Gwenhwyfar (28 page)

Those who were going to charge no matter the orders had been put in the front lines of the flanks, so at least when they charged, it would be across the hill rather than down it. After that initial planning session, Lancelin had made a round of the fires, using charm, honesty, or, occasionally, a skin of strong mead to find out what each commander knew of his mens’ behavior in battle and what he thought the others would do. Then he had revised his plans to account for what he learned.

When he spoke to Gwen, it had been with respect and honesty. She and her scouts—for the scouts had seen much more of how the others fought—answered him with the same frank candor. The result was that their disposition remained the same: to sting the Saxons until they charged, then hold back and harry the outliers, watching for an effort to flank.

She sat her horse easily, looking down the shallow slope to the Saxon army spread out in their rough battle line at the bottom.

There was a great deal of noise: challenges being shouted on both sides, weapons beaten on shields, insults, catcalls. It didn’t matter that most of them didn’t understand each other’s language; the tone made the content clear enough. And if they had been fighting with traditional tactics, eventually one man or another would break from the lines, run forward, and throw a spear into the enemy nearest him. Unless he was extraordinarily strong or lucky, the spear would glance off the shield, fall short, break, or bury itself in the wooden shield. Then the man attacked would wrench it out, pick it up or take his own spear, run forward, and return the favor. Then the two would fight, one on one, while the rest of the armies cheered them on. The victor would taunt the enemy, return to his own lines, or remain for someone else to challenge him. Perhaps another fighter from his own side would join him. This would continue, with the number of single combats increasing until the tension broke and one side or the other would charge.

Of course, that was not going to happen here. Gwen would have thought that by this time the Saxons would have realized, the moment they saw forces forming the Square, that they were facing another force using the High King’s Roman tactics.

Perhaps they think it is a ruse. Or perhaps they are confident that
this
time they can induce us to fight their sort of battle.

The noise was making her horse dance and fidget in place; if this had been summer, she would have soothed him to keep him from wearing himself out. But it was winter, not summer, and all the prancing and stamping was keeping his muscles warm. This was all to the good.

She watched her men out of the corner of her eye. Their horses were as restive as hers, and they sat them as easily. They looked calm. She hoped she did. This would be her first major battle, the first where the armies of more than her father had joined together to face the foe.

There had only been one point of conflict between her and Lancelin. She had wanted to lead the scouts on their stinging attacks on the Saxon line. He had insisted that she ride somewhere in the middle of the skein. “You are almost the only woman in the army, lady,” he had pointed out. “It will not be hard to identify you as the White Phantom. This will make you a tempting target for all archers if you ride first. But if you are in the middle, the confusion you and your men will cause will ensure they do not even realize you are a woman.”

She didn’t like it, not at all, but she had to admit he was right. What was the point of creating the legend of the White Phantom if the feared creature went down under the first volley of arrows? Still. She didn’t have to like it, that he was right.

She watched the front line of the Square. It was Urien, not Lancelin, who would give the signal for her group to begin their assault. At least they would be
doing
something, not standing there chafing against the inactivity like the steady fellows who had formed the Square.

The noise rose and fell like the sound of waves on the rocks at Tintagel. The sun burned down on the white hillside, soon to be churned into an expanse of blood and mud. Things always grew well on a battlefield . . . as if the gods were saying, “Out of death comes life.” If the local farmers were not eager to plow and plant this expanse come spring, they would surely not hesitate to scythe down the lush grass that would spring from the blood that watered this land. It would only last a season, but that season would be a good one.

From the center of the Square, a pennon on the tip of a lance shot up. Urien’s forces released their pent impatience in a roar as Peder spurred his horse, leading the scouts in their gadfly charge.

She was third and had forsaken her usual gray clothing for ordinary leather armor with metal plates riveted inside, protecting breast and back. It obscured her shape, and her sex was further concealed by a half-helmet. All of the scouts looked reasonably alike, except for Gwen’s long braid of white-blonde flailing her back. She had tried coiling it up under the helm, but it wouldn’t stay. She needed a new and better helm.

Peder’s horse labored a little, galloping through the snow. This pass would be the hardest; as the horses tired, at least the snow would be easier to get through. The others pounded in his wake, snow clots flung up by their hooves. The Saxons watched them in astonishment. Evidently, they had not expected this.

It was not easy firing a bow from the back of a moving horse, and even Gwen’s men, who had practiced this with her against the day when they might be surprised and have to flee pursuit, were not what anyone would call
good
at it. But then, when the idea was to discourage pursuit, you didn’t need to be accurate. You only needed the appearance of accuracy.

Gwen, however, was good. After all, she had reasoned, if Braith and some of the warriors she led could hit a man from a moving chariot with a spear, enough practice and a horse you could guide with your knees should make such a thing possible for a rider with a bow. Peder and the man following him more or less marked their target, a big Saxon with a russet shield. It was fairly obvious who they were shooting at, as two men near him screamed or went down. Gwen shoved her reins in her mouth, guided the horse in daringly close to the line, aimed quickly, and fired.

It was all luck, of course. She was aiming for the broader target of his chest, since he’d dropped his shield to gawp. She got him in the eye.

She kneed her horse, heeling him over to follow in Peder’s wake, taking control of the reins again. A shout of rage followed her from the Saxon lines.

She didn’t look back.

They gathered again at their first position, and only then did she wheel her horse to see the results of the attack.

“Well, they are not charging yet,” Peder observed.

“Aye. But they aren’t happy.”

In truth, that was an understatement. The Saxons were outraged. Gwen smirked as she made out some of what they were saying. “They are calling us dogs without honor,” she said. Peder laughed.

“They’re welcome to chase us,” he suggested. Gwen’s smile turned into a smirk. The scouts were not mutton-headed bull-men whose idea of “honor” overrode the need to win battles. They couldn’t be. All of them were small and wiry, and to stand and bash at one of those Saxon boars would have been suicide, and from the time they had gotten their full growth, it was very clear that they would never be the sort of fighters that won champions’ battles and got songs written about them. While this turned some away from the warrior’s path, this lot had become pragmatic. Let other men worry about gaining honor and glory. They would become clever and invaluable. And if no one sang about them, well, the war chiefs knew their value, and they were well rewarded with gifts and loot.

“Well, the cursed Saxons can throw whatever names about they care to. We might get a song out of this from our side,” Gwen observed.

But Peder was already setting his horse for another part of the line, and a moment later, the second run began.

It took four before the Saxons’ temper broke. Gwen was never again lucky enough to take her man down, but she forced the leaders to duck behind shields like nervous maidens, and that infuriated them. Finally one of Gwen’s targets had enough. His face purple with anger, he waved his sword over his head and charged after her, roaring.

That was her signal to send her tiring horse not for the side, but uphill, straight for the Square.

The front line of the Square opened up to let her and the men behind her through, then closed behind them. She pulled up her horse to a trot and joined Peder, waiting for the rest. She didn’t look back; the clash of arms and the shouts and screams from the front of the Square said everything that needed to be said.

With every nerve afire now with excitement, once the rest were gathered up, she made a chopping motion with her hand and pointed to either side of the Square. They split into two groups, one led by her, and one by Peder, trotting off to either side, first to scout for any hidden reinforcements, then to harry the Saxon flanks and rear.

They already knew the likeliest places to look, and on horseback, even in the snow, Gwen and her group moved swiftly across the landscape, finding nothing. She could see from their faces that they were as impatient to return to the battle as she was. It was with relief that she sent her horse homing for the noise in the middle distance. As they pushed over the last hill, the smoke from a dozen fires rose blackly to their left. Gwen laughed when she saw it. Peder’s men had fired the Saxon camp. Victorious or defeated, there would be nothing for them to come back to. No food, no shelter, no carts, no oxen or mules to pull them.

Not the time to think about it, however. They were coming up fast on stragglers, either left behind or fleeing the battle. Gwen drew her Roman sword, a fine piece of steel that she’d put a good edge on. Reins in her left, blade in her right, she charged down on the man in her path.

The Roman sword was meant for thrusting, but she used it to slash instead, cutting viciously at the man’s face as he looked up at her in shock. He gurgled out a kind of scream, there was blood, and then she was on to the next, her heart pounding, shrieking herself, afire with excitement, full of sick nausea, driven with a cold anger and a hatred of these men who had dared try to invade
her
land, enthrall
her
people.

She slashed at men in her path until the edge of her blade grew dull and she used it like a club. At one point there was a spear sticking up out of the bloody snow in front of her; she snatched it up in passing and ran it through the next man to be in her path. It was only when her horse stumbled with weariness that she reined in her emotions and nudged the poor fellow over to the side, off the field, and under the trees where her servant, Gavin, waited, with their remounts, hidden. She was the first in.

She dismounted, handed the gelding’s reins to Gavin, and mounted the mare, noting absently that her sword arm was blood-soaked.

That was when the nausea hit her like a club.

She doubled over in the saddle. It was always like this. When battle fever wore off, sickness would overwhelm her for a moment. Her stomach knotted, cramped, and heaved; she swallowed bile that burned in her throat and fought it down. Gavin handed her a water-skin; she took it and gulped down several mouthfuls, pushing them past the lump of sickness in her gullet. Then it passed; she straightened and handed the skin back to Gavin as one of the others rode in, spattered from head to toe with blood and mud.

When they were all gathered—
all,
which anxiety had been part of her sickness, worry for them—she led them at a trot for a good place to get a quick reconnoiter.

The battle had degenerated into knots of combat. One was centered around Urien; one around Lancelin. These were not Gwen’s concern, although she wasted a moment admiring Lancelin’s fighting. He was ahorse—all of Arthur’s chosen Companions were horsemen and fought mounted—and though there were a dozen men around him trying to pull him down, he and his stallion fought like a single lethal entity.

Mentally she scolded herself for losing even a moment and turned to her men. There was still no way of knowing how this battle would turn, “Scout again,” she ordered. “Then it’s bow work.”

They nodded. Once again the group divided, and they pounded off to make sure there were no reinforcements coming in.

The Saxons had committed everything. Gwen led her group as far as was reasonable and then scattered them. They came back to her to report—nothing.
If
there were reinforcements, provided that Urien won this battle, it would be too late for them to do anything.

They galloped back to the battle lines. They were all riding mares; less speed, but more stamina.

They saw the deserters before they heard the battle. As one they pulled out their bows and strung them.

Shooting from the back of a running horse was hard. Shooting from the back of a standing horse wasn’t.