M. K. Hume [King Arthur Trilogy 04] The Last Dragon (48 page)

Then word came down the line to maintain silence, so the tribal warriors rose on one knee and prepared to leap to their feet, lock their shields into position and repel their giant adversaries.

Earlier that night, after four brief hours of sleep, Lorcan had embraced each of his three friends in turn and had left for the healers’ compound, where it was his intention to offer hope to the living and comfort to the dying, regardless of what gods they worshipped. Then the three warriors had begun their final checks on their arms and equipment. Using Artor’s comb, Gareth had taken particular care with Arthur’s hair, plaiting the whole head and using the braids to protect the skull under the helmet with its rampant dragon and horsehair plume. He had polished the breastplate until it shone, while Arthur donned a soft woollen vest, the mail shirt and simple arm guards. When breast and back plates were buckled into place, Arthur marvelled at how light the armour actually was. He felt a little silly wearing the iron codpiece under his trews, but Germanus had set him straight with a pithy comment.

‘Do you wish to spend the battle fearing you’ll sing falsetto for life? Or do you bury your scruples and protect your cock in a case made of good iron? Many good men have been brought down while trying to protect their balls.’

For the sake of speed, Arthur rejected the stiff greaves over the shins that would slow him down considerably. However, he accepted the oddly shaped plates that covered his soft leather boots because Germanus pointed out, once again, that a foot wound exposed a man to real problems in a shield wall. ‘Because that’s what we’ll be doing. Effectively, we’ll be initiating our own shield wall. And the Saxons know everything there is to know about that strategy, because they invented it.’

‘But the Dragon King held the shield wall at Moridunum and broke the back of the Cymru Saxons,’ Gareth said in his soft, musical voice. ‘My father told me about it, and he described it as one of the finest battles the Britons ever fought. They were called the Army of the Dead afterwards.’

‘Aye. My father Bedwyr stood on that line beside Cadwy Scarface when they were young men,’ Arthur chipped in. ‘I’ve heard the tale a thousand times, and now I’ll know what it feels like.’

Then, as they waited for the call to arms, Arthur had shown his companions the sharpened upper rim of his shield. He explained how Bedwyr had used that deadly edge to slice open unwary throats from below. Silently, Germanus and Gareth decided to sharpen their shields as soon as they were free to do so.

Now, tense and sick of waiting, the line crouched at the ready. Almost every man jumped when an owl called from the coppices where the cavalry waited in the darkness, its scream unnaturally loud in the silence of the night. Meanwhile, a heavy blanket of fog began to roll across the frozen ground so that the waiting warriors could barely recognise the faces of the men beside them. Silence hung heavily around them, as dense as the fog itself, while the earth seemed to hold its breath.

Then an arrow sang over their heads, followed by another. The arrow heads were wrapped in oily rags that were burning fiercely, aimed to land about a hundred yards ahead of the waiting line of Celtic warriors, and dimly lighting an area of about six feet around them. Shadows appeared in the area where the arrows were landing, large shadows that moved quickly until the flames were extinguished.

‘Here they come,’ Germanus said in his normal voice as the front defensive line rose swiftly, locked shields and braced for the coming impact. More flaming arrows hissed overhead with a sound like the whirr of giant gnats and lit the flat ground between the Britons and the north-western wall of Calleva, which had suddenly become alive with running figures that loped through the fog like golems or spirits of the dead as they hunted down anything with red blood pumping through its veins. For a moment, Arthur’s heart almost stopped with sudden, superstitious panic.

‘Breathe through your nose as deeply as you can, Arthur.’ Germanus’s voice was steady and calm as he sensed his student’s sudden panic. ‘Now! Brace your legs, because a running man the size of these devils can knock you off your feet if you’re not ready for him.’

A scream, primal and shrill, cut through the unnatural silence. ‘One of the Jutes has found a fire-pit. May he enjoy the warmth,’ Gareth hissed callously. On cue, another brace of arrows streaked through the fog. One of them struck the pit and a vicious fire fuelled by pitch and oil leaped up to turn one scrambling figure into a pillar of flame, hair streaming like a red comet and highlighting the mass of men who were pouring past him, oblivious of his agony. Another man fell as the ground opened up under his feet and another who had been running at his heels tripped over him. Soon the falling arrows were lighting human torches who capered and danced in a blur of moving, blazing flesh until a casual knife thrust or axe blow from their peers put them out of their misery.

And then the Jutes were upon them, coming out of the fog like wraiths that seemed twice the size of mortal men. The shock of their meeting, round Saxon shield against rectangular Roman one, shook the line until it seemed the defence would crumble.

Arthur had been well taught. Ignore everything but the man who came for you. Stab, slash and push with every ounce of muscle until the enemy slipped on the icy grass and fell. Without pausing to think, Arthur stabbed down with his new sword and felt it cleave through mail, ox hide and flesh before he wrenched it free, and a great spurt of blood sprayed up from slashed arteries. Then, concentrating on the next comer, Arthur kept his shield high to protect Gareth on his left while Germanus on his right protected him. Safe in this cocoon of repetitive movement, Arthur faced the next warrior, and the next, until the earth was slick with blood. Maintaining his footing became the difference between life and death.

Behind him, arrows continued to sing from bowstrings, filling the lightening sky with sheets of iron-tipped wood which sent many men to their knees before they reached the waiting line of Britons, who managed, somehow, to remain on their feet under the massive weight of the huge Jutes. If one defender fell, another seamlessly took his place, for even the passage of fifteen years hadn’t changed the iron discipline and strategies developed by the Dragon King. And all the while, a weak sun struggled to rise through the fog that swirled around the dead and the dying like a river of blue-grey ice.

In such a desperate struggle, Arthur decided it was probably best that he could see very little. The faces of his adversaries were always the same; lips drawn back over teeth in a howl of bloodlust; eyes wide and staring with that special madness of men so fired by adrenalin that they scarcely felt their own fatal wounds as they threw themselves upon the sword blades of their enemies. The screaming in his brain had resolved itself into a single voice that cried out, ‘Sword up. Shield up. Slice through to the chin. Make him bleed.’ And Arthur obeyed rhythmically, as a bloody sun rose slowly and the fog began to lift. Around him, the line of tribal warriors was becoming painfully thin, while the Jute corpses formed a wall of dead. Still, the Jutes continued to attack.

The man directly in front of Arthur was as tall as he was, but older and battle hardened, with a face blistered raw by the flames through which he had passed. He must have strayed too close to the fire-pits, Arthur’s brain told him as Oakheart slid cleanly upward between the plates of iron on the Jute’s chest and penetrated his mail shirt as if it was made of wool rather than tiny rings of iron. Then his mind suddenly shrieked at him, and his shield was twisted out of his grasp by a wicked blow from one side.

Immediately, Gareth used his own shield to cover Arthur, baring his body to attack, but Oakheart chose to sweep in a wider arc, seemingly of its own accord, as if it enjoyed having room to manoeuvre. The Dragon Knife found its way into Arthur’s left hand of its own volition, and the long-practised patterns of the dance of death began automatically. As the sun broke through the mist it caught Arthur in its feeble, ruddy light. Saxon and Celt paused momentarily and stared at the figure that emerged from the line of defenders to fight such a vicious individual battle. Then the warriors returned to their own deadly rituals of combat.

But, far away on a hilltop, Cerdic saw Arthur clearly, as if his old eyes had suddenly been cleared of the rheum of old age. The citizens of Calleva Atrebatum also saw the figure in the red cloak and a wave of excitement swept through the besieged town.

‘The Dragon King has come again,’ the whispers began, and the word was passed from man to man, growing louder and louder with each repetition. ‘You can see him from the ramparts whenever the mists clear. He bears a knife and sword as always, and has no recourse to a shield. Our enemies are dying all around him. See! The Dragon King has come again, just as he promised!’

On his hilltop, Cerdic cursed, coughed and spat blood on the earth as he watched the tall, cloaked figure whose weapons wove such complex patterns of death that they were almost too fast for the Saxon’s eyes to follow. ‘I know he’s dead,’ he murmured, so quietly that only his son could hear him. ‘I could dig the bastard up if I went to Glastonbury. No one, not even the Red Dragon, can defeat death.’

But fear clutched at the heart of the Saxon bretwalda as blood and sputum caused him to spit once again so he could breathe more easily.

Then, in a mad thunder, he heard the British cavalry come at a gallop, not to attack Havar and his sacrificial Jutes from the rear, but towards the amphitheatre, the engineers and the troops guarding the baggage train.

‘Let him be dead, Loki,’ Cerdic swore as the Celtic cavalry cut the sappers to ribbons and swept on. ‘Stop playing tricks with me.’

Then the morning light dazzled his eyes and Cerdic was forced to lean against his son’s strong body for support.

Below him, the murder began.

CHAPTER XV

THE FIRE THAT WILL NOT DIE

Truth sits upon the lips of dying men.

Matthew Arnold, ‘Sohrab and Rustum’

As the sun began to rise over the killing fields to the west of Calleva Atrebatum, Bedwyr’s cavalry struck beyond the eastern gate. The first dozen horsemen rode to the gate and killed the sappers there while the remaining cavalry headed for the warriors guarding the baggage train. Before them lay the well that supplied water to the Saxon forces. Caught off guard, the foot soldiers looked up at the horses, terrified by the sudden appearance of the cavalry out of the last shreds of the dissipating fog. One rider in particular was riding very carefully in the saddle as he clutched a container of raw, unglazed terracotta to his breast, his face as white as any of the enemy. His terror was written clearly in his colour, his expression and his wide, gasping mouth. Then, at the last instant before the horsemen would strike the enemy, the solitary rider veered away and hurled the cylinder towards a cluster of men who had been drawing water from the well. It smashed open on the hard ground and a spray of liquid fire engulfed the Saxon warriors.

As he watched from his vantage point high above the walls of Calleva Atrebatum, Cerdic could scarcely believe the explosion caused by that single container of
something
. Clearly the fruit of the chaos demons, whatever it was seemed to set the air itself on fire and over twenty men were suddenly transformed into columns of flame in front of him.

Then another white-faced rider appeared out of the mist with his accompanying guards. This time, in the chaos and with his companions clearing the way, the cavalryman rode towards the heart of the milling group of warriors by the baggage train and set his container soaring over their heads. As he spurred away, the lid of the terracotta urn became dislodged and the liquid hit the cold air, igniting in an arc of flame. Horses ran madly, oxen trampled men underfoot as they struggled to escape, and the earth itself began to blaze, regardless of the cold fog that should have hampered its spread – but had no effect on the raging fire from hell.

Attempts were made to use buckets of water to extinguish the flames, but the hellfire grew, feeding on the water and claiming new victims as it spread. Meanwhile, Bedwyr’s cavalry rode back through those Saxons who had avoided the flames and were trying to flee from the vicinity of the well, their weapons forgotten in the primal instinct to be as far as possible from these unnatural flames that refused to be extinguished. Resisting the instinct to cut them down where they milled, Bedwyr ordered his troops to ride away from the eastern gateway as the fire finally started to die down, some of the more intelligent foot soldiers using handfuls of earth to smother the flames enveloping the twitching mounds of melting flesh and bone.

From his position on the hilltop, Cerdic watched the destruction of over two hundred of his men and writhed with rage as if he too was burning. ‘Halt the attack!’ he yelled to one of his runners. ‘I must think! They have some kind of weapon the like of which I’ve never seen.’

The Jute force pulled back to a position just out of bow-shot, and Havar sent another runner back to Cerdic, begging for some of the reserves who were waiting by the western gate. He had lost over four hundred men in his frontal attacks, and had yet to understand how this catastrophe could have occurred. He stared impotently at the British lines and his eyes burned red with the berserker rage. With difficulty, he kept some control of his reason, recognising that now was the time for cool tactical decisions. He looked towards Calleva and the oily black smoke that rose ominously behind the town. The stench, even from this distance, had carried on the freshening cold winds, and Havar’s stomach roiled with his recognition of cooked human flesh.