King Arthur: Warrior of the West: Book Two

by M. K. Hume

  Then, as suddenly as they had entered the sewer, they reached its end. A small crack of moonlight appeared at the end of the sloping tunnel, and the five men found themselves at a rubble-strewn exit hanging dizzily over empty air.

  As Bedwyr cast his eye around the cavernous opening, he noted that the Romans had built these sewers out of smooth dressed stone and the living rock of the mountain. But, at one time, those canny engineers had recognized some weakness in the defence of their fortress, and had contrived to set bars of iron deep into the stone, probably to prevent a persistent enemy from attacking their unprotected backs.

  Most of the iron bars were rusted through or broken by the passage of time, but two metal stanchions at the very edge of the exit were still firmly embedded in the rock floor. Fearing danger in using only one, Bedwyr used both stanchions to secure the rope.

  Gruffydd dropped a large pebble into the black void below.

  A hissed curse came from the darkness far below, and Gruffydd grinned whitely at Bedwyr.

  ‘I think I may have hit someone on the head.’

  The rope was lowered and the men retreated back into the sewer. Soon, there was a tug on the line, and Bedwyr pulled it back up to the sewer entrance with the rope ladder tied firmly in place. Within minutes the ladder, too, was secured to the iron stanchions.

  Bedwyr patted Wind’s large square head, and prayed that the ladder was long enough and would hold the strain of the men’s weight.

  The rope sang and strained as it took up the weight of the first climber. In the sewer entrance, the five men watched, hearts in mouths, as the metal bent a little, but the bars held.

  Then Odin, the heaviest warrior by far, crawled into the sewer entry.

  One by one, other men followed. Artor stared at Wind with mild curiosity. The mastiff bared his teeth for an instant, but then dropped his massive head submissively.

  ‘Is that your dog, Bedwyr?’

  ‘Yes, my lord. I’d consider it a favour if you spared the Saxon animals when we take the fortress. They are superb beasts and are magnificent hunting and fighting animals. I promise you that they are the one true skill of these Saxons. They’ve been bred to be man-killers, but they are noble creatures nonetheless. If we ever bred such animals ourselves, we could train them to be useful to our cause.’

  Artor grinned down at Bedwyr’s earnest, worried face.

  ‘Did you feed them when you were a slave?’

  ‘Yes, my lord.’

  ‘Would they obey you?’

  ‘Yes, my lord.’ Bedwyr nodded his assurances to the High King. ‘One further matter, my lord,’ he continued. ‘There is a female slave in Caer Fyrddin who is only part Saxon. She has not betrayed me and I promised that she and her children would be freed. She’s lucky that her head didn’t become a decoration for the gates of Caer Fyrddin, as did those of the other Celt slaves who were here when I killed Wyrr. These slaves have been ill-used for years, and she considers herself to be beyond hope. I ask that you spare her if you can. I have told her to lock herself in the kitchens, and I would hate to see her suffer because of me and mine.’

  ‘Very well, Bedwyr,’ Artor replied. ‘After all, she does have some Celt blood in her veins.’

  It took several hours for a hundred men to enter the fortress. The stanchions were only strong enough for one man at a time to climb the rope ladder. Against all the odds the old iron stayed firmly within the rock.

  The remnants of Artor’s forces, under the commands of Llanwith and Lot, would be in position to pour through the entrance gates as soon as they were needed.

  ‘Lead the way, Bedwyr,’ Artor ordered. ‘Odin will be directly behind you, followed by myself. I will follow Odin because we are the two largest men and will have the most difficulty passing through the tunnels.’

  In any event, both men nearly became wedged in the narrowest sections. When they finally clambered into the relative comfort of the storage room, both Artor and Odin had decided privately that never again would they commit themselves to such an ordeal.

  Artor immediately turned to Bedwyr. ‘Where are we now?’

  ‘The warriors’ quarters are to your right as you leave the storeroom,’ Bedwyr explained, drawing in the dust of the stone floor. ‘There are at least a hundred men quartered there.’

  ‘Odin. On my command, take fifty of our men and capture the warriors’ hall. Kill them, and keep killing them until such time as all are slain or they agree to throw down their weapons. We don’t have sufficient numbers to take prisoners until the battle has been won and the fortress is secure. Is that understood?’

  ‘Yes, my lord.’

  Artor turned back to Bedwyr, who continued.

  ‘At least twenty more Saxons are asleep in the great hall with the dogs. Although they are drunk and should not put up an effective fight, the dogs might cause some problems as they are trained to kill and to hunt.’

  ‘Where will Glamdring be?’ Artor asked in a soft, dangerous voice.

  ‘Ironfist will be with his women, here.’ Bedwyr stabbed his makeshift map with one dirty finger. ‘But he may have kept his personal guards close by, now that he’s under threat from your forces. The watchtower will be well guarded and those men must be killed if the gates are to be opened. There are other guards on the ramparts, but I doubt they will be of any significance.’

  Artor nodded. ‘We will have the advantage of surprise so the battle should be over swiftly. Fortunately, there’s no way that Glamdring can obtain reinforcements. I will command the main force of twenty men and will secure the great hall, while you must select five men to search for Glamdring and his personal guards. Your task is to capture Glamdring and kill those warriors who are with him. No mercy.’

  Bedwyr nodded in understanding.

  ‘Gruffydd. You’ll take the remainder of our force and capture the watchtower. At the earliest opportunity, detail men to open the gates and allow Llanwith and Lot to enter the fortress with their warriors.’ Artor gazed round at the assembled group of captains. ‘Is the plan agreed and understood?’

  ‘Aye!’ their voices chorused.

  Within thirty minutes, the Saxon defenders were captured or killed. Most chose to die in a final act of defiance.

  Accompanied by Lot, Llanwith swept his cavalry into Caer Fyrddin and cut a swathe through those warriors who escaped the charnel house of the great hall and the warriors’ barracks.

  Of the dogs, only Grodd chose to die. The animal’s skull was cleaved in two by a blow from a great axe as he attempted to defend his master.

  When a surprised and naked Glamdring was discovered in bed with his woman, he was immediately surrounded and kept away from his weaponry. He was at Bedwyr’s mercy.

  The serving woman was freed from the kitchens, and the rest of the female slaves. At first, they cowered and wept, fearing the usual fate of women taken in war, but Artor remembered his vow and they were herded into the Great Hall. He determined that no innocent female would suffer if she had been forced to labour in the Caer Fyrddin fortress.

  Glamdring’s women and the other camp followers of the fortress were another matter entirely, and would be forced to suffer the fate of those females who are, ultimately, the spoils of war. The Saxon children were herded together to be relocated into the west to endure slavery or adoption.

  The Saxon thane wasn’t permitted the dignity of dressing. Bedwyr kicked him from his bed, naked and bemused, while Gruffydd silenced the screams of his woman. Bedwyr pulled Glamdring’s head back by a handful of greasy hair and tore the Arden Knife from round his neck. With the knife pressed to his throat, he was forced to stumble to the hall, his naked feet slipping on spilled blood and his shrivelled manhood the subject of several ribald jokes.

  ‘You are not so boastful now, little man,’ Bedwyr sneered, and Glamdring shook his muddled head as he tried to recognize a voice that teased at his memory. ‘You’re just piss and wind, aren’t you?’

  ‘Who are you?’ Glamdring demanded. In tru
th, the thane had never feared death, only failure.

  ‘Don’t you recognize your faithful dog? My, my, Glamdring Jellyfish, didn’t you think that I’d return and bring the army of Artor with me? You have always been thoughtless without Wyrr to tell you how to think!’

  Naked, Glamdring stood in his great hall, furious and struggling. But then he realized that Bedwyr was taking pleasure from his fruitless efforts. He closed his teeth with an audible snap and, although the cords stood out on his neck from the effort, he squared his shoulders, raised his head and kept his lips shut.

  The Celts surrounded him and the few Saxon warriors who survived in a ring of iron.

  For all his impotence, something noble enlivened the savage stolidity of Glamdring’s face, the same nobility that a wild bear or a boar could possess when it fought the dogs to the death in the full knowledge that it would die anyway. Bedwyr hardened his heart and stroked the scar round his neck.

  Artor walked forward, his hair freed from under his helmet, and his great height dwarfing even the bulk of Glamdring. He stared down into the bearded face of the man who had chosen not to bow, and whose eyes remained filled with implacable hatred.

  ‘You killed my ambassadors under a flag of truce at Y Gaer. What is your excuse for this breach of honour?’

  ‘What honour do Celts and cowardly curs possess? This land is ours now, and you are the usurpers. We’ve lived here for generations, invited by your King Vortigern. I am a descendant of Horsa and I claim my right to these lands.’

  ‘If you had chosen to hear my terms, this land would still be yours.’ Artor actually sounded regretful. ‘I was prepared to offer you an honourable truce between equals, accepting your right to the land your forefathers won. You and I are Britons, as is Lucan, for all that his grandfather was a citizen of Rome.’ Bedwyr pointed casually to one of his companions who had posed as a Saxon in order to enter the citadel. ‘He speaks Saxon, just like you. In fact, you welcomed him into your fortress. He is a Briton, and proudly so. King Lot has the bloodlines of the Picts, and they ruled this land when all our ancestors lived in mud huts and crawled on their bellies. Had you accepted that you were a Briton first and a Saxon second, hundreds of men would still be living and breathing. The fault, Glamdring Ironfist, is in your prejudice and your false pride.’

  Glamdring spat at Artor, who merely stepped aside. Artor looked sadly at the naked man, still so powerful and unashamed by his nakedness.

  ‘You were a worthy adversary, but you would have been a better ally. When will your people ever learn? When will they see these mountains, the open plains and the green fields for what they are? A gift to us from the gods, especially if we could live in peace and harmony together.’

  ‘Never!’ Glamdring bellowed in his rage. ‘I am the heir of Vortigern. This is my earth. You may kill me if you wish, but it will change nothing.’

  Artor sighed. ‘Vortigern was Celt, Glamdring. Celt! Don’t you understand? No, you don’t. So you speak like a fool and a brute, for what you cannot use, you debase or kill. But a wise man knows that cruelty will strike back at him a hundredfold.’ He gazed at his captains who surrounded him. ‘Behold your enemies.’

  Llanwith stepped forth. ‘You have killed any Ordovice warrior who strayed into your lands. You showed no mercy. You blooded your young men by torturing our guards on the borders. You stole our women and brutalized them. I demand your death.’

  Glamdring spat at him.

  King Lot stepped forward. ‘You are fortunate that my queen is not with me, for she would demand that the Celtic women flay you alive. I was your ally, yet you killed my son because he would not break a blood oath. A better and a wiser man would have set my son free for the courage he showed. I demand your death!’

  Gruffydd stepped forward. ‘Your warriors killed my family, and I was enslaved.’ Gruffydd tore off his woollen under-tunic to expose the spear scar. ‘I bear the Saxon mark. I’ve brought many good Saxon men to their deaths because of you and your blood-soaked father. I also demand your death.’

  Finally, Bedwyr bared his shaven head. He faced Glamdring with the dog, Wind, by his side. ‘You called me Dog, and you taught me how to hate. I watched my companions die horribly, and then you enslaved me. I cleaned your muck, learned your speech and was forced to kill your sorcerer, Wyrr. I am Bedwyr, of the Cornovii, born near the forests of Arden, and I will hate you forever for your brutality.’ He smiled triumphantly at Glamdring Ironfist. ‘I also demand your death, because I, Bedwyr ap Bedwyr, am the Arden Knife.’

  Finally, Glamdring’s composure broke and he cursed and screamed, his rage turning his face red and his eyes beginning to fill with small dancing fires. He refused to accept that he had contributed to his own destruction because neither he nor Wyrr had placed any value in the worth of a slave.

  ‘If I should die, then let me die in combat,’ he demanded. ‘I will fight any one of you, or all. It matters not to me.’

  ‘You didn’t allow Gaheris the honour of death by combat,’ Artor stated uncompromisingly. ‘For what you did to Gaheris, you shall be fed to the crows, as was he, without the boon of honourable disposal of your remains.’

  Glamdring struggled in his bonds.

  ‘For what you did to Gaheris, and to Cerdic, and to all those noble warriors who died because of your treachery at Y Gaer, you will be executed like the felon you are.’

  Artor gazed directly into the eyes of Glamdring.

  ‘Your hands will be removed like a thief, and you will die where you now stand. After your death, the hands that caused the death of Gaheris will be presented to his mother, Queen Morgause, to do with as she chooses. May your gods have mercy on you in the shades of death.’

  Artor nodded to Odin, standing alongside the screaming Glamdring. King Lot himself held the rope that tethered. Glamdring Ironfist’s hands together. With a vicious heave, the Saxon’s arms were extended in front of him on a tabletop.

  ‘Now!’

  Artor’s voice was steady, and his face expressed nothing but the contempt he felt for Glamdring.

  Bedwyr turned away, sickened despite himself, as Odin used one mighty blow of his axe to remove Glamdring’s bound hands above the wrists. Glamdring howled in shock, pain and impotent fury.

  One of Lot’s officers collected the grim relics and placed them in a leather bag while Glamdring stared at the stumps of his arms. He watched as his lifeblood pumped away into the straw.

  ‘For the sake of Gaheris, and his memory, your head will be displayed on a pole and taken through these lands until the crows eventually pick it clean at Cadbury Tor. You would have done the same to me, if our positions were reversed. I find no sensibility or decency in you, only the instincts of the beasts, so I will not spare your life. To exist, handless, would be too cruel a punishment, and I am not a man such as you. So I, Artor, High King of the Britons, have said. Let it be done!’

  Glamdring bowed his ashen face until his hair fell forward and obscured his features. As he rapidly bled to death, he fell to one knee, almost as if he finally offered a Saxon form of homage to the High King of the Britons.

  He had finally come to the realization that Artor could be merciful.

  Odin took one more mighty swing with his axe, and removed the head from Glamdring’s body. Taking a spear from one of his men, the Jutlander impaled the head and raised it aloft, to the cheers of the assembled Celtic warriors.

  ‘Glamdring’s body will be tossed outside Caer Fyrddin where the carrion shall feast on it. You will then strip this pesthole of anything of value. All children and those Saxon women who will submit shall be taken into the south land where they will begin a new life. Bedwyr will take Glamdring’s hounds. All else that remains shall be razed to the ground.’

  And so the Saxon fortress at Caer Fyrddin was reduced to ashes and rubble.

  Far away, in an oxen-drawn cart of wounded men, Myrddion saw a plume of black smoke in the west. As he watched, he recalled each of Artor’s campaigns with a pang of regre
t. Even now, after all this time, more men were dying to ensure the safety of the Celtic nation.

  Myrddion pressed his temples where a sick headache was beginning to centre in spiking, radiating pain. There were so many wight-haunted places, and it was so hard to remember them all. Magnis, Lindum, Pontes, and Causennae where the Roman roads ran straight and true; in the hills below Ratae and on the river out of Vernemetum; the places ran together in his head in a long, grim procession of wounded men, amputations and ugly deaths. He could still smell the cremation fires of Vindomora, when winter gripped the north in a fist of iron and the Saxons and blue Picts had almost broken Artor’s line, until he drew them on to the ice that his sappers had spent days weakening and then disguising. Oddly, Saxons did not swim.

  Myrddion struggled to remember the names. Navio had been terrible, deep in the forests that covered the slopes of the mountains. Saxons and Celts had hunted each other in a spiteful, long and futile autumn until the Saxons and the Angles had retreated to the land beyond Lindum. And then, before they could lick their wounds and regain their strength, Artor had gathered his scattered troops, given heart to tired men and led them in a gruelling forced march in pursuit of their enemies. At a nameless ford, the Celts had made the river run red with enemy blood.

  Of course, early in the years of struggle, the Saxons had poured out of Anderida, where the whole, fearful campaign had begun, but Artor had won great victories at Anderida Silva and east of Noviomagus. Still, Anderida remained a Saxon stronghold, guarding the narrow seas to Gaul and, one day, even Artor’s great strength couldn’t halt their slow, inexorable advance. The barbarians extended their walls and their sphere of influence around Anderida as each Saxon summer came and went. Myrddion was a realist, as were the citizens of Noviomagus, Portus Adurni and Clausentum. One day, when Artor was no more, Anderida would set fire to the south.

  ‘Lord of Light, Myrddion in the heavens, foster-father and namesake, I beg you to help my master,’ Myrddion whispered. ‘The High King doesn’t understand that a fragile peace may be more destructive than any number of bloody engagements. For who can quiet the cruelty of man when his enemies are defeated?’