The Winter King

by Bernard Cornwell

  Then we marched north to discover that Arthur had ended his pursuit at the ford, then returned to the village that lay about the substantial Roman building which Arthur reckoned had once been a resthouse for travellers going into the northern hills. A crowd of women cowered under guard beside the house, clutching their children and paltry belongings.

  ‘Your enemy,’ I told Arthur, ‘was Valerin.’

  It took him a few seconds to place the name, then he smiled. He had removed his helmet and dismounted to greet us. ‘Poor Valerin,’ he said, ‘twice a loser,’ then he embraced me and thanked my men. ‘The night was so dark,’ he said, ‘I doubted you would find the vale.’

  ‘I didn’t. Nimue did.’

  ‘Then I owe you thanks,’ he said to Nimue.

  ‘Thank me,’ she said, ‘by bringing victory this day.’

  ‘With the Gods’ help, I shall.’ He turned and looked at Galahad who had ridden in the charge. ‘Go south, Lord Prince, and give Tewdric my greetings and beg his men’s spears to our side. May God give your tongue eloquence.’ Galahad kicked his horse and rode back through the blood-stinking vale.

  Arthur turned and stared at a hilltop a mile north of the ford. There was an old earth fort there, a legacy of the Old People, but it seemed to be deserted. ‘It would go ill with us,’ he said with a smile, ‘if anyone was to see where we hide.’ He wanted to find his hiding place and leave the heavy horse armour there before he rode north to roust Gorfyddyd’s men out of their camps at Branogenium.

  ‘Nimue will work you a spell of concealment,’ I said.

  ‘Will you, Lady?’ he asked earnestly.

  She went to find a skull. Arthur clasped me again, then called for his servant Hygwydd to help him tug off the suit of heavy scale armour. It came off over his head, leaving his short-cut hair tousled. ‘Would you wear it?’ he asked me.

  ‘Me?’ I was astonished.

  ‘When the enemy attack,’ he said, ‘they’ll expect to find me here and if I’m not here they’ll suspect a trap.’ He smiled. ‘I’d ask Sagramor, but his face is somewhat more distinctive than yours, Lord Derfel. You’ll have to cut off some of that long hair, though.’ My fair hair showing beneath the helmet’s rim would be a sure sign I was not Arthur, ‘and maybe trim the beard a little,’ he added.

  I took the armour from Hygwydd and was shocked by its weight. ‘I should be honoured,’ I said.

  ‘It is heavy,’ he warned me. ‘You’ll get hot, and you can’t see to your sides when you’re wearing the helmet so you’ll need two good men to flank you.’ He sensed my hesitation. ‘Should I ask someone else to wear it?’

  ‘No, no, Lord,’ I said. ‘I’ll wear it.’

  ‘It’ll mean danger,’ he warned me.

  ‘I wasn’t expecting a safe day, Lord,’ I answered.

  ‘I shall leave you the banners,’ he said. ‘When Gorfyddyd comes he must be convinced that all his enemies are in one place. It will be a hard fight, Derfel.’

  ‘Galahad will bring help,’ I assured him.

  He took my breastplate and shield, gave me his own brighter shield and white cloak, then turned and grasped Llamrei’s bridle. ‘That,’ he told me once he had been helped into the saddle, ‘was the easy part of the day.’ He beckoned to Sagramor, then spoke to both of us. ‘The enemy will be here by noon. Do what you can to make ready, then fight as you have never fought before. If I see you again then we shall be victorious. If not, then I thank you, salute you, and will wait to feast with you in the Otherworld.’ He shouted for his men to mount up, then rode north.

  And we waited for the real battle to begin.

  The scale armour was appallingly heavy, bearing down on my shoulders like the water yokes women carry to their houses each morning. Even lifting my sword arm was hard, though it became easier when I cinched my sword belt tight around the iron scales and so took the suit’s lower weight away from my shoulders.

  Nimue, her spell of concealment finished, cut my hair with a knife. She burned all the loose hair lest an enemy should find the scraps and work an enchantment, and then I used Arthur’s shield as a mirror to hack my long beard short enough so that it would be concealed behind the helmet’s deep cheek pieces. Then I pulled the helmet on, forcing its leather padding over my skull and tugging it down until it enclosed my head like a shell. My voice seemed muffled despite the perforations over the ears in the shining metal. I hefted the heavy shield, let Nimue fasten the mud-spattered white cloak around my shoulders, then I tried to get used to the armour’s awkward weight. I made Issa fight me with a spear-shaft as a single-stick and found myself much slower than usual. ‘Fear will quicken you, Lord,’ Issa said when he had rounded my guard for the tenth time and whacked me an echoing blow on the head.

  ‘Don’t knock the plume off,’ I said. Secretly I was wishing I had never accepted the heavy armour. It was horseman’s gear, designed to add weight and awe to a mounted man who had to batter his way through the enemy’s ranks, but we spearmen depended on agility and quickness when we were not locked shoulder to shoulder in the shield–wall.

  ‘But you look wonderful, Lord,’ Issa told me admiringly.

  ‘I’ll be a wonderful-looking corpse if you don’t guard my flank,’ I told him. ‘It’s like fighting inside a bucket.’ I tugged the helmet off, relieved when its constricting pressure was gone from my skull. ‘When I first saw this armour,’ I told Issa, ‘I wanted it more than anything in the world. Now I’d give it away for a decent leather breastplate.’

  ‘You’ll be all right, Lord,’ he told me with a grin.

  We had work to do. The women and children abandoned by Valerin’s defeated men had to be driven south away from the vale, then we prepared defences close to the remnants of the tree fence. Sagramor feared that the overwhelming weight of the enemy could drive us clear out of the vale before Arthur’s horsemen arrived to our rescue and so he prepared the ground as best he could. My men wanted to sleep, but instead we dug a shallow ditch across the vale. The ditch was nowhere near deep enough to stop a man, but it would force the attacking spearmen to break step and maybe stumble as they closed on our spear-line. The tree barricade lay just behind the ditch and marked the southern limit to which we could retreat and the place we must defend to the death. Sagramor anchored the felled trees with some of Valerin’s abandoned spears that he ordered driven deep into the earth to make a hedge of angled spear-points inside the pine branches. We left the gap where the road ran through the centre of the fence so we could retreat behind the fragile barrier before we defended it.

  My worry was the steep and open hillside down which my men had attacked in the dawn. Gorfyddyd’s warriors would doubtless attack straight up the vale, but his levies would probably be sent to the high ground to threaten our left flank and Sagramor could spare no men to hold that high ground, but Nimue insisted there was no need. She took ten of the captured spears and then, with the help of a half-dozen of my men, she cut the heads from ten of Valerin’s dead spearmen and carried the spears and bloody heads up the hill where she had the spear-shafts driven butt-first into the ground, then she rammed the bloody heads on to the spears’ iron points and draped the dead heads with ghastly wigs of knotted grass, each knot an enchantment, before scattering branches of yew between the widely spaced posts. She had made a ghost-fence: a line of human scarecrows imbued with charms and spells that no man would dare pass without a Druid’s help. Sagramor wanted her to make another such fence on the ground north of the ford, but Nimue refused. ‘Their warriors will come with Druids,’ she explained, ‘and a ghost-fence is laughable to a Druid. But the levy won’t have a Druid.’ She had fetched an armful of vervain down from the hill and now she distributed its small purple flowers among the spearmen who all knew that vervain gave protection in battle. She pushed a whole sprig inside my armour.

  The Christians gathered to say their prayers, while we pagans sought the Gods’ help. Men tossed coins into the river, then brought out their talismans for Nimue to touch. Mos
t carried a hare’s foot, but some brought her elf bolts or snake stones. Elf bolts were tiny flint arrowheads shot by the spirits and much prized by soldiers, while snake stones had bright colours that Nimue enriched by dipping the stones in the river before touching them to her good eye. I pressed the scale armour until I could feel Ceinwyn’s brooch pricking against my chest, then I knelt and kissed the earth. I kept my forehead on the damp ground as I beseeched Mithras to give me strength, courage and, if it was His will, a good death. Some of our men were drinking the mead we had discovered in the village, but I drank nothing but water. We ate the food Valerin’s men had thought would be their breakfast, and afterwards a group of spearmen helped Nimue catch toads and shrews that she killed and placed on the road beyond the ford to give the approaching enemy ill omens. Then we sharpened our weapons again and waited. Sagramor had found a man hiding in the woods behind the village. The man was a shepherd and Sagramor questioned him about the local countryside and learned there was a second ford upstream where the enemy could outflank us if we tried to defend the river bank at the vale’s northern end. The second ford’s existence did not trouble us now, but we needed to remember that it existed for it gave the enemy a way of outflanking our northernmost defence line.

  I was nervous of the coming fight, but Nimue seemed unafraid. ‘I have nothing to fear,’ she told me. ‘I’ve taken the Three Wounds, so what can hurt me?’ She was sitting beside me, close to the ford at the vale’s northern end. This would be our first defence line, the place where we would begin the slow retreat that would suck the enemy into the vale and Arthur’s trap. ‘Besides,’ she added, ‘I am under Merlin’s protection.’

  ‘Does he know we’re here?’ I asked her.

  She paused, then nodded. ‘He knows.’

  ‘Will he come?’

  She frowned as though my question was crass. ‘He will do,’ she said slowly, ‘whatever he needs to do.’

  ‘Then he will come,’ I said in fervent hope.

  Nimue shook her head impatiently. ‘Merlin cares only for Britain. He believes Arthur could help restore the Knowledge of Britain, but if he decides that Gorfyddyd would do it better, then believe me, Derfel, Merlin will side with Gorfyddyd.’

  Merlin had hinted as much to me at Caer Sws, but I still found it hard to believe that his ambitions were so far from my own allegiances and hopes. ‘What about you?’ I asked Nimue.

  ‘I have one burden that ties me to this army,’ she said, ‘and after that I shall be free to help Merlin.’

  ‘Gundleus,’ I said.

  She nodded. ‘Give me Gundleus alive, Derfel,’ she said, looking into my eyes, ‘give him to me alive, I beg you.’ She touched the leather eyepatch and went silent as she summoned her energy for the revenge she craved. Her face was still bone pale and her black hair hung lank against her cheeks. The softness she had revealed at Lughnasa had been replaced by a chill bleakness that made me think I would never understand her. I loved her, not as I believed I loved Ceinwyn, but as a man can love a fine wild creature, an eagle or a wildcat, for I knew I would never comprehend her life or dreams. She grimaced suddenly. ‘I shall make Gundleus’s soul scream through the rest of time,’ she said softly, ‘I shall send it through the abyss into nothingness, but he will never reach nothingness, Derfel, he will always suffer on its edge, screaming.’

  I shuddered for Gundleus.

  A shout made me look across the river. Six horsemen were galloping towards us. Our shield–wall stood and thrust their arms into their shield-loops, but then I saw the leading man was Morfans. He rode desperately, kicking at his tired sweat-whitened horse, and I feared those six men were all that remained of Arthur’s troop.

  The horses splashed through the ford as Sagramor and I went forward. Morfans reined in on the river bank. ‘Two miles away,’ he panted. ‘Arthur sent us to help you. Gods, there are hundreds of the bastards!’ He wiped sweat off his forehead, then grinned. ‘There’s plunder enough for a thousand of us!’ He slid heavily from his horse and I saw he was carrying the silver horn and guessed he would use it to summon Arthur when the moment was right.

  ‘Where is Arthur?’ Sagramor asked.

  ‘Safely hid,’ Morfans assured us, then looked at my armour and his ugly face split into a lopsided grin. ‘Weighs you down, that armour, doesn’t it?’

  ‘How does he ever fight in it?’ I asked.

  ‘Very well, Derfel, very well. And so will you.’ He clapped my shoulder. ‘Any news from Galahad?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘Agricola won’t let us fight alone, whatever that Christian King and his gutless son might want,’ Morfans said, then he led his five horsemen back through the shield–wall. ‘Give us a few minutes to rest the horses,’ he called.

  Sagramor pulled his helmet over his head. The Numidian wore a coat of mail, a black cloak and tall boots. His iron helmet was painted black with pitch and rose to a sharp point that gave it an exotic appearance. Usually he fought on horseback, but he showed no regret at being an infantryman this day. Nor did he display any nervousness as he prowled long-legged up and down our shield–wall and growled encouragement to his men.

  I pulled Arthur’s stifling helmet over my head and buckled its strap under my chin. Then, arrayed as my Lord, I also walked along the line of spears and warned my men that the fight would be hard, but victory certain so long as our shield–wall held. It was a perilously thin wall, in some places just three men deep, but those in the wall were all good men. One of them stepped out of the line as I approached the place where Sagramor’s spearmen bordered mine. ‘Remember me, Lord?’ he called.

  I thought for a moment he had mistaken me for Arthur and I pulled the hinged cheek pieces aside so he could see my face, then at last I recognized him. It was Griffid, Owain’s captain and the man who had tried to kill me at Lindinis before Nimue intervened to save my life. ‘Griffid ap Annan,’ I greeted him.

  ‘There’s bad blood between us, Lord,’ he said, and fell to his knees. ‘Forgive me.’

  I pulled him to his feet and embraced him. His beard had gone grey, but he was still the same long-boned, sad-faced man I remembered. ‘My soul is in your keeping,’ I told him, ‘and I am glad to put it there.’

  ‘And mine yours, Lord,’ he said.

  ‘Minac!’ I recognized another of my old comrades. ‘Am I forgiven?’

  ‘Was there anything to forgive, Lord?’ he asked, embarrassed at the question.

  ‘There was nothing to forgive,’ I promised him. ‘No oath was broken, I swear it.’

  Minac stepped forward and embraced me. All along the shield–wall other such quarrels were being resolved. ‘How have you been?’ I asked Griffid.

  ‘Fighting hard, Lord. Mostly against Cerdic’s Saxons. Today will be easy compared with those bastards, except for one thing.’ He hesitated.

  ‘Well?’ I prompted him.

  ‘Will she give us back our souls, Lord?’ Griffid asked, glancing at Nimue. He was remembering the awful curse she had laid on him and his men.

  ‘Of course she will,’ I said, and summoned Nimue who touched Griffid’s forehead, and the foreheads of all the other surviving men who had threatened my life on that distant day in Lindinis. Thus was her curse lifted and they thanked her by kissing her hand. I embraced Griffid again, then raised my voice so that all my men could hear me. ‘Today,’ I said, ‘we shall give the bards enough songs to sing for a thousand years! And today we become rich men again!’

  They cheered. The emotion in that shield-line was so rich that some men wept for happiness. I know now that there is no joy like the joy of serving Christ Jesus, but how I do miss the company of warriors. There were no barriers between us that morning, nothing but a great, swelling love for each other as we waited for the enemy. We were brothers, we were invincible and even the laconic Sagramor had tears in his eyes. A spearman began singing the War Song of Beli Mawr, Britain’s great battle song, and the strong male voices swelled in instinctive harmony all along the line. O
ther men danced across their swords, capering awkwardly in their leather armour as they made the intricate steps either side of the blade. Our Christians had their arms spread wide as they sang, almost as though the song was a pagan prayer to their own God while other men clashed their spears against their shields in time to the music.

  We were still singing of pouring our enemies’ blood on to our land when that enemy appeared. We sang defiantly on as spear-band after spear-band came into view and spread across the far fields beneath kingly banners that showed bright in the day’s cloudy gloom. And on we sang, a great torrent of song to defy the army of Gorfyddyd, the army of the father of the woman I was convinced I loved. That was why I was fighting, not just for Arthur, but because only by victory could I make my way back to Caer Sws and thus see Ceinwyn again. I had no claim on her, and no hopes either for I was slave-born and she a princess, yet somehow I felt that day as though I had more to lose than I had ever possessed in all my life.

  It took over an hour for that cumbersome horde to make a battle line on the river’s far bank. The river could only be crossed at the ford, which meant we would be given time to retreat when the moment came, but for now the enemy must have assumed that we planned to defend the ford all day for they massed their best men in the centre of the line. Gorfyddyd himself was there, his eagle banner stained by its dye that had run in the rain so that the flag looked as though it had already been dipped in our blood. Arthur’s banners, the black bear and the red dragon, flew at our line’s centre where I stood facing the ford. Sagramor stood beside me, counting the enemy banners. Gundleus’s fox was there, and the red horse of Elmet, and several others we did not recognize. ‘Six hundred men?’ Sagramor guessed.

  ‘And more still coming,’ I added.