by M. K. Hume
Every enemy handicap was useful to the defenders, so the fire pits in the village had been doused with water to ensure that the attackers had only minimal access to fire. Thatch could burn and fire might work against them, as well as leaving the villagers homeless after the skirmish was over.
As Arthur carried out one final inspection of his defenses, he noted that most of the smaller stone buildings had roofs of sod, but the central hut where the headman lived was thatched for it was largely ceremonial. As the focal point of the village, Arthur expected it would become an important target, and a place where he could consolidate his reserves.
“One further matter remains for discussion, Eamonn. Distasteful as it might seem, you must use the boy—the one who brought us warning of the attack. Take him with you as your guide when the time comes. He’ll move faster than you, because he can guide you up the cliffs even in darkness. He’ll be around here somewhere, because he’ll refuse to go to the deep caves.”
Predictably, a shadow moved across from him, for Arthur had spoken in the Dene tongue. The boy had been watching Arthur with narrowed and angry eyes; he was determined to play his part in the coming battle and had hidden himself away until the women and children were ushered towards the caves.
“Where’s your dog, boy? He’ll be of no use here, no matter how brave he is, because he won’t have the space to fight or to protect himself. If you love your dog, you’ll send him to the caves with someone you trust.”
The lad flushed at the tone of Arthur’s voice, but he had spirit and raised himself to his full height of barely five feet.
“I’ve already sent Leaper to my mother. He’ll protect her, so she’ll be safe with him.”
“Can you use a knife, lad?” Arthur asked in the kindest voice he could muster. “Are you capable of cutting a man’s throat? You must tell me now! If you doubt your ability to do this, I will send another young man who is able to carry out this essential task. No shame will attach itself to you if you don’t think you can kill a man at your tender age.”
“I’ve cut the throats of my ewes if they’ve broken legs or are dying during the lambing. And I’ve had to kill one of the calves after a fox savaged it. I love my beasts more than my own life, so I’ll surely kill anyone who comes to hurt my family or any of our villagers.”
“Good lad! Do you have a serviceable knife? I know you have your stick, but it would be useless in close-quarter fighting.”
The boy extended a worn blade by the point and allowed Arthur to grip the plain wooden handle. The precious iron glowed with cleanliness, although the blade had been sharpened so often that it had become quite narrowed. When Arthur tested the edge along his thumb, he viewed the resultant thin streak of blood with satisfaction.
The boy must have spent many nights sitting on his bedroll, while cleaning and sharpening this old knife until the blade had become razor-sharp. The thought of the lad’s solitary life with only his dog for company filled Arthur with melancholy and respect, and a sympathetic lump formed in his throat. When he finally spoke, his voice was soft and friendly as he handed the knife back, handle first. “Fair enough, boy! I’ll personally give you a new knife to replace this worn one once this little skirmish is over and done with. If we survive this night, your old blade will become an honored memento of our victory. What is your name?”
As he spoke, blows from a number of axes began to strike the wooden gate with a savage, disciplined intent.
“They’re coming for us, Arthur,” Eamonn interrupted from deep within the shadow of the hut where he was invisible to any intruder. Arthur ignored the noise, although the boy’s eyes widened and darted towards the sounds of destruction coming from the barricade.
“I am called Seagull in your tongue,” the boy replied proudly, as if daring Arthur to make any mention of the scavenger reputation of that particular bird.
“Ah, that is after the sailor’s friend. Gulls tell seamen that land is close by, so you’re well named, boy!”
Arthur smiled at him in encouragement. “But it’s time now for you to save all the families who live in your village. After the battle is over, I need you to guide Eamonn up the cliff to the place where the Dene warriors will have secreted their horses. I’d like you to choose a fast and safe route that will outflank them. When you get there, everyone must die at Eamonn’s hand. Until then, you will stay with Eamonn at all times and take no part in the coming battle. You are crucial to the attack on the cliff top, Gull, so don’t fail me by getting yourself killed down here. Finally, if Eamonn should die in his attempt to kill the sentries, you must try to kill the sentries yourself and complete his mission in any way that you can. Do you hear me, boy? I know it’s wrong for a grown man to ask you to kill another person—but I have no choice!”
“Aye! I hear what you say!” Gull answered solemnly.
The boy melted into the darkness like a wraith as the gate began to shudder under the pounding of the Dene axes. Even now, the timber could be heard to shake and splinter as Arthur freed the Dragon Knife from its scabbard.
“And now they are here!”
The gate collapsed inwards, further blocking the entry into the village proper. Dark shapes began to drag away smashed slabs of timber, while a dark figure leapt through the breach with braids flying wildly in his haste. Behind him another figure followed carrying a torch aloft, followed by another . . . and another . . . and another.
Gods! That boy has no idea how to count, Arthur realized as the press of men began to fill the small space at the open end of the yard. Of course, any number over twenty would be an impossibly large number for an illiterate shepherd boy to imagine. Arthur berated himself for his failure to question the boy more carefully.
Meanwhile, the attackers divided into two distinct packs that moved like wolves to encircle their prey.
“Just as I hoped.” Arthur attempted to comfort himself. In the past, he’d never had so many lives depending on his leadership abilities.
Within seconds, the first man through the gate had charged past the doorway where Arthur stood with his back against the wall. Somehow, it seemed dishonorable to kill him from behind, despite the defenders being comprehensively outnumbered. The young man yelled out a Celtic war cry, completely alien in this land. The hairs rose on Gull’s neck as the undulating challenge rose over the sound of splintering wood. The Dene warrior turned and raised his axe, but before Arthur could run him through, Eamonn slid into position behind the man and sliced through the back of his knees with a scything sweep of his sword. He collapsed with a scream, and Eamonn vaulted over his writhing body, his sword in one hand and a Dene shield in the other.
Before he turned back to face the oncoming Dene warriors, Arthur saw the shepherd boy dart out of the shadows and bury his knife to the hilt in the wounded man’s eye socket. The Dene thrashed his legs and arched his body in a final fit, but Gull dragged his knife free as the dying man’s heels stopped drumming on the sod floor. Then, as the lad stripped away the dead man’s sword and axe, Arthur turned away, his knife and sword slicing through the air in deadly parabolas of shining metal.
“Come on then! Come and meet the Dragon Knife,” Arthur snarled in Dene as one man broke away from the press of warriors in an attempt to corner him in the confined alleyway.
“Get back, Eamonn! Check on the others—and quickly! I can hold long enough to kill this fool,” Arthur ordered as blade met blade. This Dene was more intelligent than his predecessor and was able to swing his shield like a weapon, while keeping the metal boss aimed directly at Arthur’s breast. He was also very fast, so the boss skidded across the plates sewn into Arthur’s tunic.
But Arthur was faster still.
To attempt such a risky maneuver, the Dene warrior had been forced to expose the trunk of his body. Feinting with his sword, Arthur seduced his enemy’s weapon farther away from the man’s torso in a move that allowed him to close t
o within a foot of the warrior’s chest. The man’s shield and sword were useless now, so Arthur had the edge. The Dragon Knife slid upwards between the second and third ribs like a hot blade slicing through cheese. The Dene’s eyes gaped widely and a great gout of blood gushed out of his mouth when Arthur dragged his knife upwards and outwards in one smooth motion.
As this Dene fell, another took his place.
After several months of inactivity, Arthur found himself on comfortable ground at last, a feeling he welcomed. His blood sang, and he understood why the Dene seamen on Loki’s Eye had gone into battle with the forces of nature with songs of defiance on their lips. Although the voice in his brain calmed his excitement, he felt truly alive.
Two men came at him. They rushed him, side by side, but they could scarcely raise their swords because they were encumbered by their huge, circular shields. Within the blinking of an eye, one man reeled away with his arm pumping out arterial blood when his right arm was severed at the wrist.
Arthur scarcely bothered to watch the warrior as he fell to the ground. Gull leapt onto him like an angry cat, with his reddened knife flashing in the indistinct light. Under the feet of struggling men, the boy was at an advantage. Even as he slithered away into the shadows, the worn knife flashed again and impaled a very dirty foot. Arthur grinned fiercely.
“Young Gull will go far. He has all the instincts of a born killer.”
The other warrior quickly learned that a British sword will cut just as deeply into the abdomen as a Dene blade, and he fell to the ground with his entrails spilling out like unraveling, reddened wool.
The boy screamed out a shrill warning that caused Arthur to take evasive action just as a sword blow slid harmlessly past his shoulder and caused sparks to fly as it skidded along the stone wall. One of the attackers had used a narrow space between two of the huts to outflank Arthur. With a desperate curse, the Briton stepped sideways and then forward until the man’s extended arm was exposed to Arthur’s sword as it sheared down through bone and muscle at that point where the shoulder met the neck. Grotesquely, the warrior’s head rolled sideways. It was almost severed, but Arthur had no time to watch his enemy as the man’s body fell to the ground.
A torch spat out a shower of sparks with a small explosion, and Arthur swore with the shock. If one enemy could outflank him, so could others. Cursing this oversight, Arthur swept the boy under his arm and swung him off his feet as he ran, with both weapons still at the ready.
The Dene warriors pursued him, as Arthur expected they would.
“Down, Arthur!” Eamonn’s voice roared out in Celt from the darkness. Arthur dropped to his knees immediately and released Gull, who rolled away into shadows that immediately swallowed his slight form.
As he dropped, two arrows immediately whined past him. Arthur felt one shaft whistle past his ear as it impaled itself in the chest of the massive shape behind him. Only the black fletch was visible inside the ruff of black bear fur that was worn around the huge man’s neck and shoulders. The arrow quivered obscenely as its victim tried to breathe.
Although the action seemed to take place in slow motion, only scant seconds had elapsed. Arthur’s detached brain noted that two Dene lay dead in the narrowest part of the labyrinth and several of Stormbringer’s warriors had taken Arthur’s place in the defenses. The sound of mortal combat could be heard only a few feet away on the left-hand path that had led half the invading force away from the caverns. Frustratingly, Arthur was unable to follow the true course of that battle, because several huts lay between him and the other village defenses.
“We’ve killed at least five of the bastards,” he grunted to Eamonn as his friend led him at a trot down the passageways between two houses. These alleys were so narrow that the two men were obliged to turn sideways and slide along the sweating, wet-stone walls.
“Seven,” Eamonn responded. “You’re forgetting that we’ve been guarding the smaller paths, so we can’t expect to retain all the glory for ourselves.” A ragged knife slice had twisted Eamonn’s mouth out of shape, and his smile would never be as wide or as innocent again, but the young Dumnonii prince seemed twice as alive as anyone else.
Behind them, Arthur could hear the soft susurration of Gull’s sandals on the packed sod, but the darkness was absolute.
One section of the space between two of the houses almost defeated Arthur because of his wide shoulders. He could barely slide through this narrow section of curved tunnel, until he contrived to burst into a wider passage beyond. There, in the hellish light, Arthur was thrust into a conflict that was more suited to the Greek Hades than to a small fishing village.
In a bottleneck caused by heaped bodies, five village defenders were holding nearly a dozen Dene warriors at bay. Two archers were peppering away at any portions of exposed enemy flesh with their barbed, black-fletched arrows, while the Dene warriors were unable to use their own bows in the narrow maze. Because the archers were fighting on their own soil, they had the knowledge to seek out perches where they could unloose their arrows and then disappear like smoke.
“Eamonn, a fire arrow! Guard my back!”
Arthur realized that one of the Dene warriors at the back of the press of struggling men had raised a short bow which he was pointing towards a thatched hut in the densest part of the village near the headman’s house. Attached to the barb was a length of cloth already well alight.
Without pausing to check on Eamonn’s response, Arthur stepped away from the narrow passageway behind the bulk of the Dene warriors. Before him, the melee and its resultant chaos was loud, confusing, and deceptive.
Arthur looked more like a Dene than many of Hrolf Kraki’s ruffians, for many of the honorable warriors found various nefarious ways to avoid the pursuit of Stormbringer, who was a famed Sae Dene and a noted patriot. But others of Hrolf Kraki’s men were warriors who served out of a desire for preference or payment, while some came from other northern lands where they had plied their skills for hire. These venal creatures were more criminal than loyal, for they were bought and paid for with the king’s coin. Hrolf Kraki, who knew the worth of such men, called them his dogs.
One of his dogs had managed to free his bow by stepping back from the press of his fellow warriors. Arthur’s position outflanked the larger group of attackers so, as the archer raised his bow to shoulder height, Arthur appeared behind the man like a pale ghost. The archer had no time to scream before Arthur clapped his arm over the unfortunate man’s mouth and chin.
Then, using both hands, Arthur snapped the man’s neck like a carrot.
The cracking sound shuddered through Arthur’s hands and the noise seemed to reverberate off the enclosing walls. But the battle was so fierce that none of the attacking Dene noticed an enemy was behind them.
Eamonn pushed his friend through a closed doorway behind him. It swung open under his weight, and Arthur found himself in a small, smoke-filled space.
“We can be trapped in here,” Arthur warned in a whisper.
“No,” Eamonn whispered back.
“Can we resume the attack from here? From what I saw, there are six men still alive out there, but only three of our men are still standing.”
“And they’re near to dying, master,” a child’s voice said from the doorway. Gull had materialized silently from out of nowhere. “We’ll have to do something!”
“We’re behind them, so we’ll try an all-out attack from the rear, just the two of us. But we’re on the knife’s edge now.”
Arthur gripped Gull by the shoulder.
“Whatever happens, boy, I congratulate you for the wicked knife thrust you used on the eye of that Dene warrior. But now I must ask you to stay in this room once Eamonn and I venture outside, for someone has to let Stormbringer know what has happened if we should be killed. Remind him that none of Hrolf Kraki’s warriors must be allowed to escape. This is the task that is entrusted to you, G
ull.”
“I won’t fail you, master, but why can’t I help? You’ve seen that I can fight like a man.”
Arthur was halfway out of the door as he answered. “This is red work, Gull. I’d rather you didn’t see what that means until you’re older. You must obey me in this!”
Impaled by Arthur’s implacable eyes, the boy swore to obey. Then, using the darkness to full advantage, the Britons were gone.
The defenders of this section of the maze had been pushed into a slow retreat. They were fast exhausting themselves, for the limited fighting space acted against them as well as in their favor. Entering the fray from behind, Arthur screamed like the fabled Banshee of Hibernia and attacked the first Dene in his path as his sword and knife flashed in the half-light. His charge was so suicidal and unexpected that the six remaining servants of the Crow King were forced back against the defenders from the village, all of whom were now too weak to capitalize on the mad attack by their British allies.
Arthur felt a sudden hot wire of pain across his biceps, but he ignored the leak of blood where his armor had been sliced through. As he killed his next opponent, he thanked God for Germanus, who had taught him how to use a knife at close quarters, and for Father Lorcan, who had taught him to think rationally under pressure. As fast as a man wavered or stumbled before him, Arthur advanced to the next, leaving Eamonn to mop up the wounded. Arthur’s longer reach and Eamonn’s ferocity worked effectively in tandem to destroy the warriors who stood against them.
Two men could fight more effectively than six in these narrow spaces, no matter how large and how strong they might be.
Finally, none but his allies were left standing in the narrow labyrinth, while Arthur felt the warm stickiness of blood as it dripped all down him into the leather of his boots. He was a man dipped in gore as if he had waded through a tide of clotted blood. Sickened a little by the carnage of tangled bodies and severed limbs, Arthur hawked and spat, trying to clear his mouth of the stench of physical destruction in this confined space. He weaved a little on his feet before managing to stagger along the narrow cross passage and return to the right fork in the pathway.
