by Simon Lister
The warriors behind Arthur dropped involuntarily to their knees and hung their heads. Arthur fought the urge to obey and it was all he could do to remain standing.
Lazure looked at him strangely, ‘So you do have some of the old blood. And you have the old sword too. Lay it on the ground and kneel before me. My Master has cause to wish it in his keeping.’
Arthur felt himself bend to put the sword on the ground but gripping it with all his strength he forced himself to straighten up and face Lazure.
‘Do it now! You are commanded!’ Lazure shouted at him and pointed his staff directly at Arthur.
‘No. The sword was never forged for you.’
Arthur wrenched his mind free from Lazure’s control and with a final effort hurled the sword away. It arced high, turning end over end and plunged far out into the raging river.
Lazure’s face twisted in fury and he was about to command his guard to slay the Britons when a chanting began behind Arthur, barely audible at first but rising to soar above the roaring around them. The incantation was repetitive and clear, and something about the strange language seemed immediately familiar to Arthur; suddenly he was remembering the ancient burial mound of Delbaeth Gofannon and Merdynn standing before the entrance and chanting in the same way.
‘Impossible!’ Lazure shrieked, echoing Arthur’s thoughts, ‘You’re dead! Gone from this world!’
Lazure was leaning on his staff and staring with incredulity at the chanting figure beyond Arthur. Arthur turned to see Ethain facing the sea and holding out the staff he had taken from Merdynn.
Lazure’s horrified attention was fixed on the chanting Ethain. Arthur swiftly freed Cei’s war axe from behind him and in one ferocious swing brought it crashing down on Lazure’s outstretched arm. It sliced through the wasted muscle and splintered the bone. Lazure stared in disbelief as his staff and forearm dropped into the mud of the Estuary. His eyes shot up to meet Arthur’s just as Arthur swung the axe with all his strength up under Lazure’s chin snapping his head back and cleaving half his face off. Lazure’s dead body slumped to the ground and a thin wail rose above the wind long after it was possible for him to cry out.
The warriors all around Arthur were coming back to their senses and picking up their fallen weapons. They stumbled to their feet just as Lazure’s enraged guard charged them.
‘Defend Ethain!’ Arthur roared out to them, ‘Defend Ethain!’
Ethain was still facing the sea, still chanting and oblivious to the desperate defence and the dying warriors around him.
The legion were no match for Lazure’s Cithol guard and they were the first to fall to the enemy. The remaining warriors formed a tight ring around the chanting Ethain and fought desperately to keep Lazure’s guard from reaching him but they were outnumbered by an enemy who were at least their equal and Arthur knew they only had minutes before they were overwhelmed.
Ceinwen killed two of her attackers but one of them cut her left arm deeply and she was unable to defend herself from the two swords of her third attacker; she died trying to take him with her. Moments later Balor died avenging her. Gereint and Dystran held out for another minute but it was all they could do to protect themselves and Ethain, and they too fell to the inevitable and died within seconds of each other. Hengest and the Anglians blocked the attackers from reaching Ethain but a renewed charge from the enemy sent Anglian and Cithol alike crashing into the river were they traded blow for blow and death for death.
Arthur could feel the river swelling beyond its banks and running over the backs of his legs. He looked towards the sea for a fraction of second and saw a three-foot wave tumbling across the flats and racing towards them but in the time it had taken him to see it one of the guard had cut through his defence and a sword hacked into his ribs. He stumbled and Ethain was immediately scythed down by two of the Cithol. Arthur hewed at one with Cei’s axe but even as he killed him another sword crashed down on his shoulder, cutting deeply and breaking bone. The last of the Anglians fell in the water beside him and Arthur advanced on his enemies, swinging the axe single-handedly in wide arcs and keeping them at bay as blood poured from his broken shoulder. He roared and cursed at the enemy surrounding him and with a last shout he dived into them crushing the skull of one with his first blow and disembowelling a second before the blows rained down on him from every side. He fell to his knees and was knocked sideways as the wave engulfed them all. He struggled to the surface with his blood darkening the water around him. The sea was surging in behind the wave and the Adren were floundering in the sudden tide. Arthur saw the longboat ease from its cradle and spin as the river’s current fought the tide for possession. He knew that within minutes the Estuary would be swamped by the vicious winter tide. He let Cei’s axe slip from his grasp as his world darkened. The surging sea spun him around and the river’s current took him as he slid beneath the waves. He died knowing that Ethain had brought in the high winter tide. Merdynn had not abandoned Britain.
Epilogue
The old man moved slowly, picking his path between the snow-laden trees with care. The air was frozen still and his shallow breaths plumed in the starlight. The trees were winter-bare with precarious lines of snow thickening the interlocked branches that stood black against the canopied stars. He paused to rest and leant on his staff. He kept his breathing light knowing it was unwise to do otherwise when the cold was this deep. The forest around him was silent and completely motionless, held fast by winter’s peace, but it was not lifeless. He searched the hard snow for the footprints he had been following for the last hour or so and saw them leading on towards the dark shadows ahead. He smiled to himself and resumed his slow pace.
He found her in the clearing ahead and he stopped in the deeper shadows of a once high wall to watch her. She had already set a fire in a snow-covered stone bower that stood in the lee of a lone, magnificent cedar. Her pack lay open beside her and she was selecting food for their meal. She looked over to where he stood and held up a choice of meal in either hand. The old man chuckled to himself and leaving the darker shadows he made his way across to her pointing to the choice in her right hand.
He pulled off his fur mittens and lowered himself onto the blankets that had been doubled on the stone bench and sat with his old hands splayed to the fire’s growing warmth.
‘You’re getting slow, old man. There was a time when it was me who trailed behind you.’
‘And you’re still far too young to be calling me an old man,’ he replied.
She laughed as she placed a pot of water over the fire to boil.
‘Besides, I knew you would come straight to this place.’
‘Oh?’ she enquired.
‘It was your mother’s favourite place.’
She stopped adding vegetables to the pot and looked around at the frozen clearing as the old man continued, ‘She used to call it the Winter Garden and it used to be a place of great beauty.’
‘It must have been a very long time ago.’ The young girl was clearly unimpressed and she resumed her preparations for their meal.
‘It was destroyed thirteen winters ago.’
‘So it was Arthur who destroyed it?’ she asked feigning disinterest.
‘Well, blame’s a tricky arrow – it rarely flies straight and it usually lands wide of the mark.’
‘Like your answers. One day you’ll give a straight answer to a straight question,’ she replied half to her herself.
‘And you’re too young for that tone of voice too.’
She smiled at him and sat back down beside him. ‘So then, who was to blame?’
‘Some might say Arthur. Others might blame the Adren. Still others would lay the crime at your grandfather’s door.’
‘And you? Who would you blame?’
‘Inevitability.’
‘Typically wriggly of you. What about all those lessons about choice and how fate is just superstition?’
‘Fate, young lady, is where a person’s choices are already chosen
for them – usually by some god with a questionable sense of humour. Inevitability, on the other hand, is where a person will ultimately choose to be true to their own nature – thus they follow and make their own inevitable destiny.’
‘So fate and a person’s nature amount to the same thing then.’
‘No, you infuriating child, fate is imposed while nature is grown and developed.’
‘Then the gods help me.’
He looked at her warily, ‘Why?’
‘You’ve brought me up, you’ve helped develop my nature.’
‘And witness my punishment.’
‘But it was inevitable,’ she said with a shrug and the old man laughed.
They sat back in companionable silence and the girl sloughed some water from the pot to make them both a hot drink. She held the steaming cup cradled in both hands and blew gently on the surface before taking a cautious first sip. ‘So, this was my mother’s home was it?’
‘No, just her favoured place away from the city. Her home, the Veiled City, that’s below us – or what’s left of it is.’
‘Arthur destroyed that too according to the tales.’
‘I refer you to my previous answer.’
The girl took a longer drink from her cup. ‘This is where they first met wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, it’s where they first met, at least the first time with both of them as adults.’
‘She wasn’t much older than me!’
‘You’re still a child.’
‘If you say so, old man.’
She settled herself before the fire and added more ingredients to the bubbling pot, stirring them in while singing softly to herself. The old man watched her with affection. When the meal was ready she doled out equal measures into two bowls and handed one to her companion. They ate quickly and in silence. When they had finished, the girl stoked up the fire and asked if they were going to sleep there. The old man looked around the clearing, staring at the shadows that flicked in the light from the fire.
‘Afraid of ghosts from the old days?’ she asked watching him.
‘Yes,’ he answered simply and the girl frowned at him.
‘Tell me a tale of the ghosts then, perhaps that will placate them and they’ll leave us alone.’
‘You’ve heard all the tales.’
‘Then tell me a new one.’
‘We haven’t written them yet.’
The girl frowned again, it was unlike him to pass up on a chance to re-tell one of the stories and she had hoped it would distract him from what was obviously making him sorrowful. ‘You know that last village we visited, the Anglian one?’
‘Yes,’ he replied, still staring into the darkness of the surrounding wood.
‘I heard a new tale there. Or a new ending to one of the old stories.’
He took his gaze away from the darkness and looked at her enquiringly.
‘I sneaked back into the hall once you had gone to sleep,’ she said partly in apology and yet with a touch of defiance.
‘Well?’ he asked avoiding the temptation to chide her.
‘It was about Arthur’s last battle against the Adren.’
‘As if any one of them were there to see it,’ the old man snorted dismissively.
‘Do you want to hear it or not?’
‘Go on then,’ he replied and settled himself nearer the fire.
‘They say that he and some of his warriors managed to escape from the winter tide, and the Adren, by boarding a longboat. The old man telling the story swore it was true because he heard it from someone who was on the last ship that sailed to the West and that person saw a longboat floating from the estuary.’
The old man stared at her and she saw the sadness in his eyes.
‘They say that he’ll return, with his war band, when Britain’s need is at the greatest,’ she added with a shrug, hoping to disarm the scorn she thought was coming her way but the old man was looking away into the darkness once again.
‘There is nothing new under the sun – or the stars; what has been will be again.’
‘Another of your sayings?’
‘Belongs to an ancient prophet actually. I forget which one.’
‘So there wasn’t a longboat, those that claim there was are lying?’
‘No, there was a longboat and some may well have seen it from the last ship. Morveren certainly saw it. Laethrig left it there for Arthur but whether he left it on the wrong side of the river or whether Arthur thought he’d still have his horses to get across the river we’ll never know. Perhaps Arthur used it merely to get his warriors down on to the estuary flats so that the Adren would follow and fall into the trap set for them. But in any case Arthur and his few warriors never reached it. Arthur died in the Estuary – along with the last of his war band and Lazure, and most of the Adren army.’
‘If people want to believe otherwise they will,’ she countered.
‘Very true, but believing something doesn’t make it so.’
‘Sometimes belief is the only thing that can make something true.’
‘And who’s being wriggly now?’ the old man accused her with a tired smile.
She nodded her guilt and after a few moments silence added, ‘The same Anglian also went on to tell how it was Aelfric and his outlaws who first sailed back to Britain, how they met Morveren who had waited at the Haven and how she had lit the beacon before each dawn to guide them back, and how together they had hunted down the remaining Adren - and that it wasn’t Queen Gwyna’s war band who finally rid the land of the enemy.’
‘And that, you know, is the truth.’
‘I should like to meet him again.’
‘Who?’
‘The outlaw, Aelfric, of course.’
The old man sighed and muttered, ‘There truly is nothing new under the sun.’
The young girl smiled and added more fuel to the fire before pulling her furs around her and settling down to sleep with a hand clasped around the clear jewel that hung from her neck.
Merdynn stayed awake, lost in his memories and staring out into the darkness.
Message from the author: Thank you for buying these books and I hope you enjoyed them. If you did enjoy them then please consider leaving a review on Amazon.com and/or Amazon.co.uk. More books are planned in this series…
