by Simon Lister
‘Did you know about this tunnel under the Causeway?’
Seren snorted dismissively, ‘Until recently I didn’t know about Caer Sulis, the Causeway or anything else outside the Winter Wood for that matter. I’m beginning to realise that I knew very little about anything of any importance. I’m certain that Arthur doesn’t know about the tunnel.’
‘They’ll be slaughtered then, won’t they?’
‘Yes.’ Seren spoke the word with such wretched despair that Terrill could not bear to look at her.
‘Then we best hope that Lazure keeps his word with Lord Venning.’
‘He won’t! Surely we can warn Arthur somehow?’ Seren said.
‘How?’
‘I don’t know!’
‘Well, we can’t.’
‘Then Merdynn!’
‘But he’s trapped or fallen somewhere on the Breton Coast, wherever that is.’
‘Then we’ll make for the Causeway and hope we are in time.’
‘On foot! And in summer light?’
‘We’ll take one of the wagons used for carrying food to Caer Sulis!’
‘We? You want me to go against Lord Venning and the Veiled City?’
Seren stared at Terrill incredulously. ‘It’s Lord Venning who’s abandoned the Veiled City. Perhaps Arthur can save it. It’s time to decide where your loyalties lie, Terrill. Are you loyal to Lord Venning or to the Cithol? Merdynn or Lazure Ulan? The Britons or the Adren? Make no mistake, these are the choices now.’
Terrill sat in the flickering light of the stone cellar with his head in his hands. Seren watched him, waiting to see which way he would choose.
*
Arthur’s war band rode two or three abreast and the column of two hundred and fifty warriors lined the Westway for half a mile as they crossed the South Downs and cantered towards the Causeway but the land was empty and there was no one to witness the sight of the southern war bands riding to war.
The frozen ground had spilled the recent rains and melting snow into fast flowing rills and turbulent streams that cut garrulously across a landscape newly released from the silence of winter. The Westway bridged the swollen rivers and followed the higher ground wherever possible to avoid the perennial flooding of low-lying land and they made good time on their journey from Caer Sulis.
Their shadows stretched out before them across the rolling grasslands as the sun crept its way over the western horizon behind them. As they approached the white cliffs they saw more and more makeshift huts and roundhouses where the families of the Anglian war band had set up their temporary home before moving on once again for the safety of Whitehorse Hill. A few of the Anglians remained to tend to the livestock that had already been loosed to pasture as best they could on the still frozen grass. The Anglians had kept a small part of their herds on these pastures to supply the warriors on the Causeway with fresh meat and milk. The mix of cattle, sheep and goats stood in the cold light and waited patiently for the last of the winter feed to be rolled out to them. They ignored the horsemen and faced the West as if paying homage to the sunrise.
Despite the rising sun and the westerly wind it was a cold and bitter dawn. The first hints of the coming summer were all around the riders but they only served to emphasise how short a time they had before the eastern armies unleashed their onslaught.
When Arthur reached the cliffs above the Causeway he saw that a palisade had been built along the entire length of the headland. He reined his horse in and surveyed the land below. The warriors fanned out to either side of him along the cliff top. Although they could not hear it from where they were a loud cheer went up from the eighty Anglian and Wessex warriors who had guarded the Causeway during the dark winter months when they saw Arthur’s war band outlined on the sea cliffs behind them.
The dawn sunlight had not yet reached the Causeway below them and the Channel Marshes were still in shadowed twilight and snaked by mists. The line of the elevated Causeway could be seen between the twisting curls of vapour as it led straight across the marshes and on to the distant shores that were already bathed in sunlight. Those on the cliff top could see the haze of smoke from thousands of fires that burned on the far land where the Adren waited. Arthur turned his horse and started down the steep path that led into the shadowed expanse below.
He had left the defence of the Causeway in the hands of Ruadan, his second in command, and Hengest who was the son of Aelfhelm and who led the Anglians in Cei’s absence. As they made their way down the side of the towering white chalk cliffs they studied and approved of the defensive positions that had been added over the winter months. They hoped that they would be redundant for if they had to use them it would mean that the Causeway had fallen and they would be retreating back into the mainland. They knew that if they could not halt the Adren host at the Gates then they had little chance of holding them elsewhere.
Despite these sobering thoughts the warriors began the descent down the cliffs without heavy hearts. They were riding to battle and to defend their land and people. These were the reasons why they had chosen warriors’ lives and many of them looked forward to the coming battle with a blend of anticipation, resolution and confidence.
Wide patches of snow still clung to the shadowed cliff face and the path was slippery with ice. The path downwards grew steeper so Arthur dismounted and those following him did likewise. It was clear that the defenders stationed at the Causeway had re-cut the path to make it steeper and the broader road to the North that had switched back and forth down the cliff side had been cut away altogether. Arthur thought bitterly that with the Eald and Branque villagers massacred there would no longer be any need for the broader road. Like his warriors he was relishing the prospect of fighting the enemy again after so many months of waiting.
When he reached the foot of the cliff he found that Ruadan and Hengest were waiting for him and he led his horse to one side to talk to them as Gwyna and the others passed by and on towards the Causeway Gates.
‘You’ve made the path steeper,’ he said, looking back up at the line of warriors still leading their horses down the track.
The other two exchanged a quick glance. They had not seen Arthur since he had passed through on his way back from the raid on the Shadow Lands but they had heard that since then he had slain the king, forged a treaty with the Uathach, married the daughter of one of the northern chieftains and attempted to bring the Cithol into the alliance against the Adren, yet the first thing he said to them concerned the steeper path. Ruadan smiled. He had known Arthur since the time when Merdynn had brought him to the Wessex war band as a young child and realised that the simple comment on the path said much about what had passed and what concerned the warlord now. Ruadan knew that Arthur would be content that he had done all that he could have done over the winter and while it remained to be seen if it would all come to fruition there was no more he could do to influence the events behind him. His place now was on the Causeway and he was only concerned with how the defences had been organised.
The much younger Hengest was far less familiar with Arthur and the lack of greeting coupled with the immediate focus on their defensive work stopped his many questions dead in their tracks.
‘And we’ve taken away the roadway the villagers used,’ Ruadan replied.
‘I saw that. Good. Do you plan to stable the horses down at the Causeway or on the cliff top?’ Arthur asked and started walking his horse across the flats towards the Gates as he spoke. Ruadan fell in step as he answered and Hengest followed behind feeling resentful that the months of backbreaking work digging up the frozen ground seemed to be going unacknowledged. He found himself wishing Cei was there.
‘No Adren attacks yet?’ Arthur asked turning slightly to put the question to Hengest.
‘Not yet. We thought they were waiting for the dawn but...’ he shrugged.
They passed a series of low wooden walls about three-feet high and spaced a hundred yards apart and to either side of the pathway that led from the foot
of the cliffs to the Causeway. Arthur did not need to ask what they were for and he nodded his approval. To one side of the pathway ran a wide wooden trough fashioned from the lengths of hollowed-out tree trunks and raised above the flat ground by small stone cairns set every twenty-feet or so. The trough channelled fresh water down from the higher land to the Gates and they followed the line of the waterway as they made their way across the flat ground. The aqueduct was probably as old as the Causeway itself and despite numerous attempts to bore wells throughout the half-mile wide stretch of land below the cliffs it was still the only consistent source of fresh drinking water.
During heavy rains and the spring thaw the cliffs offered short-lived springs and waterfalls and the flat land was riddled by pools of water during the early dawn days but the summer sun would soon evaporate the standing water and parch the land turning the spiny grasses brown. It was about half a mile from the base of the cliffs to the beginning of the Causeway and another half a mile from there to the Gates. The marshes crept up to the shores and spread out to either side of the Causeway and for as far as the eye could see the marsh mists wreathed and coiled close to the ground and lingered over the waterways and stagnant pools. The distant seas would soon push their rising spring tides into the wetlands and the early spring sun would attempt to burn it away and the yearly battle would inevitably become obscured in the resulting fog.
Those familiar with the Causeway at this time of year knew the dense fogs of early spring were not far away with their impenetrable banks of ground-hugging clouds that would roll across the marshes and suffocate the senses. The Causeway ran a straight course so it was impossible to go astray but travellers in the marsh fogs would be desperate to reach either end and leave behind the eerie world where vision was limited to the few feet around them and the silence hung like a pestilence depriving them of the ability to see, hear or breathe easily. The sudden piercing cry of an unseen marsh creature had been known to send lone travellers blundering off the Causeway in panic. Those that managed to rein in their fear scrambled back up the banks onto the road once again and lived to tell of their nightmares but those that crashed further into the marshes never came back. The more superstitious of the Anglians said the piercing cries were the echoes of despair from those souls lost in the mists and anyone caught out in the Causeway fog and who heard those cries could not bring themselves to ridicule the superstition.
Eventually the scorching summer sun would burn away the mists and the shimmering air would become filled with the reek from rotting vegetation and the stench from stagnant pools. Clouds of ubiquitous mosquitoes would infest the entire heat-hazed valley and those stationed at the Gates dreaded the still days when the insects would torment them. Standing on the banked earth of the Causeway under the sweltering sun of high summer and swotting at the biting mosquitoes it was almost impossible to believe that only a few months previously it had been the cold, hateful wind that bit as it swept off the frozen marshes layering ice and deep rime over every exposed surface. In the unforgiving days of the dark winter depths it was just as hard to imagine the baked and cracked earth beneath the remorseless sun of summer. Whether an Adren army faced you or not the Causeway was not a good place to be stationed.
No one knew when or how exactly the Causeway had been built. Merdynn had insisted that it was not an undertaking of the previous Age but many doubted that such a feat could be achieved by people like themselves. It ran in an unwavering line for over twelve miles and was the only land link between Britain and the rest of Middangeard and the only way across the Channel Marshes that spread for hundreds of miles to either side of the raised earth bank. Whatever its origins may have been it had certainly stood there since before the Anglians had arrived from the lands north of the Belgae over a thousand years ago. For centuries it had served as a trading and migratory route but the kingdoms of Middangeard had fallen one by one until only the Britons remained and now the Causeway threatened to betray them as a means to convey the Adren to their shores.
As they crossed the flats Arthur sensed Hengest’s resentment. He would normally have ignored it but he realised that with Cei in the Shadow Lands the young warrior carried the responsibilities of the Anglian Warlord and it was, after all, Arthur who had sent Cei east along with Hengest’s father, Aelfhelm.
Hengest knew the real aim of Cei’s journey to the East and how much depended upon it. He also knew how slim the chances of success were and how much slimmer the chances were of their returning home. He was content with that in the knowledge that his father and the others would have gone willingly on such a journey. They were all skilled and experienced warriors and he only wished he was with them, wherever they may be, but he knew his task was to hold the Causeway until Cei and his father destroyed the Adren’s ability to feed their Shadow Land army. Perhaps, he thought, they had succeeded already and that soon the Adren supplies would be running low.
They passed another of the short wooden walls and his resentment towards Arthur’s lack of praise for all their hard work returned. He also felt irked that Arthur had not felt it necessary to explain to either of them anything of what had happened over the winter in Caer Sulis but despite his antipathy towards Arthur he made sure his expression gave nothing away to him. He had seen his anger before and had no desire to ever see it turned towards himself.
Arthur glanced at the young warrior’s hands as they approached the beginning of the Causeway. Despite the wrappings of cloth and thick mittens that Hengest would have worn during the winter Arthur could still see that his hands were raw and blistered. He stopped and inspected the defensive works that had been constructed at the end of the Causeway before it opened up onto the flat land below the cliffs.
‘Did you have to light fires to thaw the earth before you could dig into it?’ he asked the question directly to Hengest giving him the chance to explain what they had done and to give him an opportunity to sing his own praises. Hengest did not need a second invitation and spoke enthusiastically and at length about the winter work on the defences. Arthur did not listen to a word of it. He was not concerned about how the defences had been built only about how they would be employed. As they approached the narrow neck of land that led onto the Causeway Arthur could see that a wooden wall had built across its width. It stood fifteen-feet high with a ramp of earth that sloped up to a rough line about four-feet from the top. It was the last defensive position on the Causeway before it opened up onto the flat land below the cliffs. Two crudely fashioned but stout gates stood open in the centre where the sloping earth had been cut away to allow easy passage for horsemen and carts carrying supplies. Off to the right the aqueduct ran through a gap that had been cut into the wall of upright tree trunks.
Arthur climbed up the ramp and gazed out towards the Gates but the mist that hung above the marshes to either side had begun to wrap itself over the raised Causeway in drifting tendrils and he could no longer see the fortification that was only half a mile away. The other two had joined him and Arthur turned his attention back to the way they had come.
‘So this is the last line of defence on the Causeway?’ he asked them.
‘Yes and between here and the Gates we’ve cut a gap in the Causeway. It’s bridged at the moment but once the attack starts we can replace the bridge with simple planking that we can haul back once we’ve crossed it. If we have to cross it that is.’ Hengest realised that he had perhaps been talking a bit too avidly about the plans for retreating and he glanced to Ruadan for reassurance before continuing, ‘Then it’s the shorter walls for alternated cover until the defences on the cliff path.’
They automatically looked to the white cliffs that towered above the gloomy mists spreading out across the flats. The cliffs seemed as if they were suspended above the ground and Arthur gazed for a moment at the borders of the land he had sworn to protect. The air was still and the mist clung damply to their clothing and chilled their faces. The occasional crying screech carried to them from the hidden marshes with a d
isembodied quality that made it impossible to tell which direction it had come from and leaving them with the feeling that they were intruders in an unfamiliar land.
‘There’s three more walls like this one between the Gates and the far end of the Causeway, with smaller barricades between each one of them,’ Ruadan said, breaking the silence.
‘The real defence will be at the Gates but we can make them pay for every yard they advance along the Causeway,’ Hengest added.
‘Good,’ Arthur replied and walked back down the earth ramp to collect his horse.
When they arrived at the West Gate Arthur told Hengest to gather the warriors who had wintered on the Causeway as he wanted to tell them personally what had happened in Caer Sulis. The war band had ridden on ahead of them and were already inside the Gates greeting those they had not seen in months. When Arthur walked through the gateway the noise died down and the three hundred warriors of the southern tribes turned to him. He stood facing them in silence and then a great roar went up as they hailed the Warlord of Britain. The clamour was echoed beyond the walls as hundreds of marsh birds rose through the surrounding mists in fright at the sudden shouting.
The last of Hengest’s short-lived resentment washed away as he stood proudly by the warlord and basked in the clamouring acclamation. When the shouting died down Arthur told Hengest to take thirty of the newly arrived warriors and replace those manning the defences further along the Causeway. As he rode off Arthur looked around the compound noting the changes and seeing how the recent arrivals were already familiarising themselves with their new surroundings. First on their agenda would be the kitchens, then where they were to sleep and finally where the smithy and weapon supplies were. Arthur glanced after the departing Hengest and Ruadan saw the look.
‘He’s a good man. Young but very talented at constructing defensive works.’
