Legacy: Arthurian Saga (45 page)

The Saxons, caught in their own trap,
with this immense winged force in front of them, and behind them
the rock of Kaerconan and the narrow defile where the ambush had
been planned, fought like demons. But they were at a disadvantage:
they started afraid -- afraid of Ambrosius' reputation, of his
recent ferocious victory at Doward, and more than both -- so men
told me -- of my prophecy to Vortigern which had spread from mouth
to mouth as quickly as the fires in Doward tower. And of course the
omens worked the other way for Ambrosius. Battle was joined shortly
before noon, and by sunset it was all over.

I saw it all. It was my first great
battlefield, and I am not ashamed that it was almost my last. My
battles were not fought with sword and spear. If it comes to that,
I had already had a hand in the winning of Kaerconan before I ever
reached it; and when I did reach it, was to find myself playing the
very part that Uther had once, in jest, assigned to me.

I had ridden with Cadal as far as
Caerleon, where we found a small body of Ambrosius' troops in
possession of the fortress, and another on its way to invest and
repair the fort at Maridunum. Also, their officer told me
confidentially, to make sure that the Christian community -- "all
the community," he added gravely, with the ghost of a wink at me,
"such is the commander's piety" -- remained safe. He had been
detailed, moreover, to send some of his men back with me, to escort
me to Ambrosius. My father had even thought to send some of my
clothes. So I sent Cadal back, to his disgust, to do what he could
about Galapas' cave, and await me there, then myself rode
north-east with the escort.

We came up with the army just outside
Kaerconan. The troops were already deployed for battle and there
was no question of seeing the commander, so we withdrew, as
instructed, to the western hill where the men of the South Welsh
tribes eyed one another distrustfully over swords held ready for
the Saxons below. The men of my escort troop eyed me in something
the same manner: they had not intruded on my silence on the ride,
and it was plain they held me in some awe, not only as Ambrosius'
acknowledged son, but as "Vortigern's prophet" -- a title which had
already stuck to me and which it took me some years to shed. When I
reported with them to the officer in charge, and asked him to
assign me a place in his troop, he was horrified, and begged me
quite seriously to stay out of the fight, but to find some place
where the men could see me, and know, as he put it, "that the
prophet was here with them." In the end I did as he wished, and
withdrew to the top of a small rocky crag hard by where, wrapping
my cloak about me, I prepared to watch the battlefield spread out
below like a moving map.

Ambrosius himself was in the center; I
could see the white stallion with the Red Dragon glimmering above
it. Out to the right Uther's blue cloak glinted as his horse
cantered along the lines. The leader of the left wing I did not
immediately recognize; a grey horse, a big, heavy-built figure
striding it, a standard bearing some device in white which I could
not at first distinguish. Then I saw what it was. A boar. The Boar
of Cornwall. Ambrosius' commander of the left was none other than
the greybeard Gorlois, lord of Tintagel.

Nothing could be read of the order in
which the Saxons had assembled. All my life I had heard of the
ferocity of these great blond giants, and all British children were
brought up from babyhood on stories of their terror. They went mad
in war, men said, and could fight bleeding from a dozen wounds,
with no apparent lessening of strength or ferocity. And what they
had in strength and cruelty they lacked in discipline. This seemed,
indeed, to be so. There was no order that I could see in the vast
surge of glinting metal and tossing horsehair which was perpetually
on the move, like a flood waiting for the dam to break.

Even from that distance I could pick
out Hengist and his brother, giants with long moustaches sweeping
to their chests, and long hair flying as they spurred their shaggy,
tough little horses up and down the ranks. They were shouting, and
echoes of the shouts came clearly; prayers to the gods, vows,
exhortations, commands, which rose towards a ferocious crescendo,
till on the last wild shout of kill, kill, kill!" the axe-heads
swung up, glinting in the May sunlight, and the pack surged forward
towards the ordered lines of Ambrosius' army."

The two hosts met with a shock that
sent the jackdaws squalling up from Kaerconan, and seemed to
splinter the very air. It was impossible, even from my point of
vantage, to see which way the fight -- or rather, the several
different movements of the fight -- was going. At one moment it
seemed as if the Saxons with their axes and winged helms were
boring a way into the British host; at the next, you would see a
knot of Saxons cut off in a sea of British, and then, apparently
engulfed, vanish. Ambrosius' center block met the main shock of the
charge, then Uther's cavalry, with a swift flanking movement, came
in from the east. The men of Cornwall under Gorlois held back at
first, but as soon as the Saxons' front line began to waver, they
came in like a hammer-blow from the left and smashed it apart.
After that the field broke up into chaos. Everywhere men were
fighting in small groups, or even singly and hand to hand. The
noise, the clash and shouting, even the smell of sweat and blood
mingled, seemed to come up to this high perch where I sat with my
cloak about me, watching. Immediately below me I was conscious of
the stirring and muttering of the Welshmen, then the sudden cheer
as a troop of Saxons broke and galloped in our direction. In a
moment the hilltop was empty save for me, only that the clamor
seemed to have washed nearer, round the foot of the hill like the
tide coming in fast. A robin lighted on a black-thorn at my elbow,
and began to sing. The sound came high and sweet and uncaring
through all the noise of battle. To this day, whenever I think of
the battle for Kaerconan, it brings to mind a robin's song, mingled
with the croaking of the ravens. For they were already circling,
high overhead: men say they can hear the clash of swords ten miles
off.

It was finished by sunset. Eldol, Duke
of Gloucester, dragged Hengist from his horse under the very walls
of Kaerconan to which he had turned to flee, and the rest of the
Saxons broke and fled, some to escape, but many to be cut down in
the hills, or the narrow defile at the foot of Kaerconan. At first
dusk, torches were lit at the gate of the fortress, the gates were
thrown open, and Ambrosius' white stallion paced across the bridge
and into the stronghold, leaving the field to the ravens, the
priests, and the burial parties.

I did not seek him out straight away.
Let him bury his dead and clear the fortress. There was work for me
down there among the wounded, and besides, there was no hurry now
to give him my mother's message. While I had sat there in the May
sunlight between the robin's song and the crash of battle, I knew
that she had sickened again, and was already dead.

5

I made my way downhill between the
clumps of gorse and the thorn trees. The Welsh troops had vanished,
long since, to a man, and isolated shouts and battle cries showed
where small parties were still hunting down the fugitives in forest
and hill.

Below, on the plain, the fighting was
over. They were carrying the wounded into Kaerconan. Torches weaved
everywhere, till the plain was all light and smoke. Men shouted to
one another, and the cries and groans of the wounded came up
clearly, with the occasional scream of a horse, the sharp commands
from the officers, and the tramp of the stretcher-bearers' feet.
Here and there, in the dark corners away from the torchlight, men
scurried singly or in pairs among the heaped bodies. One saw them
stoop, straighten, and scurry off. Sometimes where they paused
there was a cry, a sudden moan, sometimes the brief flash of metal
or the quick downstroke of a shortened blow. Looters, rummaging
among the dead and dying, keeping a few steps ahead of the official
salvage parties. The ravens were coming down; I saw the tilt and
slide of their black wings hovering above the torches, and a pair
perched, waiting, on a rock not far from me. With nightfall the
rats would be there, too, running up from the damp roots of the
castle walls to attack the dead bodies.

The work of salvaging the living was
being done as fast and efficiently as everything else the Count's
army undertook. Once they were all within, the gates would be shut.
I would seek him out, I decided, after the first tasks were done.
He would already have been told that I was safely here, and he
would guess I had gone to work with the doctors. There would be
time, later, to eat, and then it would be time enough to talk to
him.

On the field, as I made my way across,
the stretcher parties still strove to separate friend from foe. The
Saxon dead had been flung into a heap in the center of the field; I
guessed they would be burned according to custom. Beside the
growing hill of bodies a platoon stood guard over the glittering
pile of arms and ornaments taken from the dead men. The British
dead were being laid nearer the wall, in rows for identification.
There were small parties of men, each with an officer, bending over
them one by one. As I picked my way through trampled mud oily and
stinking with blood and slime I passed, among the armed and staring
dead, the bodies of half a dozen ragged men -- peasants or outlaws
by the look of them. These would be looters, cut down or speared by
the soldiers. One of them still twitched like a pinned moth,
hastily speared to the ground by a broken Saxon weapon which had
been left in his body. I hesitated, then went and bent over him. He
watched me -- he was beyond speech -- and I could see he still
hoped. If he had been cleanly speared, I would have drawn the blade
out and let him go with the blood, but as it was, there was a
quicker way for him, I drew my dagger, pulled my cloak aside out of
the way, and carefully, so that I would be out of the jet of blood,
stuck my dagger in at the side of his throat. I wiped it on the
dead man's rags, and straightened to find a cold pair of eyes
watching me above a leveled short sword three paces
away.

Mercifully, it was a man I knew. I saw
him recognize me, then he laughed and lowered his sword.

"You're lucky. I nearly gave it to you
in the back."

"I didn't think of that." I slid the
dagger back into its sheath. "It would have been a pity to die for
stealing from that. What did you think he had worth
taking?"

"You'd be surprised what you catch
them taking. Anything from a corn plaster to a broken sandal
strap." He jerked his head towards the high walls of the fortress.
"He's been asking where you were."

"I'm on my way."

"They say you foretold this, Merlin?
And Doward, too?"

"I said the Red Dragon would overcome
the White," I said.

"But I think this is not the end yet.
What happened to Hengist?"

"Yonder." He nodded again towards the
citadel. "He made for the fort when the Saxon line broke, and was
captured just by the gate."

"I saw that. He's inside, then? Still
alive?"

"Yes."

"And Octa? His son?"

"Got away. He and the cousin -- Eosa,
isn't it? -- galloped north."

"So it isn't the end. Has he sent
after them?"

"Not yet. He says there's time
enough." He eyed me. "Is there?"

"How would I know?" I was unhelpful.
"How long does he plan to stay here? A few days?"

"Three, he says. Time to bury the
dead."

"What will he do with
Hengist?"

"What do you think?" He made a little
chopping movement downwards with the edge of his hand. "And long
overdue, if you ask me. They're talking about it in there, but you
could hardly call it a trial. The Count's said nothing as yet, but
Uther's roaring to have him killed, and the priests want a bit of
cold blood to round the day off with. Well, I'll have to get back
to work, see if I can catch more civilians looting." He added as he
turned away: "We saw you up there on the hill during the fighting.
People were saying it was an omen."

He went. A raven flapped down from
behind me with a croak, and settled on the breast of the man I had
killed. I called to a torch-bearer to light me the rest of the way,
and made for the main gate of the fortress.

While I was still some way short of
the bridge a blaze of tossing torches came out, and in the middle
of them, bound and held, the big blond giant that I knew must be
Hengist himself. Ambrosius' troops formed a hollow square, and into
this space his captors dragged the Saxon leader, and there must
have forced him to his knees, for the flaxen head vanished behind
the close ranks of the British. I saw Ambrosius himself then,
coming out over the bridge, followed closely on his left by Uther,
and on his other side by a man I did not know, in the robe of a
Christian bishop, still splashed with mud and blood. Others crowded
behind them. The bishop was talking earnestly in Ambrosius' ear.
Ambrosius' face was a mask, the cold, expressionless mask I knew so
well. I heard him say what sounded like, "You will see, they will
be satisfied," and then, shortly, something else that caused the
bishop at last to fall silent.

Ambrosius took his place. I saw him
nod to an officer. There was a word of command, followed by the
whistle and thud of a blow. A sound -- it could hardly be called a
growl -- of satisfaction from the watching men. The bishop's voice,
hoarse with triumph: "So perish all pagan enemies of the one true
God! Let his body be thrown now to the wolves and kites!" And then
Ambrosius' voice, cold and quiet: "He will go to his own gods with
his army round him, in the manner of his people." Then to the
officer: "Send me word when all is ready, and I will
come."