My cavalry were pummeled to pulp. I had to save them for the' next foray out, knowing it would probably be the last. Cerdic's next attack, when it came, was a fierce clash between men on foot, archers and slingers against spear and sword, finally fist to claw. Small detachments of horse guarded the causeways, beating them back whenever they gained the beleaguered second level. Bedivere and I rode a wide circle higher about the hill, observing the mad dance of the slingers, the graceful, deadlier movements of the archers, all under the great dissonant bellow of war and the time-beating thud of the catapults. We saw the defenders tense for another effort as the yellow-haired men broke over the parapet only to be driven back as our own troops rallied or a few swift horse streaked along the ditch to trample the invaders underfoot.

  Someone called as we turned off the third level into the causeway, a rider, plowing through a press of men. "Arthur? Where is Arthur?"

  Bedivere thrust the dragon aloft. "Here, here. What news?"

  The horse stumbled toward us, bleeding about the shoulders and forelegs.

  Lucullus bowed over the saddle horn, short of breath.

  . "Ancellius sent me," he panted. "We lost a part of the Second level on the north. Trying to clear them out now. If we can't, just have to barricade and hold the rest."

  "That's all you can do." I noted the bent sword in his grip. "You look like you've caught it."

  Lucullus glared, wheezing. "Let Bedivere witness that once more I formally protest this callous insult to Rome. I've been nearly killed three times this hour."

  "We regret the inconvenience, cousin, and will make full account to Theodoric."

  "Account? What account?" Lucullus stared from Bedivere to as demented children who drained the last of his mature

  ience, yanked the lathered horse about and plunged back up 300

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  the causeway. "What account, you idiots? We're all going to be King of a Hundred Battles

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  The battle rose to a fever pitch as the high tide of Cerdic's men broke once more over the second level, hung in balance, fury against fury, then fell back repulsed while we crouched for the next screaming rush. It didn't come, but still we waited.

  Oid Maelgwyn leaned against a parapet timber, spent. "Now, d'you think?"

  "Has to be now," I said. "They won't have the strength tomorrow.''

  "Nor we." Maelgwyn gazed about the battered second level where the dead and wounded were being cleared out to the redoubt. "Nothing left above but the catapult crews. All else is down here and scant enough. We can't hold, my king."

  He jerked his white head toward the battered and dispirited men still on their feet. "Good lads, but they've taken the brunt from the first, and that bastard just keeps coming. Kill ten, thirty come running after.''

  His voice broke. The old prince's tears left lighter furrows down his spattered, wind-burned cheeks. He tore off his helmet and raked furrows of frustration through the snowy thatch. "I've led them, driven *em, sworn to bloody well hang them if they fell back. That—that won't do anymore. They're too worn out to care, the best of them."

  I saw what he meant in the listless posture of the youths around us, drained of vitality, moving as little as possible, the disjointed movements of men amazed that they were still alive, that their ration of courage was enough, their mortal fear not too great. This time. But what of the next?

  Maelgwyn passed me a flagon of uisge. As he did, I noticed a familiar sheepskin bag at his feet and drew the dark-polished harp from its depths.

  "Dafydd's?"

  "As I said, Arthur. The best of them. He just left it there."

  "Where is he?"

  "Down the line. Hurt and trying not to show it, like the rest."

  "Bring the uisge, Mal. Let's find a harper."

  To know the face of war, you need look no further than Dafydd, who sprawled against a pile of logs, gray with pain, one shoulder of his buff leather jerkin torn and stiff with caked blood. Eyes closed, mouth shut tight around the misery, that unchanging picture of wounded men—not age, but the youth wiped out for a time before life calls it back again. Like a father I wished I could keep him from this bleak knowledge, leave it to old men like Mal and me who have known it longer.

  Dafydd's eyes opened, the only part of him that moved. I put the flagon to his lips.

  "It's fitting for a king to serve a bard," I said, "for they stood high as druids and could call a chief to judgment."

  He coughed as the liquor burned down his throat. "They almost did it this time, sir."

  . Maelgwyn laid the harp in Dafydd's good arm. "Here. What are the people of the cat without their bard?"

  "Not a bard, and the thousand verses never learned. But my . da was one. A bard and a great lord, mum said."

  Another generous drink sparked a flicker of his old spirit. "God, that's good!

  A great lord, she always said—on one sweet night's acquaintance, mind—traveling from the south to the Wall, the lord of him half drunk and the bard all mad as it should be. He left in the morning with a smile and a rhyme and myself snug inside her, that sort of style. She always said I had his touch."

  Another drink, Maelgwyn wincing only a little at my prodigality and the boy's thirst, but Davy-bach recovered more each moment. He nestled the harp into his good shouider.

  "And perhaps more than just the touch. Sometimes in your hall, Prince—oh, the glorious nights when the rhyming came like spun gold from my mouth and my fingers knew they could stroke and grasp and tear such music from these strings as no bard in the wild, wailing world has ever made."

  The stiff fingers of his right hand splayed clumsily over the strings.

  "Music just beyond me when I reached, but there and waiting to be found, so pure and perfect that no other song need ever be sung. And each night I'd try and tear and try and tear and drink too much because that sound is fire and a pain in the gut—until they'd lay hold of me and pull the harp away—'Na, Davy, leave off. You'll kill the poor thing like a sufferin' beast. There's no such music, no such sound in a harp!' But there is. Listen, my king!"

  A chord sprang out of the strings, impaling the listener on a spear of sound.

  Another and another followed, sounds a harp couldn't make but did.

  "Who says there's no such music?" Dafydd challenged. "When

  •I've heard it all my life saying: find me in these strings or

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  dreaming men. Find me when you're brave, reeling drunk or whispering between a woman's breasts or in the midst of revel when you're all of a sudden alone.

  Find me in all things too far and too much and just further than a man can reach, but must. Oh, Davy, it says to me, you'll always hear the echo of where I've been and always follow. Is there no more cheer in that flagon, my lord?"

  "There is that." I passed it to him.

  Dafydd took a last huge gulp with a sensual sigh, lurching to unsteady feet.

  "I'm feeling deathly and mad as an owl in daylight, but by God, I—can—sing!"

  He touched the strings again, no longer a sound of darkness and sharp angles

  but mellow and rich with remembrance. Dafydd the harper began a song, and what happened then was, perhaps, what this testament is all about. 1 can't ask you to understand it where I cannot myself.

  It was the sort of thing I have seen and heard all my life among Britons, from lords to farmers: one man, one harper began a song. Within a few soft notes, another man had joined him in unison. And then another and another, the sweet clear line of "'Bronwen in the Vale" that I've sung since boyhood. And then, as our people do, other men began to sing, not the melody but the harmony that deep-dyes and thrills through the sad, glorious music of my people.

  Maelgwyn and I were rooted to the spot. "Listen to them, Arthur," he whispered reverently. "Nefoedd annwyl, listen to them!"

  Then, with his helmet off and the wind whipping about his white head, Maelgwyn was singing yet a third part of the soaring, intricate music he'd learned in his cradle. And the music spread out from us along the trench.

  Light and candles of evening And wait me, dear Bronwen And still another line of harmony rolled under the melody like a deep river, and I looked up, spirit thrust aloft by the swelling sound, to see our men on the third level, standing forward of the catapults, joining in.

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  And more and more from God knows where the voices rose, until the winter air went warm with a beauty to burst the heart. Stronger and stronger the voices until I wondered how the drab world could hold so much of heaven and what god had set it down here just for me. And I cried out to them, "Sing it, you lovely men! Sing out dear! Let them hear what they come against."

  No man not on his feet now all along the ditch, turning the song with the unexpected twists of harmony that sear the soul with its sound. I grabbed Maelgwyn, the two of us dancing like mad old bears in the mud.

  "Ha-ha, Arthur. Just listen to my boys!"

  "They'll hold, old Cat. They'll hold this ditch against God himself. Just stay with them, Mal. Now's the time. I'm going out."

  The last chords were still rolling lovely about the hill as my cavalry trotted into line behind their commanders. Battered and weary, they still sang with the others, faces new-lit with an old joy. Even laconic Bedivere was ecstatic.

  "Och, Artos, 1 never sang better, and the highest notes were mine, did you hear? Listen, some of them are at it still."

  "No better time to go, Bedwyr. Advance the dragon."

  There were beautiful tears in his eyes. "Aye, Artos."

  "Kay, Gawain! Bless you all this day. I'm going out."

  And then a kind of preparate stillness broken only by the leather-creak metal-scrape harness-jingle of men and steel and horses drawing together into single purpose. Once more the silent lines, the lances aloft, the ready men waiting, and under it all the whisper of the east wind, the snuffle of a horse here and there.

  I couldn't speak for all to hear, but 1 needed no eloquence like Cerdic's, not for Britons who'd found their own in the song. Little need I say to the soul of them.

  "My lords, I must go down this hill against Cerdic. And I would be honored by any man who cares to follow."

  No command was given, not one voice, but the forest of lances swept forward in salute. I closed my eyes against sudden tears.

  "Alae, forward—"

  "Orkney—"

  "Dobunni—"

  "Dyfneint—"

  "Ha-oh!"

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  It was the beginning of the end tor Cerdic. His men would still fight, but no

  longer as a savage tide. Most of them hadn't eaten for two days, fighting almost continually in wet muck and cold with no shelter. Strong men with the spirit of gods, but mortal bodies that could not be pushed any further.

  Several attacks hit the second level, but they were sporadic and easily beaten back. When we smashed through and began to tear at them, Cerdic was forced to face his men away from Badon, forming them into squares and diamonds of locked shields.

  "Gone to defense," Bedivere hissed between bared teeth. "Gone to ground and it's my turn now. Cerdic, where are you?" Defensive but hardly beaten, the Saxons held their ground. They held, they went down, they fell back craftily only to close about the unwary, run in slaughtering and then reform, each square its separate redoubt torn by our attacks. Cerdic's berserkers forsook the hard-won first level and streamed down the causeway to reinforce their comrades. Some never reached the bottom, pelted and crushed by the last of Maelgwyn's catapult stones.

  I reined in beside Gawain, screaming through the noise. "We've got them, got them. Take your Orkney, hit them on the right. Kay! Kay! Dobunni forward to me." "Cerdic!"

  The horse and rider hurtled past me. Leaning from his saddle, Kay punched my arm. "Look!"

  It was Bedivere, bent forward behind his shield, sword whirling in his right hand, galloping alone straight at a shield wall. Cerdic was behind it, the great war ax resting for a moment on his shoulder. Searching since we dashed off the causeway, Bedivere found him now.

  "Cerdic, you pig—"

  We had seconds or less to support him. I snapped the order to Kay and his men.

  "Couch lances, follow me."

  My own lance was long gone. I drew my sword and dug heels into the horse's flank, plunging forward. We smashed into the outermost square only a few bounds behind Bedivere.

  It was a mistake and almost our last. I had eyes for Bedivere and Cerdic alone and never stopped to realize how few Dobunni ever heard my order. Only Kay and a handful followed me into the square. As we plowed through the shields, the Saxons cut off and surrounded us. A moment of whirling about, then someone hamstrung my horse and it went down under me. I managed to King of a Hundred Battles

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  get free of the stirrups before we fell, but my right leg was pinned.

  Helpless, I saw Cerdic's head go back in a roar of exultant laughter, then a blur of horses as the Dobunni circled me about while I struggled free of the crippled mount. Bedivere was on foot now, leaping free of the horse that fell dead with a throwing ax in its brain. As three of Cerdic's men closed in on him, he screamed with maniacal joy, a high-pitched song of mayhem counterpointed by the swoosh of his longsword cutting a great, murdering arc in front of him.

  The fools were coming at him with swords alone. No one does mat and lives, not with Bedivere. His feet were cat pads, the feet of a dancer, the sword a mere extension of long, ropy arms as bis body twisted lightly under the clumsy blows and came up killing. I saw him spin out of a slice that shattered one man's arm and lunge forward against Cerdic's ax before another man cut across his path. Cerdic strode down on me, raising the ax, but even as I dragged free, a horse shot by me and Cerdic, with his ax poised to kill me, was blotted out by a body that dove from the saddle to tumble him in the mud. Only a moment's scrambling, then Cerdic's hand snaked to his belt, out and back, and the body lay still. But I was clear, rising to my knees, groping for the dropped sword.

  What happened then was a blur of shock and sound. I saw Cerdic wobbling to his feet, shaken, then suddenly both of us went flat again out of sheer self-preservation as a roaring storm broke over us. Horsemen from God knows where, a solid line of them that shattered the Saxon square like kindling and

  swept the survivors away from Cerdic and me. It was stupid, comical. We stared at each other like pummeled clowns in a farce—What happened?—while the iron line of horse ground Saxons into the mud. Then Cerdic reached for the ax. I couldn't find the sword— no, there it was, but too far, not enough time, and Cerdic was raising himself, the ax already swinging high.

  "Now, Arthur!"

  Before the swing reached its peak, I dove at him, the instinctive last-first weapon in my hand. The old bronze knife that marked mefhain. I closed with Cerdic under his raised arm and _ drove the knife through his eye deep into the brain behind.

  We teetered together like statues, then the ax dropped behind him and Cerdic fell away from me. I remember stabbing uselessly at the body again and again with Bedivere coming and then suddenly dodging aside with the same comic desperation as ;$ fresh line of horse damn near ran him down. Filthy, stubble-306

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  bearded men on spent horses that still hit the remnant of Cerdic's near men with the force of God's own lightning, scattering, trampling before they wheeled in formation like urgent autumn birds to charge the next square.

  Then Bedivere clutching my shoulder, hoarse and jubilant. "Combrogi, Artos!

  They got back!"

  I wiped the mud from my eyes, trying to make out faces in the scrofulous pack.

  "Who . . . who's leading?"

  "Don't know, the fool's got no shield."

  Suddenly Bedivere lifted me off my feet with a massive, savage joy. "It's Gareth! It's the macDiurmuid."

  Bedivere was twenty again, leaping up and down like a child. "The Goddamned horrible macDiurmuid! You beautiful man, you darling. GarethV'

  "Give . . . give me your sword, Bedivere."

  I severed Cerdic's head and lifted it by the thick hair as a rider wheeled away from Gareth and lumbered wearily toward us. A fine head, a king's head.

  The horseman stripped off his helmet: Lord Bors, pig-dirty and red-eyed but sustained by that vitality that comes too early in Hfe and leaves too soon.

  "My lords, I saw the dragon fallen, and I thought—"

  "Na, I dropped the bloody thing," Bedivere growled. "We thought you were dead."

  Bors grinned. He looked tipsy. "And if I didn't die this week, I never will."

  "Hell, at your age it's impossible," I said. "Lower your lance."

  He dipped the point, and I impaled Cerdic's head on it. "Throw this to his earls. Let them see it's over."

  "Aye, sir, will I not." Bors swung the victory high. "And God give you long life, sir."

  He yanked the tired horse about and galloped to where the combrogi and Orkney were combining in a deadly phalanx, driving the Saxons further back. Some of them were running clear away from Badon now. It was over.

  I sagged down in the mud by Cerdic's hacked trunk, shrugging off Bedivere's arm. "Leave off, leave off. I'm not hurl."

  "I know that. It's Kay."

  He pointed at the muddy little pile not far away. My brother Kay, die body that hurtled between Cerdic and my death, and he lay in the mud with the stain widening over his torn mail coat. The combrogi had run right over him.

  "Give him water, Bedivere."

  Kay opened his eyes, the only thing he could move. "No

  . Half blood as it would be." My little brother Caius, my Kay, so eager to keep up with me, go much of his life lived in my fast-running shadow.

  "Did ... did y'see me land on that b-bastard?" he choked.

  "Didn't I now? I'd be dead without you, Kay."

  "Ah . . . mum always said so."

  Bedivere tried to ease him, clumsy with caring, but it hurt Kay

 

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