So, the mystery remained: who could it be?
“They will have taken Trath Gwryd,” said Arthur upon dismissing the messenger to food and rest, “and have laid siege to Caer Alclyd, and Caer Edyn. This they have done with stealth and silence. They have chosen their positions well: fortresses instead of fords—our mounted warriors are all but useless. And except for Caer Edyn, they have the advantage.” Arthur paused, his blue eyes sweeping the assembly before him. “If they succeed,” he continued, his voice low, “all we have done till now is less than nothing. Britain will fail.”
He had spoken the cold heart of fear. Now, he spoke the bright fire of hope. “Yet, they have not won. The battle remains to be fought. We are not beaten because they have outwitted us this once. He of the Strong Sure Hand will uphold us, brothers, for we fight for peace and freedom, which is ever his good pleasure.”
Arthur raised his hands like a priest giving benediction and said, “Go now to your tents, and to your prayers, for tomorrow we begin. And once we have begun, we will not cease until the Day of Peace has dawned in all Britain.”
The others left, but Cai, Gwalchavad, Bors, Myrddin, and I stayed, for the Duke wished to speak to us privately. “Will you drink with me, friends?” Arthur asked.
“Sooner ask if a pig would grunt,” said Bors, “than ask if Cai would drink!”
“Sooner ask that pig to fly,” replied Cai, “than ask Bors to pass the cup!”
We all laughed and drew our chairs around Arthur’s board. The steward brought in jars and cups and placed them at the Duke’s right hand.
As soon as we had drunk a cup together, we fell to discussing what was foremost on our minds: tomorrow’s battle.
“A few of those machines Myrddin made for us last year would aid us now,” said Bors. “We could make some.”
“No time,” said Cai. He was thinking of Caer Edyn, and his father besieged there. “We must assault the walls.”
“You would brave those Picti arrows?”
“I am not afraid of their arrows.”
“You are welcome to them, then,” said Gwalchavad. “In Orcady it is said: the Picti have only to see a bird to shoot it out of the sky.”
“Even the Picti cannot shoot what they cannot see,” put in Arthur.
“Then perhaps we should fight at night!” I said. Arthur smiled and slapped his knee.
All eyes turned to Myrddin as a single thought gripped our minds. “The moon will rise tonight,” he told us, “but not until after the third watch.”
“We attack tonight!”
* * *
Never have I seen a sky so ablaze with stars, never so alive with light. Although the moon had not risen, the cloudless night seemed like bright midday to me. We all wore dark cloaks, and our faces were blackened with mud. We crawled over the cold rock on our stomachs, our swords hidden, our spearheads and shield bosses muddied. We hugged the ragged stone to our chests and climbed on elbows and knees toward the looming walls above.
Jesu preserve us, the Picti sentries regularly looked down over us! But their attention was occupied with the show of fire Arthur had contrived to conceal us: down in the camps men danced with torches and sang raucous songs. Their voices carried to the dun and urged us on.
Arthur, despite the objections of his chieftains, led the assault himself—up the cragged east side, well away from the narrow gate track. Once we reached the walls, one of us would go up and over to open the gate.
The one chosen for this was Llenlleawg. He volunteered almost before the words were out of Arthur’s mouth, and the Duke was bound to let him do it or defame the Irishman by refusing. Since we had no reason to deny him—other than the fact we did not completely trust him—Arthur agreed. So, Llenlleawg carried braided rope and an iron hook beneath his cloak.
After what seemed an age, we reached the perimeter of the wall. Huddled under cover of its shadowed roots, we waited.
I do not know how it happened; one moment I was looking down onto the firelit plain, and the next Picti arrows were whispering around me, striking the rocks and shattering their flint tips. I pressed myself flat against the wall, and others took what cover they could.
All at once I heard a shout. Out of the corner of my eye I saw someone stand. A rope snaked out and was pulled taut. The lone figure began to climb…
Llenlleawg! The mad Irishman was proceeding with the attack. Arrows flying, he had secured the hook and was climbing the wall…Jesu save him, he would be killed the instant he reached the top!
I expected next to see his pierced body plummet from the walltop to be dashed upon the rocks, and with him, our hopes of taking the fortress quickly.
But Llenlleawg somehow skittered up the sheer rock face and gained the top. A body fell—but not Llenlleawg’s. I could tell it was a Pict, even in the darkness.
Somehow all this took place in silence—yet a more noise-battered silence I never want to hear! An entire lifetime passed in the space of a few terror-fraught heartbeats.
Llenlleawg disappeared over the rim of the wall. And then…
Nothing.
A figure rose from the gloom beside me. Arthur’s voice whispered urgently, “Make for the gate! Go!”
I edged my way along the rough wall face, moving as quickly and quietly as possible. From the walltop above I heard not a sound—only the echoed shrieks rising from the camps. The dun was entered from the north by a single narrow door. I peered cautiously around the eastern corner and saw no sign of a guard above. I ran to the gate, reached it, and pressed my ear to the thick wood. I heard nothing from within.
I hunched down before the door and waited, signalling the others behind me to stay well back. An eon passed, and another…I was about to go back to Arthur, when I heard a slight scratching noise on the other side of the door.
I pressed myself against the coarse wood. The scratching sound became a sharp rap, followed by another, and the muffled sound of someone cursing under his breath. It was Llenlleawg—the gate was stuck!
Seeking to help him, I pushed with all my might, and one of the warriors behind joined me and together we heaved our weight at the gate. But it would not budge.
“Get back!” came a hushed cry from the other side.
There came a whir in the air and the dull chunk of an arrow striking into the wooden planking of the door. Then another.
The Picti had found the Irishman! Our attack was discovered.
“Get back!” Llenlleawg called loudly—silence was no use to us now. “You are pushing the wrong way!”
I stumbled back, and at once the door swung wide. The gate opened outward! How was I to know that?
I dived through the narrow opening, rolled on the stone flagging, and came up with my sword in my hand. Warriors followed on my heels. Arrows whirred around our heads like bees, chunking into the wood or shattering against the stone and bursting into stinging fragments.
We swarmed into the yard and onto the walls. The Picti, newly roused and wakened, raised the alarm with their piercing battle wail as we hewed into them.
Suddenly there was torchlight all around. More and more Picti were pouring into the yard. Their blue-stained bodies writhed in the dancing light, garish nightmares. They rushed upon us with their long knives and double-headed axes. They howled in rage at our invasion.
Before I knew it, we were being forced back out of the door by the press of enemy. “Hold ground!” I cried. “Hold, Cymbrogi!” But there were too many of us jammed in the gateway, and those behind could not get in. We were trapped between the enemy and our own warriors. And there we would die.
A torch sailed high through the air toward us. I ducked aside as it struck the ground at my feet and made to reach for it. But the brand was snatched from me and carried off. I looked and saw the torch become a shining trail of flame, whirling and spinning into the barbarian host.
Sparks of fire showered all around, and wherever the torch struck, a body fell. The fire gambolled as if alive—driving, smashing
, reeling, twisting, and twirling away before the enemy could react. The barbarians screamed and fell back before this dreadful killing apparition.
In the fireshot mist of shattered shadow-light I saw the face of our deliverer: Llenlleawg, the Irishman. It was a visage I shall never forget—stark and terrible in its rage, burning like the torch in his hand, eyes bulging with madness, mouth contorted and teeth bared like the fangs of a wildcat! It was Llenlleawg, and the battle frenzy was on him.
“Cymbrogi!” I screamed, and dashed forward into the surging turmoil of the Irishman’s bloody wake.
I slashed and thrust with my sword, striking out in the confused darkness at any bit of exposed flesh. I knew my strokes succeeded from the weight that first hindered, then fell from my blade. The ground beneath my feet became slick with blood. The smell of blood and bile hung thick in the air.
I could not see Arthur.
I fought forward, little heeding if any came behind me. My only thought was to overtake the battle-mad Irishman. I hewed mightily, but each time I looked, I found him further ahead—the whirling torch dancing lightly as wind-tossed thistledown. I heard his voice rising above the battle blare, quavering, calling, swooping like a hunting bird: he was singing.
“Cymbrogi! Fight!” Over and over I shouted, and my cry was answered by the high clear note of Rhys’ horn. The forces waiting below the dun had seen the fight commence and had stormed the rock. Now they were shoving in through the gate and swarming over the walls on ropes and laddered poles we had prepared. The Picti were thrown into panic, rushing here and there, striking wildly and foolishly.
I lost all sight of anything but the tangled limbs of the enemy before me. I chopped with my sword as if hacking through the dense and knotted snarls of a bramble thicket. I labored long, ignoring the ache spreading from shoulder to wrist.
Smashing with my shield, stabbing with my sword, lunging, plunging headlong into the howling enemy…
And then it was finished.
We stood in the fire-reddened yard, Picti corpses piled around us. The stink of blood and entrails in the air and on our hands. Black blood shimmering in the light of a rising moon. The enemy dead…all dead. The caer quiet.
I raised my head and saw three men struggling with a fourth, and went to lend my aid, thinking it must be the captured Picti chieftain. But it was Llenlleawg. He was still deep in his battle frenzy and though the fight was over, he could not stop. Cai and Cador had found him lopping the heads from the corpses and heaving them over the wall.
“Irishman!” I shouted into his face. “Peace! It is over! Stop!”
He could not hear me. I think he could no longer hear anything. There was no sense in him anymore. I ran to the nearby trough and lifted a leather bucket, returned, and dashed the water into Llenlleawg’s face. He sputtered, stared, gave a sharp cry and fell back limply.
“He must be wounded,” said Cai, pushing his helmet back. “A blow on the head.”
“I do not see any blood,” replied Cador, holding close the torch he had wrested from the Irishman’s hand.
“No blood? He is verily swimming in it!”
“Stay with him,” I told Cador, “until he wakes up, then have him taken back to camp.” To Cai I said, “Get some more torches and begin searching for wounded. I am going to find Arthur.”
I could have saved my breath, for already scores of warriors were beginning to carry out the wounded. Due to the closeness of the stronghold, not all of our attack force could crowd into the yard. Most, it appeared, had remained outside and only now were able to move in. These carried torches and hastened to the task of caring for their fallen sword brothers. Arthur stood on the wall above the gate, directing them.
I climbed the steep-stepped rampart and joined him. “We have taken the fortress, War Leader.”
“Well done, Bedwyr.” He made it sound as if I had done it single-handed. He surveyed the torchlit yard beneath him. The flickering shadows made it seem as if the fight still raged silently all around us. The growing heap of enemy corpses told a different tale.
“Is Llenlleawg still alive?” the Duke asked presently.
“Yes,” I answered, weariness beginning to seep into my arms and legs. “He lives, and not a scrape on him that I could see. How I do not know. Did you see?”
“I saw.”
“He is mad,” I said. “I can well see why he was Fergus’ champion. Who can fight a whirlwind?”
Later, when all the British dead and wounded had been removed, and the Picti wounded killed—it is a hard fact of war, but we put the enemy wounded to the sword, for we were leaving the next day and they would have received no care; better the quick thrust that sends them across the Western Sea to the Fortunate Isles, or wherever they go, than the lingering torture of a slow death—we burned the bodies of our countrymen in the fortress where they fell, and threw the enemy over the southern wall to the tide flats below. Govannon would take them to feed his fishes.
We stood atop the walls of Caer Alclyd and watched the flames reach toward Heaven. Blind Myrddin stood with his arms extended over the pyre the whole time, chanting a Psalm of victory in death. The Cymry lifted their voices in the song of mourning, which begins as a sigh, grows to a wail, and ends as a triumphant shout. In this way, we sang the souls of our fallen into Blessed Jesu’s welcoming arms.
Then we went down to our camps to sleep. The sun was rising, pearling the night vault in the east to glowing alabaster. The dawn was fair and the grass inviting; I stretched out on the ground outside Arthur’s tent. Exhausted as I was, I could not sleep, so lay gazing up into the sky at the slowly fading stars. In a little while the Irishman, Llenlleawg, crept silently to Arthur’s tent. He did not know that I was awake, so I watched him to see what he would do. He drew his sword. Was it treachery?
My hand went to my knife. But no, I need not have feared. Llenlleawg placed the sword at his head and lay down across the entrance as if to protect the Duke while he slept.
* * *
At midday, after we had eaten, we broke camp and moved off along the overgrown track of Little Wall—called Guaul in that region—the northernmost wall built by the Romans and then abandoned. It is a ruin mostly, a grass-covered hump; and the old road is not good. But to the east lies a good road running north and south. Reaching this, we turned north to the old fortress of Trath Gwryd.
And I turned my thoughts once more to the mystery at hand: who was directing the war against us?
14
There has been a fortress at Trath Gwryd from ancient times. Like Caer Alclyd on the west coast and Caer Edyn on the east, it is built atop an enormous rock above a river, and stands between them in the center of the invasion route. And like Caer Alclyd the Picti had seized the old rock-top fortress, intending to defend it against us.
Upon reaching the sands of Gwryd below the rock, we camped and laid siege to the rock. Almost at once Arthur’s scouts began returning with further reports about the enemy siege at Caer Edyn: Ectorius still held the fortress, and seemed in no immediate danger; the stronghold remained solid and secure.
King Custennin of Celyddon arrived with more disturbing news: others were coming into the war. Along with the Angli there were Jutes, Mercians, and Frisians from across the northern sea, Scotti and Attacotti from Ierne, and Cruithne joining with the blue-painted Picti. In short, all the old enemies of Roman Britain. The new Bretwalda, whoever he was, had stirred the pot well.
By God’s mercy, there were no Saecsens. Somehow the peace in the south held true, or the fight would have been finished before it began.
Anxious to move on to the defense of Ector at Caer Edyn as soon as possible, Arthur dealt with the rock-fort quickly, using the same night raid tactic with which we had reconquered Caer Alclyd. The battle was short and sharp, and we prevailed. The fortress duly secured, we turned east to the rescue of Ectorius.
We passed through several small holdings and settlements along the way. The barbarians had been there before us and h
ad left behind the black mark of their passing—a smoldering scar of destruction bleak and terrible, a bleeding wound upon the land: crops burned, cattle driven off, goods plundered and carried away, and all else ruined.
Bitter smoke and ashes filled our mouths; tears filled our eyes. For in each of the holdings the bodies of men, women, and infants lay strewn among the debris. Not content to fire the buildings and slaughter the people, at each place the barbarians left a grisly reminder of their cruelty and hate: a disemboweled corpse lying in the center of the road, stomach carved open and lungs spread out upon the chest, liver pulled out and placed between the lungs, the heart severed and laid atop the liver, the right hand cut off and stuffed in the mouth.
It was a sight to sicken, to dishearten, to taunt. Not a man among us who saw it failed to imagine himself or his sword brother or kinsman lying dead there—dismembered and dishonored. Fear and humiliation were kindled by the ghastly spectacle and spread like a noxious stench through our ranks.
But in each place where this atrocity was practiced, Arthur acted forthrightly. He ordered the body to be wrapped in a clean cloak and decently buried with prayers spoken over the victim.
This helped ease our dismay, but did not banish it. Daunted and sick with dread, we drew near Caer Edyn. Custennin had warned us, and we were ready. Yet, the first sight of the besieging host encamped upon low hills below the caer stole the light from our eyes and the warmth from our hearts.
“They were not lying when they told you the whole barbarian realm had come to Caer Edyn,” Cai said. “How did so many escape our ships?”
Arthur’s face hardened like flint. His eyes turned the color of Yr Widdfa in storm. “Breathe the air, my friends,” he said. We drew a deep breath of the fresh, salt-tinged breeze. “It tastes of triumph, does it not?”
Seeing the black smoke curling into the blue-white sky and the loathsome masses swarming about the roots of Ector’s strong fortress brought the sour gall to my lips. “It tastes of death, Artos,” I replied.
Arthur: Book Three of the Pendragon Cycle Page 33
