The Shining Company (20 page)

The Saxon, who had stood panting but with no word, broke into a stream of guttural speech. It had in it the sound of desperate protest, but we could not understand a word of his barbarous tongue, as clearly he could not understand a word of ours. I could feel the twitching tension of his whole body, but from where I stood, holding his left arm twisted behind his back, I could not see his face, and I was glad of that, having a fairly clear idea of how the thing must end.

Aneirin licked the fat from his fingers and looked up. ‘Maybe I can be of help in this.’

The Fosterling nodded. ‘Ask him what he was doing here. Did he come to spy on us?’

Aneirin put the question into the Saxon tongue and turned the answering string of protests back into ours. ‘He said he is no spy but only a man seeking for a lost sheep.’

‘In the midst of a war-camp?’ the Captain asked, and again Aneirin turned the thing to and fro between tongues

‘He says he did not know that the Red Crests’ palace, which is a place of trolls and evil spirits, had
become a war-camp. Sheep may stray far, and he has found them before now, harbouring in this place.’

‘And why the hiding and the running?’

‘He says when he found horses and armed men here, he was afraid, and thought to wait till dark to get away unseen.’ And then after another stumbling flood of words, ‘He says he means no harm. He begs you to let him live and go back to his sheep.’

‘Sheep? In this high moorland country?’ the Captain said. And then, ‘I dare not.’

There was a small sharp silence, and then someone cried, ‘How if it is true?’

And someone else, his mouth full of deer meat, said, ‘He is still a Saxon.’

‘And if he is a scout for his own people, he will have means of sending on word, a man on a fast horse could reach Catraeth many hours ahead of us; and there are other means - pre-arranged smoke signals. Explain to him, Aneirin; tell him the sorrow is upon us, I dare not risk it.’

Aneirin told the man his words, and I felt the muscles of his arm and back shudder and strain. He began to cry out and plead and rave. It was horrible. And then, seeing no giving in the faces around him, he gathered himself together and spat across the fire on the Captain’s feet. The spittle fell short and in the silence I heard it hiss on the hot stones. And the Saxon, as though in acceptance of what was coming, stood suddenly still.

The Captain made a small signal to Cynan, and I sensed, for I could not see, the quick movement as he slipped the dagger from his belt, and almost in the same instant, the shock of the blow driven home.

The Saxon gave a convulsing jerk in my hold, and with a kind of grunt, sagged to the ground.

‘I never had to do quite that thing before,’ Ceredig the Fosterling said levelly. ‘I hope I never have to do it again.’

The man had rolled over in falling, and lay face up in the light of the fire, and for the first time I saw his face. Not a face of the blue-eyed savages we thought of the Saxons as being; blue-eyed, certainly, but just a man’s face, weather-beaten, square cut, neither young nor old, the kind of face one might have thought of as dependable.

So, that was my first experience of war. Despite the last year’s patrol skirmishes, despite all that was to come so soon after. And it has remained, as my first experience of war, in my memory ever since.

There was a cold sickness in my belly, and for a moment I was horribly afraid that I was going to throw up there and then before the Captain and the troop leaders.

Then Cynan’s hand was on my shoulder, spinning me round. ‘Behave!’ said his voice in my ear. ‘Go to Prince Gorthyn, he will be wondering what has become of his shieldbearer - and send my two to me here. You and I have done our part in this, they can haul him away.’

The next day’s march was a long one, over the high crest of Penuin, watershed country where the rivers of east and west have their beginnings, a great emptiness with no sound but the wind and running water and curlews crying, save for the sound of our own passing. Another night passed in another half-lost fort so like the last that we began to feel as though we were travelling in a circle, save that there was no frontier stone and no dead Saxon lying beside the hearth. But by evening of the next day the highest of the great hills were behind us and we were coming down the head-valley of the Tees. We saw below us forests still bare and dappled like a thrush’s breast rolling away and away into the blue distance, with afar off, on the edge of everything, a grey streak that might be the sea.

And so, with the forest reaching up towards us, we came to the remains of yet one more fort in that land of lost forts, and made our last night’s camp. It was not much of a fort, maybe only a permanent marching camp in its time, and being on the edge of forest country the wild had taken it back more completely than those of the high moors. The cleared space that must once have surrounded it was submerged in scrub, hazel and alder and crack-willow, even a few oaks creeping back from the dark tide of the forest, and little remained of the buildings but turf hummocks and bramble domes.

That night, when the evening bannock had been eaten and the horses fed and watered, and there had been a few hours of rest for men and beasts, Ceredig Fosterling sent out the three best scouts among us, on spare horses that had not been ridden that day, to see what was to be seen, and bring back word. The rest of us slept in watches with our blades loose in the sheath, and kept a strong guard on the picket lines, for now we were deep into enemy territory, and no knowing how close there might be Saxon settlements in the forest. And when we rode on next day in the clean green dawn, the Captain had tightened the pattern of march, so we rode in close formation, two troops centred on the road and a light scouting screen ahead, the rest in wings into the country on either side.

Just as we were making the noon halt, last night’s scouts rode in with their horses in a lather. And almost before their report had been given to the Captain, it was running through the troops. Aethelfrith the Lord of Bernicia and Deira was still holed up in Catraeth, and the first-come of his gathering war-bands with him, all crowded into and around the Royal Village, leaving the old town and its fort empty, according to their usual custom.

‘Can we make any guess at their numbers, now?’ Gorthyn asked of the world in general, with his mouth full of oat cake.

And one of the others, newly come to the share-out, murmured over his shoulder, ‘The scouts reckon, counting the shieldbearers, much the same as our own.’

I thought it was good news, that we were not as yet outnumbered, but Tydfwlch who was older and more
experienced than most of the Companions said soberly, ‘Not so good. The Legions reckoned, at least according to my grandsire, that an attacking force needed at least twice the strength of the defenders, to over-run a defended position.’

‘Hark to our own croaking raven,’ Morien said.

And Cynan called across from where he stood with his horse’s upturned hoof in his hand while he got a stone out of its frog. ‘That’s if the quality of attackers and defenders are equal. The war-bands of Aethelfrith are no more than farmers with weapons in their hands and the blood-lust behind their noses. They are not the Companions, nor have they spent a year in the Mead Hall and the training grounds of Mynyddog the Golden.’

And then it was time to be on the march again.

In the midtime between noon and twilight we came out on to the great Legions’ road leading north and south, and on the edge of dusk, we were lying up along the woodshore, with Catraeth town across its loop of river not much more than a mile to the south.

Ahead of us the land was roughly cleared, though overgrown with hazel and alder scrub between broad intake fields that showed faintly green here and there with promises of a threadbare crop. Always the Saxons clear the forest and plant their wheat where the land is not good enough for crops, though it might support black cattle. But the forest would have been better left for timber and hunting. The forsaken town looked from that distance like little more than a kind of grey shingle ridge; save where on the highest ground the remains of the fort crouched like an old hound in the last thickening light of sunset. Of the
Royal Village another mile beyond it, there was no sign at all.

A wind had begun to rise, blowing from the southwest, which was good, for it would help to cover the sound of our coming. And I mind as we waited, dismounted along the edges of the forest, the fading petals of blackthorn coming down before the gusts, freckling the darkness of Shadow’s mane with white.

The scouts had been sent forward again, and while we waited for their return and for the dark to cover us, we watered the horses at the nearby stream, and fed them what was left of their bean ration, and ate our own evening bannock and the ration of dried meat saved for our last meal before battle. And all the while the wind rose until it sounded like a charge of cavalry in the woods behind us.

Some while after dark there came a sudden stir further along the line that we knew must mean the return of the scouts. The fourth troop, dismounted to act as archers, were going ahead on foot, their horses left with the remounts and baggage train in care of the horse-holders; but we knew little of that at the time. Our own troop was still cavalry as we followed Cynan forward into the near-dark, with a red night’s work ahead of us.

The Legions’ road led straight between the usual gravestones and a huddle of fallen buildings that might have been warehouses or the like, to the gates of Catraeth town; but the road was not for us, even if the bridge that carried it across the river had still been standing. We swung westward and forded the river further up beyond the cleared land, where it ran shallow over shelving stones, tearing down the bank
for a spear-throw on either side by our passing. Troop by troop, we crossed, the foot somewhere on ahead of us, and skeined away into the dark like wild geese at the autumn flighting. And the wind covered the noise that we made with its soft turmoil among the bushes, as we headed for the Royal Village. Presently we had the place ringed round. There was no moon in the sky of hurrying cloud, but beyond the stockades there were lights, not the alerted hurrying of torches, but cooking fires and the glow from doorways, and as we waited the wind brought us fitfully the sound of voices roaring out in song. Aethelfrith’s housecarls were feasting as we had feasted in Mynyddog’s Hall. It seemed that they kept no watch; and the advantage of surprise was with us still.

The first flight of arrows went over our heads from the archers in the scrub behind us. Not man-killers but the fire arrows of Morien’s conjuring, trailing fiery tails of spirit-soaked rag dragon-wise behind them as they flew, to lodge in the stockade timbers and the thorn-work of the gateways; a few, the furthest travellers, to pitch down into the thatch of the huddled roofs within. Dogs began a frenzied barking, but our own warhounds, trained to silence, made no reply. A man shouted, and his warning yell was taken up by others. The singing in Aethelfrith’s hall came to a ragged halt. Shadow fidgeted uneasily under me as I swung the shield on to my shoulder and shifted the balance of my spear, and I soothed her in a whisper, ‘Soft now! Softly,
cariad
, all’s well.’

From the far side of the steading, clear across the uproar that was beginning to rise between, sounded the clear high note of the hunting horn, telling us that
all was in readiness, and our own took up the call, like two cocks crowing against each other in the sunrise. I drove my heel into Shadow’s flank as we broke forward from a stand into a canter, heading for the now blazing gateway. I remembered the fire-rides in the practice ground below Dyn Eidin, which had seemed to have little purpose at the time but had purpose enough now. The canter quickened to full gallop, and above the rolling thunder of hooves we were yelling like fiends out of hell as we came.

The first troop, the Captain’s own troop, was through and over the blazing thorn-work of the gateway, beating the fire under their hooves and scattering a bright spindrift of flame, and into the midst of the men who came running with snatched up weapons to meet them. And after them we plunged, choked and half blinded, across the glowing way that they had left behind. Vaguely, I was aware to left and right of riders crashing through the burning stockades - through and over in a score of places. I was aware of yelling faces and flamelight on the swinging blades of axes and the long straight Saxon knives, and the narrow heads of our own spears. I think I killed, and more than once, but of that I am not sure; none of it seemed to matter as much as that single killing of three nights ago. Our hunting horns were sounding again, and from the heart of the steading before the long barn-like building that must be Aethelfrith’s Hall - Aelle’s Hall - there rose the sudden hollow booming of the Saxon war-horn. We thrust on towards it. The fire arrows had set the high thatched roof alight, and against the wavering sheet of flame, high on the gable end, a spreading pair of antlers
marked the place for what it was, the Mead Hall of a king; and below, the upreared horse-tail standards marked the battle-stand of Aethelfrith himself.

We went for it, charging and charging again behind the Red Dragon of Britain, ploughing through the fanged masses of the Saxon kind, with our own dismounted men, their arrows spent, running beside us to guard the horses’ bellies, and the hunting horns from the far side of the steading sounding nearer and nearer yet.

The Saxons were taken all unawares, many of them were drunk from the Mead Hall; but they fought like wolves, and the King’s housecarls forming the shield-ring, stood rock steady, swinging their mighty axes, and died like heroes when the time came for dying. Again and again the horsetail standard lurched and all but went down; but each time was caught and heaved aloft once more as another man stepped into the place of the fallen standard bearer.

Much of this comes into my mind like memory, but truth to tell, I think that is because I heard it told so often afterward, and because I knew that that must have been the way of it. And at the time all that I knew of that fight in the Saxon royal steading was a clotted mass of snarling faces in the light of burning thatch, a sense of chaos, and the smell of blood and sweat and dung. I remember small isolated things: a hound leaping at a Saxon’s throat, a wisp of burning thatch that I struck away from Shadow’s neck before it could singe her mane. I remember seeing Dara drop beside me with his head split open by an axe, and not believing it until later …