Shadow of the King

by Helen Hollick

The man stroked his beardless chin, shook his head, “We see a few Franks and Burgundians. Saex, you say? No Saex.” He spat a globule of spittle to the ground. “Don’t think I’d be inclined to serve Saex.”

  He gestured with his hand, indicating north. “The lady now, she was a handsome woman.” The man shook his head, a pity she and her party had not stopped. They seemed of the wealthy type, he could do with such trade. Here was a second chance. Although this man’s dress seemed not so affluent, it belied his accent and way of command “Will you dismount? Rest your horse, take wine and some stew, my wife has prepared a… ” He scratched at an itch behind his ear, sighed. Arthur was gone.

  LXIII

  “My Lady?” Ider’s voice was soft, so it did not carry further than it ought. He brought his horse beside Gwenhwyfar’s. “There is a horse coming behind. Fast.”

  Gwenhwyfar could not see her captain’s face in the darkness, the moon had not yet risen and although the silvered starlight was enough to follow the straight road, it was not sufficient to illuminate detail. For all that, she knew he was concerned. Ider did not fuss unnecessarily.

  “An urgent messenger?” she offered. “A lover late for his assignation?” She laughed, irony in the sound, “Or the outraged husband?”

  Ider’s guffaw was low. “Any of those. Equally it could be a Saxon.”

  “Or Gweir.”

  He nodded agreement, but his voice was not convincing. “Aye, or Gweir.” Why would Gweir be pushing his horse so fast in the dark? “I suggest we pull off the road, let him, whoever he is, pass.”

  Gwenhwyfar agreed, she was in no hurry. They had walked the horses all this distance, ambled, almost. Really, she had no care what happened.

  They got off the road and into the concealment of the trees barely in time, for although the tattoo rhythm of the hoofbeats had sounded distant, the rider was soon upon them. Ider grimaced at the man next to him, who jabbed his thumb downward. It was Gweir’s horse, but the rider was not Gweir. Llwch already had an arrow knocked onto his bow, barely waited for Ider’s brief, but sharp, command.

  Arthur heard the sound, so familiar, the whistle of an arrow in flight. He yanked at the dun’s mouth, hauling him to the left, cursed as the barb found its target in the same instant as the horse lost balance. Horse and man tumbled downward, the animal skidding along the road’s surface a few yards, Arthur crumpling into a heap.

  “Mithras bloody God!” he yelled as he scrambled upright, sword already to hand. Saxons, he thought, Saxon ambush.

  Ider’s men exchanged glances, emerged, leading their horses but Gwenhwyfar was ahead of them, leaping across the ditch that drained the road, up the embankment, running, legs, cloak and hair flying, screaming Arthur’s name. She slithered to a halt, breathless and fearful.

  “Jesu and all the gods! Are you hurt?” Her hands were already fumbling at the arrow shaft in his upper arm, her eyes searching frantically for any other hurts, found the bruising but nothing else. “What in all hell do you think you are doing, scaring us so?” The reprimand came sharp. “Bloody fool,” she added. The men had come forward, were sheepishly gathering at a discreet distance.

  “Who shot this arrow?” Arthur demanded as he shooed Gwenhwyfar’s fussing hands aside and broke off the shaft as close to the flesh as he could.

  “I did, Sir,” Llwch confessed, twisting his horse’s reins in his fingers, thankful the dark hid the deep, embarrassed blush to his skin. “We thought Gweir’s horse was stolen.”

  “Llwch. I might have guessed. You always did have a bloody bad aim.” The Pendragon was laughing, relieved to have found them – her – unhurt, unharmed. The men laughed with him. Llwch was superb with a bow, he claimed he could hit a bat’s wing blindfold.

  Awhile to bind Arthur’s arm and tend the cuts scored on the dun’s legs, more would need be done come first light, this would do for now. Arthur talked as they worked, telling in brief, concise words of the Saxon attack, his suspicion that more were following. “They’ll catch up, watch for a few days, take us at night, while we’re camped somewhere.”

  Ider grinned. The moon was rising large and lovely, hanging above the trees marching twenty paces back from each side of the road. He signalled for two of the men to find a suitable camping-place, hidden, yet from where they could watch. Hitched his sword belt more comfortable. “They’re in for a surprise then.”

  Gwenhwyfar put her hand to Arthur’s chest. “Us? We?” she queried. “You are staying?”

  Arthur placed his hand over hers, took her fingers, brushed her lips with his own. “If you’ll consent to have back a fool?”

  Her answer was a returned kiss, more lingering, more urgent. As they broke apart, he said dryly, “I have to stay. Someone must teach Llwch how to shoot straight!”

  October 472

  LXIV

  Bedwyr sat on his horse, the reins loose between his fingers, one arm resting across his thigh, his men, ten of them, sitting, perhaps not so seemingly relaxed, behind him. Eadric the Saxon stood on the track before them, his axe casual across his right shoulder. The women and the boys he had sent into the house place. As well Cuthwin was no longer here to witness this day’s bad work, as well that the fever had taken him to a better place three months back. He shifted the weight of the heavy axe, his eyes still not losing their hold, locked into those of Bedwyr’s.

  “You will need fell me first,” he stated, “before you take my harvest and burn my farm, as others of your kind have been doing to the south of here.”

  Bedwyr eased his behind deeper into the saddle, his fingers pulled at the strap of his war-cap. “I have no wish for killing,” he replied. Eadric the Saxon spat on the ground. “Nor,” Bedwyr added, “have I much of a wish to disobey orders.”

  Eadric spat a second time. “And whose orders would they be? Those of the Roman fool Ambrosius?” He let the axe-head down, let its weight swing to the ground between his feet, his hands holding the shaft, ready to move, use it, if he must. “It is the shame that your King was not found. The Pendragon would never have permitted the spilling of so much innocent blood.”

  “No blood has been shed,” Bedwyr countered.

  Blood, no, but to the south and along the Tamesis valley those past months, farm-steadings had been burnt to the ground, livestock herded away, harvests taken. The Saxon families were not killed, but with no shelter, no food left them for the winter, how long would they survive? “There are other ways to die,” Eadric said sadly. He took one step forward. “Without this farm, I cannot support my wife nor the bairn growing large in her belly. Without this farm there will be nothing for her brothers when they are grown into manhood. Without this farm,” he lifted the axe so that the gleaming head lay in the open palm of his broad, strong hand, “I, as with the others of my kind, will have no choice, but to fight you and your kind.”

  Bedwyr looked about him. This was a pleasant valley, it had seen little killing, save for the hunt and the stalking of nature’s own endings. He had no heart to start shedding blood now. He sighed, long and slow. Had his mind already been made before he came here, before they had saddled up and ridden from the fortress? Made two weeks since when the first written orders had arrived? He took up the reins, turned his horse.

  “When the Pendragon left,” he said, “Britain had a prospect of peace and trade. Ambrosius’s southern lands are still prospering, but only because he is taking from the Anglian, the Jute and the Saxon. He has taxed and taxed again, is bleeding these peaceful, settled lands systematically dry. He is trying to rid us of the Saex, he says, but he will not. If bees nest in the hollow tree at the far end of the orchard, you leave them there, harvest their honey for your own use. You do not poke them with a stick, make them swarm in anger. I will not serve a man who deliberately sets women and children on the track to starvation, even if they are Saex. I am a soldier, I am no cold murderer.” He heeled his horse into a walk. “Peace be with you, Eadric the Saxon. I will not be the one to destroy you.”

  One
by one, the men followed, aware of what Bedwyr, their commander was doing. One asked. “To where shall we go, Sir?” They could not stay at the fortress, for now they were no longer Ambrosius’s men.

  “I will ride to Geraint, take service with him.” Bedwyr shrugged, truly he had no plan, he was doing things as he went along. “Mayhap we will consider resurrecting the Artoriani, place a challenge to the one who is destroying all that the Pendragon once fought for.”

  Nods and murmurs of agreement, a good suggestion. They were once, most of them, Arthur’s men. Would willingly be so again, even if they need follow his kindred, not the man himself.

  Feet, running from behind, the youngest of Cuthwin’s sons. Bedwyr halted his horse, the lad proffered something in his hand. A brooch, another of those round saucer-shaped brooches with a mask pattern.

  “Eadric says, to honour you and the King you once both served, he will have no use for this.” Bedwyr took it, thanked the boy, put it safe in his waist pouch. If only all the threats of war were so easily settled!

  December 472

  LXV

  “If they march,” Amlawdd warned in his irritating nasal whine, “we will be knocked aside like year-old saplings before a charging boar!”

  Ambrosius Aurelianus barely bothered to flick a long-suffering glance at the man. He had been belly-aching about more or less the same thing for the past half of an hour – had been ignored at the start of this Council, was being ignored now. There was no point in repeating the obvious, for it served no purpose and solved nothing. If the Saxon force, assembled at the place they called Radingas, decided to move within the next eight and forty hours, Britain would be lost. Would become the land of the Saxons, of the English. General opinion, though, was agreed that this was to be their wintering place. There would be no fighting this side of the winter snows.

  The east was already fallen, out of any direct British control, all treaties, agreements and enforcements systematically and irrevocably destroyed, as was the line of fortresses Ambrosius had so ambitiously planned. At least no British men were slaughtered, but, as most had ridden south under Bedwyr’s banner of the double-headed dragon, effectively abandoning the entire East Saxon region north of the Tamesis, it was a fact of little consequence. They were classified as deserters; faced, under the stricture of law, the sentence of death by stoning.

  A few had refused to ride with the traitor, Bedwyr, and returned to Ambrosius. Joined by the loyal fortresses of the Cantii border and those in the valley of the Tamesis, the Governor of All Britain had an army to his name. But they were not enough. Even with calling out the entire levy due to serve, the Saxons held the advantage of three to one.

  “Is there no word from Geraint?” someone asked from the rear of the crowded Council chamber at Ambrosium. “Surely he will bring men to reinforce us?”

  Someone else took up the cry. “Aye, he will not let Britain fall to the barbarian heathen!”

  Amlawdd was standing, legs straddled, beside Ambrosius’s chair of state. He answered with endemic scathing. “Geraint? Fah! He shelters the traitor Bedwyr and his scum followers! Geraint keeps his own land for his own kin, cares nought for anyone or anything north of his borders. We are on our own and I say we ought take up our arms and hit the Saex first. Hit them while they sleep, burn their camp, halt them afore they make decision to march onto the Ridge and become unstoppable.”

  A few ears were beginning to cock in his direction, a few murmurs of reluctant agreement, silenced as Ambrosius raised a hand so he might speak.

  “Geraint has not yet answered my urgent-sent plea. For all my friend Amlawdd may think of him, he is a man of honour. Admitted, Bedwyr resides with him, but Geraint gives shelter to kindred, as he is by duty bound. He has not publicly declared for rebellion. Geraint may yet come to our aid.” Did he speak with too much of a hesitancy in his voice? With too much fervent hope? “Aside, those here at this meeting and a handful of lords to north and west have pledged to send men.” He shrugged dismally. “It may be enough.” He knew it would not. The voices of Council rose louder, one clearly heard.

  “We ought never have let ourselves become so isolated! Arthur retained petty kingdoms under his sovereignty for this one especial reason. When he needed men, he had them.”

  Someone else shouted, “Arthur deliberately kept the Saex contained and contented. Under his rule, this bloody mess would never have raised its head higher than his balls would have let it!”

  “If only he were to come again! We would have chance of victory under a leader such as Arthur.”

  The number of voices increased, a few, Ambrosius noted, decrying that last statement. Amlawdd one of them, of course. He had not hidden his open pleasure at Bedwyr’s fall from grace, was personally seeing to it that these latest, gossip-mongering rumours of Arthur were firmly quashed and ridiculed. Arthur would come again in time of need? Fool nonsense! Childish prattle to bolster unsteady nerves. No one spoke of Arthur when the gold chinked in their pouches, when the grain was stored high in their barns. No one spoke of Arthur when they had sent the Saxons running at Guoloph!

  Ambrosius would not speak of him. The Pendragon was dead, gone, buried and mouldering. The maggots and worms had already heaved and twisted through the bloated, decaying corpse, the stinking, rotting flesh moving as if in life beneath the darkness of the earth. Arthur was gone!

  That last speaker had been his own son, Cadwy.

  Slowly, drained from tiredness and an ominous hint of returning illness, Ambrosius stood. The faces blurred, the walls moved, he closed his eyes, all but briefly. He must not be ill. Must not! Spoke, mustering calm and confidence. “We have, then, the one option. We initiate the fight.”

  Delighted, Amlawdd punched the air with his fist, men were on their feet, beginning to herd forward, excitement overruling any former reluctance, the roll of blood-heat pumping. Others, generals, petty chieftains, were gathering the drape of their togas over their arms and hurrying for the outside. The one cry loud on their lips, passing from ear to mouth, a babble of expectant anticipation, spreading through the fortress and beyond its secure walls to the scatter of encampments. Within the hour, men were putting a sharper edge to their spears, swords and daggers, were checking straps to harness, helmet and armour. Women were seeking their loved ones, or those who needed a woman. One word hovering and dancing, leaping and cavorting.

  War!

  January 473

  LXVI

  The Ridge Way. The Tamesis River flowed from the west a while, before turning abruptly south, its flood-plain fed by hungry, running tributaries dashing down from the high ground that was topped by this ancient and majestic track. The Tamesis, a geographical and cultural boundary. Below, to the south, British land, lifting to the heights of the soft-coloured, bright-aired Downs, above its flow, the outriders of the forests that ran up dark and foreboding to the fledgling Saex Kingdoms of the East and Middle Saxons. An undisputed frontier, a great protective curved boundary that effectively separated English from British.

  Except, the English had gathered to the British side and were massed near a place of early, peaceful settlement, called in their English tongue, Radingas. The settlers, the farmers and landholders, there and along this part of the gentle Tamesis valley, were of a third and fourth generation, their land given as reward by Rome itself. More British now than Saxon, some even converted to Christianity, they found themselves inextricably caught between the cultures of the two. Ostracised by one, treated with contempt by the other. Old men, young boys, unsure on which side to carry their spears. No farmer cared to fight, not when the land needed ploughing, sowing or harvesting. No farmer cared to leave his cattle ready to calve, his sheep ready to lamb. But then, no farmer cared to pay taxes to a greedy and scornful over-lord – and it was not yet spring, not yet the time of nature’s urgent need for those who farmed the land. There was little choice. The long-established settlers of the Tamesis Valley tied the war ribbons to their spears, and made their way across the
ir winter-sleeping fields to the fortified encampment beside the great Ridge, swelling the numbers of discontented English. If Arthur had been king, they would have stayed at home, mending their ploughs, watching the skies for the first signs of winter snow, sifting the bad sowing-grain from the good. But he was not. Ambrosius was Supreme. Ambrosius Aurelianus, a man who answered only to his Christian God, and acclaimed the ways that were Roman ways. The English cared nothing for Rome and what little was left of it. Cared even less for the Christ God.

  On the eve of midwinter, the British had come crying their Christian war-shouts and hefting their war-spears along the Ridge, driving the English outposts before them, sending the Saex scuttling for shelter behind the high, solid-built timber palisade walls of the English encampment. The fighting had been bloody and short. One gateway had given way, several British had pushed through, raising an expected victory cry, but the English were many within, and the broken defences were soon rebuilt by a barricade of the dead and dying. The night attack failed. The dawn of the new day saw the bodies of the British dead piled before barely charred, sentinel-like oak timbers.

  A loud-sung victory for the English. The British had come and were beaten back. Those few of the Saxons who had wavered at the prospect of battle, took up their weapons and made with all speed for Radingas. There was now hope, and Aelle, the acclaimed Bretwalda, High King of All Saxons, was to lead them to a victory even greater. One that would resound in song from mead-hall to mead-hall, from father to son; to son, to son…

  The rain came in cold, vicious squalls lashing from the north-east, and the English saw no reason to leave the safety of their camp, the warmth of their tents and the comfort of their women. It was a time of feasting. They drank their mead and ate their fill of ox and deer, boar and fowl, toasted their gods, and told their tales of heroes past and adventures achieved. When the winds eased and swung to a more benign south, they would be ready, with cleared heads and high hearts. Aelle of the South Saxons would call to his brothers, and they would march. When the feasting was done, when the mead had run dry and the tales were all told.