Wolfbane (Historical Fiction Action Adventure Book, set in Dark Age post Roman Britain)

by Atkinson, F J

  In desperation, Hrodgar faced horse and rider. With sword gone, he lunged forward with his dagger, intent on burying it in the breast of the horse before him. Gherwan, with a play of the reins, deftly had his beast dance backwards and away. Hrodgar’s helm had gone allowing Gherwan to see his gaunt features. Spittle, white and frothy, flew from his mouth as he screamed mutely at Gherwan. Unperturbed, the Briton wound up his death strike. After two swishing orbits above his head, he delivered his slice downwards into the neck of Hrodgar.

  As Hrodgar’s head flew high and away, Gherwan spun to face his next threat. All along the wall, he noticed that enemy horse and men lay dead, pierced by the hundreds of spears sticking from the shields. His tactical advice to Arthur had proved sound, but before he could allow himself any feelings of satisfaction, four horn blasts sounded. It was the signal to leave the field of battle. The gap had closed to a dangerous level and entrapment for all equestrians was now a real possibility. Gherwan’s steed reared high as if in defiance. Upon landing, he spurred it away and along the line as he fled the scene of slaughter.

  As the mounted troops galloped from the gap, Dominic let fly his last arrow and withdrew from the flanks. He saw Tomas approach with his riders and joined him in his flight. Moments later, the archers mustered some hundred strides behind the British shieldwall.

  Dominic did a quick count. ‘We fared well,’ he said, ‘only twenty men lost; we still number one hundred and forty bowmen.’

  Harvey, the man who had been in charge of the archers on the opposite flank, winced in response to the intensity of sound coming from the battlefield. ‘Jesus God,’ he cursed, ‘Hell is about to be unleashed over there.’

  Soon, the cavalry joined Dominic’s group. Arthur went to him and they clasped arms. ‘Hereferth fell,’ said Arthur in answer to Dominic’s searching appraisal of the riders. ‘He died bravely but was overcome by three of them … I got there too late to save him. But I put his killers to the earth all the same.’

  ‘Ah … that’s a loss we could have done without,’ said Dominic. ‘The chief was an inspiration to his men. Any more captains lost?’

  ‘None. All fought well and are bloodied but alive still.’

  ‘What of enemy losses?’

  ‘Many. They have fewer mounted men than us now. We lost four hundred men—more than half—but they fared much worse. Seven hundred of them, by Flint’s quick count, now lie dead on the killing ground. Hrodgar went down to Gherwan. Wigstan fought well and we think he survived, though there was no sign of Guertepir as expected.’ Arthur’s voice now betrayed his frustration. ‘Oh, that we could have continued, but we do not have fresh horses. We should be pressing our advantage, but these beasts are dead on their feet and need to rest.’

  ’And Cunedda and Diarmait?’

  ‘No sign of them either. Their absence worries me.’

  ‘As planned, we managed to kill many of their shields!’ shouted Dominic as the noise intensified to a level that threatened to drown out his address. It’s up to the shields now. As soon as my archers have caught their breath we’ll send arrows into their flanks again!’

  ‘Then do it soon, for they are about—’ An ear-splitting roar went up and a clash that seemed to shake the very pillars of the earth muted Arthur’s words. Grim faced and with horror in his eyes he looked at the wall. ‘They’ve come together,’ he muttered. ‘Now this thing will be decided.’

  Smala readied himself for the collision. He had briefed the men surrounding him (farmers and peasants who asked themselves not for the first time why in hell’s name they had ever agreed to fight in Britannia for a foreign king) to meet the enemy advance with much more force than the day before. Along the line, Augustus and the other tacticians had conveyed the same message to their own charges: ‘Push with all your might as soon as the enemy wall is a sword’s distance away.’

  Consequently, the British line was able to hold when the impact came. All along, arrows splintered into shards (for the enemy shields resembled pincushions after the assault by Dominic’s archers) as men screamed their fury at men.

  Smala stood behind a shieldsman named Oswine—a fisherman from Husum in Angeln. Having seen the size of Guertepir’s forces, he had considered deserting on the first day, but in the end had decided the ridicule he would endure back home would be far worse than actually dying on the battlefield.

  Now he wasn’t so sure, as his opponent—a leathery Hibernian with stinking breath and mad eyes—attempted to swipe under his guard with his mattock. Oswine, determined not to have his feet taken away at the ankles, dropped his shield just in time to prevent his dismemberment. He stooped, keeping his head behind the shield, as instructed to do at Brythonfort. As the mattock dug into wood, the whistle of steel above him evinced that an ax-wielding man behind the leathery Hibernian had swung for his head. Oswine’s hasty training had saved him for now.

  Smala was quick to counter and make use of the space before him. Carrying a spear—his preference being to jab, rather than swipe at his opponents—he shoved its tip into the face of the ax man, splitting it apart. In one movement, he removed the spear and thrust it at the other—the one who had struck at Oswine’s ankles. Carelessly, the man had allowed his forehead to rise above his shield. Smala’s first strike took off the man’s helmet, his second razored through flesh and bone. With head riven and brains exposed, the man swayed upright and dead, held vertical by the crush behind him.

  A shudder went through the wall and Smala feared the worse as he twisted his head and saw that’s its trueness of line had gone.

  Augustus was concerned about the detritus at his feet. To push against the seven-deep enemy line was bad enough, but the dead horses and cadavers left from the cavalry battle threatened to destroy the integrity of his shieldwall. The line was disjointed in places, as men stumbled and lost contact with their shield neighbours. This could only lead to one outcome—imminent breach.

  He resorted to pushing, crouched, behind his huge shield as he realised the futility of his position. Pwyll, who had stood beside him moments earlier, was now twenty paces behind. Enemy infantry had begun to pour past Augustus as the men rushed to meet the shields now at his rear. Alarmed, he noticed that only fifty shields were locked with him, and realised the time for free skirmish had come.

  He turned to the man beside him. ‘We need to break and fight!’ he shouted. ‘They’re coming at us from all sides now!’

  ‘BREACH! BREACH!’ the cry went up from both British and enemy infantry as the linear lines of the shieldwalls dispersed, and hand to hand fighting began. In total, sixty British shields had collapsed at the centre, but the flanks still held. There, two opposing lines of shields, now tussled for ascendancy.

  Dominic and his archers were abroad again and active in the breach where the fight raged with savage intensity. From a distance, they began to pick off enemy fighters in the centre of the melee.

  Dealing with any who broke through, Arthur and his tired cavalry prowled the back of the wall. ‘We’re containing them!’ shouted Arthur to Flint as he cut down a Saxon who rushed to him on foot. ‘Our men fight like wolves and Dominic’s arrows take out their extra men; and the side walls still hold!’

  But Flint had frozen, his face a mask of despair as he stared ahead. ‘Chariots,’ he mumbled. ‘No wonder Cunedda and Diarmait were nowhere to be seen, they were saving themselves for the chariots.’

  Aghast, Arthur stared through the breach and down the hill.

  Below, Guertepir had unleashed one hundred and fifty chariots. Beside them bounded a pack of war hounds—seventy in number. Arthur, knowing that time was precious now, beckoned his riders towards him. ‘The chariots are bladed, and like the hounds are indiscriminate. They’ll shred all the fighters in the breach—British and enemy! They seek to clear a hole and attack our lines from behind and so win the day! We must meet them, though I fear it will lead to our deaths.’ Fey now, he raised Skullcleft and stood in his saddle. ‘DEATH OR GLORY!’ he roared. H
is knights, both British and Anglii reciprocated the cry as Arthur turned towards approaching hell.

  But before he could spur Storm into her final glorious gallop, Gherwan’s shout came from behind. ‘Hold up! Hold up! Robert has come!’

  Robert and Simon had heard the roar of battle when still two miles away. With them, thirty horses pulled thirty ballistae along the rutted road towards the rear of Badon Hill. After much experimentation and many failures at Brythonfort, they had managed to build the war machines, and after careful adjustment and fine-tuning, had coaxed them to fire accurately. All now had their torsion springs winched back ready for immediate use; all were loaded with either heavy dart or stone projectile.

  The climb up the twisted road proved bumpy and awkward as they neared the ridge. When the cry of ‘Breach!’ was heard, they goaded the heavy drays into one final strenuous push up the hill.

  Surrounded on all sides by Saxons, Augustus laid about him, slashing with his heavy sword. Aware his death was near, such was the disparity in numbers, he had decided to give it his all. He purposed to fight until he dropped.

  His blade bit through the leg of an opponent who shuffled too close. The man went down screaming, his stump spraying blood. Another man rushed in, seeking to gain advantage over a breathless Augustus. Acting upon the opportunity, the Saxon tensed, swung back, then aimed at Augustus’ exposed neck, just as a hound—snarling and crazed—took him down before he could deliver.

  Augustus, astounded, turned to meet another man as the war hound went to work on the Saxon. Iron rang upon iron as Augustus blocked his assailant’s sword swipe. He pushed him away. Standing a body length apart, both paused … too exhausted to press the fight at that moment.

  The Saxon, panting, looked down the hill, then at Augustus. A triumphant smile had come to him. ‘You’re finished, you big bastard—you and the rest of your British rabble,’ he said in Saxon. ‘The chariots are coming, try your big sword on them if you dare!’

  Augustus did not turn. Instead, he kept his eyes on the man before him as, all around, the distant blur of fighting continued. Hounds tore and swords bit, but his world stood frozen and silent for now. ‘Chariots,’ that much he had understood. It was bleak anyway, but now it’s over, he thought as the Saxon ran from him and away from a breach soon to be filled with hurtling horseflesh and spinning blade. He looked down the hill, his eyes haunted; his unicorn shield held before him. Dogs ran and chariots sliced through the fields. Soon they would be upon him and he knew not what to do.

  His first warning before the air parted above his head was a sibilant, yet powerful ‘SSHHH’ that grew alarmingly from behind, then receded as it passed him by. The ballista bolt raced downwards and thumped into a knoll, throwing up an explosion of turf and soil.

  He turned and saw the giant crossbow snouts of the ballistae as, one by one, the artisans pushed them into position on the crest. Behind them, sat bestride their mounts, waited Dominic and his crew of archers. The wolf man stood in his saddle beckoning for all Britons fighting in the breach to come to him. On the flanks, the shieldwalls still held and there the battle blazed.

  Augustus didn’t need telling twice. He lumbered up the hill, passing many who still fought. Soon, he came to Pwyll, who faced another fellow (a freeman farmer and a member of the Saxon Fyrd) whose ineptitude was only matched by Pwyll’s. Both men had already made several ineffective lunges without inflicting a single wound upon each other. Augustus approached Pwyll’s adversary from behind and landed the pommel of his sword upon his head. The man dropped, leaving Pwyll face to face with Augustus.

  Augustus struggled to be heard above the clamour. ‘Come on, man; get yourself out of here—follow me back up the hill, unless you want your head taken off with a ballista bolt!’

  Pwyll wavered a moment, too stunned by the day’s events to take in Augustus’ words. Leaving nothing to chance, Augustus slap-grabbed his chest and dragged him away.

  By now, other Britons had begun to flee from the epicenter of conflict and run up the hill, towards where Dominic’s archers continued to send a shower of death downwards.

  The wolf man stood in a line of forty. Behind him, two more files, each comprising of forty bowmen, stood ready. Dominic’s charges loosed their arrows and the second line stepped forward and immediately did the same. These were replaced by the third set of archers, and so a continuous and unbroken flock of arrows was sent down the hill. The rotation maneuver, which had been relentlessly practiced on the training grounds of Brythonfort, progressed and knocked droves of Saxons to the ground. Many war hounds fell beside them.

  Meanwhile, scores of Britons ran up the hill, until only a handful of them remained in the gap, these being men who had become embroiled within their own sphere of combat to the exclusion of all outside influence.

  Snarling and fierce, having survived the arrows, the remaining dogs arrived. As they leapt, they quickly fell to spear or sword. Arthur himself fended off a hound, meeting its leap with Skullcleft. The hound dropped riven at his feet.

  More ballistae were in position and primed for use. Arthur walked behind, casting a wary glance down the hill at the approaching chariots. Beside each war machine stood two men, strong of arm. Each pair had practiced briefly at Brythonfort, after Robert, Simon and the rest of the artisans had finally figured out the complexities of ballista construction. Proficient at ratcheting the machines to full tension at speed, the men had begun to release the death bolts.

  Arthur approached Robert. ‘They’re on their way, Rob!’ he shouted. ‘Already, they’ve reached the lower fields.’

  By now, most of the men were back up the hill, but on the flanks the shield fight continued. Two sets of opposing walls—smaller versions of the continual long wall which had existed at the start of battle—now fought without conclusion. Led by Smala, the Angle wall had fought tenaciously and managed to utilise the steep slope to their advantage and so push the allies a short distance down the hill. The other wall, though, was at deadlock, as men driven to the point of nausea, and too weak to raise their weapons, took to merely leaning on their shields such was the level of their exhaustion.

  As soon as the gap had appeared, Guertepir had released his chariots. To throw them at the Britons was his big surprise. His charioteers would burst through the breach and get behind the British shieldwall and so win the day. To send them against the flanks had been unthinkable—the terrain there being too rutted and hedge-clogged for the wheeled conveyances. No … it had to be the smoother centre ground, and that could only happen if a breach occurred, and that had happened now. He viewed the battle from the elevated wall-walk of Aquae Sulis’ northern face. Beside him stood Almaith—her hand to her mouth in suppressed joy as she watched the carnage play out before her.

  Diarmait was astounded when the first ballista bolt flew. Beside him rode Cunedda and Abloyc, both on chariots pulled by white stallion siblings from Guertepir’s stable. As more ballistae snouts appeared at the summit, Diarmait considered the wisdom of going up through the breach. To turn back, though, was unthinkable—an act of abject cowardice. And so he continued to whip his pony forward; the beast wild-eyed and snorting with fear as it weaved through retreating allies, who were frantic to escape the cascade of arrows looping from the ridge. Some, unable in their exhaustion to avoid the chariots, fell before them, or were riven or rendered limbless by scything wheel blades.

  Other chariots, falling foul to jarring ground or corpse-litter, flew in tumbling cartwheels, their riders ejected and flung skywards.

  Cunedda shouted to Diarmait. ‘Prepare yourself, my friend! They’re about to use the ballistae again!’

  As if on cue, several of the giant crossbows sent forth their bolts. With an approaching hiss, the projectiles raced towards the first of the chariots, now only three hundred paces distant. The time from release to near-miss was a mere moment as one of the bolts hurtled past Abloyc. He gasped, unsure if his own decision to continue had been an error of judgment.

 
Behind him, several of the bolts found targets. Many ponies took the brunt of the assault. Pierced in their breasts they fell dead, their chariots careering over them in crashing arcs of destruction. Bodies took to the air and landed broken on the bloody field.

  Other bolts hit the chariots, smashing into their substructures and wheels and sending shards of twisted timber skywards. To make things far worse, Dominic’s archers continued to fill the sky with arrows, their approaching death whisper being the last living sensations for many of the charioteers.

  The first ballistae assault took out twelve chariots. Furthermore, Dominic’s archers had killed or injured twenty of their drivers. Some of the surviving charioteers, now nervous and hesitant, dragged their steeds to a halt.

  But Cunedda still thundered upwards, even though a chariot upended beside him. Another hiss as a ballista bolt flew past. Loaded again, the ballistae had begun to fire. A look behind, told Cunedda that chaos ensued. He reined in his pony, bringing it to a snorting standstill.

  He cursed the British archers for their unrelenting doggedness as an arrow whispered its hint of death past his ear. He considered his choices. Below him, Diarmait, who now had Abloyc beside him, had signalled the others to stop. As he watched, Diarmait pointed to Aquae Sulis and made to leave the hill. Above Cunedda, the ratcheting sound of ballistae being primed for a third assault was enough. He snapped the reins of his pony, guiding the animal downwards and away from the ridge as Dominic’s arrows splintered into the wood of his retreating carriage.

  A cheer erupted on the crest of Badon Hill, but Arthur and his generals knew there could be no let up. In response, Robert and Simon instructed their operatives to send the third wave of ballista bolts down the hill. Dominic’s arrows continued to rain death until the chariots were out of range. Twenty more of the war machines fell in the flight, victim to bolt and arrow. In total, seventy chariots lay wrecked, their sub structures adding to the dreadful litter of carnage on the battlefield. The breach was left unpeopled—a killing zone.