by Simon Lister
‘Ethain? Cuthwin?’ she asked.
‘They’ve gone to get help from Wessex with Merdynn,’ Trevenna answered.
‘How long have they been gone?’
‘Four days now. They’ll be here soon.’
Leah turned her face to Cei and gripped his hand. ‘Don’t let them take me. And burn my body too, I don’t want them bastards feeding on me.’
‘Oh the Wessex lot aren’t that bad. Ugly but not that bad.’
Leah smiled. ‘Just you make sure, Cei. Promise me.’
Cei bowed his head and nodded.
‘Promise me,’ she insisted.
‘I promise you, Leah. I promise to get you back to Wessex and I promise the Adren won’t get you.’
The intensity left her pale blue eyes and she rested her head back down. ‘Good,’ she muttered faintly and drifted back down to her tortured dreams.
Cei put his head in his hands.
‘She’s not going to live is she?’ Aelfhelm asked wearily.
‘No,’ Trevenna answered.
Aelfhelm sighed, depressed as much by Trevenna’s lack of hope as he was by Leah’s dying.
‘Gods I’m tired. If I get back to Wessex I’m going to sleep for a month,’ Aelfhelm said.
Cei looked up at him. ‘You’ll get back to Wessex. The boats will be here soon now. They’re probably already on the way.’ He stood up and looked around for the old woman who had been tending the wounded and called her across.
‘I want you to sort the wounded into three groups. Those that can walk to the boats and those that need to be carried.’
‘And the third?’ she asked. Cei just looked at her and she dropped her eyes.
They left the hall and stood outside in the cold air. The drizzle and mist were clearing away. They all automatically glanced at the wall to make sure there were no signs of an imminent attack.
‘Four days and no attacks,’ Aelfhelm stated what they all knew and what none of them could explain. Cei led them towards the cliff edge and as he did so the last shreds of the mist blew past them like thin smoke. To the West the sun had already broken over the horizon and shafts of sunlight stretched across the coastline.
‘Aelfhelm, build a beacon at the end of the headland and make sure it smokes. The Wessex boats may need guiding here,’ Cei said.
Trevenna touched his arm and drew his attention to the wall. Cardell was signalling to them.
‘One more day. A few more hours. That’s all we need,’ Cei said as they strode back to the wall.
When they were standing at the top of the wall they saw why Cardell had been signalling them. The sea mists had hid what the Adren had been working on for the last two days but now everyone on the wall could see across to the Adren lines. They all stared and no one said a word.
About a mile away they could see ten tall wooden towers. They were easily as high as the wall and each one seemed to have a platform or roof running around the base about ten-feet off the ground and some type of tunnel at the base of each tower which projected out in their direction. At the top of each tower was a drawbridge that was clearly intended to be lowered once the towers were near enough for them to bridge the ditch that ran in front of the wall. As they watched they saw figures entering each tunnel and swarming around the bases of the towers. They were gradually moving forwards. Behind the towers there were thousands of Adren lined in ranks and advancing slowly as the towers inched towards the fortress. Leading them was a blue robed figure on a white horse.
‘Looks like some bastard got them organised,’ Cei said and spat over the wall. He looked along the length of the parapet. All the Bretons were looking at him. Everyone knew that as soon as the towers reached the wall then dozens of Adren would spill out at ten different points to be followed by hundreds more and then by thousands. Cei looked back over what was left of the Breton village and on out over the sea towards Wessex. It was simply a matter of whether the boats or the towers arrived first. At the end of the headland the beacon sent smoke spiralling to the sky.
*
Merdynn surfaced to consciousness through waves of pain that knotted his stomach and brought beads of sweat to his lined forehead. He kept his eyes closed as he tried to quell the pain inside and listened to the sounds around him. The memory of the events on the boat flooded back to him and he opened his eyes in horror. He was in a darkened hut with a small fire burning in a hearth somewhere nearby. He could smell the scent of medicine leaves being boiled and he turned his head to one side. A man in his fifties was sitting on a low stool watching a young boy stir the pot over the fire. Neither had realised he was awake and the man spoke to the boy instructing him what to add next and how long to leave it boiling.
Merdynn tried to speak but no sound came out. He tried to lift himself off the bed but found that his arms did not have the strength and his stomach erupted in agony at the merest tightening of the muscles around it. He gasped in pain and frustration. The man appeared at his side.
‘Are you awake?’
Merdynn nodded and opened his eyes once more. With a great effort and speaking slowly he asked the man where he was. The man had to bend close to his mouth to hear what he said.
‘We found you in your boat against the breakwater. Your companion was beyond help and we’re doing what we can for you. You’re Merdynn, the counsellor, aren’t you?’
‘How long have I lain here?’
‘A day or so. You should rest, your injury is very bad.’
‘Listen. Bring your elders here. I came here for help. You must sail for the Breton coast. Adren are attacking there. The Anglian Warlord and the Bretons need you to take them back across the sea.’ Merdynn closed his eyes in exhaustion. The man stayed at his bedside staring uncertainly at Merdynn who summoned his strength and said as forcibly as he could, ‘Bring them now, fool! Every hour could cost them their lives!’ The man was spurred to action more by the desperation in Merdynn’s eyes than by his words.
‘I’ll fetch my brothers.’
‘Not your brothers, fool, the elders!’
‘The elders aren’t in the village. There’s only a few families here. The warlord’s decree said that the people should be near Caer Sulis. Don’t know why, not much of a place to be near if you ask me. He wants the fishing boats all gathered at the Haven. Don’t know why he wants that either. He needs to explain things a bit more if you ask me.’
‘I’m not bloody asking you!’ Merdynn cried half rising in his bed before falling back with a grunt of pain.
‘I’ll fetch my brothers then,’ the man said as he slowly stood up.
His brothers arrived shortly after and Merdynn painstakingly explained the situation to them. Whether it was by Cuthwin’s skill, Merdynn’s directions or just blind chance they had arrived at Morveren’s village and they were her brothers who were gathered around Merdynn’s bed. They were not convinced by his tale and Merdynn would have cursed and raged at them if he had anything of his old strength but he harboured what strength he had left and used it to patiently explain the situation again. The brothers still looked unconvinced and Merdynn finally threatened to curse all the men and women of the village so that no children would ever be born to them again.
The small group withdrew to discuss the matter. Most of the villagers had stayed at the Haven and were being trained for war so only a few had returned to the fishing village and they had been told to sail the boats around the Wessex peninsula to the Haven, not to some distant coastline. The old man lying on the cot certainly seemed to be Merdynn and none of them wanted to cross either him or the newly appointed Warlord of Britain. The old man appeared to be mortally wounded but, as one of the brothers pointed out, if he was Merdynn then who was to say if a knife wound could kill him or not, and even if he was dying he could still curse the village.
Morveren’s brothers remembered Arthur coming to their village when they were young men and they had eventually heard the rumours about him and their mother so they had little love for the Wes
sex Warlord but they reasoned that if Arthur was to be the next king, as people were saying, then it would do them no harm at all to have rescued his sister and Cei from the Adren army. They decided to take one boat and sail for the Breton coast.
Merdynn insisted on accompanying them and they carried him out to the boat on the small cot he lay on and placed him below deck in a corner of the hold where their catch was usually kept. As they got under way Merdynn drew them a rough map of the Breton coast and told them what course to take before he subsided once again into unconsciousness.
*
The towers crept ever closer. As they neared Cei could see that the tunnel-like extrusions they had seen were acting as shelter for those that hauled the tall wooden structures. The roof flanging around the base provided cover for the Adren that were re-feeding the rounded trunks that the towers were rolling on. It may have taken the Adren three days to construct these siege towers but they had produced a faultless weapon. Cei could see no way of stopping them. If they still had their horses and dozens of warriors then they could risk riding out to topple and fire them but with just the villagers and on foot it would only shorten the fight.
Cei had done what he could. He had smashed away the stone steps that led down from the wall so that the only way to get down now was to use one of the three ropes that hung from the parapet. Those of the injured that could be moved had been taken to the end of the headland where the steps descended to the harbour. The old healer woman had a sharp knife put to one side for those who could not be moved and the hall was ready to be burned should the Adren break through. Leah had regained consciousness once more but the others were on the wall and she had died alone and uncertain of what was happening around her.
The beacon was being fed by the remaining children and smoke still wrapped its way upward and trailed eastwards with the wind. Two watchers stood on the cliff looking out to sea waiting for the first sighting of the boats that would rescue them and as soon as they saw them all that remained of the Bretons would retreat back to the steps and down to the harbour. There they would defend the cliff path while the boats from Wessex lifted off the others. Aelfhelm had already agreed to take charge of a detail of ten Bretons who would act as the last defenders on either the wall or the steps when the boats arrived.
Everyone who could still fight was on the wall and they alternatively switched their gaze from the towers that crawled closer and the still empty sea behind them.
The towers were only five hundred yards away now and they could hear the chanting from the massed Adren ranks behind them. Cei and Trevenna stood together on the wall and they looked at each other.
‘Now would be a good time to come up with a great plan,’ Cei said lightly.
‘Now would be a good time for Merdynn and Cuthwin to turn up with the Wessex boats,’ she replied.
They both looked behind them and out to sea. There was no sign of the boats from Wessex.
‘Well, the Adren will take the wall before the boats get here. It looks like we’ll be defending the steps again but from below this time,’ Cei said.
‘It’s over isn’t it, Cei? This time there’s no escape is there?’
‘Merdynn will bring the boats here. We’ll just have to defend the harbour. He’s never let us down. Remember that time on the moors when we were lost in the mist wandering around with that cow we stole?’
‘Borrowed you mean!’
They both laughed at the shared memory and those around them took heart from it. The towers were almost upon them and Cei issued his final commands for the last defence of the Breton fortress.
*
They brought Merdynn up on deck as the fishing boat rounded the headland and as he lay there he heard Morveren’s brothers talking about the bodies of two children they had seen broken against the rocks at the base of the cliffs just above the waves that pounded in from the sea. He wondered if they were the bodies of Charljenka and Nialgrada the two young goat herders who they had come across at the abandoned village during their flight through the Shadow Lands. Perhaps, at the last moment, they had leapt to their deaths rather than face their soul stealers.
Two of the brothers lifted Merdynn on his cot and carried him up the steep steps to the top of the headland. The beacon had burned low but it still sent grey smoke billowing upwards and eastwards. It had served its purpose and guided them into the coastal Breton fortress but they were too late. The fortress had finally fallen and Merdynn’s soul screamed in anguish that the day he had lost after being stabbed by Ethain had been the difference between saving Cei and the Bretons and their deaths at the hands of the Adren.
They raised him up so that he could see across the headland to the wall that had protected them all for so long. Above the edge of the wall he could see the tops of several tall wooden towers and knew how the Adren had finally broken through. The gates were torn from their iron brackets and lay askew to either side of the gaping entrance. Merdynn thought that they had been broken after the Adren had gotten in. The hall where the wounded had been tended was just a smoking ruin with only a few of its timber struts still standing upright. Merdynn wondered if Leah had died before they broke through.
The pain that consumed him seemed to subside as he imagined the pain of those who had died here during the last hours of their long defence. To have lasted the six months of winter only to have died hours from salvation struck him as cruel beyond fate, and the tears welled in his old eyes.
The brothers were searching among the ruins of the village and along the base of the wall but Merdynn knew they would find no one, either alive or dead. He could feel something inside him twist in despair that he should have failed them. He could not shake the image of Trevenna’s turquoise blue eyes and Cei’s easy smile and neither could he shake the certainty that he would never see either again. He tortured himself by trying to guess if they had fallen defending the wall or if Aelfhelm had tried to hold the wall while Cei and the others raced for the harbour, desperately trying to buy another hour or two from their destiny in the hope that he would return in time. All the long years he had lived and he was a too late by a few hours. He gripped the grass in his clenched fists as he dwelt on how his friends had died. Perhaps they had been separated from each other in their headlong race for the steps to the harbour and been cut down one by one. Perhaps they had died in desperate, small groups surrounded and overwhelmed by the enemy.
Morveren’s brothers returned and shook their heads. They made to lift Merdynn and take him back to the boat but Merdynn directed them to the western side of the headland and asked to be placed there. At first they were unwilling to leave him and protested that he should return with them as there was nothing he could do here now. Merdynn let them insist then cajole and finally plead but when they were silent he just gave them a message to take to Arthur who would be at the Causeway.
‘Just tell him that I did what I could and it wasn’t enough. Arthur must stand against the Adren, he must stand against the tide. My task is unfinished and we shall not meet again. We died. We all died. Ethain betrayed us but the blame is mine. Tell Arthur to look for him. Arthur must find him. Now go.’
They left Merdynn leaning against a rock so that he faced the rising sun in the West. Seagulls effortlessly rode the currents along the cliff face below him. His sight gradually dimmed as despair and regret weighed down his soul. His hands opened lifelessly on either side, resting on the ground where the long tussock grass was tugged by the cold wind.
Chapter Eight
‘Yes, but can we trust him?’ Lord Venning was pacing the small room without looking at Commander Kane who sat at a table near the fire.
‘The alternative is Arthur and we both know we can trust him to do as he says and that course would only lead to complete disaster,’ Kane replied.
He knew his Commander was right, that Arthur would lead the Cithol to disaster, but he was still fearful of the choices he had just made. The fire had been lit for the visitor who had just left and it
s flickering light caused their shadows to leap and stutter in the otherwise dark room. Commander Kane kept his eyes on Lord Venning as he paced back and forth.
‘You know that Arthur and his savages won’t keep the Adren at bay for long. And you know that Arthur would rather destroy the Veiled City than see it fall into the hands of his enemies.’ Kane could see that Lord Venning was still unconvinced about the course they had chosen and he inwardly cursed him for his weakness. It’s too late now to have doubts you old fool, he thought to himself.
‘This is the only way that we can keep what has been ours ever since we made this our home. Any other course would have scattered us to the outside world to live among the barbarians and even that would have been short lived for the Adren will kill everyone who oppose them. This was the only way,’ Kane said, trying to mollify the other’s conscience.
Lord Venning remained silent as he crossed and re-crossed the small chamber. Kane wanted to scream at him to stand still but instead added gently, ‘Any other choice would have condemned your people to death.’
Lord Venning finally stopped pacing and looked at Kane. ‘I’ve condemned everyone outside the Winter Wood to certain death at the hands of the Adren.’
‘Could you have saved them? No. But you could save your people and you have. Let the kings and chieftains of the savages worry about Britain. Your responsibility is to your people and what you’ve done tonight saves them from the savages’ fate.’
