Sword at Sunset (25 page)

Arian was sweating; I felt him start and tremble under me, for like all horses, he was terrified of fire. All horses ... How if they refused to face the faming gateway? I should have ordered the
whole assault on foot, but we needed the crash and sweep of a cavalry charge. No time for regrets or wavering now; no time to let the flames die down, though already our lads, close under the wall
where the arrows and throw spears of the defenders could not reach them, were flinging on masses of fresh bracken to damp them down for the moment. The white steam hissed up, and the flame-wall
sank and grew ragged as I called to my trumpeter, ‘Now, man – the Charge!’

The familiar notes of the hunting horn leapt into the wind, and I bent forward onto Arian’s sweating neck. ‘Now! Now, brother!’ He snorted and shook his head, beginning to
swerve aside, and I flung a fold of my cloak across his eyes. Blind, I knew that he would go where I urged him, because he trusted me. ‘Git up!
On
, boy!’ He hesitated an instant
longer, and then with a defiant and despairing neigh broke forward into a canter, and I heard the hooves of the others drumming on his heels. The heat of the gateway struck at my face like a blow,
the smitch of half-quenched flames choked and blinded me. My face was down against Arian’s neck, partly to shield my own eyes, partly that my voice might reach him above the tumult. I was
managing him with my knees alone, the reins loose on his neck, that I might have one hand for my spear and the fold of my cloak across his eyes. I sang to him, shouted in his laid-back ear.
‘On, brave heart! Sa sa sa – up, come up, bold and beautiful! Come up, my hero!’

And old Arian answered me like a hero indeed. He gathered himself together, greathearted as he was, and with the terror of the fire in his nostrils, galloped straight forward into the dark,
through the steaming and crackling inferno of the gateway and the massed spears beyond. And after me crashed the rest, tramping the fire under round hooves and scattering the red embers like sparks
from a swordsmith’s anvil. I raised the war cry, and heard it echoed back to me from across the roaring chaos of the camp. ‘Yr Widdfa!
Yr Widdfa!
’ The hunting horn was
sounding again, and suddenly from the heart of the camp ahead of us came the hollow booming of the Saxon war horns, and the deep throbbing snarl of the eight-foot war horns of the Scots. We charged
on toward them.

The fire arrows and torn-off flames from the burning barricades had fired the rough thatch on some of the buildings; and by the leaping wind-torn light, we charged and charged again through the
solid masses of the enemy, carrying the Red Dragon of Britain on toward the heart of the camp where the war horns and the up-reared standards told us that we should come at Huil Son of Caw, his
household warriors and his allied chieftains. Our foot swarmed in over the still-smoking embers that we had scattered for them, and hand-to-hand fighting had spread into every corner of the great
fort. And from the northern quarter, where Bedwyr and his war band had leapt in over the crumbling wall, the war cry, taken up by a score of triumphant voices, was sweeping nearer.

I remember little of the last phase. When once all vestige of the pattern is gone, there is little to remember of any battle save the chaos and the smell of blood and sweat that are common to
all battles; and one is very tired, and not very clear in the head ... In the end they broke and streamed away – those who could – over the broken parts of the wall, leaping from the
rampart walks and down the bush-grown hill scarp, leaving their dead behind them.

The time came when the last fighting was done, and a sudden quietness fell over the great camp; and even the wind seemed to drop for the moment. Men were putting out the flames of the roofs that
had caught, and I was standing beside the remains of a cooking fire, with an arm over Arian’s neck, praising and consoling him for the red spear gash in his flank. Presently, I thought dimly,
I must get it bathed; presently, if there was any water. Surely there had been something about a shortage of water, a long while ago? My head began to clear slowly, and I saw Bedwyr limping toward
me, with the blood trickling from a gash just above his knee.

‘A good hunting,’ I said, when he came up.

‘A good hunting.’

‘Any sign of Huil?’

‘None so far, but they have only just begun to go through the dead and wounded. There’s a good few of them.’

‘What of our own losses?’ (It might have been Eburacum over again, but after most battles there are much the same questions to be asked.)

‘So far as we can tell as yet, not heavy. I lost several men getting in from the north rampart, but most of the wolf pack was faced to your blazing gate; yet it is in my mind that that
charge of yours through the flames seemed more like a lightning flash than a thing that one could strike back at.’ And then he said, ‘We’ve lost nine horses; that I do
know.’

And the last of the fog lifted from my brain. (I think, looking back, that I must have taken a bang on the head without knowing it, for that kind of heaviness after battle was not usual with
me.)

I looked at Bedwyr, scarcely noticing even when Arian muzzled at my shoulder. It was a worse loss than that of the same number of men; but there was no help for it, no help even in cursing.
‘Well, we have our winter quarters – though they stand somewhat in need of scrubbing out,’ I said. Amlodd came to take Arian from me, and I handed the old horse over, and then
turned to the multitude of tasks and decisions, the general clearing up, that always wait for every commander after the fighting’s over.

Gwalchmai as usual was serenely at work among our own wounded, gathered into a roofless barrack row; I heard a man cry out in pain, and his quiet voice in command and reassurance as I passed the
tumble-down doorway.

Some of our men were throwing the Saxon dead and wounded alike over the ramparts at the spot where the escarpment fell almost sheer to the river; but not before they held a torch to each dead
face to make sure that it was not Huil Son of Caw. Our own dead were being gathered and laid aside for burial in the long grave that their comrades were digging for them among the bushes where the
ground was soft. I had made it a rule, years ago, that however hard and hot the day had been, however spent our bodies or sick our heads, however near the enemy and however little time remained to
dawn, no dead body should be left unburied within the camp overnight. I do not know how it is; maybe evil spirits gather to bodies left lying so; but that way comes pestilence. I have seen it
happen before, especially in summer weather. There would be no attack on Trimontium for a while and a while, and save for a few pickets, we could take the sleep we needed tomorrow.

The searchers found more than one Saxon chieftain, and a huge Pict with the blue spirals of his race tattooed from brow to ankle, and the gold collar of a noble, lying among the dead under the
blood-dabbled horsetail standard where the last stand had been made. But when the last of the enemy slain had been dealt with, there was still no sign of any man who could be Huil Son of Caw.

‘It is as well to have something saved for another day,’ said Cei, who had discovered a store of Saxon beer jars in one of the old store barns and was inclined to take a cheerful
view. ‘Sir, will you give the order for an issue of beer all around? I’m thinking the lads could do with it.’

For Cei was ever one to share good fortune.

‘Well enough,’ I said. ‘Get in a couple of the captains and half a dozen of the Company to see to it.’

But there was more than beer jars in that barn. A short while later, one of the Companions came to me in a hurry where I was standing with Bedwyr to see the baggage train brought in. ‘Sir,
my Lord Artos, we have found a girl’s body over there among the beer jars. Will you come and look?’ He was a veteran of many fights, hardened in the fire, I should have said, as any one
of my Companions, but from the color of his face, I thought for a moment that he was going to spew.

chapter thirteen

I
CURSED INWARDLY AS
I
TURNED TO GO WITH HIM.
I
T WAS
Eburacum all over again. I seemed fated always to
find myself with the body of a woman to dispose of when the fighting was done. But this was no golden witch in a crimson gown.

The men had been working by the light of a pine-knot torch, and so there was light enough to see what lay at their feet, when they moved back with an odd hush on them to let me through.

More than light enough.

A young woman, hardly more than a girl, lay there among the beer jars, in the ugly, contorted attitude in which she had been flung down and kicked aside. She was no taller than a girl of
fourteen or fifteen would be among our own folk, but she was of the Little Dark People, and among them a grown woman is no taller than that. I thought, looking at her upturned face among the
tangled masses of black hair, that she had once been very good to look upon, in the narrow, fine-boned way of her people; but she was not good to look upon now, though her skin was still honey soft
between the bruises and clawings of the brutal handling she had received, and her contorted limbs slim and fine. She was stark naked, and from the stains upon her she had been raped not once but
again and again. The man who held the torch moved his arm, and as the light shifted I looked again into the girl’s battered face. I had thought the look on it was one of torment and
unutterable horror, but now I saw that beneath these things there was something else; a look of escape. She had possessed, this girl of the Old Race, the power which some birds and animals possess,
when the outrage of living mounts beyond a certain point, of making the final withdrawal into the refuge of death where no tormentor can follow.

Cei was cursing in a sustained flow, his blue eyes blazing with a rage such as I had never seen in them before. ‘May their souls rot in Hell! By Christ! If I had the man here I’d
unman him with my naked hands, and tear his living heart out afterward!’

‘You’d need to unman a good few, I’m thinking – and maybe you’d need help,’ said Bedwyr’s voice just behind me, still and cool as deep water by contrast
with the hot rage of the other’s.

One of the men looked to me. ‘What are we to do with her, sir?’

I hesitated. If she had been one of our own kind she could have gone into the same long grave as our battle dead. But she was of the Old Race, the Little Dark Ones. Many of our own scouts and
camp followers had something of that blood in them (I have sometimes thought that there was a strain of it in the Royal House of Arfon itself, for Ambrosius, though taller, was narrow-boned and
dark as the Fairy kind), and our own people worked alongside them contentedly enough, especially since Irach; though many a time I have seen one of my own Companions make the Sign of the Horns
before sharing food from the same dish with one of them. But I knew that if I ordered the girl’s body to be laid with our own dead, I should have trouble with my men, for fear that the
nearness of the Fairy’s dead might harm our own in some way.

‘Scoop her out a grave to herself somewhere among the bushes,’ I said.

There was a sudden movement, a many-voiced murmur of dissent behind me, and swinging around I saw that a crowd had gathered, peering over each other’s shoulders at the small outraged body
in the torchlight. One of the mule drivers came thrusting his way through, or was thrust by those behind him; a small dark hairy man with prick ears like a faun’s. ‘My Lord Artos, there
is another word as to that.’

‘Speak it, then.’

He stood with his feet apart, staring into my face, stubborn as one of his own mules. ‘My Lord Artos, I know something of these things, for my grandmother came from the Hollow Hills. They
are not wont to lie alone, my people – my grandmother’s people. If you lay her as you have ordered, she will grow lonely, and in her loneliness she may walk. Women who die as she died
are given to walking, anyway; and she will be angry, not only with those who killed her, but with us, who cast her out. But if you bury her here in the midst of the camp, she will be quiet with
life going on about her and the warmth of the cooking fires overhead. Her anger will be all for those who killed her, and she will bring us luck and help us to hold the Place of Three
Hills.’

Young Brys Son of Bradman protested furiously. ‘My Lord, do not listen to him, he will let her loose in our very midst!’ And another added his word. ‘I’ve no wish to
sleep at nights with
that
under my pillow!’ And the refrain was taken up by others, while the mule driver stood his ground, still staring into my face, and behind him, the men who had
thrust him forward muttered among themselves.

Cei demanded in his deep grumble, ‘Are you going to give ear to a bunch of mule drivers, rather than to your own Companions?’

‘We shall still need mule drivers,’ I said. And then suddenly I had the answer: not perfect, but the best that I was likely to find.

Only a few paces from where we stood, there was a deep broad pit, probably once a supplementary grain store, for mildewed shreds of the hides with which it had been lined still clung to its
sides and to the remains of the timbers that had once closed it in. It could never be used again, and I had given orders that the dead horses were to be tipped into it and covered over for tonight
with whatever came to hand of clods and debris and old thatch. That would be a lighter task than to drag the carcasses outside and far enough from the camp. There had not been time yet for the
order to be carried out, though the first of the carcasses had been dragged close in readiness; and horses were creatures of the Sun, sacred among the Sun people once, while nine has ever been a
number of Power.

‘Lay her in the old grain pit before the horses go in,’ I said. ‘Thrice three horses above her should make all safe, without keeping off the warmth of the cooking fires.’
And before anyone had time to raise further objections: ‘Go, someone, and bring a couple of baggage ropes,’ for I had no wish to tumble her into her grave as one flings a dead cat on a
garbage pile; and while someone went to do my bidding and the rest stood by, few I think, even of her own kind, overeager to touch her, I flung off my old weather-stained cloak, and spread it on
the ground, and lifted the poor broken body onto it. She weighed no more than a child, and some of the suppleness of life was still in her, so that I was able to lay her decently, and not in the
crumpled attitude in which we had found her. Bedwyr knelt beside me, helping me to draw the dark folds close. ‘Cover her face,’ he said; and then, ‘I’ll carry
her.’