Medraut

by David Pilling

  LEADER OF BATTLES (V): MEDRAUT

  By David Pilling

  ‘All the world’s wonder, no grave for Arthur’— Stanzas of the Graves

  LEADER OF BATTLES (V): MEDRAUT

  ©Copyright David Pilling 2017

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the author, David Pilling.

  Table of Contents

  INDEX OF PLACE NAMES

  GLOSSARY

  1.

  2.

  3.

  4.

  5.

  6.

  7.

  8.

  9.

  10.

  11.

  12.

  13.

  14.

  15.

  16.

  17.

  18.

  19.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Follow David at his blog at: www.pillingswritercorner.blogspot.co.uk

  Or contact him directly at: Davidpilling56@hotmail.com

  INDEX OF PLACE NAMES

  Glevum – Gloucester

  Hibernia – Ireland

  Laigin – Leinster

  Londinium – London

  Osraige – County Kilkenny and western County Laois, Ireland

  Rock of Caisel – Rock of Cashel, Munster

  Viroconium – Wroxeter

  GLOSSARY

  Bretwalda – Saxon term for High King or Over-King

  Ceitherne – Scotti (Irish) infantry/spearmen

  Ceorl – a free-born Saxon peasant

  Huscarl – housecarl or household warriors

  Spatha – long-bladed cavalry sword

  Thegn – Saxon thane or nobleman

  1.

  497 AD

  Every night, after a day’s hunting in the forest, Cei came home to get drunk. He was a morose and vicious drunk, with a habit of drawing his sword to hack at shadows, or in days gone past, any servant unfortunate enough to get in his way. The latter pastime was lost to him now. Only one servant remained, Gwarae Golden Hair. The rest had all left, through fear of their master’s temper or the wrath of Artorius. Gwarae feared nobody, not even Cei in his cups. He was a former spearman in the High King’s warband, now old and crippled. He had lost a foot in a fight against Pictish raiders, while three fingers were missing from his sword-hand. Sheared away by a Saxon axe in the taking of the fort at Mount Badon. “Golden Hair,” Cei sneered one night in deepest midwinter, reaching across the table to flick Gwarae’s scanty grey locks.

  “I remember a time when the girls at Caerleon used to sigh when you passed by, and melt into a puddle at the merest glance from your soft blue eyes. These days they would run away screaming. What an ogre you have become.”

  Gwarae twisted his mouth in a sour smile. He and Cei had been drinking since sundown, and were fond of swapping insults. “Ogre I may be,” he grunted in reply, “but at least I am true to my lord. Unlike some at this table, throwing weighted dice and hoping his opponent won’t notice.”

  Cei’s good eye stared balefully at the other man. They sat in the tiny hall at Caer Gai, a hill-fort on the southern end of the lake called Llyn Tegid, inside the Kingdom of Gwynedd. The fort had been a gift from the High King, in the days when he and Cei were still friends. Cei had lived in this remote spot for six years. Six long years of exile from everything – and everyone – he had ever loved. He stared down at the table, marked by wine stains and knife cuts. At the dice resting on the board, the battered tin cups, the amphora of rough red wine.

  His gaze rested on the amphora. It was made of wheel-thrown red clay, with a swollen body and two handles fixed to the neck. Cei remembered the day it was unearthed by one of his servants from the ditch outside the fort. Caer Gai had once been a Roman legionary fortress, and the present hall was built on top of the old bathhouse. Occasionally other bits and pieces were dredged up: a rusted blade, old helmets, broken spears and old sandals. Even a child’s toy. Cei reached out to hook his fingers round the spout of the amphora.

  “This,” he declared, “is the only thing of beauty left inside Caer Gai. Now Golwg is gone.”

  The other man sighed and slapped the table. “God help us, not her again. Every night I have to listen to the same old song. For heaven’s sake, man, she left three years ago. If you’re so desperate for a girl, go down to the village and find one. You’ll have to pay her well, though. No self-respecting lass would choose to lie with such a vile old soak.”

  “You are fat, ugly and hopelessly impotent, Gwarae Golden Hair,” rasped Cei. “One day I shall kill you and give your carcase to the wolf in the wood.” “Aye,” Gwarae chuckled as he watched his master upend the amphora and slop wine down his throat, “perhaps tomorrow, eh? When your head is not quite so sore.”

  After Cei had sucked down the last drop, he grasped the amphora in both hands and hurled it at Gwarae. His companion ducked, and it sailed across the shadowy hall to shatter against one of the pillars. “There!” Cei lifted his brawny arms in triumph.

  “The last shred of beauty is gone! Vanished! Lost forever. Such is the life of a man. We come from shadow, enjoy a brief moment in the light, and then go back into the dark.”

  Gwarae cautiously lifted his head. “Yes, well done. No more beauty. Now we have nothing left to drink either.”

  Cei jerked his thumb at the door. “Go and fetch some more from the storehouse. Plenty of wine. Always plenty of wine. The exercise will do you good.”

  He cocked his head to listen to the rain, drumming on the thatch. “It’s pissing down. You can have a wash into the bargain.”

  Gwarae gave his master an evil stare, reached for his crutches, and used them to hobble outside. The door banged shut behind him. Cei grinned, dabbled his fingers in a pool of wine on the table, and licked them dry. His drunken good humour swiftly faded. In his mind’s eye, he once again beheld the face of the girl he had lost.

  “Golwg,” he murmured.

  Cei plucked at his stained tunic, and as he did he stared in wine-sodden misery at the backs of his hands. They were big, powerful hands, scarred and swollen, their nails dirty and broken or bitten down to the quick. How many men had he strangled with these? He could recall seven, maybe eight. Saxons and Picts and Scotti. Sometimes their faces haunted him at night. The mute desperation in their bloodshot eyes. He returned hurriedly to the vision of Golwg. Her sweet, heart-shaped face, auburn hair he had loved to stroke, the rich green eyes that so captivated him. A Scotti girl, once in the service of the Cornish traitor, Drystan. Gone these past three years. Run off with a handsome pot-boy.

  Cei clenched his fists. I only I had them both in front of me now, he thought fiercely. I’d wring their necks like a couple of geese, the dirty, treacherous…He subsided. Cei’s volcanic temper was the reason Golwg left. Too many rows. Too many bruises. He blamed it on the drink, the only way he could kill the thudding pain in his skull; the legacy of an old battle-wound. Excess of drink brought on his rages. It was a vicious, inescapable cycle.

  Three years. Ever since, he had sat in his damp stronghold at Caer Gai, allowing bitterness and grey hairs to take over. The steward of Caerleon, one of the Three Chief Warriors of the Island of the Mighty. Reduced to this sorry, wine-sodden desolation.

  Tears came, as they always did, plodding down his raddled cheeks. I could have gone back. I could have mended the breach with Artorius. Too proud. Too stupid. Artorius himself had tried hard to heal the rift between them. Eight times in the past six years the High King had sent an envoy to Caer Gai, begging Cei to return to Caerleon. Always the message was the same. The kingdom needed him. His friend needed him. Eight times Cei had sent the envoys packing, each man with a flea in his
ear and a boot print on his arse. “Tell the brothel-master I’ll speak to him in person,” he had shouted, “not his damned whores!”

  Yet Artorius had his pride too. The High King could hardly make the journey to Caer Gai, merely to beg forgiveness from a broken-down former servant. It was beneath his dignity. None of the lesser kings and chieftains of Britannia would dream of doing such a thing. Artorius had already shown considerable tolerance by allowing Cei to live.

  Too proud. Too stupid.

  The tears flowed fast now. What was Cei without his pride and anger? He well knew the answer. A snivelling little coward, who would have shat his breeches and fled from battle at the first clash of arms. How often had he longed to flee the field, when the horns were bellowing, shields clashing, the air alive with shouts and yells and all the tumult of war? Only Cei’s sheer stubbornness, the root of his character, had held him in place. Only his wild rage had permitted him to excel in the fighting.

  He sat alone for a while longer, gazing into the shadows. Eventually the tears ran dry, though his head still throbbed. As he had done countless times before, Cei cursed to hell and damnation the Pictish spearman who had dealt the blow. He reached up to adjust the leather patch over his left eye. Over the years he had gradually lost the use of it, another consequence of his ancient battle-wound. Now the eyeball was painfully sensitive to light, and had to be kept covered.

  Old, fat, half-blind, drunk. Deserted by my lover, abandoned by my king, stripped of my friends. All except Gwarae. Where in hells is Gwarae?

  The old servant had been gone a long time. Tripped and fallen over his crutch in the dark, probably. Cei grunted in irritation. The old fool was becoming a liability.

  He was about to rise, then froze. A tiny sound, barely perceptible, scratched at the edge of his awareness. The long years of sloth and self-indulgence had not blunted Cei’s instinct for danger, honed in a lifetime of war.

  Footsteps. Men trying to move in silence, and failing. The creaking of the gate. Cei pushed back his chair and crossed to the northern end of the hall. For such a big man, overweight and short of breath, he moved quickly. He bent to heave up the lid of a battered old chest and lifted out his sword – a long-bladed cavalry weapon, called a spatha, sharpened to a fine cutting edge on one side. Cei grasped the hilt and smoothly drew the sword from the dark brown leather scabbard. Cei’s sword was his one treasured possession. He had kept it sharp and well-oiled over the years. He tossed away the scabbard and held the blade high. The only light in the hall came from the smoking hearth and a single torch, set in a bracket on the wall behind him. This was enough to let Cei see his distorted reflection in the polished steel. “Well, my darling,” he murmured, “it seems they have come for us at last.”

  He soft-footed over to the door. For the first time in years, his heart raced, and the old excitement flickered inside him. The excitement of impending battle, clash of arms, danger and glory. Cei had almost forgotten it. To be alive, on the very cusp of death, was the greatest feeling of all.

  “Cei! Stop hiding in your kennel! Come out and face us!”

  The voice sounded from outside, high and nasally and shrill. Rank with fear under a thin shield of bravado. Cei smiled. He could still gauge other men. Their essential weakness. Gwarae had left the door slightly ajar. Cei booted it open, then swiftly stepped aside. He was not fool enough to stand in the doorway and make a target of himself for spears and arrows.

  No missiles came flying through the entrance. Only gusts of rain, pattering on the dirty rushes strewn about the floor of the hall. Cei pressed his back to the wall, sword held at an angle across his chest.

  “Come out, Cei. You cannot stay in there forever. Come out and die like a man.”

  The voice was less shrill now. More confident. Cei thought he recognised it. Some dim echo from his past. To hells with it. This was his home. He wasn’t going to skulk in the shadows like a frightened rat. He took a deep breath, silently commended his soul to God, and moved to the doorway. He could see little outside in the gloom and the wet. There was a half-moon, and gradually the night vision in his good eye asserted itself. A huddle of figures crowded before the gate, like sheep bunched together for safety. Some held lanterns, and the moonlight glinted off spears and helmets.

  Gwarae lay on his back in the wet mud between Cei and the intruders. The old servant’s crutch lay beside him. Dark red blood leaked sluggishly from the gaping knife-wound across his throat. His eyes were wide, as though in shock, staring glassily at the night sky. Cei sighed. “Poor Gwarae,” he muttered, “poor old fool. They would never have taken you so, in the days of your golden youth.”

  One of the figures stepped forward. Cei glanced at him in contempt. A tall, willowy man in a shirt of ring-mail, his face partially hidden under an iron helm. Unlike his companions, he grasped a sword. “Step outside, old man,” this one said. He was the owner of the shrill voice. Cei was amused to notice his sword tremble slightly. The swine was on the verge of fouling himself.

  “I don’t know you, pig,” Cei answered coolly. “Why have you and your band of thieves come to my hall and murdered my only friend left in the world?”

  The tall man reached up with his free hand and slowly removed his helm. Cei frowned as he studied the face beneath. Long, white and narrow, with a drooping black moustache and absurd tuft of beard on the end of the pointed chin. There was a weak cast to the face, the thin mouth and little eyes. Many years had passed since Cei last beheld this unlovely visage.

  “Gwyddawg,” he breathed. “Gwyddawg fab Menestyr. What rat-hole have you crawled from?”

  The other man’s face twisted into a snarl. Gwyddawg had once been a petty lord of Powys, stripped of his lordship and driven into outlawry for deserting his men in a skirmish against a Saxon raiding party. Cei had been the chief instigator in Gwyddawg’s disgrace, and persuaded the High King to have him whipped through the streets of Caerleon. Now this ghost from Cei’s distant past had come to take his revenge.

  Cei stepped out into the rain. His sword hung loose in his hand. Gwyddawg retreated, almost tripping over Gwarae’s corpse, even as his men fanned out either side of him. They spat at Cei and hissed insults. He recognised a few of their faces as well. Men he had slighted in the days of his power at Caerleon, where his position as the High King’s steward made him untouchable. Cei had always known he would one day regret his sharp tongue.

  What a pack of cowards. It has taken them six years to screw up the courage to hunt me down. Only now, when I am old and alone, do they have the guts to face Cei the Tall!

  “Come, then, traitors all,” he yelled suddenly, “get what you can of me!”

  Cei ran straight at Gwyddawg, who fell backwards in panic and tripped over the corpse of Gwarae. Squealing, he twisted aside and scrambled away on all fours, just in time to avoid Cei’s sword as it flashed down to skewer his belly. “Help!” shrieked Gwyddawg. “Take him, you cravens! You are sixteen to his one!”

  The other men closed in on Cei. He stood at bay, hacking right and left with great sweeps of his blade, roaring the old war-song:

  “An army was but vanity,

  Compared with Cei in battle.

  His sword in battle was

  Not to be averted.

  He was the resolute lord

  Of a legion for the kingdom’s good.”

  A warrior came at him from the left, spear stabbing. Cei parried the spear and took the warrior’s eyes, slashing across his face with a savage cut. Old, fat, drunk and half-blind as he was, Cei could still move fluidly in battle. Most of his enemies were younger men, yet they were sluggish and frightened, and got in each other’s way. Cei fought with reckless abandon, careless of wounds, merely wishing to slay as many as possible before they brought him down.

  “I have seen Cei in haste.

  Prince of the plunder,

  The tall man in his wrath;

  Heavy was he in his vengeance,

  Terrible was his fighting.”

 
; The ancient fort rang to blows struck. Cei’s sword scraped and clanged off ring-mail, shields and helms. His murderers had come well-armed for the fight. He wore no armour, just his stained tunic and rumpled breeches. Spears jabbed at his flesh, knives and axes hewed him. Soon Cei was slathered in his own blood, mingled with sweat. Yet his old strength endured, and he remained defiantly on his feet, hacking men down as he croaked out his death-song.

  “When he drank from a horn

  He would drink as much as four;

  When into battle he came,

  He slew as would a hundred.

  Unless God should accomplish it,

  Cei’s death would be unachieved.”

  An axe swung down at his face. Cei seized the wielder’s wrist, butted him in the face. He went down, blood spurting from a shattered nose. A spear plunged into Cei’s back. He lurched, gasping, and swung wildly. His sword met with thin air; the taste of blood was thick and rank in his mouth. A cut opened on his brow, pouring blood into his good eye. He shook it away, breath rasping in his throat. The attackers swarmed in for the kill. Five men Cei had laid low. An over-eager young man in a deerskin tunic leaped over the bodies to finish Cei with his javelin. Cei’s exhaustion was deceptive. His sword flickered like an adder’s tongue, ripped out the youth’s bowels, left him squirming on the ground.

  “Cei’s death…Cei’s death would be unachieved…”

  Now there were three spears in the old man’s massive back. He staggered. Blood wept from his wounds. His strength failed at last, and he fell to his knees. A spear-butt hammered against the back of his skull. Cei toppled over and fell among the slain. Gwyddawg, who had stayed well to the rear, now crept forwards, sword in hand. “Is he dead?” hissed another man, nursing a livid cut Cei’s sword had opened on his face.

  Two more survivors edged towards the fallen man. “Take his head!” yelled Gwyddawg. A shudder ran through Cei’s enormous body. His bloodied fingers grasped a fallen shield. His voice sounded like a horn, summoning the host to battle.