"I don't know."
"Will Merlin come?"
"I hope so," I said, 'or perhaps Arthur will." I spoke in fervent but disbelieving hope, because what we needed was a miracle. Instead we seemed trapped in a midday nightmare for when, after a couple of hours walking, we were forced to leave the woods to cross a deep, winding stream that looped through grassy pastures bright with flowers, we saw more smoke pyres on the distant eastern skyline, though whether the fires had been set by Silurian raiders or by Saxons taking advantage of our weakness, none could tell.
A deer ran out of the woods a quarter mile to the east. "Down!" the huntsman's voice hissed and we all sank into the grass at the edge of the wood. Ralla forced Mordred on to her breast to silence him and he retaliated by biting her so hard that the blood trickled down to her waist, but neither he nor she made a sound as the horseman who had startled the deer appeared at the trees' edge. The horseman was also to the east of us, but much closer than the pyres, so close that I could see the fox mask on his round shield. He carried a long spear and a horn that he sounded after he had stared for a long time in our direction. We all feared that its signal meant that the rider had seen us and that soon a whole pack of Silurian horsemen would come into view, but when the man urged his horse back into the trees we guessed that the horn's dull note meant that he had not seen us at all. Far away another horn sounded, then there was silence.
We waited long minutes. Bees buzzed through the pastures edging the stream. We were all watching the treeline, fearing to see more armed horsemen, but no enemy showed there and after a while our guide whispered that we were to creep down to the stream, cross it, and crawl up to the trees on its far bank.
It was a long, difficult crawl, especially for Morgan with her twisted left leg, though at least we all had a chance to lap at the water as we splashed through the stream. Once in the far woods we walked with soaking clothes, but also with the relieved feeling that perhaps we had left our enemies behind us. But not, alas, our troubles. "Will they make us slaves?" Lunete asked me. Like many of us Lunete had originally been captured for Dumnonia's slave market and only Merlin's intervention had kept her free. Now she feared that the loss of Merlin's protection would doom her.
"I don't think so," I said. "Not unless Gundleus or the Saxons capture us. You'd be taken for a slave, but they'd probably kill me." I felt very brave saying it.
Lunete put her arm into mine for comfort and I felt flattered by her touch. She was a pretty girl and till today she had treated me with disdain, preferring the company of the wild fisher boys in Ynys Wydryn. "I want Merlin to come back," she said. "I don't want to leave the Tor."
"There's nothing left there now," I said. "We'll have to find a new place to live. Or else we'll have to go back and rebuild the Tor, if we can." But only, I thought, if Dumnonia survived. Maybe even now, in this smoke-haunted afternoon, the kingdom was dying. I wondered how I had been so blind as not to see what horrors Uther's death would bring. Kingdoms need kings, and without them they are nothing but empty land inviting a conqueror's spears.
In mid-afternoon we crossed a wider stream, almost a river, so deep that the water came up to my chest as I waded through. Once on the far bank I dried off Hywel's sword as best I could. It was a lovely blade, made by the famous smiths in Gwent and decorated with curling designs and interlocking circles. Its steel blade was straight and stretched from my throat to my fingertips when I held my arm straight out. The crosspiece was made of thick iron with plain round finials, while the hilt was of apple wood that had been riveted to the tang and then bound about with strips of long, thin leather that were oiled smooth. The pommel was a round ball wrapped with silver wire that kept breaking free and in the end I took the wire off and fashioned it into a crude bracelet for Lunete.
South of the river was another wide pasture, this one grazed by bullocks that lumbered over to inspect our draggled passing. Maybe it was their movement that attracted the trouble, for it was not long after we had entered the woods on the far side of the pasture that I heard the hoofbeats sound loud behind us. I sent a warning forward, then turned, spear and sword in my hands, to watch the path.
The tree branches grew low here, so low that a horseman could not ride down the path. Whoever pursued us would be forced to abandon their horses and follow us on foot. We had not been using the wood's wider paths, but taking hidden track ways that threaded narrowly through the trees, so narrow that our pursuers, like us, would have to adopt a single file. I feared they were Silurian scouts sent far ahead of Gundleus's small force. Who else would be interested in whatever had caused the cattle on the river bank to stir themselves in this lazy afternoon?
Gwlyddyn arrived beside me and took the heavy spear out of my hand. He listened to the distant footfalls, then nodded as though satisfied. "Only two of them," he said calmly. "They've left their horses and are coming on foot. I'll take the first, and you hold the second man till I can kill him." He sounded extraordinarily calm, which helped soothe my fears. "And remember, Derfel," he added, 'they're frightened too." He pushed me into the shadows, then crouched on the path's far side behind the upended root mass of a fallen beech tree. "Get down," he hissed at me. "Hide!"
I crouched and suddenly all the terror welled back inside me. My hands were sweating, my right leg was twitching, my throat was dry, I wanted to vomit, and my bowels were liquid. Hywel had taught me well, but I had never faced a man wanting to kill me. I could hear the approaching men, but I could not see them and my strongest instinct was to turn and run after the women. But I stayed. I had no choice. Since childhood I had been hearing tales of warriors and had been taught again and again that a man never turned and ran. A man fought for his Lord and a man stood up to his enemy and a man never fled. Now my Lord was sucking at Ralla's breast and I was facing his enemies, but how I wanted to be a child and just run! Suppose there were more than two enemy spearmen? And even if there were only two they were bound to be experienced warriors; skilled and hardened and careless in their killing.
"Calm, boy, calm," Gwlyddyn said softly. He had fought in Uther's battles. He had faced the Saxon and carried a spear against the men of Powys. Now, deep in his native land, he stooped in the tangle of earthy root-suckers with a half-grin on his face and my long spear in his sturdy brown hands. "This is revenge for my child," he told me grimly, 'and the Gods are on our side."
I was crouched behind brambles and flanked by ferns. My damp clothes felt heavy and uncomfortable. I stared at the trees that were thick with lichens and tangled with leaves. A woodpecker rattled nearby and I jumped with alarm. My hiding place was better than Gwlyddyn's, but even so I felt exposed, and never more so than when at last our two pursuers appeared just a dozen paces beyond my leafy screen.
They were two lithe young spearmen with leather breastplates, strapped leggings and long russet cloaks thrown back over their shoulders. Their plaited beards were long and their dark hair was bound behind by leather thongs. Both men carried long spears and the second man also had a sword at his belt, though he had not yet drawn it. I held my breath.
The leading man raised a hand and both men stopped and listened for a while before coming on again. The nearest man's face was scarred from an old fight, his mouth was open and I could see the gaps in his yellowed teeth. He looked immensely tough, experienced and frightening, and I was suddenly overwhelmed with a terrible desire to flee, but then the scar on my left palm, the scar that Nimue had put there, throbbed and that warm pulse gave me a jolt of courage.
"We heard a deer," the second man said disparagingly. The two men were advancing at a stealthy walk now, placing their feet carefully and watching the leaves ahead for the smallest flicker of movement.
"We heard a baby," the first man insisted. He was two paces ahead of the other who looked, to my scared eyes, to be even taller and grimmer than his companion.
"Bastards have disappeared," the second man said and I saw the sweat dripping off his face and I noticed how he gripped and re gripped his ash spear-shaft and I knew he was nervous. I was saying Bel's name over and over in my head, begging the God for courage, begging him to make me a man. The enemy was six paces away now and still coming, and all around us the greenwood lay warm and breathless and I could smell the two men, smell their leather and the lingering scent of their horses as sweat dripped into my eyes and I almost whimpered aloud in terror, but then Gwlyd-dyn leaped out of his ambush and screamed a war cry as he ran forward.
I ran with him and suddenly I was released from fear as the mad, God-given joy of battle came to me for the very first time. Later, much later, I learned that the joy and the fear are the exact same things, the one merely transformed into the other by action, but on that summer afternoon I was suddenly elated. May God and His angels forgive me, but that day I discovered the joy that lies in battle and for a long time afterwards I craved it like a thirsty man seeking water. I ran forward, screaming like Gwlyddyn, but I was not so crazed as to follow him blindly. I moved over to the right side of the narrow path so that I could run past him when he struck the closer Silurian.
That man tried to parry Gwlyddyn's spear, but the carpenter expected the low sweep of the ash staff, and raised his own weapon above it as he thrust his weapon home. It all happened so fast. One moment the Silurian was a threatening figure in war gear, then he was gasping and twitching as Gwlyddyn rammed the heavy spearhead through the leather armour and deep into his chest. And I was already past him, yelling as I swung Hywel's sword. At that moment I felt no fear, perhaps because the soul of dead Hywel came back from the Otherworld to fill me, for suddenly I knew exactly what I had to do and my war scream was a cry of triumph.
The second man had a heartbeat's more warning than his dying companion and so he had dropped into a spearman's crouch from which he could spring forward with killing force. I leaped at him, and as the spear came at me in a bright, sun-touched lunge of steel I twisted aside and parried with my blade, not so hard as to lose control of the steel, but just enough to slide the man's weapon past my right side as I whirled the sword around. "It's all in the wrists, boy, all in the wrists," I heard Hywel say and I shouted his name as I brought the sword hard down on to the side of the Silurian's neck.
It was all so quick, so very quick. The wrist manoeuvres the sword, but the arm gives it force, and my arm held Hywel's great strength that afternoon. My steel buried itself in the Silurian's neck like an axe biting into rotten wood. At first, so green was I, I thought he had not died and I wrenched the sword free to strike at him again. I struck that second time and was aware of blood brightening the day and the man falling sideways and I could hear his choking breath and see his dying effort to pull the spear back for a second thrust, but then his life rattled in his throat and another great wash of blood ran down his leather-covered chest as he slumped on to the leaf mould.
And I stood there shaking. I suddenly wanted to cry. I had no idea what I had done. I had no sense of victory, only of guilt, and I stood shocked and motionless with my sword still embedded in the dead man's throat on which the first flies were already settling. I could not move.
A bird screamed in the high leaves, then Gwlyddyn's strong arm was around my shoulders and tears were streaming down my face. "You're a good man, Derfel," Gwlyddyn said and I turned to him and held him like a child clinging to a father. "Well done," he said again and again, 'well done." He patted me clumsily until at last I sniffed back my tears.
"I'm sorry," I heard myself saying.
"Sorry?" he laughed. "For what? Hywel always said you were the best he ever trained and I should have believed him. You're fast. Now come, we have to see what we've won."
I took my victim's sword scabbard that was made of willow-stiffened leather and found it fitted Hywel's sword tolerably well, then we searched the two bodies for what little plunder we could find: an unripe apple, an old coin worn smooth, two cloaks, the weapons, some leather thongs and a bone-handled knife. Gwlyddyn debated whether we should go back and fetch the two horses, then decided we did not have the time. I did not care. My vision might be blurred by tears, but I was alive and I had killed a man and I had defended my King and suddenly I was deliriously happy as Gwlyddyn led me back to the frightened fugitives and raised my arm as a sign that I had fought well.
"You made enough noise, the two of you," Morgan snarled. "We'll have half Siluria on our heels soon. Now come! Move!"
Nimue did not seem interested in my victory, but Lunete wanted to hear all about it and in the telling I exaggerated both the enemy and the fight, and Lunete's admiration engendered even more exaggeration. She had her arm in mine again and I glanced at her dark-eyed face and wondered why I had never really noticed just how beautiful she was. Like Nimue she had a wedge-shaped face, but where Nimue's was full of a wary knowledge Lunete's was soft with a teasing warmth, and her closeness gave me new confidence as we walked on through the long afternoon until at last we turned east towards the hills of which Caer Cadarn stood like an outrider.
One hour later we stood at the edge of the woods that faced Caer Cadarn. It was late in the day, but we were in midsummer and the sun was still high in the sky and its lovely gentle light was flooding the western ramparts of Caer Cadarn with a green glow. We were a mile away from the fortress, but still close enough to see the yellow palisades atop the ramparts, close enough to see that no guards stood on those walls and no smoke rose from the small settlement inside.
