by Simon Lister
Arthur stared at him in silence for a long minute and then said, ‘Did the message go like this: ‘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.’?’
Sal stared at the face he could not see. He shuddered and quickly made the sign to ward off evil.
‘Was that the message?’ Arthur asked again.
‘Gods, yes, that was it exactly. How...?’
‘Tell no one of this.’
Arthur turned his glance towards Morveren and she quickly ushered her brothers out of the room. They were glad to get out. She came back in and sat down heavily before quietly saying, ‘So they’re all dead. All of them. Even Merdynn.’
Arthur crossed the small room and strapped his sword on without replying. As he left his place by the open shutters Morveren could at last see the expression on his face and a shaft of fear coursed through her.
‘They didn’t see Merdynn die and Merdynn didn’t see the others fall,’ she spoke quickly, the words tumbling out onto one another in her haste.
Arthur ignored her and took a step towards the door. With one violent kick he tore it from its hinges and sent it flying into the hall.
‘Where’s Ceinwen?’ he roared in the sudden silence. Ethain was still alive and somewhere in Britain and he needed someone to find him and find him quickly.
The warriors in the hall remained frozen in their places as the dust settled around the door. Arthur took a step towards them and as he scanned their faces looking for Ceinwen he spotted Aelfric racing out of the main doors to find her.
‘Mar’h!’
Mar’h stepped forward and cast a glance towards Morveren who stood in the doorway to Arthur’s chamber wondering what on earth had prompted Arthur’s rage.
‘I want your legion assembled before the main gates within the hour!’ Arthur turned away from Mar’h and addressed the rest of the warriors in the hall.
‘Merdynn’s quest east has failed. It is down to us and us alone to defeat the Adren. Your captains know the plan so get ready what you need and prepare to leave immediately.’
The warriors sprang to life and the hall suddenly filled with noise again. Mar’h collided with Ceinwen as he dashed from the hall.
‘What’s going on?’ she asked him.
‘Morveren took her brothers to see Arthur and now he’s telling us that Merdynn and the others have failed!’
‘They’re dead?’ Ceinwen asked horrified by the news.
‘Don’t know. Ask Morveren, but don’t ask Arthur! I’ve got to get the legion ready to move within the hour!’
‘Impossible!’
‘I know,’ Mar’h said over his shoulder as he ran out into the sunshine.
Ceinwen stepped inside the doorway to make room for those dashing out and took a second to survey the frantic activity in the hall. She stopped Gwyna as she was barging her way out. ‘Do you know any more about all this?’
‘I know as much as you do,’ Gwyna replied bitterly, regretting now that she had left Arthur’s chamber when Morveren had brought the message.
Ceinwen stared across the hall and saw Arthur standing outside his chamber. With a deep breath she made her way across to him and her feeling of trepidation doubled when she saw the door to his chamber lying in the dust on the ground.
‘What’s happened Arthur?’ she said looking up at him.
He turned and entered the small room and she followed. Morveren was still there and she exchanged a wary glance with her.
‘I want you to find Ethain and I want you to bring him here,’ Arthur said coldly.
‘Ethain? How? He’s in the Shadow Lands. Isn’t he?’ Ceinwen looked quickly between Arthur and Morveren, confused by his request and scared that her confusion would enrage him further.
‘Explain it!’ Arthur barked at Morveren and strode from the room. Morveren grimaced and sat down on the bed.
‘What’s going on, Morveren? People are saying that Cei and Merdynn are dead. Is it true?’
‘We don’t know that. Or about the others. Not for certain anyway.’
‘What do we know then?’ Ceinwen asked exasperated.
‘Merdynn turned up at my village around the time of Imbolc...’
‘But that’s months ago!’ Ceinwen interrupted.
‘My stupid brothers followed the orders they’d been given and decided to take the boats around to the Haven first and then join Mar’h’s legion before getting the message to Arthur.’
‘Gods!’
‘I know, I thought Arthur was going to kill them with his bare hands. Perhaps he should have.’
‘What was Merdynn doing at your village?’
‘He arrived in a small boat with Cuthwin and Ethain. It seems that Ethain attacked them both, killing Cuthwin and injuring Merdynn before running for it.’
Ceinwen sat down heavily on the only chair in the room shocked by what Morveren was telling her.
‘Ethain attacked them?’
‘Again, we don’t know for sure. It’s possible they were attacked before they set sail but part of Merdynn’s message was that Ethain had betrayed them and for Arthur to look for him.’
‘But why would he do that? What about the others?’
‘The others were trapped on the Breton coast by an Adren army. That’s why Merdynn sailed to Wessex, to get help or at least to get boats to rescue them.’
Ceinwen just sat staring at Morveren in shock so she continued, ‘My brothers took Merdynn back to the coast but when they got there the battle was over and neither Cei’s lot nor the Adren were anywhere to be seen. Merdynn was convinced they had been overwhelmed.’
‘Oh gods, Cei? Trevenna? All of them?’
‘And Merdynn too. He demanded to be left there so my brothers sailed back without him.’
‘Could they have escaped somehow?’
‘I told Arthur that no one had seen Cei or his sister fall and my brothers don’t know for sure that Merdynn died either but, well, you saw him. Part of Merdynn’s message was that the quest east had failed and that they had all died and Arthur certainly seems to believe it.’
‘Everyone but Ethain?’
‘And that’s why Arthur wants you to find him. None of it seems possible does it?’
‘Why would Ethain attack Cuthwin and Merdynn? It just doesn’t make any sense. How am I going to find him? He could be anywhere in Britain by now!’
‘I don’t know, Ceinwen, but I wouldn’t say that to Arthur if I were you.’
‘So I’ve got to go traipsing round Wessex trying to find one person, who could be anywhere, while everyone else launches an attack upon the Adren?’
‘Yes,’ Arthur said from the open doorway. They both jumped at the sound of his voice and turned to look at him as he continued, ‘And I want you to find him quickly. Take Morveren with you. Tell no one of Ethain. Pack some food and go now.’
He stepped aside to make room for them to leave and they both left without a further word. Arthur packed the few things he needed into a small saddlebag and returned to the frantic scenes of preparation in the compound. He spent the next hour overseeing the packing of provisions for what he estimated to be a three-week campaign. Mar’h had told him that his legion could cover twenty to twenty-five miles a day and while the mounted warriors could cover more ground than that Arthur had based his estimates on the slowest of his forces.
Long after the hour had passed Mar’h came up to Arthur and told him that the legion was assembled before the main gate. Arthur left the final storing of weapons and food to Gereint and climbed the steps to the parapet by the gates. The walls of Caer Cadarn were encircled by a deep and broad ditch and over three thousand of Mar’h’s legion were now standing crowded together on the banks of this ditch and looking at their warlord who stood before them.
A
rthur surveyed them in silence for a minute then his voice roared out to them, ‘You’ve had to leave your families behind. You’ve had to abandon your villages. You’ve had to abandon your fields and your boats. Why? Because of the Adren.
‘We’ve stood against them on the Causeway. They fell in their thousands. We’ve fought them in the Winter Wood. Their corpses lie forever buried in the Veiled City. Now you, the peoples of Britain, have come to join the battle. Anglians, Wessex, Mercians and those from the North have come together to join the battle. We will never abandon each other. We will never abandon the fight. We will never abandon our land, our Britain.
‘The enemy were many. They thought to slaughter us like they had the other kingdoms to the East. Half of their number are now dead. Together we will destroy the remaining half. You have nothing to fear from the Adren. Every single one of you is more than a match for them. Trust your captains. Trust your training. Trust each other and never forget what it is you’re fighting for. You fight for the person next to you. You fight for your homes and families. You’re warriors of Britain and you fight for Britain. We fight for Britain!’
Over three thousand voices echoed the cry.
*
Within a few hours Caer Cadarn stood almost deserted; only a handful of elders remained to feed the remaining livestock and look after the youngest of the warriors’ children. They found the sudden peace more unsettling than the preceding chaos and they went about their business with an unnatural quiet long after the raised dust on the Ridgeway had drifted away. The children were too young to understand what was being undertaken and the adults were lost in their own memories of battles that they had lived through and each of them privately recalled the names and faces of those who had been denied old age.
While the war band and the legion made for the Westway, Arthur headed straight for the village on the Isis where Hengest and the Anglians had gone. He travelled alone and kept his horse at a steady walking pace. The journey through the rolling downs and on into the Isis valley would take a good ten hours and with the comparatively slow pace of the legion on the Westway he knew there was little to be gained by hurrying so he used the time to rein in his anger. Now that his battle plan was in operation, the violent rage that Merdynn’s message had precipitated had channelled itself into a cold, seething fury.
The sky was cloudless and the overhead sun was already beginning to brown the long grass that reached up to his stirrups. Small clouds of dust rose from the baked and cracked earth about his horse’s hooves and everywhere the deep greens of spring were fading as the summer gradually burned the colour from the landscape.
The hours and miles slipped by and both man and beast sweated freely in the breezeless heat. He stopped in a grove of oak trees that grew on either side of a small brook whose banks had been undercut by the faster running waters of early spring. He refilled his water flask while his horse lowered its head to drink lengthily from the swirling water.
His thoughts had alternated between Seren, and their unborn child, to the fates of Merdynn and Cei. His mind had gone back to the time when as a young child he had taken his baby sister and hid them both from an Uathach raid in the village well. That was when Merdynn had first found him and taken him to Caer Cadarn and it was not long after that he first met Cei who had come to the hill fort as one of the children of a visiting group of Anglian warriors. The same question kept repeating itself; were they all dead? He knew that if they were then it was he who had sent them to their deaths.
His fury ebbed and flowed and he dragged his horse across the stream and continued on to the Isis trying to force his thoughts onto the plan for the coming battle but the soporific heat dulled his thoughts and he found himself once again dwelling on Seren and the child. Thoughts of her spiked his anger towards the Adren and Lazure and once again he set his mind to the coming battle.
The first part of the plan relied heavily on each section of his army doing exactly what they were supposed to do, and doing so exactly when they were supposed to do it. If it worked then the second part should be simple enough and if it did not work then they were unlikely to need the second part of the plan. His impatience to be at the Isis forced him to kick his horse into a canter for the last few miles across the valley floor.
He could hear the echoing of hammers and axes from half a mile away and he urged his horse onwards. The village sprawled along the bank of the Isis for about a thousand yards. It had no defensive wall and the wooden and thatch dwellings all stood on stilts set firmly into the earth to avoid the floodwaters of early spring. Dug-out canoes and small boats lined the bank but the fields were untended and the livestock pens empty; the villagers had long since left for the Haven.
Hengest had spotted Arthur riding across the valley and one by one the Anglian warriors stopped their work and watched as he approached. The plan had been for them to send word to Arthur once they had finished so they were puzzled and a little anxious to see him riding so hastily towards them.
*
The Anglians were dismayed to hear the message that Merdynn had sent to Arthur. Some of them held on to the belief that Cei had somehow managed to escape from the Breton fortress but most of them accepted what they had long held as inevitable. Arthur did not tell them about the part that Ethain had played and he had asked Morveren and Ceinwen to keep Merdynn’s accusation of betrayal to themselves, at least until they had brought Ethain before him.
They were angry too; like the Wessex warriors they had lost most of their war band to the Adren soldiers but unlike the Wessex they had lost their warlord too and they wanted revenge on those who had invaded their tribal lands to the East. They knew Arthur would be feeling the same way; Cei had been like a brother to him and if Cei was lost then so was Arthur’s sister, Trevenna. They wanted vengeance and they listened avidly as Arthur outlined his battle plan to them and told them more about Mar’h’s legion and their battle readiness.
When he had finished he told them to make ready to leave while Hengest showed him what they had been working on. The two of them walked down to the river’s edge where two jetties stood out into the eddying current.
‘We’ve only had time to build six of them,’ Hengest said with an apologetic shrug.
‘Six will be enough. Are they ready?’ Arthur asked surveying the barges tied alongside the jetties.
‘They’re a shame to Anglian craftsmanship. They aren’t even watertight yet but if we have to leave now then, well, they won’t keep your feet dry but they’ll stay afloat.’
‘Good. And they can each carry twenty or so people and still stay afloat?’
‘Yes,’ Hengest replied reluctantly as he eyed the barges which were little more than rafts with sides.
‘You can continue the work as we head down river.’
Hengest nodded unhappily, still feeling ashamed to be associated with such rudimentary craftwork. Arthur left him to organise the final preparation of the barges and went to find Laethrig. When he found him he took him to one side and talked to him for twenty minutes explaining exactly what it was he needed him to do. As Laethrig rode back to the Haven the Anglians led their horses onto the barges in readiness for departure. Arthur’s horse required some convincing and refused to step onto the leaky barge until the last of the Anglian horses was led aboard.
Finally they were ready and the barges were pushed away from the wharves and rowed out to the faster currents in midstream. The horses were in the barges steered by Aylydd, Lissa and the giant Saewulf; each of which was being towed by one of the other boats that were manned by the rest of the Anglian warriors. The Isis was flowing fast enough to carry the boats downstream without much need for rowing, except when the extra momentum was needed for steerage, and the miles slipped effortlessly by.
Balor and Arthur stood at the front of the leading barge with the cool river water slopping back and forth over their feet. The boats had proved to be as leaky as Hengest had feared but the Anglians’ were in no mood to put up with any crit
icism as Balor had quickly found out when he complained about the amount of water they were shipping; he had been told in terms that left little to be misunderstood that he was welcome to swim if he preferred. He had the good sense to keep his reply of ‘might as well be’ to a low mutter that only Arthur could hear.
Neither Arthur nor Balor had much to do during the journey as the Anglians had hastily taken the rowing benches, not trusting the Wessex warriors to be any use whatsoever on water, even on a sedate river. Most of them remembered the sea crossing back from the Shadow Lands when Balor had been persistently seasick and Arthur had stood at the prow hurling abuse at the storm-wracked seas and their respective performances had only confirmed to the Anglians what they had always thought; the Wessex warriors should keep their feet dry and leave the seas to themselves.
Balor left his place at the bow and splashed his way back to the stores. The Anglians watched him warily as he selected some food and returned to his place by Arthur. He handed him an apple and some hard cheese, which Arthur took without any acknowledgement. Balor followed his gaze and together they watched a hawk hovering high over the reeds and long grasses that stretched along the bank to their left. The hawk slipped the current and dropped fifty-feet before settling once again to its patient hunting of the reeds. They turned to carry on watching as the boat slipped onwards and the hawk suddenly bent its wings and arrowed straight down into the reeds. It emerged in a graceless flurry of beating wings and flew away without its prey.
‘That’s a bad omen for us,’ one of the Anglians muttered. Arthur stared at him scathingly and he refrained from uttering any further opinions.
The country they passed through was open grassland and gently rolling hills much of which was often obscured by the tall reeds that grew along either bank. Occasionally they would pass the remains of a stone buttress on one bank with similar remains mirrored on the opposing bank and these were usually accompanied by clusters of overgrown stone ruins to either side of the river. Balor and some of the Anglians would make the sign to ward off the evil spirits that were known to haunt such ruins and the oars would dip into the water to speed them past the unseen danger.
