by M. K. Hume
But there was still no sign of movement from his father.
Cadal’s mind began to churn. Had the old man sickened? He was hearty and buoyed up with excitement when Cadal left the bivouac, so sudden illness seemed unlikely. Had they been attacked from behind when the enemy, this Ironfoot, outmanoeuvred them all and outflanked the force that was sheltering in the forest? Would his men have heard the sounds of combat if a disturbance had taken place in the trees behind them?
Had Llew’s detachment been intercepted and ambushed during his roundabout trek through Anderida Silva to his position on the eastern margins of the small town? Harald Ironfoot would have made detailed plans to ensure that his troops and the ceols were protected. The boats were essential if they were to escape back to Saxony and his winter encampment on the Albis River. Could the Britons defeat Ironfoot without the hundred men in Llew’s command? The odds were already in favour of the Saxons, but there was nothing that Cadal could do.
He must wait and pray that the signal fire would soon be lit.
Still the sky remained depressingly clear of smoke from the signal fire. At least it was clear of rain, although dark clouds had been massing over the seaward side of the town.
Cadal was drooping from nervous exhaustion in the heat and humidity and he wondered what he should do once night fell.
Retreat? Unthinkable!
Attack? Impossible!
And then a stone fell, almost on the tip of his nose.
Startled, Cadal raised his head a little and saw Huw’s sharp eyes and the edge of a plait only a few feet to his left. The scout had burrowed himself deeply into the surrounding earth.
‘Look, Lord Cadal! The signal fire has been lit. It’s almost time to rise.’
He rubbed his eyes with numb fingers. There, above the crown of the forest, a plume of thick black smoke was rising into the pale sky. A vague hint of scarlet could be seen between the thick tree trunks and some blurred movement was obvious where the rough track emerged out of the thinning line of trees along the verge.
‘Wait!’ Cadal called as softly as he could. ‘Pass the word along the line. We wait until the Saxons come out of their holes and are committed to the battle.’
A long column of horses suddenly erupted from the trees. Sitting tall in their saddles, the imposing figures of massed cavalrymen in their colourful cloaks were trotting down the track that led towards the town. In the leading rank of the column, the pennons of the various tribes were flapping in an invisible breeze with a representation of the Boar of Cornwall in front, charging out of a green background with its thick, ribbed muscles and exaggerated, curving tusks.
A little in front of the tree, the soil, bushes and long grasses appeared to boil as if a giant, invisible spoon had stirred the pot of the earth. Cadal could make out the helms of concealed men when they climbed out of their trenches and stretched their numbed limbs.
Then, at a signal from Caradoc, the cavalry’s speed increased. The air and the earth seemed to still as the newly exposed Saxons and the Britons in their trenches waited expectantly for the first screams of men and horses as they fell into the mantraps. With his breath catching in his throat, the Dumnonii prince watched his father as he rode, upright and fearless, like a man half his age. The horsemen drew closer and closer to the mantraps as Cadal signalled to his own men that they should kneel behind their sparse cover.
Although he was too far from the column to see his father’s face, he imagined that Caradoc was grinning with a gap-toothed smile of pure enjoyment.
Still, the Saxons hadn’t realised that Cadal’s force of foot soldiers was behind them.
The British cavalry increased its pace, although Cadal knew his father would save the best of his speed for the charge towards the Saxon forces. As he watched the horse-soldiers riding gloriously towards a determined foe that held a significant advantage, he swore that he would not let his father down during this time of need.
At the last moment, the rows of horsemen wheeled to their left at full stride and turned away from the mantraps that were only barely visible in the glare of sunlight, avoiding disaster by the barest of margins. Cadal felt the remnants of the sandy soil as it cascaded down his back when he began to rise to his feet. He saw the cavalry wheel again.
‘There’s so many of the bastards!’ Cadal whispered aloud as he watched the huge, hulking northerners move out of their trenches and turn to face Caradoc’s approaching cavalry. The ground seemed to boil near their trenches and still more men began to appear, bolstered by another group of warriors who came running through the town gates from their places of concealment among the shabby huts. The Saxon’s original plan was now brutally clear. If Caradoc had charged into the mantraps, the riders who survived would have been caught in a pincer movement.
‘Up!’ Cadal ordered crisply, and Huw and his men rose stiffly from the depressions in which they had hidden for so many hours.
Wonder of wonders, none of the Saxons seemed to have sensed the British warriors who were forming at their rear. Within moments, Cadal’s force began to move towards the dead tree and the Saxons whose attention was totally focused on Caradoc’s cavalry as it wheeled away from the mantraps. Cadal’s heart swelled with pride at the neat tactical movements that had been achieved at speed.
Caradoc swung his sword and caught the sunlight with a flash of scarlet silk. In ranks of ten riding abreast, the horsemen waited for the order to charge at their enemy. The king’s upraised sword dropped, and in a sea of hard flesh, iron, bone and muscle, the charge began.
‘Form ranks!’ Cadal yelled. ‘At the double! Run like the devil and we’ll re-form on the other side of the Saxon ratholes. Move!’
The waiting British infantry ran with a sense of mingled fear, excitement and purpose. The British force would have lost nothing if the Saxons saw them now, because the trap had already been sprung.
In an arrowhead formation, Caradoc charged his cavalry directly towards the heart of the Saxon line. The discipline that had forced the Saxon foot soldiers to lie in wait as a single unit was breaking down, so their normal lust for personal glory came to the fore. Similarly, the realisation that Cadal’s force was approaching their rear made no difference to them as they continued to charge towards the cavalry with their axes, swords and circular shields at the ready. Battle cries rose from hundreds of throats, roars that chased the birds of the forest onto the wing, before they settled again to wait for the inevitable feast.
‘For Britannia!’ Cadal roared, as he skirted one large hole in the landscape that had sheltered a number of the Saxons during the past two days. ‘For Britannia,’ he bellowed again.
The corresponding chorus from a hundred British throats resounded behind him.
Then Caradoc’s cavalry hit the Saxons with the force of a hammer-blow. Cadal could feel its power through the trembling of the dry earth.
The cavalrymen carved through the Saxons like a dagger slitting an unprotected throat. Blood stained upraised swords as the Saxons died in untidy rows when they were singled out and smashed under iron-clad hooves. And then the cavalry was through the Saxon lines and were forced to slide into sharp turns to both left and right to avoid Cadal’s foot soldiers. Then they turned, circled and began to isolate small groups of Saxons and cut them to pieces.
‘Advance!’ Cadal screamed as his warriors charged into the rear of the Saxon force. ‘Hit them hard and push the bastards towards the cavalry. For Britannia!’
The rest of the engagement was a dim blur for Cadal. Men appeared in front of him, fierce and bear-like in their fur-edged cloaks, screaming curses and battle cries. Sword play became a simple exercise in hacking and slashing at any exposed flesh. Blades shivered and shattered, while straining men fought with stolen and scavenged weapons snatched up from dead or dying hands. For those warriors who couldn’t find replacement weapons, teeth and nails
were acceptable substitutes to rake at eyes or tear throats open. There were no rules, just an individual need to stay alive in a melee of thrashing bodies and jostling shields.
Over all hung the stink of death. Men in extremity voided their bowels and bladders; similarly, blood tainted the air with the unmistakable reek of hot metal accompanying the sharp smell of vomit, pierced entrails and sweat.
Even the earth on which they stood had been transmogrified by the fierce blood-letting. Gore lay in pools around the growing pile of corpses, soaked into the earth and created ghastly pink slurries to stain the feet and legs of the living. Men looked like scarecrows that had been bathed in red paint; dried or fresh, blood obscured the men’s eyes and dripped from their gauntlets until Cadal was sickened by its stench.
Somehow, the prince managed to blot out all sound, except for the guttural curses of those Saxons who were running directly at him. Suddenly, a horn shrieked brazen orders and the enemy began to melt away like smoke.
‘Hold! Hold!’ Cadal screamed. The Saxons were retreating towards the township, except for a small rearguard of fanatical combatants who refused to obey their orders.
‘After them, lad! The cavalry will clear the way, and I’ll see you in the town square. Burn down any buildings that can’t be cleared of Saxons,’ Caradoc shouted down at his son from the saddle.
The old man’s arms were bloodied to the elbows but his eyes were twinkling from the success of his tactics. Every muscle in his face seemed to be glowing with a fierce joy.
‘Collect any of the riderless horses that can be caught and join me. And, while you’re at it, order Huw to kill off those stragglers,’ the king snarled, pointing towards a small cluster of Saxons that continued to frustrate the Britons.
‘The rest of you can follow me at a trot,’ Cadal yelled to his men. ‘You heard the king – it’s time now to kill off the rest of these bastards. These will be for Britannia, and for our dead.’ Some sixty of his original one hundred warriors arranged themselves behind him. His losses had been heavy.
A riderless horse ran directly towards him, the reins dangling and its eyes maddened with fear and pain from a shallow cut that extended beyond its breast armour to leak blood down one leg. Except for that slight wound, the beast seemed unhurt, so Cadal grabbed at one of the trailing reins and dragged himself into the saddle. The horse calmed immediately with the presence of a human on its back, so it sidestepped a small pile of bodies fastidiously before Cadal turned it towards the township. Beyond him, other Britons were either running at his side or catching the remaining half-dozen riderless steeds.
In the chaos of the continuing conflict, Cadal somehow found himself on the outskirts of Anderida. He led the way along the straggling track leading into the town before it divided itself into two clear halves, opting to begin his assigned task by clearing out one of the narrow laneways between two rows of shabby huts. The rubbish dumped outside the buildings indicated that these buildings had been in regular use, but the silence in the town was eerie and the stillness total.
‘Light some torches,’ the prince ordered two of the men who were trotting at his side. Then, with an angry hum, an arrow whizzed past his ear to bury itself into a sod wall across the narrow pathway. ‘Quick! Set fire to those two buildings and we’ll burn the bastards out.’
He indicated the shack from which the arrow had been loosed.
‘You! And you! Burn that bastard out for me!’
As one warrior used his already-torn cloak to create a makeshift torch by attaching the wool to a broken spear shaft, another opened his tinder box and used his flint to strike the sparks that would light a small fire. Several other warriors used their shields to protect both men from arrows as they coaxed the torch into life. In the meantime, arrows continued to whizz through the air, forcing the remainder of Cadal’s men to find shelter wherever they could.
Cadal was paranoid about bowmen, for no armour can be so finely wrought that a man could be completely safe under a hail of arrows. The only thing he feared more than barbs from an archer was the prospect of an oil fire. The prospect of cooking within his armour caused even the most fearless of warriors to bleach white with horror.
House by house, Cadal led his men towards the heart of Anderida in a door-to-door search for Saxons, burning the town around him as he went. The reed roofs flamed up as fire devoured the dry thatch and burned the rafters down to charcoal. Inside the buildings, the enemy warriors were either incinerated or suffocated. Alternatively, if they refused to accept the searing heat, they made their way out of the guttering huts to be cut down by the waiting Britons.
Finally, his troop reached a large open square to discover that their side of Anderida had fallen. Total destruction prevailed over the northern side of the town.
Before death came to visit Anderida, Llew’s contingent of Dobunni cavalry had waited in a position where a thick copse of trees offered some protection beside the dirt road that took travellers into the east. Remote from the action, Llew had felt cut off and of little use in the struggle to regain control of the town. But a cursory glance from the brow of his hilltop vantage point changed his opinion.
The bay sparkled with sunlight reflecting off the white caps. Some of the Saxon ceols had been pulled up onto the sandy beach where they were being carefully loaded with boxes and barrels.
‘This’ll be the treasure that’s been pillaged from Anderida Silva,’ Llew said to a dour, black-haired warrior called Mabon. ‘You can see how they’re stowing those boxes evenly throughout the middle of the ceol to keep the vessel balanced.’
‘Bastards!’ Mabon muttered. Unusually soft-hearted, this warrior had been outraged at the sight of dead women and children when the Britons pursued their quarry among the farmsteads, crofts and villages of Anderida Silva. ‘They’d steal the eye out of a needle.’
‘Or a rattle from a babe,’ Llew added with feeling. ‘With luck, we’ll take this wealth back and return it to its owners.’
‘What will become of it if the owners are dead?’ Mabon snapped. Llew had no idea who the man’s anger was aimed at, but he found himself bridling with affront at his subordinate’s argumentative tone.
‘There’ll be widows enough and there’ll be scores of orphaned children by the time we’ve sorted out this band of Saxons. Every child who dies through neglect because their parents have been slaughtered should become a blot on those of us who should have protected them. The booty must be shared out in such a way that all of the indigent receive a portion.’ At twenty-five, Llew was still an idealist.
‘The Regni and the Atrebates kings will all demand a share of the proceeds, so there’ll be little left for those who can’t fight for themselves,’ Mabon retorted, his dark eyes staring at the sun as it slid lower in the afternoon skies.
‘It’d be best that you check on the men, Mabon, and ensure they’re ready to mount and ride as soon as we see the signal fire. They understand their orders.’ Llew continued to scan the landscape. The town was too empty, and it was too still.
‘Aye, my lord. They’ll be ready to do their duty for the glory of the tribe.’
‘Then see to it, Mabon, because the waiting is almost over.’
Beyond those ships that had been beached for loading, further ceols were awaiting their turn in the shallows. A large number of ships had arrived from Saxony to reinforce Ironfoot’s expedition during the spring, so he could capitalise on his successful forays into the south of Britannia.
Llew could understand now why the Britons had suffered so harshly at the hands of their enemy. The army had killed and killed, but for all the casualties that had been suffered by the Saxons, they seemed to breed overnight. In fact, shiploads of reinforcements had been arriving regularly. Then, in turn, these same ceols would return to Saxony with the spoils.
The burn of anger at the sight of these vessels came slowly to
Llew, but once his rage had been triggered, it grew and grew until such time as it was slaked. Such anger was foreign to his fellow Britons who were creatures of sudden, violent fury that dissipated almost as quickly as it began. Llew’s cold fury would last until his enemies were crushed.
The town lazed in the summer sun like a dirty, disreputable dog. Yet no animals stirred in the streets. Badly maintained and shabby, Anderida seemed to be empty of townsfolk, as if the population had decided to leave the Saxons behind as the sole inhabitants of this small fishing town. Llew however knew that the Saxons would never leave enemies alive to sit at their unprotected backs; the citizens of Anderida and the farmers from the surrounding district had probably been dead for months. A clever commander like Harald Ironfoot would know better than to leave the dead to breed disease, so they must be buried somewhere close, unshriven and without prayers to speed their way to Paradise.
No chickens picked away at the sod and there were no farm animals in the small pens attached to the small houses. The vegetable patches were baked hard in the gardens and all green plants had been stripped away. Anderida had been picked clean by a ruthless enemy.
Llew raised his eyes to look above the town. With surprising clarity, considering the dust and smoke in the air, he could see the forest to the west of the township where the signal fire smoke would eventually begin to rise. Every muscle in his body was stiff and cramping with tension.
Like Cadal, Llew chafed under the tension of waiting while the afternoon wore away. The sun was obscured by cloud for a short period and Llew prayed for some cooling rain to break the hot grip of summer that caused him to sweat within his armour and turned his helmet into a burning circlet around his aching forehead.
When the smoke from the signal fire finally plumed into the sky, Llew’s concentration on the plans for each step of the attack on Anderida was so deep that he almost missed it. Caradoc had ordered the Dobunni king to select suitable terrain inside the town where his twenty bowmen could dominate the positions of the defending Saxons, a task that Llew dreaded. In front of the Dumnonii king and his tyro son, Llew had lacked the nerve to ask any deep and exacting questions, and now he would be forced to make important decisions.
