A heron fished the river's edge, but then lazily spread its wings and flapped away northwards, a direction Nimue took to be a good augury because the bird was taking its bad luck towards the enemy.

Valerin's spearmen came on slowly. They had been woken to battle and were still sluggish. Some were bare-headed and I guessed their leaders had rousted them from their straw beds in such haste that not all had been given time to gather their armour. They had no Druid, so at least we were free of spells, though like my men I muttered swift prayers. Mine were to Mithras and to Bel. Nimue was calling to Andraste, the Goddess of Slaughter, while Cavan called on his Irish Gods to give his spear a good day's killing. I saw that Valerin had dismounted and was leading his men from the line's centre, though I noted a servant was leading the chieftain's horse close behind the advancing line.

A heavy gust of damp wind blew the smoke of the burning huts across the road, half hiding the enemy line. The bodies of their dead comrades would wake these advancing spearmen, I thought, and sure enough I heard the shouts of anger as they encountered the newly made corpses, and when a gust of wind cleared the smoke away the attacking line was coming on faster and shouting insults. We waited in silence as the grey early light seeped down to the valley's damp floor. The enemy spearmen stopped fifty paces from us. All of them carried Powys's eagle on their shields, so none were from Siluria or from the other contingents gathering with Gorfyddyd. These spearmen, I assumed, were among Powys's best, so any we killed now would be a help later, and the Gods knew how we needed help. Thus far we were having the best of the day, and I had to keep reminding myself that these easy moments were designed only to bring the full might of Gorfyddyd and his allies on to Arthur's few loyal men.

Two men raced out from Valerin's line and hurled spears that went high over our heads to bury themselves in the turf behind. My men jeered, and some deliberately took the shields away from their bodies as though inviting the enemy to try again. I thanked Mithras that Valerin had no archers. Few warriors carried bows for no arrow can pierce a shield or a leather breastplate. The bow was a hunter's weapon, best for use against wildfowl or small game, but a mass of levied countrymen carrying light bows could still make themselves a nuisance by forcing warriors to crouch behind their shield-walls. Two more men hurled spears. One weapon thumped into a shield and stuck there, the other flew high again. Valerin was watching us, judging our resolve, and perhaps because we did not hurl spears back he decided we were already beaten men. He raised his arms, clashed his spear on his shield, and shouted at his men to charge.

They roared their challenge and we, just as Arthur had ordered, broke and fled. For a second there was confusion as men in the shield-line impeded each other, but then we scattered apart and pounded away down the road. Nimue, her black cloak flying, ran ahead of us, but always looking back to see what happened behind her. The enemy cheered their victory and raced to catch us while Valerin, seeing a chance to ride his horse among a broken rabble, shouted at his servant to bring the beast. We ran clumsily, cumbered by cloaks, shields and spears. I was tired and the breath pounded in my chest as I followed my men southwards. I could hear the enemy behind and twice looked over my shoulder to see a tall, red-headed man grimacing as he strained to catch me. He was a faster runner than I, and I was beginning to think I would need to stop, turn and deal with him when I heard that blessed sweet sound of Arthur's horn. It sounded twice and then, out of the dawn-dulled trees ahead of us, Arthur's might erupted.

First came white-plumed Arthur himself, in shining armour and carrying his mirror-bright shield and with his white cloak spread behind like wings. His spearhead dipped as his fifty men came into sight on armoured horses, their faces wrapped in iron and their spear-points glittering. The banners of the dragon and the bear flew bright and the earth shook beneath those ponderous hooves that slung water and mud high into the air as the big horses gathered speed. My men were running aside, forming two groups that swiftly gathered into defensive circles with shields and spears outermost. I went left and turned around in time to see Valerin's men desperately trying to form a shield-wall. Valerin, mounted on his horse, shouted at them to retreat to the barricade, but it was already too late. Our trap was sprung and Lugg Vale's defenders were doomed.

Arthur pounded past me on Llamrei, his favourite mare. The skirts of his horse blanket and the ends of his cloak were already soaked in mud. A man threw a spear that glanced off Llamrei's breast armour, then Arthur thrust his spear home into the first enemy soldier, abandoned the weapon and scraped Excalibur into the dawn. The rest of the horse crashed past in a welter of water and noise. Valerin's men screamed as the big brutes hurtled into their broken ranks. Swords slashed down to leave men reeling and bloody while the horses ploughed on, some driving panicked men down beneath their heavy iron-plated hooves. Broken spearmen had no defence against horses, and these warriors of Powys had no chance to form even the smallest shield-walls. They could only run and Valerin, seeing there was no salvation, turned his light horse and galloped northwards.

Some of his men followed, but any man on foot was doomed to be ridden down by the horses. Others turned aside and ran for the river or the hill, and those we hunted down in spear-bands. A few threw down spears and shields and raised their arms, and those we let live, but any man who offered resistance was surrounded like a boar trapped in a thicket and speared to death. Arthur's horse had disappeared into the vale, leaving behind a horrid trail of men with heads cut to the brain by sword-blows. Other enemies were limping and falling, and Nimue, seeing the destruction, screeched in triumph. We took close to fifty prisoners. At least as many others were dead or dying. A few escaped up the hill we had come down in the grey light, and some had drowned trying to cross the Lugg, but the rest were bleeding, staggering, vomiting and defeated. Sagramor's men, a hundred and fifty prime spearmen, marched into sight as we finished rounding up the last of Valerin's survivors. “We can't spare men to guard prisoners,” Sagramor greeted me.

“I know.”

“Then kill them,” he ordered me, and Nimue echoed her approval.

“No,” I insisted. Sagramor was my commander for the rest of this day and I did not enjoy disagreeing with him, but Arthur wanted to bring peace to the Britons and killing helpless prisoners was no way to bind Powys to his peace. Besides, my men had taken the prisoners, so their fate was my responsibility and, instead of killing them, I ordered them stripped naked, then they were taken one by one to where Cavan waited with a heavy stone for his hammer and a boulder for an anvil. We placed each man's spear hand on the boulder, held it there, then crushed the two smallest fingers with the stone. A man with two shattered fingers would live and he might even wield a spear again, but not on this day. Not for many a day. Then we sent them southwards, naked and bleeding, and told them that if we saw their faces again before nightfall they would surely die. Sagramor scoffed at me for displaying such leniency, but did not countermand the orders. My men took the enemy's best clothes and boots, searched the discarded clothing for coins, then tossed the garments on to the still burning huts. We piled the captured weapons by the road.

Then we marched north to discover that Arthur had ended his pursuit at the ford, then returned to the village that lay about the substantial Roman building which Arthur reckoned had once been a rest house for travellers going into the northern hills. A crowd of women cowered under guard beside the house, clutching their children and paltry belongings.

“Your enemy,” I told Arthur, 'was Valerin."

It took him a few seconds to place the name, then he smiled. He had removed his helmet and dismounted to greet us. “Poor Valerin,” he said, 'twice a loser," then he embraced me and thanked my men.

“The night was so dark,” he said, “I doubted you would find the vale.”

“I didn't. Nimue did.”

“Then I owe you thanks,” he said to Nimue.

“Thank me,” she said, 'by bringing victory this day."

“With the Gods' help, I shall.” He turned and looked at Galahad who had ridden in the charge. “Go south, Lord Prince, and give Tewdric my greetings and beg his men's spears to our side. May God give your tongue eloquence.” Galahad kicked his horse and rode back through the blood-stinking vale. Arthur turned and stared at a hilltop a mile north of the ford. There was an old earth fort there, a legacy of the Old People, but it seemed to be deserted. “It would go ill with us,” he said with a smile, 'if anyone was to see where we hide." He wanted to find his hiding place and leave the heavy horse armour there before he rode north to roust Gorfyddyd's men out of their camps at Branogenium.

“Nimue will work you a spell of concealment,” I said.

“Will you, Lady?” he asked earnestly.

She went to find a skull. Arthur clasped me again, then called for his servant Hygwydd to help him tug off the suit of heavy scale armour. It came off over his head, leaving his short-cut hair tousled. “Would you wear it?” he asked me.

“Me?” I was astonished.

“When the enemy attack,” he said, 'they'll expect to find me here and if I'm not here they'll suspect a trap.“ He smiled. ”I'd ask Sagramor, but his face is somewhat more distinctive than yours, Lord Derfel. You'll have to cut off some of that long hair, though.“ My fair hair showing beneath the helmet's rim would be a sure sign I was not Arthur, 'and maybe trim the beard a little,” he added. I took the armour from Hygwydd and was shocked by its weight. “I should be honoured,” I said.

“It is heavy,” he warned me. “You'll get hot, and you can't see to your sides when you're wearing the helmet so you'll need two good men to flank you.” He sensed my hesitation. “Should I ask someone else to wear it?”

“No, no, Lord,” I said. “I'll wear it.”

“It'll mean danger,” he warned me.

“I wasn't expecting a safe day, Lord,” I answered.

“I shall leave you the banners,” he said. “When Gorfyddyd comes he must be convinced that all his enemies are in one place. It will be a hard fight, Derfel.”

“Galahad will bring help,” I assured him.

He took my breastplate and shield, gave me his own brighter shield and white cloak, then turned and grasped Llamrei's bridle. “That,” he told me once he had been helped into the saddle, 'was the easy part of the day.“ He beckoned to Sagramor, then spoke to both of us. ”The enemy will be here by noon. Do what you can to make ready, then fight as you have never fought before. If I see you again then we shall be victorious. If not, then I thank you, salute you, and will wait to feast with you in the Otherworld." He shouted for his men to mount up, then rode north.

And we waited for the real battle to begin.

The scale armour was appallingly heavy, bearing down on my shoulders like the water yokes women carry to their houses each morning. Even lifting my sword arm was hard, though it became easier when I cinched my sword belt tight around the iron scales and so took the suit's lower weight away from my shoulders.

Nimue, her spell of concealment finished, cut my hair with a knife. She burned all the loose hair lest an enemy should find the scraps and work an enchantment, and then I used Arthur's shield as a mirror to hack my long beard short enough so that it would be concealed behind the helmet's deep cheek pieces. Then I pulled the helmet on, forcing its leather padding over my skull and tugging it down until it enclosed my head like a shell. My voice seemed muffled despite the perforations over the ears in the shining metal. I hefted the heavy shield, let Nimue fasten the mud-spattered white cloak around my shoulders, then I tried to get used to the armour's awkward weight. I made Issa fight me with a spear-shaft as a single-stick and found myself much slower than usual. “Fear will quicken you, Lord,” Issa said when he had rounded my guard for the tenth time and whacked me an echoing blow on the head.

“Don't knock the plume off,” I said. Secretly I was wishing I had never accepted the heavy armour. It was horseman's gear, designed to add weight and awe to a mounted man who had to batter his way through the enemy's ranks, but we spearmen depended on agility and quickness when we were not locked shoulder to shoulder in the shield-wall.

“But you look wonderful, Lord,” Issa told me admiringly.

“I'll be a wonderful-looking corpse if you don't guard my flank,” I told him. “It's like fighting inside a bucket.” I tugged the helmet off, relieved when its constricting pressure was gone from my skull. “When I first saw this armour,” I told Issa, “I wanted it more than anything in the world. Now I'd give it away for a decent leather breastplate.”

“You'll be all right, Lord,” he told me with a grin.

We had work to do. The women and children abandoned by Valerin's defeated men had to be driven south away from the vale, then we prepared de fences close to the remnants of the tree fence. Sagramor feared that the overwhelming weight of the enemy could drive us clear out of the vale before Arthur's horsemen arrived to our rescue and so he prepared the ground as best he could. My men wanted to sleep, but instead we dug a shallow ditch across the vale. The ditch was nowhere near deep enough to stop a man, but it would force the attacking spearmen to break step and maybe stumble as they closed on our spear-line. The tree barricade lay just behind the ditch and marked the southern limit to which we could retreat and the place we must defend to the death. Sagramor anchored the felled trees with some of Valerin's abandoned spears that he ordered driven deep into the earth to make a hedge of angled spear-points inside the pine branches. We left the gap where the road ran through the centre of the fence so we could retreat behind the fragile barrier before we defended it. My worry was the steep and open hillside down which my men had attacked in the dawn. Gorfyddyd's warriors would doubtless attack straight up the vale, but his levies would probably be sent to the high ground to threaten our left flank and Sagramor could spare no men to hold that high ground, but Nimue insisted there was no need. She took ten of the captured spears and then, with the help of a half-dozen of my men, she cut the heads from ten of Valerin's dead spearmen and carried the spears and bloody heads up the hill where she had the spear-shafts driven butt-first into the ground, then she rammed the bloody heads on to the spears' iron points and draped the dead heads with ghastly wigs of knotted grass, each knot an enchantment, before scattering branches of yew between the widely spaced posts. She had made a ghost-fence: a line of human scarecrows imbued with charms and spells that no man would dare pass without a Druid's help. Sagramor wanted her to make another such fence on the ground north of the ford, but Nimue refused. “Their warriors will come with Druids,” she explained, 'and a ghost-fence is laughable to a Druid. But the levy won't have a Druid." She had fetched an armful of vervain down from the hill and now she distributed its small purple flowers among the spearmen who all knew that vervain gave protection in battle. She pushed a whole sprig inside my armour.

The Christians gathered to say their prayers, while we pagans sought the Gods' help. Men tossed coins into the river, then brought out their talismans for Nimue to touch. Most carried a hare's foot, but some brought her elf bolts or snake stones. Elf bolts were tiny flint arrowheads shot by the spirits and much prized by soldiers, while snake stones had bright colours that Nimue enriched by dipping the stones in the river before touching them to her good eye. I pressed the scale armour until I could feel Ceinwyn's brooch pricking against my chest, then I knelt and kissed the earth. I kept my forehead on the damp ground as I beseeched Mithras to give me strength, courage and, if it was His will, a good death. Some of our men were drinking the mead we had discovered in the village, but I drank nothing but water. We ate the food Valerin's men had thought would be their breakfast, and afterwards a group of spearmen helped Nimue catch toads and shrews that she killed and placed on the road beyond the ford to give the approaching enemy ill omens. Then we sharpened our weapons again and waited. Sagramor had found a man hiding in the woods behind the village. The man was a shepherd and Sagramor questioned him about the local countryside and learned there was a second ford upstream where the enemy could outflank us if we tried to defend the river bank at the vale's northern end. The second ford's existence did not trouble us now, but we needed to remember that it existed for it gave the enemy a way of outflanking our northernmost defence line.

I was nervous of the coming fight, but Nimue seemed unafraid. “I have nothing to fear,” she told me. “I've taken the Three Wounds, so what can hurt me?” She was sitting beside me, close to the ford at the vale's northern end. This would be our first defence line, the place where we would begin the slow retreat that would suck the enemy into the vale and Arthur's trap. “Besides,” she added, “I am under Merlin's protection.”

“Does he know we're here?” I asked her.

She paused, then nodded. “He knows.”

“Will he come?”

She frowned as though my question was crass. “He will do,” she said slowly, 'whatever he needs to do."

“Then he will come,” I said in fervent hope.

Nimue shook her head impatiently. “Merlin cares only for Britain. He believes Arthur could help restore the Knowledge of Britain, but if he decides that Gorfyddyd would do it better, then believe me, Derfel, Merlin will side with Gorfyddyd.”

Merlin had hinted as much to me at Caer Sws, but I still found it hard to believe that his ambitions were so far from my own allegiances and hopes. “What about you?” I asked Nimue.

“I have one burden that ties me to this army,” she said, 'and after that I shall be free to help Merlin."

“Gundleus,” I said.

She nodded. “Give me Gundleus alive, Derfel,” she said, looking into my eyes, 'give him to me alive, I beg you.“ She touched the leather eyepatch and went silent as she summoned her energy for the revenge she craved. Her face was still bone pale and her black hair hung lank against her cheeks. The softness she had revealed at Lughnasa had been replaced by a chill bleakness that made me think I would never understand her. I loved her, not as I believed I loved Ceinwyn, but as a man can love a fine wild creature, an eagle or a wildcat, for I knew I would never comprehend her life or dreams. She grimaced suddenly. ”I shall make Gundleus's soul scream through the rest of time,“ she said softly, ”I shall send it through the abyss into nothingness, but he will never reach nothingness, Derfel, he will always suffer on its edge, screaming."

I shuddered for Gundleus.

A shout made me look across the river. Six horsemen were galloping towards us. Our shield-wall stood and thrust their arms into their shield-loops, but then I saw the leading man was Morfans. He rode desperately, kicking at his tired sweat-whitened horse, and I feared those six men were all that remained of Arthur's troop.

The horses splashed through the ford as Sagramor and I went forward. Morfans reined in on the river bank. “Two miles away,” he panted. “Arthur sent us to help you. Gods, there are hundreds of the bastards!” He wiped sweat off his forehead, then grinned. “There's plunder enough for a thousand of us!” He slid heavily from his horse and I saw he was carrying the silver horn and guessed he would use it to summon Arthur when the moment was right.

“Where is Arthur?” Sagramor asked.

“Safely hid,” Morfans assured us, then looked at my armour and his ugly face split into a lopsided grin.

“Weighs you down, that armour, doesn't it?”

“How does he ever fight in it?” I asked.

“Very well, Derfel, very well. And so will you.” He clapped my shoulder. “Any news from Galahad?”

“None.”

“Agricola won't let us fight alone, whatever that Christian King and his gutless son might want,” Morfans said, then he led his five horsemen back through the shield-wall. “Give us a few minutes to rest the horses,” he called.

Sagramor pulled his helmet over his head. The Numidian wore a coat of mail, a black cloak and tall boots. His iron helmet was painted black with pitch and rose to a sharp point that gave it an exotic appearance. Usually he fought on horseback, but he showed no regret at being an infantryman this day. Nor did he display any nervousness as he prowled long-legged up and down our shield-wall and growled encouragement to his men.

I pulled Arthur's stifling helmet over my head and buckled its strap under my chin. Then, arrayed as my Lord, I also walked along the line of spears and warned my men that the fight would be hard, but victory certain so long as our shield-wall held. It was a perilously thin wall, in some places just three men deep, but those in the wall were all good men. One of them stepped out of the line as I approached the place where Sagramor's spearmen bordered mine. “Remember me, Lord?” he called. I thought for a moment he had mistaken me for Arthur and I pulled the hinged cheek pieces aside so he could see my face, then at last I recognized him. It was Griffid, Owain's captain and the man who had tried to kill me at Lindinis before Nimue intervened to save my life. “Griffid ap Annan,” I greeted him.

“There's bad blood between us, Lord,” he said, and fell to his knees. “Forgive me.” I pulled him to his feet and embraced him. His beard had gone grey, but he was still the. same long-boned, sad-faced man I remembered. “My soul is in your keeping,” I told him, 'and I am glad to put it there."

“And mine yours, Lord,” he said.

“Minac!” I recognized another of my old comrades. “Am I forgiven?”

“Was there anything to forgive, Lord?” he asked, embarrassed at the question.

“There was nothing to forgive,” I promised him. “No oath was broken, I swear it.” Minac stepped forward and embraced me. All along the shield-wall other such quarrels were being resolved. “How have you been?” I asked Griffid.

“Fighting hard, Lord. Mostly against Cerdic's Saxons. Today will be easy compared with those bastards, except for one thing.” He hesitated.

“Well?” I prompted him.

“Will she give us back our souls, Lord?” Griffid asked, glancing at Nimue. He was remembering the awful curse she had laid on him and his men.

“Of course she will,” I said, and summoned Nimue who touched Griffid's forehead, and the foreheads of all the other surviving men who had threatened my life on that distant day in Lindinis. Thus was her curse lifted and they thanked her by kissing her hand. I embraced Griffid again, then raised my voice so that all my men could hear me. “Today,” I said, 'we shall give the bards enough songs to sing for a thousand years! And today we become rich men again!"

They cheered. The emotion in that shield-line was so rich that some men wept for happiness. I know now that there is no joy like the joy of serving Christ Jesus, but how I do miss the company of warriors. There were no barriers between us that morning, nothing but a great, swelling love for each other as we waited for the enemy. We were brothers, we were invincible and even the laconic Sa-gram or had tears in his eyes. A spearman began singing the War Song of Beli Mawr, Britain's great battle song, and the strong male voices swelled in instinctive harmony all along the line. Other men danced across their swords, capering awkwardly in their leather armour as they made the intricate steps either side of the blade. Our Christians had their arms spread wide as they sang, almost as though the song was a pagan prayer to their own God while other men clashed their spears against their shields in time to the music. We were still singing of pouring our enemies' blood on to our land when that enemy appeared. We sang defiantly on as spear-band after spear-band came into view and spread across the far fields beneath kingly banners that showed bright in the day's cloudy gloom. And on we sang, a great torrent of song to defy the army of Gorfyddyd, the army of the father of the woman I was convinced I loved. That was why I was fighting, not just for Arthur, but because only by victory could I make my way back to Caer Sws and thus see Ceinwyn again. I had no claim on her, and no hopes either for I was slave-born and she a princess, yet somehow I felt that day as though I had more to lose than I had ever possessed in all my life.

It took over an hour for that cumbersome horde to make a battle line on the river's far bank. The river could only be crossed at the ford, which meant we would be given time to retreat when the moment came, but for now the enemy must have assumed that we planned to defend the ford all day for they massed their best men in the centre of the line. Gorfyddyd himself was there, his eagle banner stained by its dye that had run in the rain so that the flag looked as though it had already been dipped in our blood. Arthur's banners, the black bear and the red dragon, flew at our line's centre where I stood facing the ford. Sagramor stood beside me, counting the enemy banners. Gundleus's fox was there, and the red horse of Elmet, and several others we did not recognize. “Six hundred men?” Sagramor guessed.

“And more still coming,” I added.

“Like as not.” He spat towards the ford. “And they'll have seen that Tewdric's bull is missing.” He gave one of his rare smiles. “It'll be a fight worth remembering, Lord Derfel.”

“I'm glad to share it with you, Lord,” I said fervently, and so I was. There was no warrior greater than Sagramor, no man more feared by his enemies. Even Arthur's presence did not raise the same dread as the Numidian's impassive face and ghastly sword. It was a curved sword of strange foreign make and Sagramor wielded it with a terrible quickness. I once asked Sagramor why he had first sworn loyalty to Arthur. “Because when I had nothing,” he explained curtly, “Arthur gave me everything.” Our spearmen at last stopped singing as two Druids advanced from Gorfyddyd's army. We only had Nimue to counter their enchantments and she now waded through the ford to meet the advancing men who were both hopping down the road with one arm raised and one eye closed. The Druids were lorweth, Gorfyddyd's wizard, and Tanaburs in his long robe embroidered with moons and hares. The two men exchanged kisses with Nimue, talked with her for a short while and then she returned to our side of the ford. “They wanted us to surrender,” she said scornfully, 'and I invited them to do the same."

“Good,” Sagramor growled. lorweth hopped awkwardly to the ford's farther side. “The Gods bring you greeting!” he shouted at us, though none of us answered. I had closed my cheek pieces so that I could not be recognized. Tanaburs was hopping up the river, using his staff to keep his balance. lorweth raised his own staff level above his head to show that he wished to speak further. “My King, the King of Powys and High King of Britain, King Gorfyddyd ap Cadell ap Brychan ap Laganis ap Coel ap Beli Mawr, will spare your bold souls a journey to the Otherworld. All you need do, brave warriors, is give us Arthur!” He levelled the staff at me and Nimue immediately hissed a protective prayer and tossed two handfuls of soil into the air.

I said nothing and silence was my refusal. lorweth whirled the staff and spat three times towards us, then he began hopping down the river's bank to add his curses to Tanaburs's spells. King Gorfyddyd, accompanied by his son Cuneglas and his ally Gundleus, had ridden halfway to the river to watch their Druids working, and work they did. They cursed our lives by the day and our souls by night. They gave our blood to the worms, our flesh to the beasts and our bones to agony. They cursed our women, our children, our fields and our livestock. Nimue countered the charms, but still our men shivered. The Christians called out that there was nothing to fear, but even they were making the sign of the cross as the curses flew across the river on wings of darkness.

The Druids cursed for a whole hour and left us shaking. Nimue walked the shield-line touching spearheads and assuring men that the curses had not worked, but our men were nervous of the Gods'

anger as the enemy spear-line at last advanced. “Shields up!” Sagramor shouted harshly. “Spears up!” The enemy halted fifty paces from the river while one man alone advanced on foot. It was Valerin, the chief whom we had driven from the vale in the dawn, and who now advanced to the ford's northern edge with shield and spear. He had suffered defeat in the dawn and his pride had forced him to this moment when he could retrieve his reputation. “Arthur!” he shouted at me. “You married a whore!”

“Keep silent, Derfel,” Sagramor warned me.

“A whore!” Valerin shouted. “She was used when she came to me. You want the list of her lovers? An hour, Arthur, would not be time enough to give that list! And who's she whoring with now while you're waiting to die? You think she's waiting for you? I know that whore! She's tangling her legs with a man or two!” He spread his arms and jerked his hips obscenely and my spearmen jeered back, but Valerin ignored their shouted insults. “A whore!” he called, 'a rancid, used-up whore! You'd fight for your whore, Arthur? Or have you lost your belly for fighting? Defend your whore, you worm!“ He walked through the ford that came up to his thighs and stopped on our bank, his cloak dripping, just a dozen paces away from me. He stared into the dark shadow of my helmet's eye-hole. ”A whore, Arthur,“ he repeated, 'your wife is a whore.” He spat. He was bare-headed and had woven sprigs of protective mistletoe into his long black hair. He had a breastplate, but no other body armour, while his shield was painted with Gorfyddyd's spread-winged eagle. He laughed at me, then raised his voice to call to all our men. “Your leader won't fight for his whore, so why should you fight for him?” Sagramor growled at me to ignore the taunts, but Valerin's defiance was unsettling our men whose souls were already chilled by the Druids' curses. I waited for Valerin to call Guinevere a whore one more time and when he did I hurled my spear at him. It was a clumsy throw, made awkward by the scale armour's constriction, and the spear tumbled past him to splash into the river. “A whore,” he shouted and ran at me with his war spear levelled as I scraped Hywelbane out of her scabbard. I stepped towards him and had time to take just two paces before he thrust the spear at me with a great shout of rage. I dropped to one knee and raised the polished shield at an angle so that the spear-point was deflected over my head. I could see Valerin's feet and hear his roar of rage as I stabbed Hywelbane under my shield's edge. I lunged upwards with the blade, feeling it strike just before his charging body struck my shield and drove me down to the ground. He was screaming instead of roaring now, for that sword thrust beneath the shield was a wicked cut that came up from the ground to pierce a man's bowels and I knew Hywelbane had plunged deep into Valerin, for I could feel his body's weight pulling the sword blade down as he collapsed on to the shield. I heaved up with all my strength to throw him off the shield and gave a grunt as I jerked the sword back from his flesh's grip. Blood spilt foul beside his spear that had fallen to the ground where he now lay bleeding and twitching in awful pain. Even so he tried to draw his sword as I clambered to my feet and put my boot on to his chest. His face was going yellow, he shuddered and his eyes were already clouding in death. “Guinevere is a lady,” I told him, 'and your soul is mine if you deny it."

“She's a whore,” he somehow managed to say between clenched teeth, then he choked and shook his head feebly. “The bull guards me,” he managed to add, and I knew he was of Mithras and so I thrust Hywelbane hard down. The blade met the resistance of his throat, then swiftly cut to end his life. Blood fountained up the blade, and I do not think Valerin ever knew it was not Arthur who sent his soul to the bridge of swords in Cruachan's Cave.

Our men cheered. Their spirits, so abraded by the Druids and chilled by Valerin's foul insults, were instantly restored for we had drawn the first blood. I walked to the river's edge where I danced a victor's steps as I showed the dispirited enemy Hywelbane's bloodstained blade. Gorfyddyd, Cuneglas and Gundleus, their champion defeated, turned their horses away and my men taunted them as cowards and weaklings.

Sagramor nodded as I returned to the shield-wall. The nod was evidently his way of offering praise for a well-fought fight. “What do you want done with him?” He gestured to Valerin's fallen body. I had Issa strip the corpse of its jewellery, then two other men heaved it into the river and I prayed that the spirits of the water would carry my brother of Mithras to his reward. Issa brought me Valerin's weapons, his golden torque, two brooches and a ring. “Yours, Lord,” he said, offering me the plunder. He had also retrieved my spear from the river.

I took the spear and Valerin's weapons, but nothing else. “The gold is yours, Issa,” I said, remembering how he had tried to give me his own torque when we had returned from Ynys Trebes.

“Not this, Lord,” he said, and he showed me Valerin's ring. It was a piece of heavy gold, beautifully made and embossed with the figure of a stag running beneath a crescent moon. It was Guinevere's badge, and at the back of the ring, crudely but deeply cut into the thick gold, was a cross. It was a lover's ring and Issa, I thought, had been clever to spot it.

I took the ring and thought of Valerin wearing it through all the hurt years. Or maybe, I dared to hope, he had tried to revenge his pain on her reputation by cutting a false cross into the ring so that men would think he had been her lover. “Arthur must never know,” I warned Issa and then I hurled the heavy ring into the river.

“What was that?” Sagramor asked as I rejoined him.

“Nothing,” I said, 'nothing. Just a charm that might have brought us ill luck." Then a ram's horn sounded across the river and I was spared the need to think about the ring's message. The enemy was coming.

The Bards still sing of that battle, though the Gods only know how they invent the details they embroider into the tale because to hear their songs you would think none of us could have survived Lugg Vale and maybe none of us should. It was desperate. It was also, though the bards do not admit as much, a defeat for Arthur.

Gorfyddyd's first attack was a howling rush of maddened spearmen who charged into the ford. Sagramor ordered us forward and we met them in the river where the clash of the shields was like a crack of thunder exploding in the valley's mouth. The enemy had the advantage of numbers, but their attack was channelled by the ford's margins and we could afford to bring men from our flanks to thicken our centre. We in the front rank had time to thrust once, then we crouched behind our shields and simply shoved at the enemy line while the men in our second rank fought across our heads. The ring of sword blades and clatter of shield-bosses and clashing of spear-shafts was deafening, but remarkably few men died for it is hard to kill in the crush as two locked shield-walls grind against each other. Instead it becomes a pushing match. The enemy grasps your spearhead so you cannot pull it back, there is hardly room to draw a sword, and all the time the enemy's second rank are raining sword, axe and spear blows on helmets and shield-edges. The worst injuries are caused by men thrusting blades beneath the shields and gradually a barrier of crippled men builds at the front to make the slaughter even more difficult. Only when one side pulls back can the other then kill the crippled enemies stranded at the battle's tide line. We prevailed on that first attack, not so much out of valour but because Morfans pushed his six horsemen through the crush of our men and used his long horse spears to thrust down on the crouching enemy front line.

“Shields! Shields!” I heard Morfans shouting as the six horses' vast weight buckled our shield-line forward. Our rear-rank men hoisted their shields high to protect the big war horses from the rain of enemy spears, while we in the front rank crouched in the river and tried to finish off the men who recoiled from the horsemen's thrusts. I sheltered behind Arthur's polished shield and stabbed with Hywelbane whenever a gap offered in the enemy's line. I took two mighty blows to the head, but the helmet cushioned both even if my skull did ring for an hour afterwards. One spear struck my scale armour but could not pierce it. The man who launched that spear lunge was killed by Morfans, and after his death the enemy lost heart and splashed back to the river's northern bank. They took their wounded, all but for a handful who were too close to our line and that handful we killed before we retreated to our own bank. We had lost six men to the Otherworld and twice that many to wounds. “You shouldn't be in the front line,” Sagramor told me as he watched our wounded being carried away. “They'll see you're not Arthur.”

“They're seeing that Arthur fights,” I said, 'unlike Gorfyddyd or Gundleus." The enemy Kings had been close to the fight, but never close enough to use their weapons. lorweth and Tanaburs were screaming at Gorfyddyd's men, encouraging them to the slaughter and promising them the rewards of the Gods, but while Gorfyddyd reorganized his spearmen a group of master less men waded the river to attack on their own. Such warriors relied on a display of bravery to bring them riches and rank, and these thirty desperate men charged in a screaming rage once they were through the deepest part of the river. They were either drunk or battle-mad, for thirty alone attacked our whole force. The reward for their success would have been land, gold, forgiveness of their crimes and lordly status in Gorfyddyd's court, but thirty men were not enough. They hurt us, but died doing it. They were all fine spearmen with shield hands thick with warrior rings, but each now faced three or four enemies. A whole group rushed towards me, seeing in my armour and white plume the fastest route to glory, but Sagramor and my wolf-tailed spearmen met and matched them. One huge man was wielding a Saxon axe. Sagramor killed him with his dark curved blade, then plucked the axe from the dying hand and hurled it at another spearman, and all the while he was chanting his own weird battle song in his native tongue. A last swordsman attacked me and I parried his scything blow with the iron boss of Arthur's shield, knocked his own shield aside with Hywelbane, then kicked him in the groin. He doubled over, too hurt to cry out, and Issa rammed a spear into his neck. We stripped the dead attackers of their armour, their weapons and their jewellery and left their bodies at the ford's edge as a barrier to the next attack.

That attack came soon and came hard. Like the first this third assault was made by a mass of spearmen, only this time we met them at the near river bank where the press of men behind the enemy's front rank forced their leading spearmen to stumble on the piled bodies. Their stumbling opened them to our counter-attack and we shouted in triumph as we slashed our red spears forward. Then the shields cracked together again, dying men screamed and called on their Gods, and the swords rang loud as the anvils in Magnis. I was again in the front rank, crammed so close to the enemy line that I could smell the mead on their breath. One man tried to snatch the helmet from my head and lost his hand to a-sword stroke. The pushing match started again and again it seemed that the enemy must force us back by sheer weight, but again Morfans brought his heavy horses through the crush, and again the enemy hurled spears that clattered on our shields, and once again Morfans's men thrust down with their long horsemen's spears and once again the enemy pulled back. The bards say the river ran red, which is not true, though I did see tendrils of blood fading downstream from the wounded who tried and failed to get back through the ford.

“We could fight the bastards here all day,” Morfans said. His horse was bleeding and he had dismounted to treat the animal's wound.

I shook my head. “There's another ford upriver.” I pointed westwards. “They'll have spearmen on this bank soon enough.”

Those outflanking enemy came sooner than I thought, for ten minutes later a shout from our left flank warned us that a group of enemy had indeed crossed the river to the west and was now advancing along our bank.

“Time to go back,” Sagramor told me. His clean-shaven black face was smeared with blood and sweat, but there was joy in his eyes for this was proving to be a fight that would make the poets struggle for new words to describe a battle, a fight that men would remember in smoky halls for winters to come, a fight that, even lost, would send a man in honour to the warrior halls of the Otherworld. “Time to draw them in,” Sagramor said, then shouted the order to withdraw so that slowly and cumbersomely our whole force retreated past the village with its Roman building and stopped a hundred paces beyond. Our left flank was now anchored on the vale's steep western side while our right was protected by the marshy ground that stretched towards the river. Even so we were much more vulnerable than we had been at the ford for our shield-wall was now desperately thin and the enemy could attack all along its length.

It took Gorfyddyd a whole hour to bring his men across the river and array them in a new shield-line. I guessed it was already afternoon and I glanced behind me for some sign of Galahad or Tewdric's men, but I saw no one approaching. Nor, I was glad to see, were there any men on the western hill where Nimue's ghost-fence guarded our flank, but Gorfyddyd hardly needed men there for his army was now bigger than ever. New contingents had come from Branogenium and Gorfyddyd's commanders were tugging and shoving those newcomers into the shield-wall. We watched the captains using their long spears to straighten the enemy's line and all of us, despite the defiance we shouted, knew that for every man we had killed at the river ten more had come across the ford. “We'll never hold them here,” Sagramor said as he watched the enemy forces grow. “We'll have to go back to the tree fence.” But then, before Sagramor could give the order to retreat, Gorfyddyd himself rode forward to challenge us. He came alone, without even his son, and he came with just a sheathed sword and a spear for he had no arm to hold a shield. Gorfyddyd's gold-trimmed helmet, that Arthur had returned the week of his betrothal to Ceinwyn, was crowned with the spread wings of a golden eagle, and his black cloak was spread across his horse's rump. Sagramor growled at me to stay where I was and strode forward to meet the King.

Gorfyddyd used no reins, but spoke to his horse that obediently stopped two paces away from Sagramor. Gorfyddyd rested his spear-butt on the ground, then forced his helmet's cheek pieces aside so that his sour face showed. “You're Arthur's black demon,” he accused Sagramor, spitting to avert any evil, 'and your whore-loving Lord shelters behind your sword.“ Gorfyddyd spat again, this time towards me. ”Why don't you talk to me, Arthur?“ he shouted. ”Lost your tongue?"

“My Lord Arthur,” Sagramor answered in his heavily accented British, 'is saving his breath to sing his victory song."

Gorfyddyd hefted his long spear. “I'm one-handed,” he shouted at me, 'but I'll fight you!" I said nothing, nor did I move. Arthur, I knew, would never fight in single battle against a crippled man, though Arthur would never have stayed silent either. By now he would have been pleading with Gorfyddyd for peace.

Gorfyddyd did not want peace. He wanted slaughter. He rode up and down our line, controlling his horse with his knees and shouting at our men. “You're dying because your Lord can't keep his hands off a whore! You're dying for a bitch with a wet rump! For a bitch in perpetual heat! Your souls will be cursed. My dead are already feasting in the Otherworld, but your souls will become their throw pieces And why will you die? For his red-headed whore?” He pointed his spear at me, then rode his horse directly at me. I pulled back lest he saw through the helmet's eye slit that I was not Arthur and my spearmen closed protectively around me. Gorfyddyd laughed at my apparent timidity. His horse was close enough for my men to touch, but Gorfyddyd showed no fear of their spears as he spat at me.

“Woman!” he called out, his worst insult, then touched his horse with his left foot and the beast turned and galloped back towards his army.

Sagramor turned to us and raised his arms. “Back!” he shouted. “Back to the fence! Quick now! Back!” We turned our backs on the enemy and hurried away and a great shout went up as they saw our twin banners retreat. They thought we were running and they broke their ranks to pursue us, but we had too great a start on them and we had streamed through the gap in the barricade long before any of Gorfyddyd's men could reach us. Our line spread behind the fence while I took Arthur's proper place in the very centre of the line where the road ran through the empty gap between the felled trees. We deliberately left the gap without any obstacles in the hope that it would draw Gorfyddyd's attacks and thus give our flanks time to rest. I raised Arthur's two banners there and waited for the assault. Gorfyddyd roared at his disordered spearmen to make a new shield-wall. King Gundleus commanded the enemy's right flank and Prince Cuneglas the left. That arrangement suggested that Gorfyddyd was not going to take our bait of the open gap, but intended to assault all along the line. “You stay here!” Sagramor shouted at our spearmen. “You're warriors! You're going to prove it now! You stay here, you kill here and you win here!” Morfans had forced his wounded horse a small way up the western hill from where he looked north up the vale, judging whether this was the moment to sound the horn and summon Arthur, but enemy reinforcements were still crossing the ford and he came back without putting the silver to his lips.

Gorfyddyd's horn sounded instead. It was a raucous ram's horn that did not send his shield-line forward, but instead provoked a dozen naked madmen to burst out of the enemy's line and rush on our centre. Such men have put their souls in the Gods' keeping, then fuddled their senses with a mixture of mead, thorn-apple juice, mandrake and belladonna, which can give a man waking nightmares even as it takes away his fears. Such men might be mad, drunk and naked, but they were also dangerous for they had only one aim and that was to bring down the enemy commanders. They rushed at me, mouths foaming from the magical herbs they had been chewing and with their spears held overhead ready to drive down. My wolf-tailed spearmen advanced to meet them. The naked men did not care about death, they threw themselves on my spearmen as if they welcomed their spear-points. One of my men was driven backwards with a naked brute clawing at his eyes and spitting into his face. Issa killed that fiend, but another managed to kill one of my best men and then screamed his victory, legs apart, arms upheld and bloody spear in bloody hand, and all my men thought the Gods must have deserted us, but Sagramor ripped the naked man's belly open, then half severed his head before the corpse had even fallen to the ground. Sagramor spat on to the naked, eviscerated corpse, then spat again towards the enemy shield-wall. That wall, seeing the centre of our line was disordered, charged. Our hastily realigned centre buckled when the mass of spearmen slammed home. The thin line of men stretched across the road bent like a sapling, but somehow we held. We were cheering each other, calling on the Gods, stabbing and cutting while Morfans and his horsemen rode all along the shield-wall and threw themselves into the fight wherever the enemy seemed about to break through. The flanks of our shield-wall were protected by the barricade and so had an easier time, but in the centre our fight was desperate. I was maddened by now, lost in the weltering joy of battle. I lost my spear to an enemy's grip, drew Hywelbane, but held back her first stroke to let an enemy's shield hammer into Arthur's polished silver. The shields banged together, then the enemy's face showed for an instant and I lanced Hywelbane forward and felt the pressure vanish from the shield. The man fell, his body making a barrier over which his comrades had to climb. Issa killed one man, then took a spear thrust to his shield arm that soaked his sleeve in blood. He kept fighting. I was hacking madly in the space made by my fallen enemy to carve a hole in Gorfyddyd's shield-wall. I saw the enemy King once, staring from his horse to where I screamed and slashed and dared his men to come and take my soul. Some did dare, thinking to make themselves the stuff of songs, but instead they made themselves into corpses. Hywelbane was soaked in blood, my right hand was sticky with it and the sleeve of the heavy scale coat was smeared with it, but none of it was mine.

The centre of our line, unprotected by the tangling trees, very nearly did break once, but two of Morfans's horsemen used their beasts to plug the gap. One of the horses died, screaming and thrashing its hooves as it bled to death on the road. Then our shield-wall mended itself and we shoved back at the enemy who slowly, slowly were being choked by the press of dead and dying bodies that lay between the two front ranks. Nimue was behind us, shrieking and hurling curses. The enemy pulled away and at last we could rest. All of us were bloody and mud stained and our breath came in huge gasps. Our sword and spear arms were weary. News of comrades was passed along the ranks. Minac was dead, this man wounded, another man dying. Men bandaged their neighbours' wounds, then swore oaths to defend each other to the death. I tried to ease the galling pressure of Arthur's armour that had rubbed great sores on my shoulders.

The enemy was wary now. The tired men who faced us had felt our swords and learned to fear us, yet still they attacked again. This time it was Gundleus's royal guard that assaulted our centre and we met them at the bloody pile of dead and dying that was left from the last attack, and that gory ridge saved us, for the enemy spearmen could not clamber over the bodies and protect themselves at the same time. We broke their ankles, cut open their legs, then speared them as they fell to make the bloody ridge higher. Black ravens circled the ford, their wings ragged against the dun sky. I saw Ligessac, the traitor who had yielded Norwenna to Gundleus's sword, and I tried to cut my way through to him, but the tide of battle swept him away from Hywelbane. Then the enemy pulled back again and I hoarsely ordered some of my men to fetch skins of water from the river. We were all thirsty for the sweat had poured off us, mingling with blood. I had one scratch on my sword hand, but nothing else. I had been to the death-pit and always reckoned that was why I was lucky in battle.

The enemy began putting new troops in their front line. Some carried Cuneglas's eagle, some Gundleus's fox and a few had emblems of their own. Then a cheer sounded behind me and I turned, expecting to see Tewdric's men arriving in their Roman uniforms, but instead it was Galahad who came alone on a sweating horse. He slid to a halt behind our line and half fell off the horse in his haste to reach us. “I thought I'd be too late,” he said.

“Are they coming?” I asked.

He paused and even before he spoke I knew that we had been abandoned. “No,” he said at last. I swore and looked back to the enemy. It was the Gods alone who had saved us in the last attack, but the Gods alone knew how long we could hold now. “No one is coming?” I asked bitterly.

“A few maybe.” Galahad gave the bad news in a low voice. “Tewdric believes we're doomed, Agricola says they should help us, but Meurig says we must be left to die. They're all arguing, but Tewdric did say that any man who wants to die here could follow me. Maybe some are on the way?” I prayed there were, for some of Gorfyddyd's levy had arrived on the western hill now, though none of that ragged horde had yet dared to cross Nimue's ghost-fence. We could hold for two more hours, I thought, and after that we were doomed, though Arthur would surely come first. “No sign of the Blackshield Irish?” I asked Galahad.

“No, thank God,” he said, and it was one small blessing on a day almost bereft of blessings, though a half-hour after Galahad came, we did at last receive some reinforcements. Seven men walked north towards our battered shield-wall, seven men in war gear carrying spears, shields and swords, and the symbol on the shields was the hawk of Kernow, our enemy. Yet these men were no enemies. They were six scarred and hardened fighters led by their Edling, Prince Tristan. He explained his presence when the excitement of greeting was over. “Arthur fought for me once, and I have long wanted to repay the debt.”

“With your life?” Sagramor asked grimly.

“He risked his,” Tristan said simply. I remembered him as a tall handsome man, and so he still was, but the years had added a wary and tired look to his face as though he had suffered too many disappointments. “My father,” he added ruefully, 'may never forgive my coming here, but I could never have forgiven my absence."

“How's Sarlinna?” I asked him.

“Sarlinna?” He took a few seconds to remember the small girl who had come to accuse Owain at Caer Cadarn. “Oh, Sarlinna! Married now. To a fisherman.” He smiled. “You gave her the kitten, didn't you?” We put Tristan and his men in our centre, the place of honour on this battlefield, yet when the enemy's next assault came it was not against the centre, but against the tree fence protecting our flanks. For a time the shallow trench and the fence's tangling branches caused them havoc, but they learned swiftly enough to use the felled trees to protect themselves and in some places they burst clean through and bent our line backwards again. But again we held them, and Griffid, my erstwhile enemy, made a name for himself by cutting down Nasiens, Gundleus's champion. The shields crashed incessantly. Spears broke, swords shattered and shields split as the exhausted fought the weary. On the hilltop the enemy levy gathered to watch from beyond Nimue's ghost-fence as Morfans once again forced his tired horse up the perilously steep slope. He stared northwards and we watched him and prayed that he would blow the horn. He stared for a long time, but he must have been satisfied that all the enemy forces were now trapped in the vale for he put the silver horn to his lips and blew the blessed summons across the din of battle. Never was a horn call more welcome. Our whole line surged forward and scarred swords hammered at the enemy with a new energy. The silver horn, so pure and clear, called again and again, a hunting call to the slaughter, and each time it sounded our men pressed forward into the branches of the felled trees to cut and stab and scream at the enemy who, suspecting some trickery, glanced nervously around the vale as they defended themselves. Gorfyddyd shouted at his men to break us now, and his royal guard led the attack on our centre. I heard Kernow's men screaming their war cry as they paid their Edling's debt. Nimue was among our spearmen and wielding a sword with both hands. I shouted at her to get back, but the bloodlust had swamped her soul and she fought like a fiend. The enemy was scared of her, knowing that she was of the Gods, and men tried to evade rather than fight her, but all the same I was glad when Galahad thrust her away from the fight. Galahad might have come late to the battle, but he fought with a savage glee that drove the enemy back from the twitching pile of dead and dying men. The horn sounded a last time. And Arthur, at last, charged.

His armoured spearmen had come from their hiding place north of the river and now their horses foamed through the ford like a tide of thunder. They crashed over the bodies left by the early fighting and brought their bright spears down into the charge as they seared into the enemy's rearward units. Men scattered like chaff as the iron-shod horses drove deep into Gorfyddyd's army. Arthur's men divided into two groups that cut deep channels through that press of spearmen. They charged, they left their spears fixed in the dead and then made more dead with their swords.

And for a moment, for a glorious moment, I thought the enemy would break, but then Gorfyddyd saw the same danger and he shouted at his men to form a new shield-wall facing north. He would sacrifice his rearward men and instead make a new line of spears from the back most ranks of his forward troops. And that new line held. Owain, so long ago, had been right when he told me that not even Arthur's horses would charge home against a well-made shield-wall. Nor would they. Arthur had brought panic and death to a third of Cuneglas's army, but the rest were now formed properly and they defied his handful of cavalry.

And still the enemy outnumbered us.

Behind the tree fence our line was nowhere more than two men deep and in places it was just one. Arthur had failed to cut through to us, and Gorfyddyd knew that Arthur never would cut through so long as he kept a shield-wall facing the horses. He planted that shield-wall, abandoning the lost third of his army to Arthur's mercy, then turned the rest of his men to face Sagramor's shield-wall again. Gorfyddyd now knew Arthur's tactics, and he had defeated them, so he could hurl his spearmen into battle with a new confidence, though this time, instead of assaulting all along our line, he concentrated his attack along the vale's western edge in an attempt to turn our left flank.

The men on that flank fought, they killed and they died, but few men could have held the line for long, and none could have held it once Gundleus's Silurians outflanked us by climbing the lower slopes of the hill beneath the ghastly ghost-fence. The attack was brutal and the defence just as horrid. Morfans's surviving horsemen hurled themselves at the Silurians, Nimue spat curses at them and Tristan's fresh men fought there like champions, but if we had possessed double our numbers we could not have stopped the enemy from outflanking us and so our shield-wall, like a snake recoiling, collapsed on to the river bank where we made a defensive half-circle about two banners and the few wounded men we had managed to carry back with us. It was a terrible moment. I saw our shield-wall break, saw the enemy begin the slaughter of scattered men, and then I ran with the rest into the desperate huddle of survivors. We just had time to make a crude shield-wall, then we could only watch as Gorfyddyd's triumphant forces pursued and killed our fugitives. Tristan survived, as did Galahad and Sagramor, but that was small consolation for we had lost the battle and all that remained for us now was to die like heroes. In the northern half of the vale Arthur was still held by the shield-wall, while to the south our wall, that had resisted its enemies all that long day, had been broken and its remnant surrounded. We had gone into battle two hundred strong and now we numbered just over a hundred men.

Prince Cuneglas rode forward to ask for our surrender. His father was commanding the men facing Arthur and the King of Powys was content to leave the destruction of Sagramor's remaining spearmen to his son and to King Gundleus. Cuneglas, at least, did not insult my men. He curbed his horse a dozen paces from our line and raised an empty right hand to show he came in truce. “Men of Dumnonia!” Cuneglas called. “You have fought well, but to fight further is to die. I offer you life.”

“Use your sword once before you ask brave men to surrender,” I shouted at him.

“Afraid to fight, are you?” Sagramor jeered for so far none of us had seen Gorfyddyd, Cuneglas or Gundleus in the front of the enemy shield-wall. King Gundleus sat on his horse a few paces behind Prince Cuneglas. Nimue was cursing him, but whether or not he was aware of her I could not tell. If he was he could not have been worried, for we were all now trapped and surely doomed.

“Or fight me now!” I shouted at Cuneglas. “Man to man, if you dare.” Cuneglas gazed at me sadly. I was bloodstained, mud-covered, sweaty, bruised and hurting, while he was elegant in a short suit of scale armour and with a helmet surmounted by eagle feathers. He half smiled at me. “I know you're not Arthur,” he said, 'for I saw him on horseback, but whoever you are, you have fought nobly. I offer you life."

I pulled the sweaty, confining helmet off my head and tossed it into the centre of our half-circle. “You know me, Lord Prince,” I said.

“Lord Derfel.” He named me, then did me honour. “Lord Derfel Cadarn,” he said, 'if I stand surety for your life and for the lives of your men, will you surrender?"

“Lord Prince,” I said, “I do not command here. You must speak to Lord Sagramor.” Sagramor stepped up beside me and took off his black spired helmet that had been pierced by a spear so that his black curly hair was matted with blood. “Lord Prince,” he said warily.

“I offer you life,” Cuneglas said, 'so long as you surrender." Sagramor pointed his curved sword to where Arthur's horsemen dominated the northern part of the vale.

“My Lord has not surrendered,” he told Cuneglas, 'so I cannot. But nevertheless' he raised his voice “I release my men from their oaths.”

“I also,” I called to my men.

I am sure some were tempted to leave the ranks, but their comrades growled at them to stay, or perhaps the growl was simply the sound of tired men's defiance. Prince Cuneglas waited a few seconds, then took two thin gold torques from a pouch at his belt. He smiled at us. “I salute your bravery, Lord Sagramor. I salute you, Lord Derfel.” He threw the gold so that it landed at our feet. I picked mine up and bent the ends apart so that it would fit around my neck. “And Derfel Cadarn?” Cuneglas added. His round, friendly face was smiling.

“Lord Prince?”

“My sister asked that I should greet you. And so I do.”

My soul, so close to death, seemed to leap with joy at the greeting. “Give her my greetings, Lord Prince,” I answered, 'and tell her I shall look forward to her company in the Otherworld.“ Then the thought of never seeing Ceinwyn again in this world overcame my joy and suddenly I wanted to weep. Cuneglas saw my sadness. ”You need not die, Lord Derfel,“ he said. ”I offer you life, and I stand surety for you. I offer you my friendship too, if you will have it."

“I would honour it, Lord Prince,” I said, 'but while my Lord fights, I fight.“ Sagramor pulled his helmet on, wincing as the metal slid over the spear wound on his scalp. ”I thank you, Lord Prince,“ he told Cuneglas, 'and choose to fight you.” Cuneglas turned his horse away. I looked at my sword, so battered and sticky, then I looked at my surviving men. “If we did nothing else,” I told them, 'we made sure Gorfyddyd's army can't march on Dumnonia for many a long day. And maybe never! Who'd want to fight men like us twice?"

“The Blackshield Irish would,” Sagramor growled and he jerked his head towards the hillside where the ghost-fence had held our flank all day. And there, beyond the magic-ridden posts, was a war-band with round, black shields and the wicked long spears of Ireland. It was the garrison of Coel's Hill, Oengus Mac Airem's Blackshield Irish, who had come to join the killing.

Arthur was still fighting. He had torn one-third of his enemy's army into red ruin, but the rest now held him checked. He charged again and again in his efforts to break that shield-line but no horse on earth would ride through a thicket of men, shields and spears. Even Llamrei failed him and all that was left for him to do, I thought, was to thrust Excalibur deep into the blood-reddened soil and hope that the God Gofannon would come from the darkest abyss of the Otherworld to his rescue. But no God came, nor did any man come from Magnis. We later learned that some volunteers had set out, but they arrived too late.

Powys's levy stayed on the hill, too scared to cross the ghost-fence, while beside them were gathered more than a hundred Irish warriors. Those men began to walk south, aiming to walk around the fence's vengeful ghosts. In a half-hour, I thought, those Blackshield Irish would be joining Cuneglas's final attack and so I went to Nimue. “Swim the river,” I urged her. “You can swim, can't you?” She held up her left hand with its scar. “You die here, Derfel,” she said, 'then I die here."

"You must'

“Hold your tongue,” she said, 'that's what you must do,“ and then stood on tiptoe and kissed me on the mouth. ”Kill Gundleus for me before you die,“ she pleaded. One of our spearmen began singing the Death Song of Werlinna and the rest of them took up the slow, sad melody. Cavan, his cloak blackened by blood, was hammering the socket of his spearhead with a stone, trying to tighten the shaft's fit. ”I never thought it would come to this," I said to him.

“Nor me, Lord,” he said, looking up from his work. His wolf-tail plume was bloodsoaked too, his helmet dented and there was a rag bandaged about his left thigh.

“I thought I was lucky,” I said. “I always thought that, but perhaps every man does.”

“Not every man, Lord, no, but the best leaders do.”

I smiled my thanks. “I would have liked to have seen Arthur's dream come true,” I said.

“There'd be no work for warriors if it did,” Cavan said dourly. “We'd all be clerks or farmers. Maybe it's better this way. One last fight, then down to the Otherworld and into Mithras's service. We'll have a good time there, Lord. Plump women, good fighting, strong mead and rich gold for ever.”

“I shall be glad of your company there,” I told him, but in " truth I was utterly bereft of joy. I did not want to go to the Otherworld yet, not while Ceinwyn still lived in this one. I pressed the armour at my chest to feel her small brooch and I thought of the madness that would never now run its course. I said her name aloud, puzzling Cavan. I was in love, but I would die without ever holding my love's hand or seeing her face again.

Then I was forced to forget Ceinwyn for the Blackshield Irish of Demetia, instead of walking around the fence, had decided to risk the ghosts and cross it. Then I saw why. A Druid had appeared on the hill to lead them through the spirit line. Nimue came to stand beside me and stared up the hill to where the tall, white-cowled and white-robed figure strode long-legged down the steep slope. The Irish followed him, and behind their black shields and long spears came Powys's levy with its mixed weaponry of bows, mattocks, axes, spears, single-sticks and hayforks.

My men's singing faded away. They hefted spears and touched their shield-edges on each other to make sure the wall was tight. The enemy, who had been readying their own shield-wall to attack ours, now turned to watch as the Druid brought the Irish down to the valley. lorweth and Tanaburs ran to meet him, but the newly come Druid waved his long staff to order them out of his path and then he pushed his robe's hood back and we saw the long, plaited white beard and the swinging pigtail of his black-wrapped hair. It was Merlin.

Nimue cried when she saw Merlin, then she ran towards him. The enemy moved aside to let her pass, just as they parted to let Merlin walk towards her. Even on a battlefield a Druid could walk wherever he wanted, and this Druid was the most famed and powerful in all the land. Nimue ran and Merlin spread his arms to welcome her and she was still sobbing as at last she found him again and threw her thin white arms around his body. And suddenly I was glad for her.

Merlin kept one arm around Nimue as he strode towards us. Gorfyddyd had seen the Druid's arrival and now galloped his horse towards our part of the battlefield. Merlin raised his staff in greeting to the King, but ignored his questions. The Irish war-band had stopped at the hill's foot where they formed their grim black wall of shields.

Merlin walked towards me and, just as on the day when he had saved my life at Caer Sws, he came in stark, cold majesty. There was no smile on his dark face, no hint of joy in his deep eyes, just a look of such fierce anger that I sank to my knees and bowed my head as he came close. Sagramor did the same, then suddenly our whole battered band of spearmen was kneeling to the Druid. He reached out with his black staff and touched first Sagramor and then me on the shoulders. “Get up,” he said in a low, hard voice before turning to face the enemy. He took his arm from around Nimue's shoulders and held his black staff level above his tonsured head with both hands. He stared at Gorfyddyd's army, then slowly lowered the staff, and such was the authority in that long, ancient, angry face and in that slow, sure gesture that the enemy all knelt to him. Only the two Druids stayed standing and the few horsemen remained in their saddles.

“For seven years,” Merlin said in a voice that reached clear across the vale and right up its deep centre so that even Arthur and his men could hear him, “I have searched for the Knowledge of Britain. I have searched for the power of our ancestors that we abandoned when the Romans came. I have searched for those things that will restore this land to its rightful Gods, its own Gods, our Gods, the Gods who made us and who can be persuaded to come back to help us.” He spoke slowly and simply so that every man could hear and understand. “Now,” he went on, “I need help. I need men with swords, men with spears, men with hearts unafraid, to go with me to an enemy place to find the last Treasure of Britain. I seek the Cauldron of Clyddno Eiddyn. The Cauldron is our power, our lost power, our last hope to make Britain once again into the island of the Gods. I promise you nothing but hardship, I will give you no reward but death, I shall feed you nothing but bitterness, and will give you only gall to drink, but in return I ask for your swords and your lives. Who will come with me to find the Cauldron?” He asked the question abruptly. We had expected him to talk of this sprawling blood-letting that had turned a green vale red, but instead he had ignored the fight as though it was irrelevant, almost as if he had not even noticed that he had strayed on to a battlefield. “Who?” he asked again.

“Lord Merlin!” Gorfyddyd shouted before any man could respond. The enemy King pushed his horse through the ranks of his kneeling spearmen. “Lord Merlin!” His voice was angry and his face bitter.

“Gorfyddyd,” Merlin acknowledged him.

“Your quest for the Cauldron can wait one short hour?” Gorfyddyd asked the question sarcastically.

“It can wait a year, Gorfyddyd ap Cadell. It can wait five years. It can wait for ever, but it should not.” Gorfyddyd rode his horse into the open space between the spear-walls. He was seeing his great victory jeopardized and his claim to be the High King threatened by a Druid, and so he turned his horse towards his men, pushed back the cheek pieces of his winged helmet and raised his voice. “There will be time to pledge spears to the Cauldron's quest,” he called to his men, 'but only when you have punished the whoremonger and drowned your spears in his men's souls. I have an oath to fulfill, and I will not let any man, even my Lord Merlin, deflect that oath's keeping. There can be no peace, no Cauldron, while the whore's lover lives.“ He turned and stared at the wizard. ”You would save the whore-lover by this appeal?"

“I would not care, Gorfyddyd ap Cadell,” Merlin said, 'if the land opened and swallowed Arthur and his army. Nor if it engulfed yours as well."

“Then we fight!” Gorfyddyd shouted, and he used his one arm to drag his sword free of its scabbard.

“These men' he spoke to his army, but pointed the sword towards our banners 'are yours. Their lands, their flocks, their gold and their homes are yours. Their wives and daughters are now your whores. You have fought them this far, would you now let them walk away? The Cauldron will not vanish with their lives, but your victory will vanish if we do not finish what we came here to do. We fight!” There was a heartbeat of silence, then Gorfyddyd's men stood and began to beat their spear-shafts against their shields. Gorfyddyd gave Merlin a triumphant look, then kicked his horse back into his men's clamorous ranks.

Merlin turned to Sagramor and me. “The Blackshield Irish,” he said in a casual voice, 'are on your side. I talked with them. They will attack Gorfyddyd's men and you shall have a great victory. May the Gods give you strength." He turned again, put an arm around Nimue's shoulders and strode away through the enemy ranks that opened to let him through.

“It was a good try!” Gundleus called to Merlin. The King of Powys was on the threshold of his great victory and that giddy prospect had filled him with the confidence to defy the Druid, but Merlin ignored the crowing insult and just walked away with Tanaburs and lorweth.

Issa brought me Arthur's helmet. I crammed it back on my head, glad of its protection in these last few moments of battle.

The enemy re-formed its shield-wall. Few insults were shouted now, for few men had energy for anything other than the grim slaughter that loomed on the river's bank. Gorfyddyd, for the first time all day, dismounted and took his place in the wall. He had no shield, but he would still lead this last attack that would crush his hated enemy's power. He raised his sword, held it aloft for a few heartbeats, then brought it down.

The enemy charged.

We thrust spears and shields forward to meet them and the two walls crashed with a terrible sound. Gorfyddyd tried to thrust his sword past Arthur's shield, but I parried it and cut at him with Hywelbane. The sword glanced off his helmet, severing an eagle wing, then we were locked together by the pressure of the men thrusting from behind.

“Push them!” Gorfyddyd shouted at his men, then he spat at me over the shield. “Your whore-lover,” he told me over the battle's din, 'hid while you fought."

“She is no whore, Lord King,” I said, and tried to free Hywelbane from the crush to give him a blow, but the sword was trapped fast by the pressure of shields and men.

“She took enough gold from me,” Gorfyddyd said, 'and I don't pay women whose legs don't part." I heaved at Hywelbane and tried to stab at Gorfyddyd's feet, but the sword just glanced off the skirts of his armour. He laughed at my failure, spat at me again, then raised his head as he heard a dreadful screaming battle cry.

It was the attack of the Irish. The Blackshields of Oengus Mac Airem always charged with a ululating scream; a terrible battle-cry that seemed to suggest an inhuman delight in slaughter. Gorfyddyd shouted at his men to heave and cleave, to break our tiny shield-wall, and for a few seconds the men of Powys and Siluria struck at us with a new frenzy in the belief that the Blackshields were coming to their aid, but then new screams from the rearward ranks made them realize that treachery had changed the Blackshields'

allegiance. The Irish sliced into Gorfyddyd's ranks, their long spears finding easy targets, and suddenly, swiftly, Gorfyddyd's men collapsed like a pricked waters king

I saw the rage and panic cross Gorfyddyd's face. “Surrender, Lord King!” I shouted to him, but his bodyguard found space to hack down with their swords and for a few desperate seconds I was defending myself too hard to see what happened to the King, though Issa did shout that he saw Gorfyddyd wounded. Galahad was beside me, thrusting and parrying, and then, magically it seemed, the enemy was fleeing. Our men pursued, joining with the Blackshields to drive the men of Powys and Siluria like a flock of sheep to where Arthur's horsemen waited to kill. I looked for Gundleus and saw him once among a mass of running, mud-covered, bloody men, and then I lost sight of him. The vale had seen much death that day, but now it saw outright massacre for nothing makes for easy killing like a broken shield-wall. Arthur tried to stop the slaughter, but nothing could have checked that pent-up release of savagery, and his horsemen rode like avenging Gods among the panicked mass while we pursued and cut the fugitives down in an orgy of blood. Scores of the enemy succeeded in fleeing past the horsemen and crossing the ford to safety, but scores more were forced to take refuge in the village where at last they found the time and space to make a new shield-wall. Now it was their turn to be surrounded. The evening light was stretching across the vale, touching the trees with the first faint yellow sunlight of that long and bloody day as we stopped around the village. We were panting and our swords and spears were thick with blood.

Arthur, his sword as red as mine, slid heavily from Llamrei's back. The black mare was white with sweat, trembling, her pale eyes wide, while Arthur himself was bone-weary from his desperate fight. He had tried and tried again to break through to us; he had fought, his fnen told us, like a man possessed by the Gods even though it had seemed, all that long afternoon, as if the Gods had deserted him. Now, despite being victor of the day, he was in distress as he embraced Sagramor and then hugged me. “I failed you, Derfel,” he said, “I failed you.”

“No, Lord,” I said, 'we won," and I pointed with my battered, reddened sword at Gorfyddyd's survivors who had rallied around the eagle banner of their trapped King. Gundleus's fox banner also showed there, though neither of the enemy Kings was in view.

“I failed,” Arthur said. “I never broke through. There were too many.” That failure galled him, for he knew only too well how close we had come to utter defeat. Indeed, he felt he had been defeated, for his vaunted horsemen had been held and all he had been able to do was watch as we were cut down, but he was wrong. The victory was his, all his, for Arthur, alone of all the men of Dumnonia and Gwent, had possessed the confidence to offer battle. That battle had not gone as Arthur had planned; Tewdric had not marched to help us and Arthur's war horses had been checked by Gundleus's shield-wall; but it was still a victory and it had been brought about by one thing only: Arthur's courage in fighting at all. Merlin had intervened, of course, but Merlin never claimed the victory. That was Arthur's and though, at the time, Arthur was full of self-recrimination it was Lugg Vale, the one victory Arthur always despised, that turned him into the eventual ruler of Britain. The Arthur of the poets, the Arthur who wearies the tongues of the bards, the Arthur for whose return all men pray in these dark days, was made great by that stumbling shambles of a fight. Nowadays, of course, the poets do not sing the truth about Lugg Vale. They make it sound like a victory as complete as the later battles, and perhaps they are right to shape their story thus for in these hard times we need Arthur to have been a great hero from the very first, but the truth is that in those early years Arthur was vulnerable. He ruled Dumnonia by virtue of Owain's death and Bedwin's support, but as the years of war ground on there were many who wished him gone. Gorfyddyd had his supporters in Dumnonia and, God forgive me, too many Christians were praying for Arthur's defeat. And that was why he fought, because he knew he was too weak not to fight. Arthur had to provide victory or lose everything, and in the end he did win, but only after coming within a blade's edge of disaster.

Arthur crossed to embrace Tristan, then to greet Oengus Mac Airem, the Irish King of Demetia, whose contingent had saved the battle. Arthur, as ever, went to his knees before a king, but Oengus lifted him up and gave him a bear hug. I turned and stared at the vale as the two men talked. It was foul with broken men, pitiful with dying horses, and glutted with corpses and littered weapons. Blood stank and the wounded cried. I felt more weary than I had ever felt in my life and so did my men, but I saw that Gorfyddyd's levy had come down from the hill to start plundering the dead and wounded and so I sent Cavan and a score of spearmen to drive them away. Ravens flapped black across the river to tear at dead men's bowels. I saw that the huts we had fired that morning still smoked. Then I thought of Ceinwyn, and amid all that bestial horror, my soul suddenly lifted as though on great white wings. I turned back in time to see Merlin and Arthur embrace. Arthur almost seemed to collapse in the Druid's arms, but Merlin lifted and clasped him. Then the two of them walked towards the enemy's shields. Prince Cuneglas and the Druid lorweth came from the encircled shield-wall. Cuneglas carried a spear, but no shield, while Arthur had Excalibur in its scabbard, but no other weapon. He paced ahead of Merlin and, as he drew near to Cuneglas, he dropped to one knee and bowed his head. “Lord Prince,” he said.

“My father is dying,” Cuneglas said. “A spear thrust took him in the back.” He made it sound like an accusation, though everyone knew that once a shield-wall broke many men would die with their wounds behind.

Arthur stayed on one knee. For a moment he did not seem to know what to say, then he looked up at Cuneglas. “May I see him?” he asked. “I offended your house, Lord Prince, and insulted its honour, and though no insult was meant, I would still beg your father's forgiveness.” It was Cuneglas's turn to seem bemused, then he shrugged as though he was not certain he was making the right decision, but at last he gestured towards his shield-wall. Arthur stood and, side by side with the Prince, went to see the dying King Gorfyddyd.

I wanted to call out to Arthur not to go, but he was swallowed in the enemy's ranks before my muddled wits recovered. I cringed to think what Gorfyddyd would say to Arthur, and I knew Gorfyddyd would say those things, the same filthy things that he had spat at me across the rim of his spear-scarred shield. King Gorfyddyd was not a man to forgive his enemies, nor one to spare an enemy hurt, even if he was dying. Especially if he was dying. It would be Gorfyddyd's final pleasure in this world to know that he had hurt his foe. Sagramor shared my fears, and both of us watched in anguish as, after a few moments, Arthur emerged from the defeated ranks with a face as dark as Cruachan's Cave. Sagramor stepped towards him. “He lied, Lord,” Sagramor said softly. “He always lied.”

“I know he lied,” Arthur said, then shuddered. “But some untruths are hard to hear and impossible to forgive.” Anger suddenly swelled up inside him and he drew Excalibur and turned fiercely on the trapped enemy. “Does any man of you want to fight for your King's lies?” he shouted as he paced up and down their line. “Is there one of you? Just one man willing to fight for that evil thing that dies with you? Just one? Or else I'll have your King's soul cursed to the last darkness! Come on, fight!” He flailed Excalibur at their raised shields. “Fight! You scum!” His rage was as terrible as anything the vale had seen that whole day. “In the name of the Gods,” he called, “I declare your King a liar, a bastard, a thing without honour, a nothing!” He spat at them, then fumbled one-handed at the buckles of my leather breastplate that he still wore. He succeeded in freeing the shoulder straps, but not the waist, so that the breastplate hung in front of him like a blacksmith's apron. “I'll make it easy for you!” he yelled. “No armour. No shield. Come and fight me! Prove to me that your bastard whore-monger ing King speaks truth! Not one of you?” His rage was out of control for he was in the Gods' hands now and spattering his anger at a world that cowered from his dreadful force. He spat again. “You rancid whores!” He whirled around as Cuneglas reappeared in the shield-wall. “You, whelp?” He pointed Excalibur at Cuneglas. “You'd fight for that lump of dying filth?”

Cuneglas, like every man there, was shaken by Arthur's fury, but he walked weaponless from the shield-wall and then, just feet from Arthur, he sank to his knees. “We are at your mercy, Lord Arthur,” he said and Arthur stared at him. His body was tense for all the rage and frustration of a day's fighting was boiling inside him and for a second I thought that Excalibur would hiss in the dusk to strike Cuneglas's head from his shoulders, but then Cuneglas looked up. “I am now King of Powys, Lord Arthur, but at your mercy.”

Arthur closed his eyes. Then, still with his eyes shut, he felt for Excalibur's scabbard and thrust the long sword home. He turned away from Cuneglas, opened his eyes and stared at us, his spearmen, and I saw the madness pass away from him. He was still seething with anger, but the uncontrollable rage had passed and his voice was calm as he begged Cuneglas to stand. Then Arthur summoned his banner holders so that the twin standards of the dragon and the bear would add dignity to his words. “My terms are these,” he said so that everyone in the darkening vale could hear him. “I demand King Gundleus's head. He has kept it too long and the murderer of my King's mother must be brought to justice. That granted, I ask only for peace between King Cuneglas and my King and between King Cuneglas and King Tewdric. I ask for peace between all the Britons.”

There was an astonished silence. Arthur was the winner on this field. His forces had killed the enemy's king and captured Powys's heir, and every man in the vale expected Arthur to demand a royal ransom for Cuneglas's life. Instead he was asking for nothing but peace.

Cuneglas frowned. “What of my throne?” he managed to ask.

“Your throne is yours, Lord King,” Arthur said. “Whose else can it be? Accept my terms, Lord King, and you are free to return to it.”

“And Gundleus's throne?” Cuneglas asked, perhaps suspecting that Arthur wanted Siluria for himself.

“Is not yours,” Arthur replied firmly, 'nor mine. Together we shall find someone to keep it warm. Once Gundleus is dead,“ he added ominously. ”Where is he?“ Cuneglas gestured towards the village. ”In one of the buildings, Lord." Arthur turned towards Powys's defeated spearmen and raised his voice so that each man could hear him.

“This war should never have been fought!” he called. “That it was fought is my fault, and I accept that fault and shall pay for it in any coin other than my life. To the Princess Ceinwyn I owe more than apology and shall pay whatever she demands, but all I now ask is that we should be allies. New Saxons come daily to take our land and enslave our women. We should fight them, not amongst ourselves. I ask for your friendship, and as a token of that desire I leave you your land, your weapons and your gold. This is neither victory nor defeat' he gestured at the bloody, smoke-palled valley 'it is a peace. All I ask is peace and one life. That of Gundleus.” He looked back to Cuneglas and lowered his voice. “I wait your decision, Lord King.”

The Druid lorweth hurried to Cuneglas's side and the two men spoke together. Neither seemed to believe Arthur's offer, for warlords were not usually magnanimous in victory. Battle winners demanded ransom, gold, slaves and land; Arthur wanted only friendship. “What of Gwent?” Cuneglas asked Arthur. “What will Tewdric want?”

Arthur made a show of looking about the darkening valley. “I see no men of Gwent, Lord King. If a man is not party to a fight then he cannot be party to the settlement afterward. But I can tell you, Lord King, that Gwent craves for peace. King Tewdric will ask for nothing except your friendship and the friendship of my King. A friendship we shall mutually pledge never to break.”

“And I am free to go if I give you that pledge?” Cuneglas asked suspiciously.

“Wherever you wish, Lord King, though I ask your permission to come to you at Caer Sws to talk further.”

“And my men are free to go?” Cuneglas asked.

“With their weapons, their gold, their lives and my friendship,” Arthur answered. He was at his most earnest, desperate to ensure that this was the last battle ever to be fought among the Britons, though he had taken good care, I noticed, to mention nothing of Ratae. That surprise could wait. Cuneglas still seemed to find the offer too good to be true, but then, perhaps remembering his former friendship with Arthur, he smiled. “You shall have your peace, Lord Arthur.”

“On one last condition,” Arthur said unexpectedly and harshly, yet not loudly, so that only a few of us could hear his words. Cuneglas looked wary, but waited. “Promise me, Lord King,” Arthur said, 'upon your oath and upon your honour, that at his death your father lied to me." Peace hung on Cuneglas's answer. He momentarily closed his eyes as though he was hurt; then he spoke.

“My father never cared for truth, Lord Arthur, but only for those words that would achieve his ambitions. My father was a liar, upon my oath.”

“Then we have peace!” Arthur exclaimed. I had only seen him happier once, and that was when he had wed his Guinevere, but now, amidst the smoke and reek of a battle won, he looked almost as joyful as he had in that flowered glade beside the river. Indeed, he could hardly speak for joy for he had gained what he wanted more than anything in all the world. He had made peace. Messengers went north and south, to Caer Sws and to Durnovaria, to Magnis and into Siluria. Lugg Vale stank of blood and smoke. Many of the wounded were dying where they had fallen and their cries were pitiful in the night while the living huddled round fires and talked of wolves coming from the hills to feast on the battle's dead.

Arthur seemed almost bewildered by the size of his victory. He was now, though he could scarcely comprehend it, the effective ruler of southern Britain, for there were no other men who would dare stand against his army, battered though it was. He needed to talk with Tewdric, he needed to send spearmen back to the Saxon frontier, he desperately wanted his good news to reach Guinevere, and all the while men begged him for favours and land, for gold and rank. Merlin was telling him about the Cauldron, Cuneglas wanted to discuss Aelle's Saxons, while Arthur wanted to talk of Lancelot and Ceinwyn, and Oengus Mac Airem was demanding land, women, gold and slaves from Siluria. I demanded only one thing on that night, and that one thing Arthur granted me. He gave me Gundleus.

The King of Siluria had taken refuge in a small Roman-built temple that was attached to the larger Roman house in the small village. The temple was made of stone and had no windows except for a crude hole let into its high gable to let smoke out, and only one door which opened on to the house's stableyard. Gundleus had tried to escape from the vale, but his horse had been cut down by one of Arthur's horsemen and now, like a rat in its last hole, the King waited his doom. A handful of loyal Silurian spearmen guarded the temple door, but they deserted when they saw my warriors advance out of the dark.

Tanaburs alone was left to guard the fire lit temple where he had made a small ghost-fence by placing two newly severed heads at the foot of the door's twin posts. He saw our spearheads glitter in the stableyard gate and he raised his moon-tipped staff as he spat curses at us. He was calling on the Gods to shrivel our souls when, quite suddenly, his screeching stopped.

It stopped when he heard Hywelbane scraping from her scabbard. At that sound he peered into the dark yard as Nimue and I advanced together and, recognizing me, he gave a small frightened cry like the sound of a hare trapped by a wildcat. He knew that I owned his soul and so he scuttled in terror through the temple door. Nimue kicked the two heads scornfully aside then followed me inside. She was carrying a sword. My men waited outside.

The temple had once been dedicated to some Roman God, though now it was the British Gods for whom the skulls were stacked so high against its bare stone walls. The skulls' dark eye-sockets gazed blankly towards the twin fires that lit the high narrow chamber where Tanaburs had made himself a circle of power with a ring of yellowing skulls. He now stood in that circle chanting spells, while behind him, against the far wall where a low stone altar was stained black with sacrificial blood, Gundleus waited with his drawn sword.

Tanaburs, his embroidered robe spattered with mud and blood, raised his staff and hurled foul curses at me. He cursed me by water and by fire, by earth and by air, by stone and by flesh, by dewfall and by moonlight, by life and by death, and not one of the curses stopped me as I slowly walked towards him with Nimue in her stained white robe beside me. Tanaburs spat a final curse, then pointed the staff straight at my face. “Your mother lives, Saxon!” he cried. “Your mother lives and her life is mine. You hear me, Saxon?” He leered at me from inside his circle and his ancient face was shadowed by the temple's twin fires, which gave his eyes a red, feral threat. “You hear me?” he cried again. “Your mother's soul is mine! I coupled with her to make it so! I made the two-backed beast with her and drew her blood to make her soul mine. Touch me, Saxon, and your mother's soul goes to the fire-dragons. She will be crushed by the ground, burned by the air, choked by the water and thrust into pain for evermore. And not just her soul, Saxon, but the soul of every living thing that ever slithered from her loins. I put her blood into the ground, Saxon, and slid my power into her belly.” He laughed and raised his staff high towards the temple's beamed roof. “Touch me, Saxon, and the curse will take her life and through her life yours.” He lowered the staff so it pointed at me again. “But let me go, and you and she will live.”

I stopped at the circle's edge. The skulls did not make a ghost-fence, but there was still a dreadful power in their array. I could feel that power like unseen wings battering great strokes to baffle me. Cross the skull-circle, I thought, and I would enter the Gods' playground to contend against things I could not imagine, let alone understand. Tanaburs saw my uncertainty and smiled in triumph. “Your mother is mine, Saxon,” he crooned, 'made mine, all mine, her blood and soul and body are mine, and that makes you mine for you were born in blood and pain from my body.“ He moved his staff so that its moon tip touched my breast. ”Shall I take you to her, Saxon? She knows you live and a two-day journey will bring you back to her.“ He smiled wickedly. ”You are mine,“ he cried, 'all mine! I am your mother and your father, your soul and your life. I made the charm of oneness on your mother's womb and you are now my son! Ask her!” He twitched his staff towards Nimue. “She knows that charm.” Nimue said nothing, but just stared balefully at Gundleus while I looked into the Druid's horrid eyes. I was frightened to cross his circle, terrified by his threats, but then, in a sickening rush, the events of that long-ago night came back to me as if they had happened just yesterday. I remembered my mother's cries and I remembered her pleading with the soldiers to leave me at her side and I remembered the spearmen laughing and striking her head with their spear-staves, and I remembered this cackling Druid with the hares and moons on his robe and the bones in his hair and I remembered how he had lifted me and fondled me and said what a fine gift for the Gods I would make. All that I remembered, just as I remembered being lifted up, screaming for my mother who could not help me, and I remembered being carried through the twin lines of fire where the warriors danced and the women moaned, and I remembered Tanaburs holding me high above his tonsured head as he walked to the edge of a pit that was a black circle in the earth surrounded by fires whose flames burned bright enough to illuminate the blood-smeared tip of a sharpened stake that protruded from the bowels of the round dark pit. The memories were like pain serpents biting at my soul as I remembered the bloody scraps of flesh and skin hanging from the fire lit stake and the half-comprehended horror of the broken bodies that writhed in slow pitiful agony as they died in the bloody darkness of this Druid's death-pit. And I remembered how I still screamed for my mother as Tanaburs lifted me to the stars and prepared to give me to his Gods. “To Gofannon,” he had shouted, and my mother screamed as she was raped and I screamed because I knew I was going to die, 'to Lleullaw,“ Tanaburs shouted, 'to Cernunnos, to Taranis, to Sucellos, to Bel!” And on that last great name he had hurled me down on to the killing stake. And he had missed.

My mother had been screaming, and I still heard her screams as I kicked my way through Tanaburs's circle of skulls, and her screams melded into the Druid's shriek as I echoed his long-ago cry of death. “To Bel!”I shouted.

Hywelbane cut down. And I did not miss. Hywelbane cut Tanaburs down through the shoulder, down through the ribs and such was the sheer blood-sodden anger in my soul that Hywelbane cut on down through his scrawny belly and deep into his stinking bowels so that his body burst apart like a rotted corpse, and all the time I screamed the awful scream of a little child being given to the death-pit. The skull circle filled with blood and my eyes with tears as I looked up at the King who had slain Ralla's child and Mordred's mother. The King who had raped Nimue and taken her eye, and remembering that pain I took Hywelbane's hilt in both my hands and wrenched the blade free of the dirty offal at my feet and stepped across the Druid's body to carry death to Gundleus.

“He's mine,” Nimue shouted at me. She had taken off her eye patch so that her empty socket leered red in the flame light She walked past me, smiling. “You're mine,” she crooned, 'all mine," and Gundleus screamed.

And perhaps, in the Otherworld, Norwenna heard that scream and knew that her son, her little winter-born son, was still the King.

The story of Arthur continues in the second volume of

The Warlord Chronicles

The Enemy of God