Then the two horsemen burst into the light from the beacon, and showed themselves not as Saxons, but as young Celtic warriors.
Swords swinging, legs pumping the flanks of their black steeds, they cut their way through the ranks of the Saxons, and surrounded the weakening Arthur. Arthur raced up the slope, and Niall cut down towards him. The enemy fell back in one of those sudden and often inexplicable mass panics that lasts, perhaps, a second or two.
It was enough. By the time the attack was under way again Arthur was safe, and the two mounted warriors had added their own kind of chaos to the Saxons’ ranks, driving many of them away, sustaining deep wounds themselves, but fighting with an almost joyous excitement.
They rode up the slopes and leapt across the earth walls, were led round to the gate in the palisade, and inside to safety.
After a while the skirmish ended and the blooded Saxon force faded into the night. The fort resounded to the cheers of the Britons, and repair began immediately: first the fort, then the wounded.
A renewed attack was unlikely, but not impossible. Most probably, Arthur explained to Niall as they sat and closed each other’s wounds, they’ll ship back up the channel to a safe beaching point along the Saefern river and repair their own wounds.
‘They’re fools if they do,’ said Niall. ‘If they have any sense they’ll attack again. We’re far weaker than we seem.’
‘I agree,’ said Arthur. ‘But if they had had any sense they’d have come in force, Cerdic with them. We’ll have to trust to luck, and God, that they don’t suddenly discover the best strategy.’
‘I’ll trust to luck and my
own
gods, and mine are war gods. I have no time for this weak god of yours.’
Arthur said nothing, merely watched as his body was repaired.
Towards dawn he rose, and followed by Niall and Bryn the Merciless, went to where the two horsemen were curled asleep, losing their pains to their dreams, recovering their strength after their ride from whatever province had fostered them.
One of the young warriors awoke and sat up, brushing back his hair and grinning.
‘For your help,’ said Arthur, ‘my sincere thanks.’ He was about to say more when he noticed something. The youth still smiled, waiting, it seemed, for Arthur to realise just who he was.
Arthur was reaching out and touching the ivory amulet that hung around the youth’s neck.
As Arthur touched it, so Niall recognised it! It was
his
, the amulet that had been given to him before the skirmish with his brother Feradach, and the war queen Grania!
Niall felt an immediate urge to rip the amulet from this boy’s neck, but something prevented him from acting so violently.
Arthur was saying, ‘It’s you, the boy who kept my brother alive until …’ he glanced round at Niall, frowned for a second as he saw Niall’s dark expression. Looking back at the boy: ‘So. You’re a warrior, now, and by God you use a sword well. Who taught you?’
‘I taught myself,’ said the boy. ‘Do you remember my name?’
‘I confess that I don’t,’ said Arthur. ‘But I remember that I slapped your face when you lied to me. You may slap me now, young dragon, and even the score: a bad memory is the scourge of older men. I am ashamed.’
The fresh-faced boy, his features framed in half-length black hair, reached his hand to Arthur’s face and touched finger to cheek, then laughed. ‘My name is Owain, and the score is settled. No man shall fight more fiercely for you, no warrior shall pledge his soul more completely, no Celt shall behave more honourably. I am your servant, until the sword decides otherwise.’
‘And that gives my heart fresh hope,’ said Arthur, and glanced angrily – and pointedly – at Bryn the Merciless as that rather boorish warrior grumbled with annoyance.
‘This, then,’ said Arthur, reaching towards the still sleeping warrior next to Owain, ‘is your eagle sister; her name, I also forget …’
‘Reagan,’ said Owain, kicking the sleeping form.
The warrior jerked upright, hand going instantly to sword-hilt, face – such a smooth face – etched with shock and surprise.
The cowl fell from the face, and golden brown hair flowed out, around her neck. Her green eyes stared at Arthur, her moist lips closed, then faintly smiled. She knelt up, pushing the furs aside, so that her slim, small-breasted body was tautly outlined in her tunic of skins and leather belt. Then she held out her hand which Arthur took and firmly pressed with both of his.
‘An eagle,’ said Arthur. ‘Who bides her time, then swoops. I remember Owain telling me that, and I knew it to be true, because my brother, Uryen, had hinted as much to me. Welcome Reagan.’
Reagan tossed her head so that her hair swept back from her face. She was a beautiful young woman, but hard, hard. There was the look of a warrior about her, and Niall, though he felt the stirrings of lust for her as a woman, recognised that she was leather to a normal woman’s silk, steel to the soft and pliable wood of a wench who was content to cook and sew and lay beneath the scarred body of a warrior.
‘These,’ said Arthur, ‘are two of the three men I most trust. This is Bryn of Morgannwg – ugly isn’t he? Never mind his scowling face, there are none better than he when it comes to odds of a hundred to one. Kei you shall also meet; he has a prior engagement with a valley that is marked on no map. But this … this handsome man here, who speaks our language worse than a dog, whose body bears more scars from last nights skirmish than my own, this is what your ride from Dyfed was all about, young Owain. This is the weapon of madness, the invincible warrior that Uryen was so desperate to tell me about. Niall Swiftaxe of Connacht. Niall the Strong. No other name matters, though you may hear him called by many.’
Owain rose to his feet and walked across to Niall. Only a few years separated them in age, but they were as tall as each other, and though Niall’s muscles were more consolidated than the youthful muscles of the other, they looked equal of strength and pride. Owain smiled and reached for Niall’s hand. Niall took it, but his eyes went to the amulet around the boy’s neck.
Owain said, ‘It was given to me by Arthur himself, who inherited it from a war queen. It is filled with magic. It protects the wearer against the blade of any true born Celt, reserving his death for battle, therefore.’
‘When it hung about my neck,’ said Niall carefully, ‘it was merely an amulet, a sign of strength. There was no magic in it then.’
Arthur rose to his feet, his dark eyes questioning. ‘When … when
you
wore it? Tell me, friend Berserker, when
did
you wear it?’
‘Many years ago,’ said Niall. ‘I wore it when I killed my brother. I wore it …’ he was about to say when he’d been tricked by a lusty woman, but he knew, he
knew
, that Arthur’s queen could be none other than that same woman, and he wished no trouble with the Bull Chief of the Britons, who wore an invincible armour of his own. While Niall was invincible by virtue of his berserk rage, Arthur was invincible because of something far more subtle, far less tangible; Arthur was legend, and legends never die, and that made Niall afraid of the tall man, and he held his tongue.
‘I lost it during a skirmish,’ he said. ‘The amulet was taken as booty, and where it went from then I don’t know.’
But Arthur had sensed the lie.
‘By the Cross of Jesus,’ he said softly, invoking his strange god, ‘it seems destiny had planned our meeting before we were hardly aware of death. Who took the amulet from you? Was it a woman?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Niall. ‘The person who took it from me was a wizard – a trickster – I would not swear to that person’s sex, despite what my eyes told me.’
He remembered feeling just that at the time, as he had rolled in agony in the stable.
‘And do you demand the return of the amulet?’ asked Arthur.
Owain made a noise of anger, reached up to protect his icon. His right hand gripped the bronzed hilt of his sword and his eyes stared narrowly and threateningly at Niall. ‘I shall kill you if you try.’
Niall blazed red as he sensed anger approaching, and his whole body began to heat and enflame, ready to take life indiscriminately. The blood in his head beat loud, and redness rose before his eyes. Owain saw this and backed away, unsheathing his sword in one easy motion. Reagan, standing up now, restrained him. Owain shook her off roughly, but he calmed. The girl stared at Niall and Niall himself subsided from the wave of fury that might so easily have engulfed him.
Arthur laughed, slapped the boy on the shoulder. ‘Not only a fine spirit, but a sensible head, still intact,’ he winked at Niall. ‘And a valuable sister too!’
Reagan acknowledged the compliment with a half smile and a slight shake of her head, which sent her golden hair swirling about her face. Niall noticed that her own hand rested on her sword. The weapon hung from a thick belt that was tightly bound around her waist, pulling the fabric of her tunic in to show the slimness of her body; the tunic was short, reaching only to the middle of her thighs, and it had bunched up during her sleep and her firm, white flanks caught every man’s desire who watched her, giving, as they did, an unsubtle hint as to the delights of her belly.
‘You both have wounds to repair, I notice,’ said Arthur, indicating the slashes and grazes on their legs and arms. ‘Get them properly tended to. We have two herbalists of considerable skill, if they weren’t killed last night. If they were, then a Druid lives nearby. When he isn’t calling down the forces of Taran to destroy the Christians here, he’s quite helpful.’
Abruptly Arthur strode away. Owain watched him go then smiled at Reagan; Reagan was staring at Niall and her brother seemed unhappy about this. He said something to her that Niall – still unused to the language – did not catch. Then Owain himself left, walking in a youthful parody of Arthur’s easy stride, hand resting lightly on sword, body lithe in his leather tunic. Reagan crouched and rolled up their sleeping furs, and Niall went back to the house to fetch tools.
There was much repair work still to do.
As soon as the wooden palings were repaired the fort rested easy. The work had taken most of the day, and after the sleepless night before most of the men were fatigued to the point of dropping. Niall returned to the main house and curled up on the floor against one wall. Bryn the Merciless was already there asleep.
In the darkest hour of that night Arthur too came in and slept for a few hours. His sleep, like Niall’s, was fitful. Surprise attacks always left a man uneasy.
During the day that followed the Saxon dead were properly looted and their corpses dragged to a pit where they were unceremoniously burned. The Welsh dead were placed on wagons that were fetched from nearby communities, and returned to their homesteads. A few were cremated on pyres within sight of Powys, and Arthur watched the dark smoke rising into the overcast sky, and he cried.
Niall failed to understand his emotion, though both Owain and Reagan seemed to share his grief, and Arthur acknowledged this.
Some miles away, two fishing communities had been pillaged by the Saxon raiding party, one of them having fallen to the sword only very recently, probably on the Saxon’s retreat. The women in this village had been abused and slaughtered; those in the second village had been taken.
Arthur called a war council.
‘We can’t defend the southern coast,’ he said angrily, ‘because the channel is too wide. It is impossible to police it properly. Once Cerdic realises the full implication of that, he will be back in force. We must strike at him now, chase him beyond his own frontier. It is becoming less and less safe to retreat here after our skirmishes. Powys fort is too small, the whole of southern Morgannwg is far too vulnerable.’
‘I agree,’ said Kei. ‘We routed Cerdic at the Ora, and now we have smacked him in the eye when he thought he could retaliate with a small force. What is needed right now is a second massive blow, right at the heart of his army. Kill Cerdic himself and we have killed one limb of the Saxon movement towards us.’
‘Cerdic, no doubt, has figured that we have been thinking along just these lines.’ Bryn’s tone, Niall thought as he listened, was tinged with sarcasm.
‘We might lessen our vulnerability,’ said Kei, stroking his sword as he
spoke, ‘by appealing to the Erish reivers, who sail the coastal waters, to cease their hostility.’
Bryn glanced sourly at Niall, a look that told Niall much of the man’s contempt for him and his kind.
Niall said, ‘Appealing to the Sea Wolves would be like appealing to Thunder to stop. They are as much outcasts from tribal society as am I, indeed, as were the fiana with whom I rode.’
Arthur laughed, and Niall looked puzzled. The warlord said, ‘Thunder is one of the Great Gods, isn’t it? I thought it did as your Druids asked.’
‘Rarely,’ said Niall, remembering the frightening storms that swooped so quickly from the ocean, across Slieve Mor, the dark mountain, and down to the fortified settlement where he had lived as a child.
‘I was also thinking,’ said Arthur, ‘that many of your fiana brethren are fighting for me, or kiss the earth of a strange land because of such temporary allegiance. Might not the Sea Wolves be convinced to fight with us?’
Again Niall shook his head. ‘Booty is their interest, and war is too high a price to pay to achieve that interest. No, you must concentrate on limiting all Saxon advance to the land frontier, and then police it with your cavalry with such vigilance that you will appear to be in a thousand places at once. That is the only way.’
Bryn snorted his contempt. ‘The Erisman has spoken. Maybe we should make him warlord. Maybe we should make him the Bull Chief, or should I say
Bear
Chief.’
‘There is something of the dragon in us all,’ said Arthur. ‘And something of the bull too. There is also a little of the bear in every sword stroke we make, something of that same madness that afflicts our valuable mercenary. Niall speaks my thoughts exactly, in case you’re interested.’ Bryn growled unhappily, stared at Niall darkly. Arthur went on, ‘My good queen is even at this moment leading a cavalry force along the frontiers to the north, assessing the numbers of the enemy that are building up to the east of the City of the Legion. Speed and strength behind our striking, those are indeed the secrets of success in the forthcoming wars.’