Ashes of Time (The After Cilmeri Series) (29 page)

All Justin had to do was look back at the
riders and jerk his head once in the direction he wanted everyone
to go, and they were off.

The company surged down the hill into the
valley. The fog still hovered close to the ground, but with the
coming of the day it was thinning, and there was enough light to
see by—at least to prevent the men from driving their horses into
the river by mistake. At a gallop, a horse can cover half a mile in
two minutes, and they were the longest two minutes of David’s life
before his horse came around a hillock, the slope gave way to a
flat field, and he could see the battle before him.

The only good thing about Dad’s position had
been that the river flowed from high to low, as rivers do, so that
he’d been descending out of the gap when Madog’s forces charged
into his. The two armies—if one could call Dad’s numbers an
army—had met at a low spot in a farmer’s field on which only stubby
November grass grew.

A man to David’s right screamed in pain, an
arrow sticking out of his shoulder. More arrows rained among
David’s company, hitting men and horses alike. But they were
charging, and David disciplined his mind to focus on what was ahead
of him and not that his men were falling around him. Or that he
might fall too. A second rain of arrows came, indicating that
Madog’s bowmen were getting into a good rhythm, but the third
barrage came haphazardly. And then the arrows ceased to come at
all.

There was no point in glancing up the hill
to see what was happening, not if David hoped to live through the
next few minutes. But he spared a thought for Ieuan’s bowmen, who
must have found, if belatedly, good ground from which to shoot. It
could only be they who were keeping Madog’s bowmen occupied with
themselves instead of David’s men.

Justin had pulled a little ahead of David
and was the first to reach the rear of Madog’s force. The spearmen
were pressing forward, taking on not only Dad’s cavalry but Ieuan’s
footmen, who had surged from the path along the draw that ran
between where Madog’s men had waited and where Dad’s company had
emerged. None of the foot soldiers on either side were in what one
might call a uniform, but everyone on David’s side wore a red
kerchief, either tied around necks or upper arms. Madog’s men wore
a plain linen band.

Madog’s men were less organized than Dad’s.
Good.

The armies met in the chaos that accompanies
any battle once the two sides are joined. It was only toy army men
who deployed in squares and lines. As David swung his sword into
the back of a man who’d been late to turn at his approach, he
banished all thoughts from his mind but the necessity of staying on
his horse and not dying. David’s company had completely surprised
the men at the back of Madog’s army. Their focus had been forward
towards Dad’s cavalry, who’d ridden into the valley from the north,
and Ieuan’s spearmen, who had formed up on the slope above the
field to the northeast and were fighting behind their tall
shields.

Madog’s men fell before David’s riders, as
footmen almost always fall before cavalry, no matter the unevenness
of the numbers.

Overall, Dad’s forces were far fewer—Madog
could have had up to fifteen hundred men on foot alone—but if every
one of David’s horsemen still in the saddle managed to take on a
single footman and win, those casualties would be enough to make
the rest of Madog’s men turn and run.

David had divided his cavalry into thirds,
each with a leader. David’s contingent followed him up the middle
of the field. He’d been keeping an eye out for his father all the
while he was fighting, and it took another minute and three more
deaths for David to find him. Dad was still seated and had three of
his own men hemming him in and preventing more than one of Madog’s
men at a time from reaching him.

Whatever Dad might say, war was a young
man’s game. David spurred his horse towards him. Another third of
David’s men had driven through Madog’s ranks to the west along the
river and had managed to circle all the way around the enemy force
and link up with Dad’s company.

It looked like Dad’s men had been holding
their own too; victory was possible. David was sure, in fact, that
his side was winning, right up until he fought his way to Dad’s
side and turned to look back the way he’d come. At David’s arrival,
Dad’s guard pushed outward, creating a small pocket of space for
the two men to confer.

Dad grunted a greeting. “Where’s their
cavalry?”

David had been so focused on what he had to
do that he hadn’t registered the giant missing piece of the puzzle.
“Could Madog have left them at Harlech?”

“
Unlikely,” Dad said.
“That’s not what the scouts reported.”

David stood in his stirrups, his eyes
sweeping over the field. The fog had thinned some more, such that
visibility was a hundred yards instead of twenty. No horsemen
appeared. It was surely too much to hope for that Madog had already
gone down, but David didn’t see him either.

Slightly panicked at what
could be a major miscalculation on their part, David raised his
sword above his head, calling his men to regroup around him. Most
of them had swept through Madog’s lines and turned to face back the
way they’d come like David had. Ieuan was doing a good job of
holding his own on the hill. Madog’s spearmen had fallen back to
regroup too. David needed his men to head back through them. They
needed to win this now
.

But as it turned out, there
was no
now.
At the
moment David tasted the possibility of victory, a horn call echoed
from the southern end of the field.

Madog had come.

David’s only comfort was that Madog had left
his charge a little late. Instead of riding into the rear of
David’s cavalry, which was now forming a line ten men deep at the
northern end of the field, facing south, Madog’s own spearmen were
between him and them. Madog’s spearman had noticed this problem
too. Most of them scrambled to get out of the way, not towards
Ieuan’s spearmen, who held their position on the hill, but west
towards the river.

David’s sword went into the air. He stood in
his stirrups and lifted his voice to his men. “Forward!” Then he
pointed his sword at the opposing cavalry, which had started to
materialize out of the fog. Though Madog didn’t have more horseman
than David did, his men and horses were fresh.

David sat back in the saddle, dug in his
heels, and urged his horse into a trot. He slashed at the heads and
shoulders of the spearmen who were foolish enough to stand their
ground or slow in getting out of the way. Dad’s guard had formed up
around him to David’s left, though Dad would never allow them to
ride into Madog’s force in front of him. Like David, he wore his
shield on his left arm and held the reins loosely in his left hand,
though he was mostly instructing his horse with his knees.
Cadwallon rode on Dad’s right to protect his unshielded side.

Justin rode to David’s right, and David
could hear him cursing steadily, something about condemning Madog,
the fog, and all Welsh traitors to hell. But then Dad raised his
hand, and the line slowed. Still eighty yards away, Madog had risen
to stand in his stirrups and had ripped off his helmet. Even from
this distance, David could see the slash of a grin that split his
face. He whipped the helmet around in a circle above his head,
calling his men to action, and then tamped it back down on his
head. Back in the saddle, he looked straight at Dad and cupped his
hands around his mouth. “Do you surrender, Llywelyn? You must know
that you cannot win!”

Calling David’s father ‘Llywelyn’ was an
insult, of course. He was the King of Wales, a fact which Madog was
plainly telling him that he didn’t acknowledge.

Madog was working from a position of
strength. He had the greater numbers. Out of the corner of David’s
eye, he could see Madog’s spearmen gathering themselves by the
river, prepared to renew the fight they had thought lost. The cold
feeling that had sat in David’s stomach since the scout had spoken
of David’s lack of luck turned to solid ice.

David swallowed hard. Their plan had failed.
What Bevyn would say about the disaster when he heard about it
didn’t bear thinking about.

“
Fight or run,” Dad
said.

“
We can’t run,” David said.
“If we run, all of Ieuan’s men will die. And after that, Madog will
chase those who survive all the way to Aber.”

Dad nodded. “Then we fight.”

David ripped off his helmet, as Madog had
done a moment ago, but David tossed his aside so his men could see
his face and take courage from his defiance. Then he stabbed his
sword above his head. “Cymry!”

From the hillside to David’s left, Ieuan’s
men heard his call. Whether or not they understood the bravado
behind it—and the desperation—they roared their approval. David
spurred his horse, riding towards Madog as fast as his horse would
carry him and outstripping Dad within twenty yards.

Without hesitation, the men followed David
down the center of the field, and if they questioned his choice of
fighting instead of running, they didn’t show it. David could tell
where Madog was by the white plume on his helmet. Shouts and calls
came from behind. Except for Justin and Samuel, coming up on the
far right, David was getting ahead of his men.

But he had formed a plan. It might be a
crazy, foolish plan, but cutting off the head of the snake might be
their only chance to win this battle. David had seen the reckless
look in his father’s eye a moment ago, and David thought that Dad
had seen this one chance too. He might say David was more valuable
than he was, but David was younger and stronger. This fight
belonged to him.

“
I’m counting on you to
watch my back, Justin. You know what to do. We’ve practiced this
many times.” David sheathed his sword.

“
My lord! What are you
doing?”

“
What I must.” David didn’t
spare Justin another glance. Madog was only twenty yards away now
and bearing down on David as fast as David was racing for
him.

“
My lord, but—”

David headed his horse to Madog’s right,
which wasn’t the usual way of doing things in the Middle Ages. As
David intended, it caused a momentary hesitation in Madog’s horse.
Instead of David’s sword clashing with Madog’s, David bashed his
shield into Madog’s shield and used his greater size and strength
to drive Madog’s shield down and away. More than that, as David’s
left arm swept downward, he launched himself at Madog.

David hadn’t played football in years—and
hadn’t liked it much when he did play—but he’d rehearsed this move
with a practice dummy and his own guard so often he’d dreamt about
it. David’s chest hit Madog’s left shoulder and upper arm. Letting
go of his shield, he wrapped his arms around Madog’s shoulders, and
they fell together off the other side of Madog’s horse. Madog’s
right side hit the ground with a horrible crunch, and he lost his
grip on his sword.

The fall knocked the wind out of David and
did worse to Madog. As Madog lay momentarily stunned, David
scrambled to his feet, pulled his sword from its sheath, and kicked
Madog’s sword out of range of his groping hand. It would have been
expedient at that point for David to turn Madog onto his back like
a turtle and drive his sword through Madog’s heart, but the rules
of warfare were such that David couldn’t kill him when he was down.
They were knights after all. He had to give Madog a chance to
surrender.

As David had fallen on Madog, the front
lines of the two forces had met with an awful crash. Though David
was only peripherally aware of anyone but Madog, he could tell that
Justin and the men of his immediate guard were doing their jobs,
circling around the pair and allowing David to take on Madog
without fear of being attacked from behind.

David did not take chivalry so far as to
give Madog back his sword, however, and Madog moaned and struggled
to rise. He got first to his knees and then to his feet. His helmet
was askew, and he tugged it off, revealing a mop of black curly
hair, soaked with sweat and pressed to his head. David pointed his
sword at him, not willing to give Madog any more time to think. “Do
you surrender?”

Madog gave a mocking laugh, weaving on his
feet. Dad was right that he was short and thin—not a soldier by
nature, David guessed, but someone who’d taken on that role out of
pride and necessity. David could understand it, even if he couldn’t
condone its manifestation here.

“
Tell your men to stand
down,” David said.

“
And if I do, what then?”
Madog said.

“
This war will end here,
and you will receive justice according to the laws of this land,”
David said.

Fighting continued in other parts of the
field, but the soldiers in the vicinity—both David’s and
Madog’s—had stepped back from each other in order to watch the
exchange. That was a medieval tradition too: to have the two lords
who led their troops fight one another in single combat to
determine the outcome of the war. In fact, David had counted on
it.

“
Like it ended with
Valence?” Madog choked on his own laughter. “Where I dangle by the
neck at the end of a long rope?”

“
It is you who brought this
rebellion on us, Madog,” David said. “You don’t have the right now
to set the terms of your own surrender. But I will give you the
same terms I gave Valence: a trial before a jury of your
peers—”

A horn call rang out from the southern end
of the field, the same direction from which Madog’s call had come.
It was the third call of the day and the sweetest sound David had
ever heard.