by Simon Lister
Ceinwen watched as they began recounting the most recent battle. She had seen it dozens of times. The first thing a group did when they came back from the front of the battle was to see to their wounded and then their own injuries. Then it was food, relive the battle and sleep where they sat. Always in that order and it was never long before sleep overcame them. The only exception was before her now and that was Cael who, as ever, put food as his first and last priority.
She often found herself cleaning out the cuts and wounds of warriors who had fallen asleep as she treated them, dead to the world and oblivious to what she was doing. Many of the lighter injuries just needed disinfecting and dressing but she knew from experience that to delay treating such wounds would inevitably lead to the far more serious problems of infections and fever. She had five others working with her, young sons and daughters of Anglian warriors who, like those who staffed the kitchens, had refused to leave for Caer Sulis when the others had. Each was invaluable and they worked their way through each returning group of warriors and rarely had time enough to rest or eat.
The oldest and leader of these children was a young sandy-haired Anglian boy called Aelfric and Ceinwen called him over. He stood before them and reported on who among the new arrivals needed her attention saying that he would deal with the others.
Morgund looked up at the boy as he delivered his verdicts with a serious face and complete confidence in his own judgements. Ceinwen was used to both his manner and his seriousness which seemed so out of place in one so young but Morgund watched fascinated then burst out laughing.
‘I see the Anglians have found a young Cei to organise them!’
The others, finishing off the last of the food as they sat around the fire, grinned at the boy but he just looked them over and nodded to them before telling them where they could find dry blankets if they wished to sleep. He made to go then turned back to them and told them that if they wanted any weapons sharpened whilst they slept then to leave them there by the fire where they could pick them up after they had rested. He strode off purposefully to organise the other children with the good-natured laughter of the warriors following him but inside he was swelling with pride at being likened to his warlord.
They were not diverted long by the young Anglian and they heaved themselves to their feet and trudged off to collect dry blankets and steal as much sleep as they could. Ceinwen noticed that they all left their weapons behind to be sharpened.
Normally she would have let them sleep for six hours but everyone who was asleep in the compound was woken four hours later when ten warriors burst through the main gate dragging and carrying wounded. The largest of them was shouting to rouse everyone and Ceinwen dropped what she was doing and sprinted across to him. She recognised Saewulf, the towering Anglian they had come across in the Shadow Lands raid, although she had no recollection of having been carried by him all the way from the first wall back to the Gates. She also recognised the man he was half-carrying as Berwyn, the second Anglian they had rescued from the forests outside the Belgae villages.
Berwyn was moaning and clutching his bloody stomach and it was all Saewulf could do to hold him in an upright position. Other warriors were streaming in through the gate and suddenly the camp was in chaos. Ceinwen looked up at Saewulf and shouted to make herself heard above the growing confusion.
‘What’s happening?’
‘The Adren have broken through!’
‘Where’s Arthur?’
‘Don’t know! Last I saw he was trying to hold the rearguard together. There’s just too many of them, they overran the first ditch position. Arthur tried to hold them in the ground before the last ditch!’
Ceinwen quickly looked around the mayhem at the main gate and saw Morgund and the others running towards her with their newly sharpened weapons. Despite the pain she forced her jaw to work and screamed out above the noise of the chaos to get everyone’s attention.
‘Get Berwyn and the other wounded to those fires over there! I want ten of you on the wheel to retract the bridge but wait for the order! Who knows how to fire that contraption above the gates? You four get up there! The rest of you follow me!’
With Morgund and the other Wessex warriors by her side and the rest of them following her she raced out of the main gate and into the fog of the Causeway.
Within a few paces they were crossing the bridge that spanned the fifty-yard gap that had been cut in the Causeway. Below them the swollen melt waters of the marshes swirled and eddied. Ceinwen could already hear the frantic sounds of battle ahead of her. There was only about two hundred yards between the bridge they had just crossed and the first ditch that Saewulf said had been overrun but the fog made it impossible to judge how far ahead the battle was. Bloodied warriors were streaming past them as they ran back towards the Gates then without any warning at all they ran straight into the charging Adren.
There was no time to form battle lines or a shield wall and the fighting erupted in a vicious uncontrolled melee. The warriors of Briton instinctively tried to form small fighting units and Ceinwen found herself back to back with Morgund as they both hacked at their frenzied Adren opponents. Morgund was roaring with all his might for the Britons to keep advancing. Somewhere ahead of them Arthur was making a stand and with the Adren now behind him there was no way he could retreat back to the Gates.
The fifty warriors who had followed Ceinwen from the compound had checked the Adren charge but it was still chaotic with individual duels and small groups interspersed and fighting each other. More Adren were joining the battle and the Britons were too enmeshed in fighting for their lives to be able to put any order to the anarchy. Their own charge towards Arthur had been checked too and a bloody stalemate was developing as the furious fighting continued.
Ceinwen took a blow on the shoulder and was knocked to the ground. Morgund swung at her attacker as she scrambled back to her feet to block a blow aimed at Morgund’s back. They had swapped opponents and the speed and unexpectedness of the switch distracted the Adren she was facing long enough for her to slip her sword under his guard. She glanced at her shoulder and saw the iron strip, which had been fixed into her battle jerkin, bent into a ninety-degree angle. She only had a moment to think that without that strip she would have certainly lost her arm before two more Adren threw themselves at her. She struggled to take one blow on her shield but her arm was already deadening from the previous blow and she barely managed to deflect the Adren’s weapon. She twisted to avoid the second attack and swung around slashing with her own sword but the Adren caught the blow on his shield while her second attacker swung below her limp shield at her legs. She saw it just in time and leapt clear. Then suddenly Balor was crashing into her assailants with his heavy war axe smashing one aside and disembowelling the other.
‘We have to retreat!’ he shouted.
But before she could answer more Adren were upon them and they were once again fighting for their lives and trying to hold their ground. Above the furious racket surrounding her Ceinwen heard a new source of battle further along the Causeway and unseen in the fog. Then she heard Arthur’s voice roaring out commands. She hammered away the sword thrust at her and risked a glance towards the growing din of the new battle and saw about thirty warriors emerging from the mist coming towards them in a tight square with their shields raised and interlocking. Adren were swarming all around the square like wasps; throwing themselves at the wall as the Britons hacked down over their shields and gradually, yard by yard, fought their way back towards the Gates.
Morgund had seen it too and was shouting himself hoarse for the warriors entangled in the melee to make their way to either side of the square. Ceinwen immediately saw what he intended to do. If they could get enough warriors to the sides of the square then they could form a shield wall across the Causeway and stop any further Adren getting beyond them. They could retreat back to the bridge and, once they were across, it could be retracted leaving the Adren on the far side of the gap in the Causewa
y.
They battled their way to one side of the retreating square and Arthur’s voice could be heard giving the command for the two sides facing the marshes to open and form a line across the Causeway. Those warriors previously facing the Gates now rushed out to attack the Adren caught behind the shield wall.
Ceinwen found herself fighting alongside the Anglian commander, Hengest. As they locked shields she shouted out to him if Ruadan was with the square. He nodded frantically before staggering under a blow and returning it with a thrust back over the top of his battered shield.
The Adren loose behind the Britons were quickly slaughtered and under Arthur’s command the shield wall began inching its way back to the bridge again. When they were thirty yards from the gap Ceinwen heard Arthur behind her shouting to those in the wall to prepare to form a square again. Then he was gone to the other end of the line to give them the same instruction. Ceinwen realised that the bridge was narrower than the Causeway and they had to reform in order for the ends of the line not to be caught with the gap at their backs.
Arthur bellowed out his orders and the shield wall broke at right angles one third in from each end of the line. The Adren attack increased in ferocity as the warriors began crossing the bridge and two more of the Britons fell in the centre of the wall. Arthur was at the breach instantly and met the Adren with his own raging attack. They fell back before him and the wall held.
Most of the Britons were inside the compound now and Arthur was holding the open main gate with a double line of warriors while the Adren crammed on to the bridge as they fought to get past the narrowed shield wall. There was no way to retract the bridge with the Adren still on it and with Arthur’s warriors blocking the gateway. Those already inside the fort were lined up on the wall and sending volleys of arrows down onto the bridge but more and more Adren were pressing on from the Causeway and instantly taking the places of those that fell. With the open Gates before them the Adren were sensing victory and so great was their desire to annihilate the Britons that many were forced off the edges of the bridge and the sides of the gap and fell to their deaths in the sucking marsh.
Ceinwen left the second line of shields and raced up to the parapet above the main gate yelling as she went.
‘Aim it at the bridge! Now!’
As she reached Hengest’s monstrous crossbow it finally fired. She flinched involuntarily at the crashing sound then stared at the havoc of destruction it had caused on the bridge. She continued staring even as the bridge was jerked away from the far bank stranding the Adren on the other side of the fifty-yard gap. The bridge was littered with dead and dying Adren. Limbs and bodies were scattered everywhere in horrendous bloody heaps. Some of the unrecognisably mutilated bodies were crawling and screaming through the wreckage as the bridge was withdrawn into the fort and the gates swung shut.
Ceinwen stared at the weapon in front of her and at the ruined bodies below as Arthur raced up to the parapet to join her. She turned her blank gaze towards him; Arthur was covered in sweat-streaked blood and gripping the top edge of the wall with both hands as he surveyed the ruination below. He was smiling.
*
Captain Terrill stared out across the underground lake. Its dark, still surface reflected the lights from the dwellings on the far bank in a perfect mirror image and he tried in vain to discern where the demarcation was between reality and reflection. He gave up the fruitless task and gazed along the shores of the Veiled City. Everywhere the pathways and roads were thronged with people heading towards the Great Hall and the last meal of the day. They were his people. This was his city. This was his home and he had always done whatever he thought was in its best interests. Over the last few days he had told himself this again and again as if repeating it would somehow take away the suffocating feeling of guilt he had felt since Lord Venning had pronounced his judgement.
Both Commander Kane and Lord Venning had praised him for his loyalty and sense of duty in telling them about Fin Seren and the child she carried and at first he had accepted the praise as rightfully his. A hard duty but one he had fulfilled as was expected of a captain of the Cithol but as the comforting words and praise of others continued they began to sound more and more hollow to him.
He looked up towards the unseen roof of the cavern and thought to himself that everything was beginning to feel hollow. Even the city itself was built in an underground hollow and nothing inside it rang true any longer. He asked himself why, if everything he had done was right, did he feel like a traitor? Did these feelings spring from wanting to put Seren before the good of the Cithol people or was there something deeper and more fundamentally wrong in what was happening? The sense of guilt and remorse haunted him and his thoughts kept returning to the near encounter with the Adren Master and he knew deep down that he had done something terribly wrong.
His loyalty and duty to his office and Lord were at complete odds to his own sense of right and wrong, and try as he might he could not quieten the inner voice that drilled away at his conscience. He looked around at his city again and marvelled at its beauty, at how it blended so naturally with its surroundings. No wonder, he thought, that the barbarians who had visited it looked upon it in awe. No wonder that they thought it was powered by some magic of their gods because it was a truly wonderful city. In all the world there was only one other like it and that was the Shadow Land City commanded by Lazure Ulan; the Adren Master who was so like Merdynn and yet so opposite.
Terrill gazed into the lake once more, ignoring the people who stared at him as they passed by. The questions that had been hunting him finally caught up and cornered his conscience demanding answers so that they could finally find rest. What was best for the Veiled City? Would Lazure remain true to his alliance and join with the Cithol in recreating the glory of the old world or would he enslave them for his own purposes? If Arthur escaped the trap on the Causeway could and would he defend the Veiled City against the Adren? Was Fin Seren right and her father wrong or were her emotional allegiances warped and untrustworthy? Where did his loyalty ultimately lie; with his superiors or with his people?
Terrill started to walk aimlessly along the smooth stone pathways that wound around the fringes of the lake. He was sure that Merdynn was completely trustworthy and although he thought of Arthur as a violent barbarian he nonetheless believed him to be a man of his word. He also put a lot of faith in Seren’s judgement and she too was adamant that Arthur was the city’s only hope. His answers were swaying away from the Cithol leadership and he stopped by a small stone bridge that arced gently alongside the path as it carried water off from the lake in a fashioned channel. By chance he had arrived at the point where the water was siphoned off and re-directed to the deeper chambers under the lake where the ancient source generated the power for the Veiled City.
Terrill knew that this was at the centre of it all. The city and its people lived only because of its hidden power. Lazure wanted to harness that power for greater purposes than just keeping a city alive and Merdynn was desperate to keep the Adren from reaching it. To follow Lord Venning’s course was perhaps the best way to keep his people alive and his city intact but Terrill wondered at what cost. To follow Merdynn’s course and side with the Britons would mean to win everything or lose everything.
He suddenly saw the answer as quite simple. If they threw their lot in with Lazure then they would surely be slaves to his design. If they backed the Britons then at worst they would end up as slaves to Lazure but at best they would keep the Veiled City as it had ever been and with it their safety and seclusion. It was not a case of whether he should be loyal to Merdynn or Lord Venning; he should hold true to what he thought was ultimately right.
He retraced his footsteps along the lakeshore knowing now what he had to do and knowing that he had little time to do it in.
*
Seren lay on her hard bed counting out the days in her head until her child was due. She had done the same thing numerous times but it calmed her mind and shut out th
e worst of the frustrations that burned inside her. She came to the same conclusion she always came to; the child would be born in late autumn as the sun set in the East. It would be born to the winter and she was delighted that it should be so. Locked in her cell she longed even harder to be in the Winter Garden with the cold stars overhead and the ice around her. Her thoughts were straying once more to the night she had spent with Arthur in the Garden when she heard a scuffling outside her room and a muffled cry.
She sat up on her bed and stared anxiously at the door hearing the rattle of keys from the other side. It swung open abruptly and Terrill burst in.
‘Terrill?’
‘Quick. There’s no time to explain we only have seconds!’
Seren sat staring at him completely nonplussed and he dashed across to her and dragged her from the bed. He handed her a cloak and a pair of stout leather boots.
‘Put these on. Hurry!’ He spoke with such a desperate urgency that Seren did as he asked despite not understanding what was happening around her.
He took her by the arm and pulled her out of the room and across the corridor. She stared briefly at the two guards who were crumpled on the floor to either side of the doorway. She did not know if they were alive or dead and she had no time to find out as Terrill hauled her into the room opposite her vacated cell. He was throwing aside the various furniture that covered the narrow tunnel that they had previously used to sneak near enough to overhear the aftermath of the meeting with Lazure.
‘Surely they’ve blocked it off?’ she said as it belatedly dawned on her that Terrill was helping her to escape.
‘No. I never told them it was how we got in. Help me!’
She joined him in casting aside the detritus.
‘You first. Hurry! If we don’t get into the wood before they discover you’re gone we’ll never make it!’
