Warrior of the West (23 page)

But they would not disengage.

Like the tide from the sea that strikes against rocky headlands, the Saxons came again and again and yet again. Each Celtic loss was irreplaceable, but Glamdring spent his men like a drunkard wastes wine, in the full knowledge that he had the advantage of numbers. In the front line of defence, Bedwyr drove his sharpened shield up into several unprotected chins and felt the blood lust rise in him as arterial spray covered him from head to foot. If a man died beside him, he scarcely noticed. He stabbed with his spear until the shaft broke, and then he used the axe of a fallen Saxon with equal ferocity.

He hadn’t watched the pig killers practise their skills for three long years for nothing. Now he swore at the Saxon warriors in their own tongue, maddening them with insults until knife, axe or sword found an opening.

Then, as suddenly as his attack had begun, Glamdring called his men out of bowshot and back into the tree line.

Artor detailed two messengers to determine the casualties from the right and left flanks. He could see, well enough, the damage that had been wrought to his centre.

‘We will move back six spear lengths and pile the Saxon dead before us like a wall, leaving a corridor for the enemy to manoeuvre,’ Artor ordered brusquely. ‘Those warriors who are wounded are to be put out of their misery. No mercy! Glamdring’s next attack will be a full frontal tactic to try to break our centre, so make them climb over the corpses of their comrades in order to reach us.’

Targo hurried to oversee the orderly movement of troops.

He soon organized the non-combatants into teams to remove the dead and the wounded. The Celtic dead were piled like cordwood to form a wall before the baggage train, a last line of defence, if needed, and protection for the healers working feverishly to provide succour for those wounded who could be saved. Like a well-oiled machine, Artor’s army moved to obey, without question, without fear and without qualm.

While Myrddion was hard at work with the bloody business of saving life, Pelles’s men scouted among the dead for Saxon arrows. Meanwhile, Celts killed all wounded Saxons without compassion, taking care to stay out of arm’s reach of each warrior. Saxons didn’t die easily, and even a fatally wounded man would try to take an enemy with him into Hades if he came within striking distance.

In the front line, Bedwyr eased his cramping muscles and checked his weapons with one eye cast towards the distant tree line where the Saxon host was sheltering. Beside him, a Brigante warrior cursed as he found a chip in his sword.

‘Hades, shite and damn all Saxons!’ the warrior cursed with a lamentable lack of imagination. A rough piece of cloth angled across his face covering his cheekbones and nose, although the coarse dressing was much stained with blood.

‘I’ve damaged my father’s sword on a Saxon head,’ the Brigante muttered, disgust evident in every word and facial expression.

‘Ah, but is the Saxon dead?’ Bedwyr replied drily as he cleaned his own blade with a strip of cloth torn from his tunic.

‘Yes! But I caught the edge of his helmet when I swung. Sod it!’

Bedwyr examined the Brigante more closely. His woven cloak and pin, a massive golden ring and a torc of considerable artistry marked the warrior as a man of note.

‘You’re bleeding,’ Bedwyr stated economically.

The Brigante swore again, and untied his makeshift bandage. Across the tanned young face, a long, deep wound ran on a slight angle. The flesh gaped, especially on the cartilage on the nose, and Bedwyr decided that this warrior was a man of hard discipline to ignore the pain and slow seep of blood from such a wound.

‘Well, Scarface, I suggest you ask the healers to stitch that Saxon love-tap together, or it’ll be poisoned by all this shit,’ Bedwyr’s free hand pointed to the slurry of mud, blood, vomit and faeces that had turned the clean earth into the killing fields that surrounded the shield wall.

The Brigante cleared his throat and spat bloody sputum on to the soiled mud.

‘Aye! It’s stupid trying to kill Saxons when my nose is half off. Hold my place in the line, Arden Knife. I’ll return before the Saxons find the nerve to come at us again.’

Then, as an afterthought, he held out his sword hand in the ancient symbol of brotherhood.

‘My name is Melwy of Verterae, and I’m proud to stand beside you.’

Conscious of the honour offered to him, Bedwyr wiped his sword hand on his bloody tunic and gripped the Brigante’s proffered hand and wrist.

‘They’ll be calling you Melwy Scarface from now on, I’m thinking, my friend. Aye! I’ll hold your place in the line for you while Lord Merlinus gives you a new nose.’

Both men laughed and Melwy ambled away, still ruefully examining his damaged blade.

As he sat in the mud and honed the edges of his sword while waiting for the next attack, Bedwyr marvelled at the camaraderie of the battlefield. Men fought and suffered together, and the diversities of tribe, status and wealth became mere affectations in the brotherhood of death.

Then Bedwyr forgot Melwy Scarface completely.

Artor had commenced the battle with two hundred and fifty effective warriors in his reduced command, apart from the fifty archers and another thirty non-combatants. A small group of camp followers, fierce women who followed their men on to the battlefield, assembled slings, stones and even knives for the time when they would be needed. The High King had lost sixty men on the shield wall, a loss he couldn’t sustain with every attack. The Saxon dead were now piled six feet high, but Glamdring’s massed army seemed as large as ever as they recovered in the shelter of the trees.

Artor sighed. Three days was a very long time.

‘Have no doubts, boy,’ Targo muttered as he pulled a strip of rag over a superficial wound on one arm. ‘I’ve slowed down a bit over the years, else I’d not have been touched. The battle goes well, Artor. We have lost one of ours to two of theirs in these first probes, but soon it will be one of ours to three of theirs. Your tactics have worked so far, boy, so you must have faith. Lot and Llanwith will come, and we will still be here to welcome them back into the fold.’

The High King bit his lip. So far, he had not even had an opportunity to draw his sword, and he deplored the need for good men to die while he issued orders in relative safety.

He walked amongst the men and explained his plans to his warriors. If they could endure for two more days, Glamdring Ironfist would be caught in a destructive web of sharp iron. He would be finished, and they could return to their homes and a life of peace and plenty.

‘I won’t lie to you and say that this siege will be easy,’ he told them. ‘We could lose this battle, because we are gravely outnumbered. But I refuse to believe that Celtic hearts are less stubborn and disciplined than Saxon might. Let Glamdring batter against our defences; we will not crumble. When the Saxons come again, I will fight with you if someone will lend me a spear and a shield.’

‘No, lord, no,’ one warrior called out. ‘You must control the battle, or we will all perish. We can hold. We
will
hold!’

Artor bowed his head in homage to the man’s courage, and told his warriors how privileged he was to lead such exceptional patriots. He also explained Bedwyr’s use of the sharpened shield edge as a weapon and, after viewing the Cornovii, sticky with Saxon blood from head to toe, the waiting soldiers took out their whetstones and commenced working on the edges of their own shields.

Then, in the afternoon, shortly after each man had consumed his rations of stale bread, a heel of cheese and clean water, the Saxons began their next attack.

Glamdring had been busy developing a new strategy. Perhaps the words of Gaheris had come back to haunt him, for this time his warriors were not at the point of the attack column. A line of peasant archers moved warily through the long grass to a point just out of reach of Pelles’s conventional short bows, while the warriors of Glamdring’s main force remained along the tree line just out of arrow range.

A fusillade of Saxon arrows struck the shield wall with such force that they almost passed completely through the wooden shields.

‘Hell’s kitchen!’ Targo swore. ‘Those longbows are the work of a demon.’

‘Then it’s handy that we have ten of them,’ Artor replied. ‘Pelles,’ he shouted to the commander of the bowmen. ‘Select your best men to use our longbows. Move them forward so that they are in the lee of the Saxon bodies. They can use them as a shield to pick Glamdring’s archers off one by one. The Saxons are in the open and should be easy targets. Get to it.’

Pelles took one of the bows for himself, and nine other exceptional archers were issued with the remaining weapons. Rushing forward to the protection of the barricades, each stood, unleashed an arrow, and then ducked back into safety.

Most of the arrows had not been pitched correctly and simply buried themselves harmlessly in the earth, but Pelles’s aim was true.

The other archers quickly adjusted their trajectories to match the aim of their leader.

‘That Pelles is worth his weight in gold ingots,’ Targo crowed as two more Saxon archers fell to the ground.

‘Save it for later, Targo. Here they come again.’

And so the whole, grim reaping of death began again. The battlefield had become a struggle of wills, of attrition, as both sides suffered losses, but the flower of west Saxon manhood was sacrificing itself on soil that was churned into red mud.

During the height of the battle, Artor heard a high-pitched whine, and something struck him hard under the arm in the narrow gap between his cuirasses and his shoulder greaves. He staggered backwards with the force of the blow, and saw a feathered shaft protruding from the side of his shoulder.

‘Dear Mithras!’ Targo gasped. ‘You’re hit!’

‘Snap off the shaft and adjust my cloak over it. It doesn’t matter if you hurt me. My men must see that I am standing with them.’

Targo obeyed, although the wound made a strange sucking sound and Artor was very pale. Targo gestured to Pelles who summed up the situation in a glance. Ten pairs of eyes scanned the ground beyond the struggling morass of men until Pelles notched an arrow, lifted the longbow and fired, all in one smooth action.

Targo watched the flight of the arrow, and saw a rough-clad Saxon fall back against the wall of Saxon dead, skewered neatly through the throat by Pelles’s shaft.

Targo grinned savagely and stood beside his king as he tried desperately to stay upright.

‘At least the bastard who shot you is dead, but there could be others charged with doing the same thing. If you are killed, then we all lose. Can I call for Myrddion?’ Targo begged.

‘No. Not yet. My men will lose heart if I leave the field of battle and, if that happens, Glamdring will defeat them. If the standard of the Red Dragon is fated to fall, it will not be because I ran from the field of combat at the first scratch. Let them try to kill me.’

‘Very well then, boy,’ Targo agreed. ‘But at least let me take some precautions.’

A young messenger was acting as a courier between the two flanks of Artor’s army, and Targo intercepted him, whispered in his ear and sent him to Pelles.

Once he had heard the message, Pelles waved his arm in acknowledgement, and two of his archers with longbows scaled the mound of Celtic dead. Their task was to scan the field with arrows notched and ready to fire at any Saxon bowmen who should target Artor.

Meanwhile, the High King concentrated his scattered wits on the melee before him. Although breathing was difficult and his chest was one long protest of pain, he did not have the luxury of time to allow his wound to affect his control of the battle.

‘Double the line, Targo. And send the first line forward by one step. The Saxons will be caught between the wall of their own dead and our warriors and won’t have room to manoeuvre.’

Targo looked out at the desperate struggle. He sensed that the will of the Celts was beginning to buckle.

‘But—’

‘Do as I say,’ Artor shouted over the screams of dying men. ‘And then order Pelles to hit the Saxons with every arrow we have. There is to be nothing held in reserve. Now!’

Targo had no choice but to obey. Perversely, when they were told that Artor wished them to advance one step and then hunker down into the Tortoise, the weakest men found extra strength. Those warriors who had time to look behind could see Artor, proudly standing in the open on a slight incline of ground. He seemed unafraid of the enemy weaponry. The warriors believed he had consummate faith in their abilities, and so their spirits responded to his trust.

Caught in a narrow defile, the Saxons died under the withering rain of arrows from the Celtic bowmen until Glamdring was forced to order his warriors to retreat to their positions along the tree line.

Both armies took the time to lick their wounds.

‘Move all my warriors back by six spear lengths,’ Artor panted. ‘And collect all arrows and weapons as before. Then rebuild the wall of Saxon dead so that it has a different opening leading into our barricades. We must make them pay for every life they take.’

‘You are sorely wounded, sire,’ Luka murmured. The young messenger had told him of Artor’s plight, and he had hurried back from the left flank during a lull in the battle.

Artor fixed him with his flat and impenetrable eyes.

‘Luka, get back . . . to your . . . position.’

Luka could see that every word hurt Artor, yet he fled from the scorn in the king’s eyes. There was no sign of softness or weakness in the Artor of thirty-eight years of age, and not one corner of his heart was unguarded. Even an old friend like himself must serve in the role that Artor had planned for him.

‘You look at me as if I was a monster, Targo. But who will hold you all together if I don’t do it? Those whom the gods would destroy . . .’ Artor’s voice trailed away.