Web of Deceit (26 page)
Few seriously wounded men on either side remained alive, for the battle had been fierce and those warriors with gross sword or axe wounds had bled to death long before the baggage train had reached the outskirts of Verulamium. Some chance remained for those suffering bow injuries, concussions, or wounds received during the cavalry attack. Broken bones would heal, arrows could be cut from strong young flesh and head wounds would either heal – or not. Myrddion laboured with scalpels, pincers, forceps and needles over his folding surgical table, his hair plaited down his back and his body stripped to the waist under his leather apron. During this critical time nearly as many would die as would live, for Myrddion could not prevent the foul humours in the air from poisoning any breach in the bodies of the sick. The inflammation of infection, the early signs of gangrene and the reek of cauterisation were all around him.
By the time Cadoc returned with the first casualties from the walls of Verulamium, Myrddion had finished with the first wave of seriously injured patients, and was stitching and bandaging minor wounds on warriors who had managed to transport themselves to his tents. Praxiteles took the reins of the wagon after the casualties had been unloaded and set off for the wall to collect the next batch of wounded men, while Cadoc set to work alongside his master in the primitive surgery.
And so the day passed as the healers fought their own battle against pain and death.
In the cool of the evening, Myrddion received a summary order to
treat the High King for a minor injury. The impatient messenger gave Myrddion no choice, and because the young healer had experienced the sad truth that kings do not wait on the needs of ordinary men, he packed his satchel and followed the courier outside to where a young officer awaited him. Smoothly, Cadoc took up a new needle and finished stitching the long slice on a soldier’s arm that Myrddion had been treating before the interruption.
‘Where is Lord Ambrosius?’ Myrddion asked as he mounted his horse in the darkness.
‘In his tent. The main walls are still resisting the catapults, but the engineers predict the gates will fall to the rams before morning. The High King intends to lead the charge into Verulamium.’
Something in the officer’s voice caught Myrddion’s attention. ‘Is that you, Ulfin?’
The man turned in his saddle to look at him. Myrddion could barely make out his eyes in the shadow of his helmet.
‘Yes, healer, it’s Ulfin. So you survived in the north? A few of us hoped you’d meet with a nasty accident.’
Knowing that Ulfin was Uther’s creature, Myrddion ignored the insult. ‘What is amiss with the king? Is his wound serious?’
Ulfin shrugged and dug his heels savagely into his horse’s belly. The startled beast leapt away and Myrddion was forced to follow at a brisk gallop.
Even though darkness had fallen, the main Celtic encampment was well lit. What did Ambrosius have to hide? Thorketil knew the size of the force that opposed him and trusted to the vicious, individual contests within Verulamium’s narrow streets to win the day for him once the Celts gained entrance to the city. Meanwhile, Ambrosius needed light to bombard the town with the hastily reconstructed siege machines, while a long battering ram, protected by a stout roof of timber, pounded steadily on the thick iron-braced gates. Periodically, the Saxons poured burning oil down on the battering
ram, leaving a steady stream of blistered and suffering men in its wake. Dourly, the Celts replaced the injured men and continued to assault the gates.
Myrddion wished that he had the leisure to consult his precious scrolls. The Greeks had mastered the use of fire as a tool of terror, and their healers had devised a wide pharmacopoeia to combat the results on human flesh. ‘There is too little time,’ he whispered, as Ulfin drew his horse to a halt before the large command tent that the brothers used while conducting their campaigns.
‘Don’t take this amiss, healer, but the health of my masters is my chief concern,’ Ulfin muttered as he roughly searched the healer from head to toe. He raised his eyebrows when he found the scalpel in its narrow leather sheath within Myrddion’s boot.
Myrddion laughed. ‘Would you begrudge me my protection, Ulfin? I wield little blades like this every day in the course of my work. If I had wished to harm you, there’d have been an extra grin below your face before you even tried to search me. Enough. Take me to your masters.’
Ulfin grunted, unconvinced that Myrddion was really capable of violence. The scalpel was replaced, and Ulfin held the leather tent flap open so that the healer could enter.
Ambrosius was holding a pad of cloth to the right side of his face as he examined a chart of the inner city. Uther hovered behind him like a huge, black shadow, and Myrddion felt dark wings begin to beat in the back of his mind, as if the curse of prophecy stirred in the coils of his brain.
‘I am here as you asked, my lord.’ He bowed over Ambrosius’s hand and kissed the large ring on his master’s thumb. The huge pearl in its centre looked like a blinded eye.
‘Myrddion!’ Ambrosius exclaimed with obvious pleasure. ‘I’d heard you had joined the column and I was glad. Somehow, our twisted fates are clearer whenever you’re around. Take heed, brother,
should you ever stand in my shoes. This healer brings good luck to us and must be held close to your heart. With him beside us, we shall never fail.’
‘I wish it were so, my lord,’ Myrddion answered carefully, noting the flash of Uther’s eyes in the shadows. ‘Now, show me what’s amiss with your face.’
‘It’s a trifle, Myrddion! A little love tap from an amorous Saxon! But it’s hot, and I’m being cautious for I have no intention of missing the final defeat of Thorketil. He’ll bow to me or I’ll have his head.’ Ambrosius lowered the pad.
The wound was neither deep nor dangerous, but it was spectacular. From the right eyebrow to the jaw, narrowly missing the corner of the eye, a long slice showed where an axe had almost cloven Ambrosius’s head in two.
‘Damn me, but he almost got me,’ he said with an admiring smile. ‘At the last moment, I saw his eye twitch to the right, so I threw myself to the left. I almost made it. Uther spitted the poor sod, didn’t you, brother?’
‘He’ll not use his head again,’ Uther said laconically.
Myrddion recognised the telltale redness at the points where the muscles of Ambrosius’s face were most active.
‘Your wound is becoming infected, highness. The Saxon used a fouled blade, probably on purpose. So the enemy grows ruthless.’
‘Any enemy is ruthless. Set to work then, Myrddion, and do what you must. I’ll not complain, and Uther won’t separate your head from your shoulders if you hurt me.’ Ambrosius carefully turned his head to engage his brother’s eyes. ‘Will you, Uther?’
Like a chained bear, Uther growled softly in the back of his throat.
Hot water and an open flame were brought swiftly, and Myrddion sterilised his blade. Although Ambrosius bit his lips until they bled, he did not blench as the healer quickly reopened the wound. Then, while
the cauterising iron sizzled in the coals of the fire, Myrddion staunched the flow of fresh blood.
‘You’ll have an impressive scar, master, for I have to burn your flesh to scour out the infection,’ he whispered as he removed a small flask from his satchel and measured out several drops into Ambrosius’s wine cup. ‘But first you will have to drink this poppy juice in a little wine.’
‘I’ll not be drugged,’ Ambrosius groaned, moving his lips carefully. ‘I’ll need my full wits tomorrow.’
‘And you’ll have them, master. But the Saxon blade came close to your eye, and even a stone golem would flinch from a white-hot blade there. I can’t afford to have you move. So drink, my lord, and I’ll fix this
love tap
in a trice.’
‘Aye, you don’t lie,’ the High King said, meeting Myrddion’s eyes with an intense blue stare. ‘Do your worst, Myrddion. I’ll thank you in the morning.’
Then, with a flourish, the king drank his wine and grinned at his healer. A world of trust lived in that action, and Myrddion realised that he loved Ambrosius.
‘You will start to drowse shortly, my lord, and then I’ll begin. But I fear you’ll not be pretty when I finish.’
Outside the tent, the engineers continued to loose the catapults, sending a deadly rain of stones, old iron and fiery, fat-soaked bundles of wool into Verulamium. If he listened carefully, Myrddion could almost hear the screams of pain.
THE CELTIC TRIBES OF BRITAIN
NB: The lands controlled by the various tribes in the map above are approximations only, for the details have been lost in the mists of time and the relative geographic positions of territory controlled by the Saxon invaders.
Ave, Imperator, morituri te salutant.
[Hail, Emperor, we who are about to die salute you.]
Suetonius, ‘The Life of Claudius’
Myrddion
was
still
awake when the final assault on Verulamium began. From the dim tent hospital, quiet now in the last moments of darkness before the dawn, the sound of the ram carried clearly from the city gates. The dull thuds were regular and Myrddion could tell from the hollow echo that reverberated through the aftermath of each blow that the wood and iron resisting Ambrosius’s efforts for so long were finally starting to weaken. Like a faltering heartbeat, the main gates of the city were about to fail.
Myrddion could imagine the scene.
Boom!
The ram had a cap of thick iron, bound at the end of a long wooden trunk that swung forward and back in a cradle, powered by the cracking muscles of the engineers and common soldiers who controlled the swing of its pendulum.
Boom!
The iron cap was shaped and decorated with a ram’s head, horns lowered to strike the gate in the traditional Roman style. In
that final darkness, trembling on the edge of success, the sweating, exhausted soldiers must have prayed each time that the next swing of that brooding, threatening head would shatter the crossbar that held the poised army at bay.
Boom!
As flags of light rose over the darkness of the city, Myrddion left his quiet domain and climbed a low rise. From this vantage point, he would know when the gates submitted to iron and muscle, and then Praxiteles and Aude would take the empty wagons to the city walls. Then, as the inevitable casualties mounted, Myrddion would lose any visual perspective of the course of the battle as he fought his own fierce struggle against death. Now, as golden light spread in thin sheets over the forests, the Roman road and the humped shapes of the city, Myrddion experienced the tranquillity of a man who knows his purpose and is content. But such peace is fleeting in the affairs of men.
A grey and foggy dawn was followed by a clear and cloudless morning, as if the gods wished to observe the sport of mortals unimpeded by clouds or rain. The battering ram destroyed the gate at last, and the engineers drew the iron-shod machine back while the cavalry forced their way through the smashed obstruction with scant regard for life or limb. Uther led the charge, and even Thorketil hesitated to confront a warrior, taller than a Saxon, who wielded weapons with the ferocity of his namesake – the dragon.
With Ambrosius at their head, the foot soldiers attacked immediately after his archers turned the sky black with a protracted rain of arrows. While the Saxons on the parapets were forced to keep their heads down and their shields up, the centuries began to pour through the ruined gates and fan out into pre-planned formations that Ambrosius had devised during the night after his face had been stitched and dressed by Myrddion. One group of warriors, experienced climbers, scaled ladders with their shields held above their heads, while a small contingent of archers continued to pepper the defending
Saxons on the walls with arrows. Then, once the walls were swept clean of the enemy, the archers recovered what arrows they could and mounted the parapets to rain death down on Saxon heads in the long, straight streets below.
Ambrosius had pored over the old plans of this ancient Roman civil centre. From his patient studies, he knew every thoroughfare in Verulamium, and Thorketil’s defensive positions soon became apparent. While Uther used his cavalrymen like a cudgel, and rode down citizens and enemies alike, the foot soldiers used the old strategies of the legions to clean out every nest of Saxons with calculated efficiency. The Tortoise, the Wedge and the Fighting Square were all employed by Ambrosius as a net of iron tightened around the Vessel of Thor.
Once Uther secured the eastern gate, the battle was effectively over. Thorketil had no intention of surrendering, and nor had his warriors, who set fire to every building they relinquished to the advancing foot soldiers. Perhaps the thane intended the blaze to trap the Celts between stone and fiery death, for the wind initially favoured the Saxons and blew filthy smoke to blind Ambrosius’s eyes, but then it changed and sent disaster leaping to the east, from building to building and then from thatch to rafters, as the fire drove the Saxons back towards Uther’s waiting cavalry.