The Winter King twc-1

by Bernard Cornwell

  It was my first battle.

  The Dumnonian horsemen formed behind our line of spears to protect the women and children so long as they could. The rest of us arrayed ourselves in the battle line and watched as our enemies did the same. Ligessac, the traitor, was among the Silurian ranks. Tanaburs performed the rites, hopping on one leg and with one hand raised and one eye closed in front of Gundleus's shield-wall as it advanced slowly across the grassland. Only when Tanaburs had cast his protective spell did the Silurians begin to shout insults at us. They warned us of the massacre to come and boasted how many of us they would kill, yet even so I noticed how slowly they came and, when they were only fifty paces away, how they stopped altogether. Some of our men jeered at their timidity, but Owain growled at us to be silent. The battle lines stared at each other. Neither moved.

  It takes extraordinary courage to charge into a line of shields and spears. That is why so many men drink before the fight. I have seen armies pause for hours while they summon the courage to charge, and the older the warrior the more courage is needed. Young troops will charge and die, but older men know how terrible an enemy shield-wall can be. I had no shield, yet I was covered by the shields of my neighbours, and their shields touched others and so on down our small line so that any man charging home would be met by a wall of leather-covered wood bristling with razor-sharp spears. The Silurians began beating their shields with their spear-staffs. The rattling sound was meant to unsettle us, and it did, though none on our side showed the fear. We just huddled together, waiting for the charge.

  “There'll be some false charges first, lad,” my neighbour warned me, and no sooner had he spoken than a group of Silurians ran screaming from their line and hurled their long spears at the centre of our defence. Our men crouched and the long spears banged home into our shields and suddenly the whole Silurian line was moving forward, but Owain immediately ordered our line to stand and march forward too and that deliberate motion checked the enemy's threatened attack. Those of our men whose shields were cumbered with the enemy spears wrenched the weapons loose, then made the shield-wall whole again.

  “Edge back!” Owain ordered us. He would try to shuffle slowly backwards across the half-mile of grassland to Caer Cadarn, hoping that the Silurians would not raise the courage to make their charge while we completed that pitifully slow journey. To give us more time Owain strode ahead of our line and shouted at Gundleus to fight him man to man. “Are you a woman, Gundleus?” our King's champion called. “Lost your courage? Not enough mead? Why don't you go back to your weaving loom, woman? Go back to your embroidery! Go back to your spindle!”

  We shuffled back, shuffled back, shuffled back, but suddenly a charge of the enemy made us stand firm and duck behind our shields as the spears were hurled. One whipped over my head, its passage sounding like a sudden rush of wind, but again the attack was a feint intended to panic us. Ligessac was firing arrows, but he must have been drunk for his shots went wildly overhead. Owain was a target for a dozen spears, but most missed and the others he swept contemptuously aside with spear or shield before mocking the throwers. “Who taught you spear-craft? Your mothers?” He spat towards the enemy.

  “Come Gundleus! Fight me! Show your scullions you're a king, not a mouse!” The Silurians beat spear-shafts on their shields to drown Owain's taunts. He turned his back to show them his scorn and walked slowly back to our shield-line. “Back,” he called to us softly, 'back.“ Then two of the Silurians threw down their shields and weapons and tore off their clothes to fight naked. My neighbour spat. ”There'll be trouble now," he warned me grimly. The naked men were probably drunk, or else so intoxicated by the Gods that they believed no enemy blade could hurt them. I had heard of such men and knew that their suicidal example was usually the signal for a real attack. I gripped my sword and tried to make a vow to die well, but in truth I could have wept for the pity of it all. I had become a man this day, and now I would die. I would join Uther and Hywel in the Otherworld and there wait through the shadowed years until my soul found another human body in which to return to this green world.

  The two men unbound their hair, took up their spears and swords, then danced in front of the Silurian line. They howled as they worked themselves into the battle frenzy; that state of mindless ecstasy that will let a man try any feat. Gundleus, sitting his horse beneath his banner, smiled at the two men whose bodies were intricately tattooed with blue patterns. The children were crying behind us and our women were calling to the Gods as the men danced nearer and nearer, their spears and swords whirling in the evening sun. Such men had no need of shields, clothes or armour. The Gods were their protection and glory was their reward, and if they succeeded in killing Owain then the bards would sing of their victory for years to come. They advanced one on each side of our champion who hefted his spear as he prepared to meet their frenzied attack which would also mark the moment when the whole enemy line would charge. And then the horn sounded.

  The horn gave a clear, cold note like none I had ever heard before. There was a purity to that horn, a chill hard purity like nothing else on all the earth. It sounded once, it sounded twice, and the second call was enough to give even the naked men pause and make them turn towards the east from where the sound had come.

  I looked too.

  And I was dazzled. It was as though a new bright sun had risen on that dying day. The light slashed over the pastures, blinding us, confusing us, but then the light slid on and I saw it was merely the reflection of the real sun glancing from a shield polished bright as a mirror. But that shield was held by such a man as I had never seen before; a man magnificent, a man lifted high on a great horse and accompanied by other such men; a horde of wondrous men, plumed men, armoured men, men sprung from the dreams of the Gods to come to this murderous field, and over the men's plumed heads there floated a banner I would come to love more than any banner on all God's earth. It was the banner of the bear. The horn sounded a third time, and suddenly I knew I would live, and I was weeping for joy and all our spearmen were half crying and half shouting and the earth was shuddering with the hooves of those Godlike men who were riding to our rescue.

  For Arthur, at last, had come.

  PART TWO

  The Princess Bride

  IGRAINE is UNHAPPY. She wants tales of Arthur's childhood. She has heard of a sword in the stone and wants me to write of it. She tells me he was sired by a spirit on a queen and that the skies were filled with thunder on the night of his birth and maybe she is right and the skies were noisy that night, but everyone I ever talked to slept through it, and as for the sword in the stone, well, there was a sword and there was a stone, but their place in the tale is still far ahead. The sword was called Caledfwlch, which means 'hard lightning' though Igraine prefers to call it Excalibur and I shall call it so as well because Arthur never cared what name his long sword carried. Nor did he care about his childhood, for certainly I never heard him speak of it. I once questioned him about his early days and he would not answer.

  “What is the egg to the eagle?” he asked me, then said that he had been born, he had lived and he had become a soldier, and that was all I needed to know.

  But for my most fair and generous protector, Igraine, let me set down what little I did learn. Arthur, despite Uther's denial at Glevum, was the son of the High King, though there was small advantage to be gained from that patronage for Uther fathered as many bastards as a torn cat makes kittens. Arthur's mother was, like my most precious queen, called Igraine. She came from Caer Gei in Gwynedd and is said to have been the daughter of Cunedda, King of Gwynedd and High King before Uther, though Igraine was no princess for her mother was not Cunedda's wife, but was instead married to a chieftain of Henis Wyren. All that Arthur would ever say of Igraine of Gwynedd, who died when he was on the verge of manhood, is that she was the most wonderful and clever and beautiful mother any boy could ever wish for, though according to Cei, who knew Igraine well, her beauty was sharpened by a rancorous wit. Cei is
the son of Ector ap Ednywain, the chieftain at Caer Gei who took Igraine and her four bastard children into his household when Uther rejected them. That rejection occurred in the same year Arthur was born, and Igraine never forgave her son for it. She used to say that Arthur was one child too many, and somehow she believed that she would always have ruled as Uther's mistress had Arthur not been born.

  Arthur was the fourth of Igraine's children to survive infancy. The other three were all girls and Uther evidently liked his bastards to be female for they were less likely to make demands on his patrimony when they grew. Cei and Arthur were raised together and Cei says, though never in Arthur's hearing, that both he and Arthur were frightened of Igraine. Arthur, he told me, was a dutiful, hard-working boy who strove to be the best at every lesson, whether in reading or sword-fighting, but nothing he could ever achieve gave his mother pleasure, though Arthur always worshipped her, defended her, and wept inconsolably when she died of a fever. Arthur was then thirteen, and Ector, his protector, appealed to Uther to help Igraine's four impoverished orphans. Uther brought them to Caer Cadarn, probably because he thought the three daughters would be useful throw pieces in the game of dynastic marriages. Morgan's marriage to a Prince of Kernow was shortlived thanks to fire, but Morgause married King Lot of Lothian and Anna was wed to King Budic ap Camran across the water in Brittany. These last two were not important marriages, for neither king was close enough to send reinforcements to Dumnonia in time of war, but both served their small purposes. Arthur, being a boy, had no such usefulness and so he went to Uther's court and learned to use a sword and spear. He also met Merlin, though neither man talked much of what passed between them in those months before Arthur, despairing of ever being given preferment by Uther, followed his sister Anna to Brittany. There, in the turmoil of Gaul, he grew into a great soldier and Anna, ever conscious that a warrior brother was a valued relative, kept his exploits known to Uther. That was why Uther brought Arthur back to Britain for the campaign which ended in his son's death. The rest you know.

  And now I have told Igraine all I know of Arthur's childhood and doubtless she will embellish the tale with the legends that are already being told of Arthur among the common folk. Igraine is taking away these skins one by one and having them transcribed into the proper tongue of Britain by Dafydd ap Gruffud, the clerk of the justice who speaks the Saxon tongue, and I do not trust him or Igraine to leave these words untouched by their own fancies.

  There are times when I wish that I dared to set this tale down in the British tongue, but Bishop Sansum, whom God cherishes above all the saints, still suspects what I write. At times he has tried to stop this work, or else has commanded the imps of Satan to impede me. One day I found my quills all gone, and on another there was urine in the inkhorn, but Igraine restores everything and Sansum, unless he learns to read and masters the Saxon tongue, cannot confirm his suspicions that this work is not, in truth, a Saxon Gospel.

  Igraine urges me to write more and faster, and pleads with me to tell the truth about Arthur, but then complains when that truth does not match the fairy-tales she hears in the Caer's kitchen or in her robing chamber. She wants shape-changing and questing beasts, but I cannot invent what I did not see. It is true, God forgive me, that I have changed some things, but nothing important. Thus, when Arthur saved us in the battle before Caer Cadarn, I realized he was coming long before he actually appeared, for Owain and his men knew all along that Arthur and his horsemen, newly arrived from Brittany, were concealed in the woodlands north of Caer Cadarn, just as they knew that Gundleus's war-band was approaching. Gundleus's mistake was to fire the Tor, for the smoke pyre served as a warning beacon to all the south country and Owain's mounted scouts had been watching Gundleus's men since midday. Owain, having helped Agricola defeat Gorfyddyd's invasion, had hurried south to greet Arthur, not out of friendship, but rather to be present when a rival warlord appeared in the kingdom, and it was fortunate for us that Owain had returned. Yet even so, the battle could never have happened as I described it. If Owain had not known that Arthur was nearby he would have given the baby Mordred to his swiftest horseman and sent the child galloping to safety, even if the rest of us did go down beneath Gundleus's spears. I could have written that truth, of course, but the bards showed me how to shape a tale so that the listeners are kept waiting for the part they want to hear, and I think the tale is better for keeping the news of Arthur's arrival until the very last minute. It is a small sin, this tale-shaping, though God knows Sansum would never forgive it.

  It is still winter here in Dinnewrac, and bitter cold, but King Brochvael ordered Sansum to light our fires after Brother Aron was found frozen dead in his cell. The saint refused until the King sent firewood from his Caer, and so we do now have fires, though not many and never great. Still, even a small fire makes the writing easier, and of late the blessed Saint Sansum has been less meddlesome. Two novices have joined our small flock, mere boys with unbroken voices, and Sansum has taken it upon himself to train them in the ways of Our Most Precious Saviour. Such is the saint's care for their immortal souls that he even insists the boys must share his sleeping cell and he seems a happier man for their company. God be thanked for that, and for the gift of fire, and for the strength to go on with this tale of Arthur, the King that Never Was, the Enemy of God and our Lord of Battles.

  I shall not weary you with the details of that fight before Caer Cadarn. It was a rout, not a battle, and only a handful of Silurians escaped. Ligessac, the traitor, was one who escaped, but most of Gundleus's men were captured. A score of the enemy died, including the two naked fighters who went down to Owain's war spear. Gundleus, Ladwys and Tanaburs were all taken alive. I killed no one. I did not even dent my sword's edge.

  Nor do I even remember much about the rout, for all I wanted to do was stare at Arthur. He was mounted on Llamrei, his mare, a great black beast with shaggy fetlocks and flat iron shoes tied to her hooves with leather straps. All Arthur's men rode such big horses that had their nostrils slit into flaring holes so that they could breathe more easily. The beasts were made even more alarming by extraordinary shields of stiffened leather that hung to protect the animals' chests from spear thrusts. The shields were so thick and cumbersome that the horses could not lower their heads to graze at the battle's end and Arthur ordered one of his grooms to unstrap the device so Llamrei could feed. Each of the horses needed two grooms apiece, one to look after the horse shield, body cloth and saddle, the other to lead the horse by the bridle, while still a third servant carried the warrior's spear and shield. Arthur had a long, heavy spear named Rhongomyniad while his shield, Wynebgwrthucher, was made of willow boards covered with a skin of beaten silver that was polished until it dazzled. At his hip hung the knife called Carnwenhau and the famous sword Excalibur in its black scabbard that was cross-hatched with golden thread. I could not see his face at first for his head was enclosed in a helmet with broad cheek pieces that shadowed his features. The helmet, with its gash for eyes and dark hole for a mouth, was made of polished iron decorated with swirling patterns of silver and had a high plume of white goose feathers. There was something deathly about that pale helmet; it had a fearsome, skull-like appearance which suggested its wearer was one of the walking dead. His cloak, like his plume, was white. The cloak, which he was fastidious about keeping clean, hung from his shoulders to keep the sun off his long coat of scale armour. I had never seen scale armour before, though Hywel had told me of it, and seeing Arthur's I was overwhelmed with a desire to possess such a coat myself. The armour was Roman and made from hundreds of iron plates, each no bigger than a thumbprint, sewn in overlapping rows on to a knee-length coat of leather. The plates were square at the top, where two holes were left for the sewing thread, and pointed at their base, and the scales overlapped in such a manner that a spear head would always encounter at least two layers of iron before striking the stout leather beneath. The stiff armour chinked when Arthur moved, and it was not just iron sounding for his smiths had a
dded a row of golden plates around the neck and scattered silver scales among the polished iron so that the whole coat seemed to shimmer. It took hours of polishing each day to prevent the iron rusting, and after every battle a few plates would be missing and would need to be reforged. Few smiths could make such a coat, and very few men could afford to buy one, but Arthur had taken his from a Prankish chieftain he had killed in Armorica. Besides the helmet, cloak and scale coat, he wore leather boots, leather gloves and a leather belt from which Excalibur hung in its cross-hatched scabbard that was supposed to protect its wearer against all harm.

  To me, dazzled by his coming, he appeared as a white, shining God come to earth. I could not take my eyes from him.

  He embraced Owain and I heard the two men laugh. Owain was a tall man, but Arthur could look him in the eye, though he was nowhere near as heavily built as Owain. Owain was all muscle and bulk, while Arthur was a lean and wiry man. Owain thumped Arthur's back and Arthur returned the affectionate gesture before the two men walked, their arms about each other's shoulders, to where Ralla was holding Mordred.

  Arthur fell to his knees before his King and, with a surprising delicacy for a man in stiff, heavy armour, lifted a gloved hand to take the hem of the baby's robe. He pushed his helmet's hinged cheek pieces aside, then kissed the robe. Mordred responded by screaming and struggling. Arthur stood and held his arms towards Morgan. She was older than her brother, who was still only twenty-five or twenty-six years old, but when he offered to embrace her she began to cry behind her gold mask that clashed lightly against Arthur's helmet as they clasped each other. He held her tight and patted her back. “Dear Morgan,” I heard him say, 'dear, sweet Morgan.“ I had never realized how lonely Morgan was until I saw her weep in her brother's arms. He pulled gently away from her grip then used both his gloved hands to lift the silver-grey helmet from his head. ”I have a gift for you,“ he told Morgan, 'at least I think I do, unless Hygwydd's stolen it. Where are you, Hygwydd?”