Web of Deceit (56 page)

Blue with exposure and trembling
from shock, some wounded men stumbled into the tent bearing hideous wounds that should have caused almost instant death from blood loss. Myrddion quickly assessed the potentially fatal slash wounds, and then set to work at speed, directing the younger apprentices to clean and stitch the wounds speedily so that patients could be given some small chance of survival.

As always, Myrddion chose to labour over those patients where his unerring skill was vital, usually the most dangerous puncture wounds where arrows were still embedded in the flesh. Of all the healers, only Myrddion was sufficiently deft and confident with a scalpel to offer a reasonable hope of success. With a few considered strokes of the blade, he could carve a barbed arrowhead out through the entry point, where alternative treatments might prove to be life-threatening.

In some cases, where it was the only option, the healer was forced to remove the arrowhead on the reverse side of the body. In this treatment, Myrddion could prepare a path for the arrow by opening healthy skin and carefully avoiding the tangled skeins of blood vessels and muscle until he could grip the iron tip of the arrowhead with fingers or forceps. He would then draw the arrow through the body. These through wounds were easier procedures for both healer and patient than any other option, because the barbs couldn’t lacerate the flesh.

Considering the size of the opposing forces and the ferocity of the battle, all too few men arrived at the tents of the healers. When a courier brought the news that Anderida was secured, Myrddion sent healers and wagons to the two battlefields and the really grim treatments began. As usual, few Saxons were found alive, and none of those who were, no matter how hideously wounded, was permitted to set foot inside the citadel.

‘Pain is the killer,’ Myrddion repeated many times to his assistants. Battlefield experiences
over many years had taught him well, and he used every hard-won lesson to thwart the snow, the cold and the chill wind that turned his feet to ice. But even the worst days eventually end.

The High King sent no orders and, to Myrddion, this lack was a blessing. Despite Uther’s crimes, he was necessary to the survival of the western kingdoms. But, worryingly, few patients had come from the eastern gate where the fighting had been fiercest, so no news had been received of Gorlois’s fate. Myrddion was forced to take the pragmatic view that this lack of news was positive.

The hour must have been very late when the cortège made its way to the healer’s tents. Cadoc saw the torches first, a snake of horsemen bearing improvised bundles of sticks bound with oil-soaked cloth that had been set alight to guide the way. Myrddion knew what had happened long before the horsemen reached the higher ground.

Eerily, the flickering lights did little to pierce the darkness, even though the snow had ceased to fall. Heavy cloud cover blackened the heavens so that even the glistening whiteness of snow banks barely managed to lift the gloom. The horsemen were black shapes against the grey, and the red glow of the torches touched helmets or mailed shoulders with a bloody glow. Within the twin ranks of horsemen a single beast plodded stoically, its hide shining with blood. A darker shape lay across its back, and Myrddion swiftly washed his bloody hands, cleansed his face with a handful of snow to sharpen his wits and waited outside the main tent for the cortège to arrive.

As he had already guessed, the horsemen were part of Gorlois’s personal guard. They led the king’s horse, which was faltering from weariness and a slew of shallow wounds, as it bore its dead master to a point where his body could be prepared for the funeral pyre. Myrddion swallowed and prepared himself to do his duty.

‘Myrddion Merlinus?’ a dark-visaged, bearded warrior shouted as the horsemen halted
under the sanguine light of their torches.

‘I’ve come to meet you, for I can guess your purpose,’ Myrddion responded sadly. ‘You carry the body of Gorlois who was the King of the Dumnonii tribe. This night is one for mourning, for the noble Gorlois was a man of unimpeachable honour.’

‘You speak the truth, Storm Crow.’ Myrddion ignored the insult, for he saw the stark sorrow in the eyes of the middle-aged warrior. ‘I am Bors, who will rule in Gorlois’s stead, but I’m only half the man my uncle was, and I cannot conceive how any man could fill his boots or lift his sword.’

Myrddion sighed and bowed his head as several warriors dismounted and lifted the king’s shrouded corpse from the back of his shivering horse.

‘Care for the master’s steed also, Myrddion, if healing a wounded animal doesn’t insult you. Fleet-foot is his name. He bore my cousin proudly, and suffered painful wounds without complaint during many campaigns. I’ll return him to the green fields of Cornwall where he will sire stallions to carry my own sons.’

The warrior’s voice was heavy with loss, yet he remained proud and fierce, so that Myrddion saw the seeds of another great Dumnonii king in the dark, bearded face.

‘Cadoc will care for Fleet-foot without shame, for this horse is also a warrior as brave as any man who lives or dies on the fields of war. I shall personally see to the preparation of King Gorlois’s body. Have no fear, for Gorlois was my friend and I will treat him like my own kin.’

‘I don’t doubt you, Myrddion, but I do distrust the High King. I will leave a contingent of officers to guard my lord until such time as his ashes are offered to the sun.’ Myrddion nodded in agreement, for he understood the bitter distrust and the slow-burning anger in the eyes of Prince Bors. Gorlois had survived a hundred
skirmishes, but now, conveniently, he was dead.

With due honour, the body of Gorlois was carried into the surgical tent and laid out on Myrddion’s table. Ruadh began to remove the heavy armour from the corpse while Myrddion eased the crested helmet up from the king’s snarling face. As his fingers smoothed the stiffening muscles of the mouth into a half-smile, Myrddion felt an ache of regret. These last offices for an honourable and noble man should be performed by Gorlois’s wife and daughters, but they were far away, so the healer vowed that the corpse of the Dumnonii king would be treated with all the respect and love that his own family would have brought to the task.

Once the body was bared for washing by Ruadh and Brangaine, Myrddion examined it with the care of a healer dedicated to his trade. The many contusions and small cuts that the warrior had suffered during the battle, despite his armour, would have meant an uncomfortable night for Gorlois if he had survived, but such were his fighting skills that the king had taken only two serious wounds. And one of them had been performed on the body after Gorlois had died.

His brain racing, Myrddion straightened up. ‘Gorlois’s body tells us clearly what happened to him,’ Myrddion explained to Ruadh and Brangaine as he lifted the king’s powerful hand, which was stained with dried blood to a point well above the elbow. Obviously, Gorlois had killed many Saxons during the assault, for he had worn gauntlets and the blood had soaked through those protective leathers. What facial flesh had been visible between helmet and visor was similarly blood-spattered, and the fine spray of opposing warriors’ arterial blood had soaked armour, tunic and the wool beneath to reach the skin.

‘He was bathed in the blood of his enemies,’ Ruadh murmured, and her green eyes shone with admiration, for her Pictish upbringing still had the power to stir her sensibilities, especially with its emphasis on
raw, indomitable courage on the battlefield. Sympathetically, Myrddion wondered if she thought of her lost children who still lived beyond the wall.

‘Gorlois was a superlative warrior – a master with sword and knife.’ Myrddion stared at both women across the king’s body. ‘But if you look at his wounds, you can see that he was killed from behind.’

The healer pointed to a deep, blue-tinged and puckered puncture wound that entered Gorlois’s body below the left armpit where the armour was weakest. A long, narrow knife thrust had breached Gorlois’s ribs and lacerated his heart.

‘He was killed by a friend,’ Myrddion concluded, even as his mind rebelled at the evidence written on Gorlois’s body.

‘How so?’ Brangaine asked. Her hooded eyes were wide in surprise.

‘He was held from behind and stabbed with the left hand. Let me show you.’

Myrddion stood behind Brangaine, gripped her round the neck with his right arm and then stabbed upward with an empty left hand. The two women could see, from the angle of penetration, that a knife thrust would have pierced the heart.

‘Perhaps an enemy warrior outflanked him,’ Ruadh suggested, her voice still analytical. None of them believed that Gorlois would retreat.

‘But why, then, would his killer turn him over after he fell and slice his throat open to ensure that he was dead? All warriors know when they have delivered a killing blow. See? Gorlois scarcely bled from the throat wound, and if his heart had still been beating the arterial spray would have drenched his corpse even more heavily than it’s already stained. That stroke was made after Gorlois had stopped breathing.’

Myrddion pointed to the gaping wound that ran from left to right across Gorlois’s throat. Clearly, the
killer had either continued to hold Gorlois upright and changed knife hands – a highly unlikely action – or he had bent over the king’s dead body and sliced his throat open like a butcher slaughtering a deer.

‘His killer was left-handed,’ Ruadh said unnecessarily.

‘Perhaps. But he used both hands for this sword stroke.’

Myrddion assessed the long, even slice on the king’s throat as he indicated the entry point under the left ear. ‘See? A wider blade was used for this blow – a sword, judging by the shape of the wound. Like Uther’s guardsmen, this killer fights without the use of a shield, so he can carry a weapon in each hand.’

Ruadh gently kissed the grey-blue mouth. ‘Ave, Brave Heart. Your enemy feared that you’d survive even this treachery.’ Her left hand touched the wound in the king’s side. ‘He was making sure.’

‘I’ll leave him to your ministrations, ladies, for his men will wish to send him to his ancestors with due reverence, preferably in Cornwall. He must be washed completely, perfumed and sewn into a shroud. I’ll send a bearer to clean the king’s armour, Brangaine, if you would wash his linens.’

‘If the sun ever shines again,’ the older woman whispered, and sighed. Except for a single message received through Botha, she had heard nothing of Willa and Berwyn, and her heart was aching.

Only the nobility eschew the use of a shield in battle, Myrddion thought furiously. Saxons occasionally use axes and swords in tandem, but Uther’s guard are trained to fight with knife and sword. How could one of Uther’s guardsmen approach so close to the king in the midst of his own cavalry?

A small, cold voice answered Myrddion’s unspoken question from within.

The king’s guardsmen, and especially Uther’s couriers, can go anywhere they choose, both on the battlefield and off it, for their movements are governed wholly by the will of the High King. It would be interesting
to discover where Ulfin was during the attack on the eastern gate.

Myrddion acquitted Botha of the assassination. The captain of the guard would have obeyed his master, albeit unwillingly, but he would have killed Gorlois from the front.

‘I’ll see how Cadoc is managing with Gorlois’s horse,’ he said to the women, and left the tent.

Watching as Cadoc stitched shallow slashes across the rump of the shivering beast, Myrddion had scarcely established that Fleet-foot would live when Ulfin appeared out of the darkness like a bird of ill-omen.

‘You’re wanted, healer. Don’t even consider taking your time, because Uther has decided your patients can survive without you for an hour or two.’

‘Tell the women where I am,’ Myrddion hissed at Cadoc before turning towards the wagon. ‘I’ll collect my warm cloak and healer’s bag if I’m to be gone so long, and I’ll check on how our young apprentices are dealing with the wounded inside the citadel as well. I refuse to freeze my arse off for Uther Pendragon, or for you, Ulfin. And you have my permission to repeat my words to him as, no doubt, you always do.’

Ulfin fumed impotently, and watched the healer closely as he gathered his belongings. But Myrddion had spent too many months among the thieves and hired thugs of Rome to have learned nothing, and his scalpel went into the small sheath inside his boot in an impressive act of sleight of hand. Then, armed and feeling unnaturally dangerous, he mounted the horse that the guardsman had brought for him.

The battlefield was unusually quiet, considering the carnage. A mound of Saxon dead had been flung unceremoniously to one side after the bodies had been expertly stripped of anything of value. A wagon was already filling with booty: weapons, and chests of torcs, arm-rings and other precious
objects. The casualties among the Atrebates warriors were minimal, and Myrddion would have expected a mood of elation to buoy up the High King’s camp. They had won the battle but few men were celebrating, and Uther’s warriors simply plodded through the snow as they collected the dead in silence. The grey-faced men were almost somnambulistic in their movements, and an unnatural hush blanketed the activity around the open gates of the garrison.

‘How were conditions in the fortress?’ Myrddion asked Ulfin. ‘The survivors seem quite strong and hale.’

‘They were eating horse meat when the siege was lifted, so no one was actually starving. But Anderida has suffered her share of dead from stray arrows used by the Saxon peasantry, or from disease. We’ve been lucky that the siege was raised so promptly.’

‘Disease?’ Myrddion asked sharply, for any fevers and plagues were dangers to the whole army of the west.

‘Mostly the colds and breathing illnesses of winter,’ Ulfin sneered. ‘There’s nothing for you, Storm Crow.’

‘My name is Myrddion Merlinus, Ulfin, and I insist you use it.’ Myrddion’s voice was haughty and cold. ‘I am no farmer or peasant for you to bully, and I doubt that I’ll be out of favour with your master forever.’

Ulfin grunted with amusement.

‘Very well then, Master Myrddion. Any illness that exists inside the fortress is no concern of yours, for they have their own healers.’