Dark North (Malory's Knights of Albion)

by Paul Finch

  Its front fire-tube was angled directly down at him. Lucan eyed it through his helm, and lay perfectly still, blinking away a sweat of terror. All it would take was one intense, prolonged blast of flame, and he would be liquefied inside his own armour. But no such order was issued. The only thing belching from the dragon-muzzle was smoke.

  Its black shadow fell across Lucan. His body froze. He sensed the wooden skirting sliding across him, and suddenly he was inside it – where it was all darkness and seething heat, and a mingled stench of sweat, manure and sawdust. The hooves of lowing beasts hacked into the ground only inches from his body. He leapt up, sword brandished. His eyes were not attuned to the dimness, but navigating by the tiny chinks of light penetrating the hoardings, he could just distinguish the heavy forms of oxen, arrayed in rows on all sides and harnessed to an overhead framework of ropes and timbers. Two-handed, he swept his sword down onto the spine of the brute to his left and it dropped to its knees, bellowing in agony. His second blow fell in the same place on the ox to his right. This too stumbled and collapsed. He stepped over its carcass to strike the next one, and had dropped maybe six in a row before the oxen behind began to struggle and the great machine came to a shuddering halt. A Roman drover wearing only leather breeks clambered across the rigging to see what the problem was. Lucan sprang up and thrust Heaven’s Messenger into his belly, ripping the blade sideways so the drover’s entrails gushed out, before hauling him down.

  Lucan clambered upward himself, ascending via a trapdoor.

  The first deck was divided into compartments, each enclosed with timber partitions but crammed with a scaffold of joists and supports to support its own fire-tube. In the first one he entered, loincloth-clad engineers were too busy to notice him, adding fresh ingredients to the mix bubbling in the great cauldron or hanging on the bellows. Above them, an officer swung in his harness, peering down the length of the tube. They were eight men in total, and four had died before they knew what was happening, dispatched with single sword strokes to their skulls and necks.

  One of the remainder cast a ladle of scalding pitch in Lucan’s direction, spattering him and sizzling in his wolf-fur. Lucan cut the fellow’s legs from beneath him, and disembowelled him as he lay screaming. Another charged with a firebrand. Lucan severed the offending hand at the wrist with his sword, and drove his dagger into the fellow’s gullet. When he turned again the others had fled, including the operator. They would be seeking help, and it would be close at hand. In fact, at the rear of the compartment, a ladder led down to sunlight, and with much gruff shouting, an armoured legionary was already climbing, with another behind him, and a third behind that. With two blows of his sword, Lucan severed the ladder’s mooring, sending it crashing down amid the lowing, stamping oxen, the troopers falling with it.

  Another ladder led up, and Lucan climbed it swiftly, emerging onto the upper deck. Its broad wooden surface was covered with a gluey resin, so that men could move about without sliding or falling as the engine rocked. Runnels had been cut in the deck, and filled with large stones and rocks to be used as missiles. There were also stockpiles of arrows, tied in bundles. On all sides, catapult and ballista crews – three men to each mechanism – worked feverishly, spokes banging and oily gears ratcheting as they loaded and shot repeatedly. Aside from these, there were fifteen archers, each armed with a double-curved composite bow. Thanks to Turold and his party, riding back and forth to the west as if seeking a way to approach, they had concentrated on that battlement, but Lucan wouldn’t have long.

  The nearest machine was an arbalest – a great crossbow designed to discharge twelve cloth-yard bolts at the same time – and it had just been reloaded. Its crew remained unaware of Lucan even as he struck them, sheathing his dagger behind one’s ear, cleaving the nape of another’s neck, and tipping the third one over the parapet. The other Romans on the deck now discovered him, but not before he knocked loose the pivot-peg holding the arbalest in place, swung it around, took aim and unleashed all twelve bolts at the perfectly aligned row of archers, every one striking a target.

  The remaining engineers came at Lucan with mauls and mattocks, but only a couple wore mail shirts or corselets, and none wore helmets. He hewed his way among them, lopping necks, slicing limbs. When Heaven’s Messenger was briefly knocked from his grasp, he snatched the mace from over his shoulder and dealt out skull-crushing impacts. Only two survived his onslaught; they fled down to the lower deck, yelling.

  Lucan moved to the western battlement. He signalled to Turold, who, marshalling the rest of his men, charged courageously. Directly below Lucan, another fire-tube raised itself to meet them. He looked to his right, where an onager rested on a heavy frame. It was so bulky that most normal men would have trouble moving it on their own, let alone lifting it. But such minor issues had no place on a day like today. Throwing away his mace and sliding Heaven’s Messenger back into its scabbard, Lucan took the onager by its windlass, and with much scraping of wood and groaning of iron, dragged it out of position and shoved it against the west battlement. With every inch of strength in his body, he levered it up, bending his legs, straightening his back, the muscles in his arms, chest and shoulders screaming in agony, until he’d angled it fully upright. And then he pushed it.

  It fell heavily, rolling, and struck the barrel of the fire-tube with a resounding clang, buckling it and bending it double – just as a massive gout of flame was about to be expelled at Turold. With an explosive whoosh, the white-hot payload back-drafted through the blocked tube, engulfing its entire crew, blazing up around the officer in his command chair, blooming through the entire interior of the Hell-Breather – accompanied by the shrieks of men and beasts.

  Coughing on scorching smoke, the deck smouldering under his feet, Lucan vaulted over the battlement and hung full length by his fingers. It was still a drop of seven feet. The landing was difficult, the wind driven from Lucan’s body, but he had the strength to roll away. The next thing he was on his feet, tottering in the direction of his mesnie, who had reined up and were watching in astonishment as this machine, by which the Romans had many a time cleared paths through hordes of foes, ground to a standstill, flames blossoming from every aperture.

  Lucan swung up into his saddle and noticed the wide spaces around them. It was almost as if there’d been a lull in the fighting. Stragglers from both sides staggered back and forth, some disoriented and battle-shocked, others dazed by the pain of wounds. But the majority of Arthur’s cavalry contingents appeared to be falling back en masse. Not so the Romans. There were still fragmented groups of them on the higher ground, but these were the remnants of larger companies, and now, cut off by the cavalry charge, had been unable to retreat. Some were still fighting, but most were marooned in no man’s land, awaiting the next Roman advance, which, given that Arthur’s cavalry had recoiled, looked imminent. In fact, javelins began to fall close by, and Lucan’s mesnie turned to see fresh cohorts of Romans marching towards them, men who had not yet been in the fight coming rank upon rank.

  It seemed incredible to Alaric that they could have killed so many, and that such an uncountable number could remain, footmen and cavalry. Their arms and armour glinted, undimmed by dust or blood.

  “No wonder everyone else has retreated,” Benedict said in a voice of woe.

  “Don’t be fooled,” Wulfstan replied. “No-one’s retreated. This is merely a feint. A ploy to pull them forward, drag them onto the spearhead of our reserve.”

  Lucan took a last look at the Hell-Breather, now a blackened, blazing framework, then he wheeled Nightshade around and headed back to the lines, calling his men to follow.

  WHEN EMPEROR LUCIUS saw Arthur’s cavalry withdrawing, he announced that he would personally lead the pursuit. His senior officers advised against this, but though Lucius knew full well that he had had suffered catastrophic losses, he only needed to look around to see that he still had more than enough warriors in harness to inundate the Britons’ position. He thus ordered the
trumpets to sound, clanged his visor down, levelled his lance and galloped forward at such a tilt that it was all his officers could do to stay abreast. Company by company, the units of the Eighth and Fourteenth Legions fell in alongside him, creating a broad battle-line which bristled with lances and drawn sabres.

  “Protect the Emperor!” went the cry to his rear.

  The Roman infantry regiments, including those beaten back and exhausted, some with less than a third of their number remaining, were thus goaded to charge again – this time at double-speed, running rather than walking, despite their weight of arms and armour. But they were advancing behind their own cavalry screen, so their view of the vale’s north end was concealed – and they did not see the infantry ranks on Arthur’s east flank shuffle aside, creating an open passage from which a fresh stream of horsemen issued.

  This was the other half of Arthur’s chivalrous host: the mounted portion of the Familiaris Regis, King Hoel and his Breton knights, and those other Knights of the Round Table who had not yet entered the fray: Tristan, Hector, Dornar, Caradoc, Udain, Ider, Palomides, Urre, Lavain, Gareth and Griflet – another six thousand combatants, and at their head the fearsome forms of Lancelot du Lac and his mesnie, distinctive for their leopard badges and their blue and white livery. At the same time, the cavalry force that had retreated, which if Emperor Lucius had only looked he would see was still largely intact, wheeled around and came back pell-mell into the action.

  Arthur, Kay and Bedivere, anchoring the centre of the infantry line, also mounted up. Arthur raised his royal banner so that it streamed in the hot, gusting wind, and blew a single blast on his battle-horn. He lowered his standard and charged, and the infantry line went with him. Howling like a barbarian horde of old, the whole army of the Britons surged down the slope of the Vale of Sessoine.

  Their mounted companies engaged first, Lancelot projecting himself into battle at the spear-point. With his first contact, he impaled a Roman general through the breast with his lance. In the same motion he drew his sword, slicing throats in all directions. Roman horsemen fell around him without even realising who or what had slain them.

  Lucan, on the other flank, was the next into battle, careering through the enemy cavalry with abandon, laying to his left and right, Heaven’s Messenger soon slathered with gore not just the length of its blade, but up and over its hilt. He now engaged with Roman horsemen wearing orange livery. They showed skill and courage, but his rage grew inexorably. Heaven’s Messenger twirled about his head as he struck and parried and fended and butchered, carving his way through line after line of these handsome fellows, oblivious to their counter-blows, feeling only the ache in his sword-arm.

  So furious was his charge, and the charge of all those others like him, that even the fresher Roman ranks dissolved into complete disorder, horsemen falling back among their infantry, orders being issued to no-one, which made it even easier for Arthur’s men, who, by comparison, were so well organised for war that their horses were trained to fight alongside their masters. Nightshade was in the thick of the combat; the noble brute reared at a clutch of Roman footmen who came at it with pikes, its iron-shod hooves ploughing into their helms, smashing their face-plates, pulverising the features beneath.

  In the heat of battle the Knights of the Round Table knew no retreat. Forward, ever forward, was their motto – so, though the Romans ranked in front of them grew denser and denser, still they chopped their way among them. Lucan had his entire pack at his heels: Turold, Wulfstan, Guthlac, Gerwin, Cadelaine, Brione, Alaric and many others, flailing on the enemy with their blades and mattocks. Blood flowed in torrents as mailed and plated bodies fell on top of each other. Riderless steeds shrieked insanely, rampaging back and forth, causing more mayhem.

  IN THE MIDST of this chaos, Lucan came upon a Roman horseman he recognised: a short, portly fellow encased in gilded armour cut with elaborate patterns – though, separated from his followers, he had now reined his steed and thrown down his weapons. He lifted his visor to reveal a plump, purple face and strands of long, red-grey hair: Ardeus Vigilano, Duke of Spoleto. His charger was in a dreadful state, broken arrow husks protruding from its sides, its head hung low, blood gushing from its nostrils. Spoleto himself could only raise one arm in surrender, for the other was punctured through the elbow by an arrow.

  “I’m your prisoner!” the duke pleaded. “Whoever you are, brave knight of Albion, I throw myself on your mercy. My family will pay you a king’s ransom for my safe return. They will make you the wealthiest man in the whole of Christendom.”

  Lucan hesitated only a second before ramming Heaven’s Messenger into Spoleto’s gargling mouth, and twisting it so that teeth and bone shattered.26 “All I ever had or wanted you people took from me!” snarled a bestial voice that Lucan himself barely recognised. “You can never repay it... except with your souls.”

  The slaughtered nobleman fell to the ground, and Lucan dug his spurs into Nightshade’s flanks, driving the animal on.

  “MY GOD!” TUROLD shouted, lifting his visor. He, too, was gashed and scarred, his mail rent, blood streaking his black mantle. Alaric reined alongside him in a similar state. Turold indicated Spoleto’s corpse. “That suit of armour alone could pay the household wages for an entire year.”

  “We can collect the bounty later,” Alaric said, standing in his stirrups to locate their lord, once again fearful that Heaven’s Messenger might now fall on a gentler head.

  Turold laughed. “Aye... unless some camp-following scullion’s beaten us to it. Can’t you sense it, lad? We’re winning.”

  He slammed his visor closed and urged his mount forward. Alaric followed.

  IN FACT, THE army of Albion was not winning the battle – not yet.

  Numerically, they were still outmatched, though they had the momentum thanks to the downhill charge. The morale of New Rome’s finest was strained by the prolonged fight and by the sight of so many comrades-in-arms lying drowned in gore and filth. But the real turn of the tide only came fifteen minutes later, when King Arthur spotted the banner of Imperial Rome just ahead of him. Seated on his horse, fully armoured, but with visor open and mouth agape as he witnessed the slow destruction of all his dreams, was Emperor Lucius Julio Bizerta. An entire phalanx of mounted bodyguards had drawn up around him, clad toe to crown in the black enamel plate of the old Praetorian Guard, maces and falchions in their fists.

  Arthur glanced to his right. Kay was still close, and Lancelot was ranging towards them. His horse, much bloodied, had to pick its way through the piles of mangled corpses. Arthur signalled to both and indicated the Imperial bodyguard. They nodded and, hunching forward, entered into a full gallop, in the midst of which Arthur and Tristan joined them.

  The two small companies clashed with explosive force, sparks flashing, splinters flying from shattered lances. The Emperor’s bodyguards fought valiantly, but compared with Arthur and his knights were little more than human shields. The first shock of impact saw two of them eliminated, one skewered through the groin, the other with his left arm cloven at the shoulder. The remainder rained blows on their assailants, but for every contact they made, Arthur’s men made two or three, and very quickly the last few Praetorians fell from their saddles, blood spouting from joints in their armour.

  Emperor Lucius was alone, fists tight on the reins of his terrified horse, his pale face lathered with sweat, his green eyes bulging as they fixed on the ferocious horseman confronting him – a horseman who could only be the King of the Britons.

  “Your time has come, hell hound!” Arthur said, snapping up his visor.

  “You crazed, barbarian beast!” the Emperor shrieked. “It was my destiny to rule.”

  “And it was mine to draw a sword from a stone, and now to plant it in another.”

  Arthur plunged Excalibur forward. Lucius attempted to deflect it, but Arthur’s aim was the stronger and surer. The Emperor’s sabre broke, and the longsword pierced his breastplate and the breastbone beneath it, and the b
eating heart beneath that. Lucius’s head hinged backward in a silent shriek, a crimson font arcing from his lips.

  An age might have passed as he hung there, and then the mightiest man in the world toppled slowly from his saddle. When he struck the ground he was cold clay.

  Tristan seized the Imperial banner and held it aloft, howling in triumph.

  THE WORD SPREAD through the Romans’ tattered ranks like a wildfire.

  Some refused to accept it, and strove on, slashing in all directions, still taking lives, but ultimately being dragged from their saddles or cut from their feet. The rest – the vast majority – turned and fled in a gargantuan, chaotic mob, causing more pain and destruction en route, horses maddened with fear driving through clumps of hapless infantry, bounding across the carpet of wounded and dying, their hooves impacting in flesh and bone as though it were soft mulch. So pressed together was the staggering horde, that it would only take one arrow to bring a man down, and maybe fifty others would trip over the top of him, to be trampled in the panic. Even men of rank fell victim to this pandemonium. One such was the wounded Prince Jalhid, whose bier was overturned in the stampede; before his bodyguards could reach him, feet, the hooves of horses and even the wheels of carriages had furrowed his body.

  Arthur’s knights cantered among the fleeing droves, hacking and spearing. His infantry followed, swarming across the mounds of wounded, finishing them off with blades and clubs. They would continue in this fashion until the order was given to cease, though orders did not traverse easily over so chaotic a field. For maybe an hour after Arthur sent the word that only those Romans still armed were to be offered no quarter, the massacre continued. The British archers, who had now replenished their ammunition, also gave chase, loosing shafts willy-nilly, bringing down one man after another; it was almost sport for them – they laughed and joked.