Excalibur, p.3
Excalibur, page 3
Arthur could not sleep that night, listening to the whimpers of the three women the war band had rescued from the raiders who wept inconsolably at the horrors they had suffered at the hands of the bandits. Ector’s words rattled around his head like mice in a barn wall, of how he must harden himself to the world if he was to take his place within it. Everything Ector had said Arthur had heard before from Ector, Huell and the warriors of Ector’s war band on the training ground, but now that Arthur had seen battle, it all seemed more real, more relevant and more important to remember.
The war band rose early that morning and the three women rode captured horses behind Ector, Kai and Arthur whilst the war band marched in a silence punctured only by the cough or moan from a man suffering from too much ale the night before. The news of the Saxons and their fifty ships quietened them, and the men feared what that new army meant for them and their families, for it meant war, fear, death and suffering.
‘Thank you for saving my life,’ Arthur had said to Lunete the moment she awoke, and a broad smile creased her pretty face. He had helped her up from the broken-tiled floor and given her his last oatcake to break her morning fast. As the warriors struck camp and prepared litters for their dead, Arthur had found Kai and congratulated him on his bravery. Arthur marvelled at the dark blue death ring etched on Kai’s right forearm, and his foster brother had grabbed Arthur in a warm embrace. Amends were made and Arthur rode with the war band back to King Urien’s Bear Fort with Ector’s words burned into his mind like a cattle brand. He had to steel himself to what must be done, had to be ready to kill and strike with his spear, and he promised himself that next time he would strike without hesitation.
The war band marched through the forests and hills of Rheged under a pale blue sky the colour of winter ice. The kingdom of Rheged sat in the north-west of Britain. Britain contained many kingdoms. To the north was Dal Riata, Gododdin, Lothian and Pictland, to Rheged’s east were the lost kingdoms of Bernicia and Deira. South of Rheged lay Elmet, and then Dumnonia ruled by Uther Pendragon, the king of kings. To the south-east lay Kent and other lands lost to the Saxons, just as Deira and Bernicia were. Finally, the western kingdoms of Gwynedd, Powys and Gwent, and finally Demetia ruled by King Morholt and his wild Irishmen who had conquered that land a generation before Arthur was born. Each kingdom was distinct and fought to protect its borders, its woodlands, its cattle, salt, tin, clay, shale, jet, lead, iron and copper from jealous and warlike neighbours.
The Bear Fort stood high and proud atop its promontory looking down onto the River Eden as the warriors crested a heather covered hilltop. The Bear Fort was a timber hall built by King Urien’s father, Cynfarch the Cold, perched on a steep-sided hill inside the River Eden’s wide meander, which flowed out into the grey sea to the west. Cynfarch was a cunning old dog and had ordered every man in his kingdom to help build a mound atop the hill, and a hall atop the mound. Below the hall and mound, a wooden wall of sharpened timber stakes ringed the hilltop, encircled by a deep ditch. Inside the walls was a wide courtyard with thatched houses and room for blacksmiths, weavers, potters, craftworkers and Urien’s courtiers. Many lords of Britain made their homes in the ruins left by the Romans. The neatly dressed stone walls were beyond the ken of any craftsmen in the kingdoms born in the fiery wake of the legion’s departure. But Cynfarch built a new fortress, high and impregnable, or so he hoped. Marshland and reeds surrounded it on one side and the river on the other. Pastures and farmland swept away to north and south, and coppiced woodland to the east. The west led to the sea, to trade, fishing and salt pans. So the Bear Fort was both a snarling clifftop fortress and a rich hub for trade, silver and wealth.
Arthur stared at the pointed walls, the vast, lofty hall and its thatched roof. The hall appeared to be made of gold, shining in the sunlight, and the walls resembled sharp spears encircling the place, like a hall of an ancient god soaring high in the clouds. Smoke from a dozen fires hazed the hill and sat above the Bear Fort like its very own cloud, and as the war band marched up the worn path towards the fortress, a horn blared long and loud to announce their arrival.
Arthur and Kai secured the horses in a stable by the gate, and just as Arthur emerged from the stink of horse and fouled hay, he found Huell waiting for him at the stable door. The stocky warrior chuckled as Arthur approached. He had taken a shallow cut to his forehead during the fight, and his brawny forearms were thick with death rings.
‘I saw you, bastard,’ Huell said, his eyes narrowing. ‘You’ve a coward’s heart inside of you. Ector can’t see it, but I can. Might be better for us all if you just left, rode off in the night and never came back. I don’t want you beside me when we face the Saxons, boy. Your spear will drop, or you’ll run, and our men will die. So, piss off when it’s dark, run away. You know you want to.’
Arthur just carried on walking, pretending that the warrior’s words hadn’t affected him, even though they sliced into his heart like a sharp blade.
‘What did he want?’ asked Kai as they jogged to catch up with Ector.
‘Nothing.’
‘Ignore him. He’s full of piss and wind. He had his eye on Lunete, and she’s only got eyes for you.’
‘What?’ said Arthur.
‘The men talk of it, that Huell will ask my father for Lunete’s hand. His own wife died in childbirth two winters back. Come now, you know Lunete has loved you since we were boys. Don’t play the innocent.’ Deep down, Arthur knew Lunete loved him, but it was the love of a child, of a young girl for an older boy, and Arthur was a man now. He liked Lunete, her wildness and ferocity and her bright eyes, but it was the love for a sister, nothing more.
Kai punched Arthur on the shoulder and Arthur punched him back, but they had thankfully caught up with Ector who strode towards King Urien’s hall, and Arthur could remain silent. The Bear Fort took its name from a monstrous bear’s skull mounted above the hall’s wide oak doors. It snarled down at Arthur, bone white with teeth as long as a man’s finger. Urien had killed the beast himself when he was Arthur’s age, and as he stalked beneath its snarl, Huell’s words continued to sting him like a whip.
Two burly spearmen guarded the door, and they frowned as Arthur and Kai passed between them. A wall of heat hit Arthur as he entered King Urien’s great hall. The warmth was like the blast from a furnace, but tinged with the acrid smell of sweat, leather and iron. The roof was high and smoke-blackened. Torches flickered in iron crutches set high on support posts which stretched from floor to rafters. Shields with Urien’s bear sigil hung on the walls, along with shields of men Urien and his warriors had slain in battle. Warriors filled the place, men wearing hard-baked leather armour, a handful in chain mail, and all peering over one another for a glimpse of what occurred at King Urien’s high seat. Arthur shouldered through the warriors, past men he recognised and others he didn’t. Men with braided beards, some with blue-black tattoos on their faces, others with scars and missing teeth.
‘Why are there so many men here?’ said Arthur as he sidled around a broad-shouldered man.
‘The king must have summoned his warriors whilst we were away,’ said Kai with a shrug. It would take over two days to bring all the warriors of Rheged together. Even Ector’s home at Caer Ligualid was a half-day ride from the Bear Fort. Arthur had visited Urien’s hall many times but had rarely seen it so full of fighting men. A fire burned in a stone hearth at the hall’s centre and its smoke escaped through a smoke hole in the thatch. The fire, combined with so many men, made the hall close and oppressive, and Arthur was glad when he reached the raised dais where Urien sat on his throne and glowered at the throng before him.
‘Lord king,’ Ector said. He stood below the king’s throne and bowed his head.
‘Ector has returned,’ growled the king, his voice deep and as full of gravel as a riverbed. ‘What news of the raiders?’ Urien sat slumped on his throne, a wide and deep chair carved of oak adorned with the skulls of five warriors he had killed during the Great War. Urien was bald, and his braided beard was as grey as an iron spit, but despite his age he exuded power and strength. A scar ran from the top of his head down through his eye to his jaw. He was broad and thick necked, with a pugnacious round face and clever eyes. As a boy, Arthur had loved to sit by a winter fire and listen to bards talk of mighty Urien, Uther Pendragon, Ector, Cadwallon Longhand, Gorlois, Ambrosius Aurelianus and the other heroes who had fought against the evil usurper Vortigern and his Saxon horde.
‘Bucellari from Bernicia’s borderlands, lord king,’ said Ector, and a rumble of voices swept across the hall. ‘A band of masterless men whose heads we mounted on spears to warn others what happens to those who raid in Rheged.’
‘Good. Perhaps I should have ridden with you. I could do with getting out of this cursed chair for a while. We should not call Bernicia and Deira by their old names any longer, for they are no longer part of our lands, no longer part of what was once Britain. They are Lloegyr, the lost lands, lost to pagan Saxons and their axes, shields and ships. Good land, rich land, all lost. By all the gods, but we must cast these bloody invaders from our shores.’
‘The raiders were mercenaries forced out of Bernicia by a new force of Saxons, my lord. I questioned one of their number, and he spoke of fifty ships landed this spring. Three thousand Saxon warriors led by a man named Octha.’
More murmurs rippled across the hall as men whispered in shock at the huge number of warriors.
‘There are already thousands of the scum in Bernicia and Deira, or Lloegyr, as you say, my lord. They swell Saxon armies to the size we haven’t seen since Vortigern first invited the Saxons to our shores. And they do not come in peace, lord king. There will be war this summer, and it will take all our forces to keep them out of Rheged.’
‘I know it, Ector. I heard tell of such a force. King Letan Luyddoc of Gododdin sent word days ago, which is why I have called my warriors and comitatuses’ here to the Bear Fort. I have sent my son Owain ahead with fifty men to scout our borders. We must rally our army and march east to guard our borders. Rheged will fight the Saxon whoresons, and so will Letan. We march to war, my warriors, red war!’
The men in the hall stamped their feet and roared their approval at the king’s command so that the hall shuddered with the noise.
‘They are pagan scum,’ screeched Dustan, Urien’s priest. He was a pinch-faced man with a small mouth and close-set eyes over sharp nose, so that he looked like a sparrow. He wore a filthy robe, woollen, with a ragged hem and loose sleeves from which shook his thin white hands. ‘Worshippers of foul gods, idolators, sinners and the enemies of God. They must be stopped, driven from this land like dogs. God wills it!’ His voice grew in pitch until he screamed like a fox. Spittle flew from his mean mouth and his eyes rolled with pious fury. Urien, like Ector, allowed a Christian priest to live in his hall and preach to his people, just as he permitted folk to worship the old gods. Both men did so more out of fear of upsetting the nailed god than out of love for him.
The warriors reached for the crosses at their necks or touched charms and the iron at their belts for luck and to ward off the God-fury Dustan invoked. All men feared God, Jesus, the Virgin Mother and the priests who spoke their word. There were other gods in Britain, old gods spoken of in whispers or called upon at times of need, childbirth, sickness or battle. Arthur liked the tales of those violent gods, told by bards and scops, just as much as the tales of kings and warriors. But the word of God and his priests had power, and when Dustan screeched, the warriors echoed his cries for the slaughter of invading pagans.
Urien raised a ringed hand, and the hall fell silent. Only the creak of the hall’s timbers and the sigh of men’s breath disturbed the stillness. Such was Urien’s command over his fighting men. Arthur wondered at Urien’s words, for he must have heard of this new army of Saxons before he despatched Ector to deal with the bucellari raiders, which meant he sent Ector out close to the borderlands where thousands of Saxons massed for war because he cared little for his champion’s life, or because he knew Ector would come back alive with the raiders punished.
‘There is a messenger come to speak to you, lord king,’ said Urien’s steward, a thin man with a crooked nose and a bent back. He wore a finely woven tunic and a green cloak and waved his hand at a warrior in a helmet and with long moustaches who stood to the side of the high platform.
‘Come forward and speak,’ rumbled Urien.
‘King Urien,’ said the man in a strange accent. ‘I come to you from your friend King Leodegrance of Cameliard. I have ridden far and crossed the sea, for my king has need of your help.’
‘Leodegrance,’ Urien said wistfully. The king sat back on his throne and smiled, his face creasing in a lattice of wrinkles across his broad skull. ‘All men know of my brotherhood with your king, of how he sent men across the sea from Cameliard and Armorica in the dark days to help our cause. What can I do for my old friend?’
The warrior bowed deeply in recognition of Urien’s respectful words. ‘There is war across the sea, lord king. The Saxons continue to march westwards. They flee their homelands, a place of never-ending war, riven with violence since the Romans left so long ago. The Franks march eastwards and the Saxons’ lands are a hell pit of slaughter and lawlessness.’
‘Just as our lands were when the Romans left in my father’s grandfather’s time,’ said Urien, and men in the hall nodded solemnly at the memory of those dark days.
‘We are beset by war, lord king. Armorica and our once peaceful land are under attack from Saxon pagans and the warriors of Frankia. So, King Leodegrance fears for his family’s safety and sent his daughter to you for protection, to be fostered by you until a suitable match can be found for her. She is of marrying age and ready for a good husband.’
‘I would do anything for Leodegrance. His daughter is welcome in my hall.’
‘He knew you would say that, my lord. Your legend burns as brightly across the sea as it does in your own lands. So, my king already sent his daughter to these shores on his fastest ship, guarded by his bravest men. But she has fallen foul of the very men your champion Ector spoke of. This Octha, a Saxon dog, has captured the princess and is demanding a monstrous ransom for her return amid threats of the worst possible kind.’
‘The Saxons have Leodegrance’s daughter?’ Urien rose from his seat, huge and baleful and swathed in a bear-fur cloak.
‘Aye, lord king. They have her in Bernicia, captured at sea, and your friend Leodegrance would ask you to free her from her captivity and bring her here, where our princess will be safe.’
Suddenly, the doors to Urien’s hall burst open, and a gust of wind whipped through the rafters and made the hearth fire flare. Men turned and gasped as a tall man strode into the hall. He walked confidently and straight-backed with a black staff in his right hand. He came barefoot, with a head of wild white hair and a thick white beard. His face was drawn and wrinkled with a long, hooked nose above a cruel slash of a mouth. The strange man wore a black tunic and a cloak of purest white billowed behind him. Two great wolfhounds padded beside the stranger, tongues lolling, and their padded feet kept time with the slaps of the stranger’s soles as he marched through the hall. The hairs on Arthur’s neck stood up, and he shivered involuntarily.
‘A druid,’ Kai hissed in his ear, and Arthur gaped at the stranger, who exuded a strange, ethereal power which cowed every man in the hall. Even the great King Urien, so famed for his brutality and ruthless strength, sat forward in his chair, stricken by the stranger’s dramatic entrance. The druids were the priests of the old gods, from the time before men worshipped God and Christ. They were men of great power who once held sway over all Britain, of similar standing and importance to kings. Arthur heard tell of their human sacrifices, their power, and the rumours of wizards and dark magic. The Romans had killed all but a few of the druids when the legions conquered Britain, but some remained upon their holy island of Ynys Môn, which some men called Anglesey, which was sacred to the old gods and their dead religion. Despite the growing Christian religion, all respected and feared the power of the old gods, of the demons and spirits of the forests, lakes, rivers, crags, caves and springs. So, though the druids did not hold the power or sway of ancient times, they were still feared and respected.
‘Pagan!’ screamed Dustan the priest. He pointed his finger at the stranger and rose from his bench, red-faced and furious. The stranger made the sign to ward off evil, stuck two fingers into his own throat and then pointed at Dustan, who promptly sat down. His face quickly changed from red anger to ash-white fear. The stranger marched past the hearth and tossed something into it, which made the fire hiss, and its flames turn blue-green. The warriors in the hall gasped. Some went to make the sign of the cross but stopped midway and sat upon their hands in fear of the druid’s power.
‘I am Kadvuz,’ the stranger bellowed, his voice like the crashing of the sea. It filled the hall and echoed around the rafters like thunder. ‘I come from Ynys Môn, at Merlin’s behest.’
