Shadow of the King (66 page)

3 9 8 H e l e n H o l l i c k

detailed planning. Arthur—and several of the men with him—knew Vicus

well, knew its street layout and gateways. The defendable places, the insecure.

A half-hour’s ride, less, if they pushed the horses on at a pace faster than the jog-

trot so far employed. They were warm, the animals, neck and flanks showing

more sweat than he would have liked, but then, this was winter. Even Onager,

and those like him with the Arabian breeding, had thicker, denser coats. Their

breathing was easy, however, energy unsapped.

Arthur’s stomach was churning at the anticipation of a fight, mixed emotions

of plunging fear and the rising excitement. He glanced at Gwenhwyfar who

lifted her head, gestured her thought by touching the sword at her hip.

“Cut off the rear, and it will be an easy gallop up to Badon.” She almost

purred at the prospect.

As her husband, Arthur ought to suggest she fall back, seek safety with the

boys and spare horses. He ought to have insisted she never left Durnovaria, but

then, Arthur never had been a man for doing as others thought he ought do.

He nodded at her. Aye, his thoughts exactly. “You will fight with us?” Only a

slight hesitancy, a slight doubting as he asked it.

“Would you prefer,” she answered, cat-eyed, blank expression, “that I had

stayed to keep Winifred company at Durnovaria. Joined with her in her fast?”

He replied with a matching, teasing solemnity. “If I could ensure an end to

the Saxon uprising by letting nothing but sips of water past my lips for the next

few days, I would have stayed with her myself!”

Gwenhwyfar laughed merrily. “What? You? Fast?” The gurgle increased.

“Has that shield you carry gone to your head?”

Grimacing, Arthur swivelled his eyes over his shoulder, tipped the oval shield

to an angle, wrinkling his nostrils in disgust at the design painted on its tough-

ened leather skin. The Chi Rho. All shields were painted so, Ambrosius’s first

task on learning the Pendragon was no more, to replace the Red Dragon with

the symbol of God. Arthur had no other shield, had accepted this one with no

time to have it altered.

“With the Dragon on my banner and this Christian symbol on my shield, I

assume I am covered from both directions.” He raised his hand, gave the signal

to move out.

Seventy-Five

That feeling of being alive but facing death, the sensation of the

heart pumping, sweat glistening. The pull of aching muscles, the bite of a

blade into thigh or arm. God’s love, but it was wonderful!

It was over all too soon and on reflection, when Arthur, breathing hard,

squatted his backside onto the winter-damp steps of Vicus’s shabby, timber-

built Basilica, nothing more than a slaughter of the unsuspecting and drunk by

the experienced. Most of them, the Saxons, had been old men, the unfit, the

wounded, those left behind to keep the road open for a safe retreat, should—

Woden prevent it—Aelle need to withdraw. The inactive waiting, poor

command and that element of over-confidence contributing to this, a minor,

easily accomplished victory. Aelle had obviously not expected the British to

come this far eastward. Most certainly did not expect the Pendragon.

Arthur marvelled that he had so easily forgotten the exhilaration of the

enjoined fight. That surge of elated power created by a war-horse in full gallop,

mane flying, ears back. The sheer pleasure of feeling so alive while death danced

so close.
Na
, he had not forgotten; perhaps had thrust it away to the furthest

depth of his mind because he had not wanted to remember? Some things were

best forgot, and even though his men were jubilant, excited, proud of this

success, he still asked whether he was suited to lead them. He had failed once,

he could fail again. The next battle he led those good, proud, unquestioning

men into could so well be their last.

Gwenhwyfar sauntered along the main Via Prima, wiping her sword with a

torn shred of a Saxon’s cloak. Her face was grimed with sweat and dirt, spotted

with blood specks. She positioned herself next to her husband, finished wiping

blood off the blade. Flushed, eyes bright-sparkling, her hair, never controlled at

the best of times, bursting in exuberant wisps from its restricting braid. “That

was good,” she said, as if she were speaking of nothing more simpler than an

afternoon stroll.

4 0 0 H e l e n H o l l i c k

“Mm,” Arthur answered.

She sheathed the sword, propped her elbows on her knees, rested her chin

on the knuckles. “Only
‘mm’
?” she queried, slipping a sidelong glance.

The men were clearing up, helping their wounded, reverently lifting their

few dead—three only, incredibly only three! Occasionally, one would glance

up, see Arthur watching and raise an arm or hand in victorious salute. Ah! It

was so good to be riding under the banner of the Dragon again! Riding with

Arthur, the Pendragon! The Saxons, they were tossing into a pile beyond the

gateway, no time or want to bury them. Arthur had given orders for their

burning, come dark when the smoke would not be seen climbing into the sky.

The Saex wounded were finished quickly and dispassionately by a knife to the

throat. Men of the Artoriani disliked torture where it was not necessary, had

not the resource of enough men to leave guard over any suitable for slavery.

“The gods alone know how I managed to ride through that gate,” Arthur

confessed to his wife, staring ahead, embarrassed to say aloud the truth, though

he knew she understood it. “Once into the charge, there was no choice, but—”

he cast a swift, guilty squint at her expression, which remained impassive. “But by

the bull, before that I was trembling like a rain-sodden cur in a thunderstorm!”

The tactics had been to ride quietly as near as possible to Vicus, under the

sheltering cover of dense trees; then spring into a gallop, burst through those

still-unclosed, unguarded gates, and create havoc. The plan worked as if it had

been no more than a predictable child’s game using toy pieces. And only three

British dead!

Arthur held his fingers of his right hand out before him. Steady, controlled.

“I almost dropped my sword twice, and Mithras alone knows where the first

spear I cast ended up. Certainly not in its target!” He was beginning to relax,

the tightness in his body easing, leaving him. A hint of laughter gathering

behind the recounting, not yet ready to come out, but there, hovering, waiting

its moment.

Sensing it, Gwenhwyfar uttered a swift, silent thank-you. She, perhaps

alone above anyone, had realised and understood the great fear that had

clawed mercilessly at Arthur’s gut. To fight, to face battle, took courage and

endurance. Arthur had plenty and more of both, but he had also seen the

horror of defeat and failure—as on occasion they all had, but he had gone

away after it, taken by a woman who wanted nothing of death and fighting.

He had not even had his sword to touch or to cherish, to remind him of other,

better endings. It was best not to allow that tick of doubt to rise, to grow,

S h a d o w o f t h e k i n g 4 0 1

like yeast in bread. For a nerve broken was a nerve difficult—occasionally

impossible—to mend.

They all had fear—any man, be he British, Saxon, or Roman—and felt the

spectre of trepidation while waiting for battle to begin; all knew the dread that

sank into the stomach like a weighted stone. Knew how it would vanish like

mist under a rising sun when the bloodlust began to flow, when the battle-cry

was bayed and taken up; when the thing was entered. Arthur’s fear would be

harder to conquer, and this small skirmish was nothing to prove that it had been

exorcised. To rebuild self-pride and confidence took more than the slaying of

a few unwary drunkards, more than just remounting a horse and sitting there

while it stood, cropping grass. The hurdle need be faced and jumped again.

And again. The dawn of his coming through was there, though, the darkness

not quite as black, as cloying and smothering.

“So what now?” she asked. She had not talked with him about the fear. It

was something for him alone to face and to conquer. Instead, she was here,

beside him, with him. Her horse had galloped next to Onager, her sword

slashing beside his as, dismounted inside the gate, they had advanced through

the mud-slurried, dejected streets of Vicus. She covering his left, he, her right.

Aye, the rest of the Artoriani had been there also, but what mattered was that

she was there, her presence, with her loyalty and love. There.

“Now?” he repeated, pushing himself to his feet. Gods, but he ached! “Now

we feed the horses and ourselves; and, come dusk, we ride like souls fleeing

hell along the road to Badon.” He took Gwenhwyfar’s hand, hauled her to her

feet, caught a brief flare of her nostrils, a grimace. Instant concerned, alarmed,

he raked his eyes over her, searching for a wound, an injury.

“I’m well,” she reassured, patting her palm onto his chest. “You, however!”

She leaned back from him, appraising as he had, “You are filthy and you stink!”

The light came into Arthur’s face as brilliantly as the summer sun casts its

magnificence into the new-born day. His head tossed back, the barked guffaw

drawing attention from several of his men. He clamped his hands to Gwenhwyfar’s

shoulders, and smacked a resounding, firm, loving kiss to her lips.

“So, my dear Cymraes, do you!”

Seventy-Six

Three or so hours it took them to ride from Vicus along the Via

Ermin to Badon. A ride completed in near silence and beneath the

shrouding mantle of midnight darkness. No moon would rise, no soft glow

of star could penetrate the thick mass of rain-building cloud that pressed close

over the earth, like a lid above a box. They rode the fifteen miles at the walk,

any metal item that could clatter or jangle muffled: weapons, buckles, harness.

Hooves were bound with rags, leather slips secured around the muzzles of

war-dogs and horses to ensure no bark or whinny could betray their pres-

ence. The wind came from the west, blew in their faces, scudding their cloaks

behind them like wings spread from a soaring bird. The eagle king, come to

claim his land.

Of course, one of the Saex could have made it away, one among the English

might have not been so inebriated as the others. Or it was always possible a

messenger had been sent back from Aelle and the army ahead laying arro-

gant siege to the British fortress. Anything could have alerted the Saex of the

Artoriani. Even instinct, the gut feeling that a good leader has; the knack of

knowing. As Arthur knew Aelle was ignorant of his coming.

Leaving the easier route of the road, they dismounted, led the horses, and

cut across country, boots squelching in the many pocketed muddied hollows,

cursing silently as they thrust a way through tangled thorn and unyielding scrub,

slowing the pace more, and taking care. So much care. They could have taken

the smaller, narrower, and easier to travel road that would run, straight as an

arrow, up to the fortress. But that way was easily watched and they would be

vulnerable on foot; easily seen, mounted.

They began to climb, the flickering, smoke-shifting, pale glow of many

camp-fires leading them on; the Saxons, half of one mile ahead, strung out in

scattered copses of tents clustered around tended hearth-fires. Some would be

sleeping, others nursing weapons, talking quietly to ward away the tedium of

S h a d o w o f t h e k i n g 4 0 3

a long, quiet night-watch. Ha! Well, things would not be so quiet or monoto-

nous soon enough!

So Gweir and the two others sent ahead with him, had reported. They had

watched since dusk, secreted against the browns and greens of earth and grass,

observed the Saxons taunting the British entombed behind the high rampart

walls, held their breath as a foray to try again at the secured gates was beaten

down. But at even their safe distance, Gweir could see the British were suffering,

their defence edged with a lack of resilience that was rapidly crumbling towards

the inevitable. Would Ambrosius be tempted to surrender soon? It depended

on how many men he had already lost, how many could continue. And it

would depend on Arthur bringing up the Artoriani without sign or sound.

Gweir sent a boy back, riding on one of the swift Arabian breeds that ate

the ground beneath the hooves as hungrily as a starving beggar devoured

fresh-baked bread. The English were unaware they had been observed, were

unaware of the Pendragon’s closeness. One group, set to keep eye to where the

steep slope fell into the flat spread of land, were unknowing that Gweir and his

companions were close enough to hear their muttered conversation, smell their

wine-tainted breath, even. They, the three Englishmen, watched the sky now,

their blank eyes staring up at the blackness, waiting for a sunrise they would