Theodoric

TEN

‘Saxons, Sire — a mighty host,’ gasped the scout, reining in his lathered mount before Ambrosius. ‘As thick as blowflies on a week-old corpse.’

‘Numbers? Distance?’

‘My guess is ten thousand at the least, Sire. Now about five miles off, I’d say.’

More than thrice our strength, thought the other grimly. Ambrosius Aurelianus: Dux Britanniae et Saxum Britannorum — Duke of Britain and ‘the Rock of the British’ — son of a Roman senator and leader of the British resistance against the blue-eyed heathens from across the German Ocean. Within two hours, his rag-tag army, the Exercitus Britanniae, could be locked in battle with the Saxon host. Less than three generations ago, he reflected, when Britannia was still a diocese of Rome, the ‘Sea Wolves’ had come as raiders only. Now, with the legions long gone and the forts of the Saxon Shore abandoned and crumbling, they arrived each year in ever greater numbers, driving the Britons from the land to seize it as their own. Already, the great province of Maxima Caesariensis* had fallen to the North and South Folk and the East and South Saxons, the native Britons fleeing to the west or across the sea to ‘New Britannia’ in north-west Gaul.

Turning in the saddle, Ambrosius surveyed his force: civilian volunteers stiffened by limitanei — second-rate frontier troops, all that remained of the Army of Britain after Constantine, self-styled ‘the Third’, had taken the legions with him to Gaul in a doomed bid for the purple. Desperate appeals for help against the Saxon menace had been sent to Aetius, the greatest general of the Western Empire — appeals perforce ignored by a Master of Soldiers struggling to save the West from extinction by barbarian insurgents. Now, any hope of help from Rome had long vanished; Aetius was dead these twenty years, slain by a jealous emperor, and the West itself was tottering towards its end. With the aid of a remarkable man, one Severinus — scholar, healer, natural leader, a member of Germanus’ second mission to counter the Pelagian heresy in Britain — he had encouraged the British to organize defence centres. These were fortified strongpoints within whose walls the local populace could gather and be safe whenever Saxon war-parties approached. It was his efforts in this field that had earned Ambrosius his nickname, ‘the Rock of the British’. For a time his scheme had proved successful, but of late the increasing frequency of attacks had begun to make such centres appear like islands in a raging Saxon sea.

Of Ambrosius’ troops, the limitanei alone had proper armour — battered ridge-helmets and mail hauberks issued by the Roman government many years before and since patched up times without number; the volunteers made do with caps and cuirasses of boiled leather. Each man carried a long spear and oval shield, the limitanei also bearing swords. The cream of the army consisted of the cavalry, positioned at either end of the three-deep line of infantry. Handpicked, sons of Romano-British aristocracy, these were natural horsemen, needing only some basic training to weld into a formidable fighting machine.

Until this year, the Saxon conquest had been a matter of slow attrition by separate war-bands. This present threat was on an altogether different scale, a mass invasion which suggested a concerted plan, perhaps masterminded by a single leader. A century before, Britain had faced a comparable danger, when a Barbarian conspiracy of Saxons, Picts and Scots, had overrun the island. But Rome then had a mighty army, and within a year Count Theodosius, father of one of Rome’s greatest emperors, had cleared the land of the invaders. Now that army was gone, replaced by federates as fickle and greedy as they were ill-disciplined and violent, ready on a whim to turn upon their masters.

To meet this new and terrible Saxon threat, Ambrosius had hastily assembled a scratch militia, organizing instruction in elementary drill and tactics by officers drawn from the all-but-vanished landowning and administrative class. On first news of the route of the enemy’s advance, using the terrain to maximum advantage he had drawn up the Romano-Britons on the crest of a low ridge flanked by woods, to negate as far as possible any Saxon superiority in numbers. Far away across the plain, the trilithons of the ancient Hanging Stones appeared as a faint tracery of concentric rings.

The hot summer afternoon bled away, the army standing down to snatch some rest before the coming encounter. At last, a swirling haze on the horizon, accompanied by a sound like breakers on a distant shore, announced the approach of the Saxon host. As the dust-cloud rolled nearer, a myriad of tiny specks interspersed with glints and flashes appeared at its base, while the noise swelled from a murmur to a muted roar. The Britons stood to arms, the ground beneath their feet beginning to tremble.

‘Is there no end to their number?’ breathed the young cavalry officer beside Ambrosius. ‘They blacken the earth like the locusts in the Bible. We’ll never hold them, surely?’

‘True,’ the general replied to his second-in-command. ‘But we can sting them, teach them that the price of British soil’s a heavy one — in blood.’

Like an incoming tide, the Saxon host — flaxen-haired giants, unarmoured and on foot — flowed across the plain, lapped the foot of the ridge, surged up it to break against the British shield-wall with an ear-shattering crash. For a time, the two armies swayed back and forth, the British footsoldiers holding the ridge while their cavalry mounted charge after charge to carve bloody swathes deep into the enemy mass. Forced to fight on a narrow front, the Saxons were at first unable to bring their overwhelming strength to bear. But, inexorably, sheer weight of numbers began at last to tell. The British line thinned from three deep to two, then one, while the cavalry returned from every charge diminished. His horse killed under him, Ambrosius fought on foot until brought down by a Saxon javelin. Rushing to the general’s side, his second-in-command dragged him behind the battle-line and made to pull the shaft from his leader’s armpit, where the opening in the antique Roman cuirass left it unprotected.

‘Leave it, Artorius,’ gasped the general. ‘I’m finished. Now it is you who must carry on the fight. We’ve done all we can here. Given them a mauling they’ll not readily forget. Withdraw with what’s left of the army, and regroup. Cambria, the mountains of the north, the moors and uplands of the west — that’s the terrain we can best defend. Raise and train a force of heavy horse; strike them hard and often, using hit-and-run tactics. You saw today the damage cavalry can inflict.’ Ambrosius forced a grin. ‘Your sword’s broken, I see. Well, at least that means a few less Saxons. You’d best have mine.’ He handed to Artorius not the customary long spatha of Rome’s late armies, but a bloodstained gladius, the short stabbing sword with which the legions had won an empire. This one had been handed down from father to son of the Aureliani for two centuries and more, since the days when the dynasty of Severus had worn the purple. Struggling to hold back tears, Artorius took the venerable weapon from the dying ‘Rock’.

Out of such fleeting moments, mythologies can grow. Thus did Arthur take the Sword from the Stone.

* It covered most of south-east England, from East Anglia to Hampshire, and was governed from London.