Sword at Sunset

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  ‘If the thing might be done peacefully, yes,’ I said, ‘but do you not see that whichever way you throw the apple, there will be trouble, bad trouble, afterward? See now, the choice lies between Cador and myself—’ I quelled a sudden movement from the Bishop. ‘Oh yes it does; I am not standing aside from this in humble apology for my left-hand birth; bastardy makes me no less fitted to carry the Sword of Britain – and if the choice falls upon me, I know well enough that I shall have almost the whole body of the Christian Church ranged against me—’

  The churchman cut in, querulously. ‘Have you shown yourself so much a friend to the Church that she should open loving arms to you now?’

  ‘Meaning that I have pastured my horses on monastery land, and demanded a share in the monastery plate when the war kist was empty? Yet I have kept your roofs over your heads for twenty years, your lights burning in your sanctuaries and your monks inside their own whole skins. And I am thinking with a certain saying of your Christos that the laborer is worthy of his hire. If the choice falls on me, the Church will set its face against me, as I say, and with her certain of the Celtic princes who love not the ways of Rome even now, and like enough Cador of Dumnonia will join you. Sa! But let you choose Cador of Dumnonia to carry the Sword of Britain, and you will find that not only my own Company, but the whole war host will rise against him and you. Oh, I will not stir the thing up, I swear you that, but none the less they will rise, without my stirring. Holy Father Dubricius, my Lords of the Council, for God’s sake believe me. It is not the moment to be risking such a split in the kingdoms – a split through which the Saxons may come in on us, as an army through an undefended pass!’

  Bishop Dubricius said wearily, ‘How may we be sure that all this talk of a Saxon thrust is more than an attempt to gain time?’

  ‘For what, in God’s name?’

  ‘For perfecting plans of your own, for making more sure of the war host.’

  Aquila spoke, slowly and deliberately. ‘I cannot speak for the Companions, but for every man of the war host, I can speak. They will not accept a Western princeling thrust upon them without having yet earned their trust. The Rex Belliorum has no need of time to make more sure of them.’

  And behind me, the leveled voice of Bedwyr said: ‘I can speak for the Companions.’

  Dubricius’s gaze flicked past me. ‘I did not know that we had a new Councilor among us.’

  ‘No? Nevertheless, as lieutenant to Artos the Bear, I claim the right to speak for his personal cavalry.’ (A thunderous growl from Cei supported his words.) ‘We are the Bear’s men to the death, and whether he leads us or no, we will not see another man sitting in the place that should be his.’

  Someone was trying to silence him, but the Bishop made a quick gesture with the hand on which the great ruby was brilliant as a gout of fresh-spilled blood. ‘No, let him speak – it appears, then, that you care more for a personal leader than for the good fate of Christian Britain?’

  ‘We care for the good fate of Britain, oh yes, for the last-leavings of Rome, for the last lights that must be shielded as long as we may shield them from flickering out. Quite a few of us have died for these things from time to time. You have maybe heard? But we do not think that an untried princeling on the High Seat, instead of a war leader who has spent half a lifetime in arms against the Sea Wolves, would be for the good fate of any save the Sea Wolves themselves, at this time. You speak of Britain as though it were one, my Lord Dubricius; but we are from many tribes and many peoples. Some of us were bred up in the last lingering ways of Rome, some in the free wilderness where Rome’s shadow scarcely fell. We are from the broad hills of Valentia, from the marshes of the East and the mountains of the Cymri. Myself, I am not of this land at all, save by ancestry, but was born and bred in Armorica beyond the Narrow Seas. We have only one thing to bind us together, we are the Bear’s Companions, and our swords belong first to the Bear and then to Britain. That is a thing for you to remember, my Lords of the Council.’

  He of the bird’s-nest beard leaned forward abruptly. ‘You speak with a loud voice, Bedwyr, Lieutenant of the Bear; yet one remembers that there are but three hundred, or maybe a few more, of you.’

  ‘How many rode with Alexander of Macedon when he set out to conquer the world?’ inquired the deep singer’s voice behind me with great sweetness. ‘He called them his Companions, too.’

  There was a long, long pause in the Council Chamber, and the scratching of the clerks’ quills was silent. Very slowly the Bishop bowed his head and sat thinking, the thick blue-white rolls of his jowl resting on the fine embroidered stuff of his mantle, his eyes half closed. In a while they flashed open again, making their usual disconcerting change in his face, and he straightened himself in his chair. ‘Let me be clear as to this before we carry the matter further. What, precisely, are your demands? Not of necessity the High Kingship for yourself?’

  ‘Not of necessity the High Kingship for myself, but that it shall not be set upon any man, at this present time.’

  ‘And why does it seem to you that the thing will come better at another time?’

  ‘When this spring’s fighting is over, if the victory is ours, we may have leisure to fight among ourselves, with the Wolves driven off to a safe distance. If we taste defeat, then we shall be dead, and all need to choose a new High King gone from us with our last breath.’ I stared around the Council table into face after face that looked back at me, in support, in rejection, in complete blankness. One of the more ancient Councilors had fallen asleep. ‘Father Dubricius, you speak of our need to choose a ruler before the Saxons come, but for the civil matters of state, surely this Council, this Senate, is competent, while for all that has to do with the leading of a fighting people, does not the Rex Belliorum suffice, as he did in the old days, when a confederacy of the Tribes, with no High King over all, would choose out one chief from among themselves to lead them on the war trail?’

  Dubricius seemed to have withdrawn deep inside himself, his eyes half closed once more. Then again he opened them, not swiftly this time, but with a slow deliberation, and fixed them on my face as a man might look into the pages of a book that interested him.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, when he had read enough. ‘I retract certain words of mine that I spoke just now. I believe, at all events, that you believe in this great Saxon thrust. Now tell me why?’

  I remained standing, as though to sit down again would be to lose some advantage. I leaned forward with my hands on the table, and told again all that I had learned from our scouts, of the stirring beyond the Sea Wolves’ borders, of the coming and going between the Cantii territory and the East Seax. Most of that, of course, was known to them already, but they had not before had the small pieces fitted together to form the whole picture. I told them of Ambrosius’s views (which were indeed my own also) as to why the thrust should come now, when it had not come last year nor the year before; I told them of the likelihood that the Barbarians were at last learning to combine, and the men about the table listened and nodded wisely and listened again; and when I was done, a small buzzing murmur rose from them until Dubricius silenced it with a movement of the hand.

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘You make out a good case, and clearly it is one that you believe in ... That, I have allowed already. You might still be mistaken.’

  ‘I might, though thirty years of the war trail give one something of an instinct in these matters. But Ambrosius had it also, and I never knew him to be mistaken.’

  There was another long and dragging silence, and in desperation I was just about to plunge in again, though indeed I did not know what more there was to say, when the Bishop turned his hand over and laid it flat on the table in a gesture of ‘Finish,’ and said most surprisingly, ‘No, nor did I.’

  He swept his gaze around the whole circle of the Council – and yet one knew that he had taken in every face as he came to it. ‘Brothers, shall we cast our votes on this matter? Will those of you who are in favor of leaving this
choice to wait for a while, signify your judgment by putting your right hands on the table before you.’

  Aquila’s hand and that of Perdius slammed on the table almost before he had finished speaking, and three other Councilors followed almost as swiftly; the lesser churchmen sat rigid with their hands in their laps; Ulpius Critas half raised his arm, then changed his mind and pretended to rub his nose, then changed again and laid three fingers on the edge of the table after all. Vericus of the bird’s-nest beard took his time to think, then set his hand before him with a small decisive slap. One more Councilor refrained, and the Bishop, smiling a little sleepily, left his own hand lying where it was, big and plump and pale on the polished wood. The ancient was still asleep, and nobody troubled to wake him; the verdict was clear enough without his vote.

  I parted from my grimly triumphant escort within the gates of the Governor’s Palace, and went on home, to find that one of the scouts had come in and was sitting on his haunches half asleep in the corner of the courtyard where the evening sun yet lingered with a little warmth. He roused at the sound of my footsteps and was up with the swiftness of an otter, and came to meet me, touching joined palms to forehead in the gesture that the Dark People make before their chiefs.

  Noni Heron’s Feather was well known to me, a man half bred between the Dark People and our own, with the skill as a hunter and tracker that only the Dark People possess. I had followed the game trail with him more than once, and there are few better ways of coming to know a man than by hunting with him; and it was so that he had become one of the chief among my scouts.

  ‘What word do you bring, Noni my friend?’ I said, stooping to fondle Cabal’s great gray-muzzled head as he came to greet me.

  He thrust the long black hair out of his eyes, and stood up straight in his wildcat-skin mantle, as he had seen the Companions do when they spoke with me on parade occasions. ‘The Sea Wolf who walks by the name of Cerdic has gathered his war bands and moved up from the hunting runs of the Cantii, driving much beef cattle with him on the hoof, and has made his camp two days eastward of the frontier on the old track under the North Chalk. In other places also, the Wolves are driving off the herds. Indeed, that I tell as a thing from my own heart, for they have driven off the red cattle from my father’s village, and if my father’s folk had not contrived to hide the cows in calf among the forest, next winter they would have starved.’ He paused for breath, for he had told the thing at a racing speed. ‘Another thing I tell, but this thing not of my own knowing: Erp the Otter bade me bring you the word and say that he will come in a while and a while when he has seen what follows, and tell it again himself, but that meantime you should know as soon as might be.’ He paused again, a little anxiously, for in general I did not like secondhand information. But from those two, I knew it might be relied on.

  ‘So?’

  ‘Erp came from the edge of the Great Water, that way—’ He pointed south and eastward. ‘And met me at a certain spot, and bade me tell you that he had seen three boats come in to the place that you call Dubris.’

  ‘War boats?’ I asked quickly.

  He shook his head. ‘Na, not the long war boats, but broad-bellied like a woman in whelp, and out of them, men carried ashore new weapons rust-spotted with salt, and ironbound caps, and barrels, and one of the barrels broke open and out came much sawdust, and packed in the sawdust—’ He broke off yet again, searching this time for the right word, his fingers making flickering filigree patterns over his own body. ‘War skins, like this – like salmon skins.’

  ‘Mail shirts,’ I said. ‘So they still have to bring in their best sarks from the Rhenus armorers, do they?’

  ‘Mail shirts? That is the word? Aiee! I will remember.’ He came a light half step nearer. ‘My Lord the Bear, one thing more I tell. I heard it spoken of around a Sea Wolves’ campfire, while I lay hid in the shadows beyond the firelight – and since, in other places also: they say that they have chosen out Aelle of the South Seax to be Battle Lord of them all, of all the tribes of the Sea Wolves, and lead them on the war trail!’

  Like all his kind, Noni betrayed nothing through his eyes, but I think, from the almost prick-eared look on the rest of his face, that he wondered why I laughed.

  chapter twenty-nine

  Badon Hill

  SUNSET WAS PAST, BUT THE WEB OF LIGHT STILL LINGERED behind the hills northward, and the nights are never very dark in midsummer. And from the hawthorn-crested barrow that was the highest point of the camp, I could look out over the clustered wattle huts of the regular garrison (we always kept a small garrison there, even in times of so-called peace, for Badon Hill was one of the main strong points in Ambrosius’s system of defense in depth) and make out still the shape of the surrounding country. A familiar shape, for I served along the northern frontiers when I was a boy.

  I could see how the huge hill shoulder thrust out from the main mass of the Downs, commanding the Ridgeway and the sweep of the White Horse Vale, and the pass where the road dives southward through the bare rounded turf hills. Once through that pass and into the rich lowlands beyond, the land would lie open to the invaders, to swing westward through the lead-mining hills into the reed and withy country south of Aquae Sulis – we might be able to do something there, but it would mean holding a perilously long and slender line, and the marshes would hamper our cavalry – and so on to the coast, and the main strength of Britain neatly sliced in two behind them. It was the old game, the same game as they had tried at Guoloph, twenty years ago. But between the Sea Wolves and all these things, like a giant on guard, stood Badon Hill with its triple crown of dikes and ramparts that had been a stronghold to our British forebears before even our Roman forebears came.

  If the White Horse Vale is the gateway into the heart of southern Britain, then Badon Hill is the key to the gate. It remained to be seen whether the Saxons could turn it ...

  Ambrosius had been right. In the face of our growing cavalry strength, they had dared delay no longer in mounting their great attack. And for the first time in their lives, it seemed that the Saxons were indeed learning to combine. With Aelle of the South Seax for their chosen War King, and Oisc for his lieutenant, they had drawn together, the Jutes of Cantii Territory and the Tamesis Valley settlements, the East Angles and the Northfolk and Southfolk of the old Icenian horse country. Up from the south and swarming down the Ridgeway from north of the Tamesis, they had come, to converge at last on the White Horse Vale; and all the way, we had harried them, by flank attacks from Durocobrivae and Calleva, by night raids and ambushes, and the dog-pack tactics of slingers and mounted archers on their lines of march by day, striving by every means in our power to slow them up and thin their ranks. It had had some effect, but not enough, we could not spare sufficient light troops for the task; and the last messengers to come in had reported that the enemy had joined forces and were camped for the night astride the Ridgeway some six miles off, and that despite the valiant efforts of the light troops who were now keeping watch on them, they still numbered some seven or eight thousand men.

  Against them we could muster not much over five. But we had the cavalry.

  Below me in the camp where the light of the fires was biting more sharply as the last of the daylight died, arrows and fresh bowstrings were being given out, while men with torches moved along the picket lines, checking foot shackles, and from the field forges came the ring of hammer on anvil where the smiths and armorers were at work on last-minute repairs. And from the cooking fires the smell of the evening stew began to mingle on the air with the tang of woodsmoke and horse droppings.

  I had called the Council of War to sup with me, for when there is not much time to spare, it serves ill to waste it by eating and conferring separately when both may be done together, and so in a little, Aquila the firstcomer tramped into the light of the council fire that burned almost at the foot of the bush-grown barrow, flinging back the heavy blood-red folds of his cloak, and half turning to speak to Bedwyr, who stepped out of t
he shadows behind him, into the fire flicker that touched as though with exploring fingers the pale feather of hair at his temple. And I went down to them, with old Cabal stalking at my heels.

  Perdius was the next to join us, and little grim Marius who commanded the foot of the main war host. The Lords of Strathclyde and the North, and the princes of the Cymri, for I too had sent out my own Cran Tara that spring; and Cador of Dumnonia, grayer than when we hunted together in the spring before I sailed for Gaul, thicker in the shoulder and inclined to a paunch; and when the stewpot and baskets of barley cakes had already been set beside the fire, Cei arrived, clashing with cheap glass jewelry, from our sister fort across the road valley, where he held command of tomorrow’s left cavalry wing.

  So we ate, and while we ate, worked out with bits of stick and ale cups and daggers, the pattern – so far as one can ever make such a pattern in advance – of tomorrow’s fighting.

  When the food was eaten and the War Council ended, and the captains and leaders gone their own ways, I went to put on my war shirt. The day had been hot, and in summer no man wears link mail more than need be; and there would be little leisure for arming in the morning. Old Aquila walked with me, for the bodyguard was camped beyond the garrison huts, and so his way was mine. Before the mud bothy where my personal standard drooped on its spear shaft by the doorway, we checked, and lingered looking out over the great curve of the Downs silvered now by the moon, and by very contrast with the quiet of the summer night beyond the ramparts, the awareness of tomorrow’s battle was strong on us.

  ‘We have waited a long time for this,’ Aquila said.

  ‘Ever since we drew breath after Guoloph, I suppose. Twenty years. And yet it seemed at the time, just for that one time, that we had fought the greatest fight that ever there would be between us and the Saxon kind. And afterward—’