The Bloody Cup (62 page)

Odin turned, summed up the danger to his king with a single glance, and abandoned his own wounded horse in the water. As Artor’s beast swam past, Odin scrambled on to its blood-streaked back behind Artor and clutched at the king’s belt like a limpet. Unaware that his old servant had deliberately relinquished his horse, Artor used one hand to grip Odin’s leather coat and drove his beast on. As the horse’s legs gained some purchase on the gravel of the riverbank, Artor heaved a sigh of relief and slackened the furious pace.

He turned his horse to face the enemy. Had Modred’s men taken the bait? How long could he stand here, exposed to enemy fire, to tempt the Brigante to leave the safety of their bivouac?

The air around him hummed and buzzed with arrows from both sides. Artor stood his ground until Bedwyr drove his horse at breakneck speed to Artor’s side and lifted his own shield to protect the body of the king.

Artor was quick to assess the fruits of the sacrifice made by his personal guard. The Brigante cavalry had scented blood and were already in the shallows as they chased the remnants of Artor’s attacking force. The Pictish foot soldiers followed their cavalry across the shallows in hot pursuit, screaming and whooping battle cries as they ran.

The Brigante phalanx was the only enemy unit with the discipline to hold its position.

On the far side of the shallow river, already alive with Modred’s horsemen and the first foot soldiers holding their weapons above their heads, Artor could see the Brigante king on a white horse as he waited at the head of his troops. Now that Artor’s force had retreated to their own side of the river, the Brigante king was belatedly playing the role of a leader of men.

Fronting the phalanx, Modred appeared to argue with a Brigante warrior. Bedwyr could just make out a white scar under the shadow of the officer’s helmet. Cadwy Scarface!

‘Come away, Artor,’ Bedwyr shouted, the whites of his eyes clearly visible. ‘Or we’ll both be trapped.’

‘A moment!’ Artor ordered.

The High King watched the pantomime of Modred striking the captain of the phalanx with his open hand. No words were needed to show that a dispute was taking place in the enemy encampment. The hands of the grizzled warrior rose momentarily towards his sword pommel and then rejected the hasty action. With some slight gesticulation, the captain’s orders set the phalanx on the march towards Artor’s positions.

Finally, Artor wheeled his horse and galloped towards his own lines.

‘The Brigante are coming!’ Artor shouted in a stentorian voice. ‘Prepare! Prepare! Back to your position, Bedwyr. Our strategy is working.’

Gareth intercepted his king as soon as Artor reached his foot soldiers.

‘Order your men into position, Gareth,’ Artor yelled. ‘Prepare to repel a cavalry charge.’

Like deadly puppets, Artor’s troops formed into battle lines. The front row of soldiers dropped into a uniform crouch, anchored their shields firmly in the earth and positioned their spears so that the points formed a hedgehog of metallic quills. The second row used their shields to partially protect the front row so that a wall of iron confronted the charging horse soldiers. A third row consisted of reserves ready to fill the breaches made by the attacking cavalry.

Artor wheeled his horse and headed for the knoll, followed by Gareth.

‘Lord, you must permit us to care for Odin,’ Gareth shouted, his white hair streaming back from his face in the breeze. The boy, Ector, followed Gareth on his hill pony, his face strained and pale, his right hand clutching at a short knife at his waist.

Artor shook his head slowly, like an old bull tormented by arrows he couldn’t deflect.

‘What did you say, Gareth?’ Artor asked. ‘Is Odin hurt?’

‘Aye, lord.’ Gareth nodded. ‘He is sorely wounded.’

Then Artor saw a cluster of men running towards him, accompanied by Taliesin with a leather satchel in his hand.

‘My lord,’ Gareth pleaded, ‘you must release your hold on Odin.’

Artor did so and the healers lifted the old warrior down. His body fell slackly once Taliesin forced Odin’s hand to release its death grip on Artor’s sword belt.

Artor’s old friend was dead before he reached the ground. A dozen arrows had pierced his leather shirt between the heavy bands of iron that strengthened it.

‘Odin!’ Artor murmured brokenly within his helmet. Something shattered within the consciousness of the High King. Odin had taken every arrow aimed at the broad back of his master.

‘We shall wade through a sea of blood, old friend, to avenge you’, Artor vowed. ‘For Death! For the Celts! For Artor!’ he roared as the Brigante horsemen began to close in on his defensive position.

The enemy cavalry struck and the force of the impact juddered through the bones of both men and beasts. Horses screamed with the high-pitched sounds of women’s wailing, and oaths, cries and prayers were melded into a cacophony of noise. Artor’s eyes did not leave the front line, but the king’s mind was slowed, so that the carnage he observed around him seemed to be the exaggerated gestures of play actors. Odin couldn’t be dead! The sun still shone, and the grass still grew. His own heart still pumped, and his eyes still saw.

Odin couldn’t be dead!

The enemy wheeled away and struggled through the tangle of fallen men and horses. Once again, they charged the Celtic lines and Artor watched numbly as Modred’s men fell under the weight of their horses, only to be replaced smoothly by other horsemen from the rear of the attacking force.

For a third time, the Brigante cavalry retreated and then, out of the chaos, Artor’s warriors saw a wave of armed infantry rushing towards them.

‘Death to the traitors!’ Artor screamed. ‘Death to all men who attack their own!’

‘Death to the traitors!’ echoed from hundreds of throats.

Gareth used a polished plate of silver to catch the sun high above them to send a signal to the commanders who were on the tips of the crescent formation. Within a few heartbeats, Artor saw Bors and Bedwyr on the move as their cavalry swept wide to encircle the whole field and enclose the Brigante and Pictish warriors within a net of death.

‘Death to the traitors! Death to Modred!’

The sounds of battle rose and swelled. The ground, the hill and the sky seemed to echo the cries across the field as seasoned warriors turned on each other in a carnage rendered more terrible because it was personal, hand-to-hand combat.

The depleted lines of Celtic warriors began to step forward smoothly under the orders of their captains, with the men at each end of the line curving visibly inward. The king spun on his heel, grasped Gareth’s hand in his mailed fist, either in commiseration or farewell, before remounting and spurring his horse back into the fray.

Gareth followed slowly, his shoulders slumped. Behind him, Ector was left with three survivors of Artor’s charge. The boy’s huge eyes reflected the horrors he had seen.

In the distance, Artor caught a flash of blue. Ostentatious as ever, Modred had ridden with his household cavalry to enjoy the rout of the Celts from a position of relative safety. Artor headed towards the patch of colour, his red cloak streaming behind him like a pennon. Foot soldiers and horsemen made way for his passage, for Artor’s shark eyes were set inexorably upon Modred’s blue cloak.

Odin’s death, the loss of the twins and the tragedy of the Cup all fused together in the king’s mind to find expression in a ferocious charge at the Matricide. Artor drove his horse into the beast ridden by Modred, forcing the animal back on its haunches where it scrambled for purchase on the churned earth. Modred screamed shrilly and parried Artor’s vicious overhead blow with his own sword. Muscles cracked under the strain, but youth and desperation won, and Artor found himself unseated.

But Modred’s beast lost its footing. Falling backwards and screaming shrilly, Modred and his horse both landed heavily.

Artor was in the guard position immediately, although every bone and muscle shouted an old man’s pain.

‘Defend yourself, Modred!’

‘You’re bleeding, old man,’ Modred scrambled to his feet and recovered his sword. ‘When will you admit that you’re past all this effort?’

‘When you are dead!’

The blade of the dragon knife purred as the king drew it from its sheath.

As soon as Modred was on his feet, Artor feinted and then changed direction. Modred’s talent was for subterfuge, not in the use of arms. The younger Artorex would have spitted him on his sword like a fish. But Artor was old, and he was slow. His muscles screamed with weariness and only his unconquered will kept him on his feet.

The king’s thrust went wide.

Modred countered with an underhand, scything sweep designed to keep Artor at bay more than anything else. Artor stepped inside the sword blow and dashed the blade away.

Modred’s chest was exposed. The dragon knife clanged against Modred’s blade and slid down and across, finding an easy passage through skin, bone and muscle before Artor twisted the knife and wrenched it free.

Modred stared at his own blood on the blade. Artor’s strike had missed the Brigante’s heart, but the High King’s sword was now moving in for the killing blow. Modred clearly saw Caliburn as it came at him, as if the passage of time had slowed.

He shrieked in horror.

As the king’s sword sheared down towards Modred’s shoulder, it angled across to sever the carotid and jugular arteries. As Artor struck, Modred used his own long knife to strike upward at Artor’s abdomen. The blade skidded along the High King’s mail with a spark of fire before finding a break in his armour and gashing him over the wound inflicted earlier by the Pict warrior. The cut wasn’t overly deep but it was bloody.

Caliburn smashed through Modred’s armour, flesh and bone.

Modred’s head was almost severed from his body by the force of Artor’s blow and fell grotesquely on to his right shoulder. His mouth filled with blood as he fell, and the bright scarlet fountain splashed over Artor’s feet.

Modred was dead and Artor still stood, although the blue sky reeled about him and the earth felt as insubstantial as thistledown.

Faithful Gareth was at the High King’s side in an instant, although he, too, was bleeding from half a dozen wounds.

Wearily, Artor leaned against his servant and watched the battle swirl around him.

The Picts fought on until every warrior was dead, but they reaped a deadly harvest of Celts as they fell. Without a master, the Brigante began to run when they realized that King Modred had perished.

‘Permit them to leave the field,’ Artor ordered. ‘Their tainted king is slain, so let the tribe bear the shame of treason forever. They can run until their legs are bloody stumps.’

Taliesin was called to the king’s side as soon as Artor could be persuaded to rest. The army was mopping up the enemy wounded, gathering the bodies of comrades for cremation or tossing the enemy corpses into the river.

‘Let the sea consume their flesh,’ Artor had ordered, and his instructions were followed to the letter.

In his tent, with his armour stripped from his body and clean rags applied to his wounds, Artor could finally relinquish his iron control.

Taliesin thrust his way past Artor’s captains and knelt beside the pallet of the High King. He fumbled for his healer’s satchel.

When Taliesin saw the awkward slash over a deep triangular wound that scarcely oozed blood, he knew that Artor had suffered a mortal blow.

Three women rode through the closing afternoon light over the low flatlands below Mamucium. One had hair so blonde that it was silver; one was brunette, as dark as a raven’s wing upon a field of snow; and the third had hair the colour of fallen leaves in the dying light. They had come from the west, the east and the north.

The three queens reached Artor’s encampment the day after the battle.

Queen Enid of the Otadini had not seen Artor’s face since the bloody night that her son, Galahad, had been born. She had known then, in her secret heart, that her husband, Gawayne, was the queen’s lover and she had wept bitter tears over the head of her baby. Now, she mourned the loss of her son, as did Gawayne, who was mired in his own nasty war of attrition against rebels who lusted after his throne. But he had yearned to stand with his uncle one last time, so Enid’s duty had been clear. She must ride to give Otadini allegiance to Artor, although she was only a woman.

The three queens had met in Mamucium, as Nimue had foreseen.

As the women rode past the quiet camp, hazy with the drifting smoke of cremation, the warriors bowed in nameless superstition, for the air seemed to shiver about them with strange energy. The queens appeared to personify water, earth, and wind. Magic had come again to the west, so the whisper ran through the troops, and no sane person should speak to Otherworld queens who have come to harvest the souls of men.

Artor lay supine on his pallet, his aged face creased with pain and worry. Taliesin knelt beside his king, forcing a soporific between the dying man’s teeth. Although Artor knew his strength was failing, his mind and eyes remained clear.

‘I have come to the end of my time on this earth’, he murmured. ‘And it is not so very bad.’

When he saw Enid’s face, Artor smiled uncertainly.

‘Is Gawayne well, my lady?’ he asked. ‘You may tell him that no bad blood lies between us. He must hold the Otadini lands safe during my absence.’

‘Hush, my lord,’ Enid said. ‘Gawayne will hold firm.’

‘Nimue?’ Artor’s face lit up as he made out her shining face in the gloom. ‘You’ve not changed overly with the march of the years. Do you still wear my mark?’

‘To the death, my lord.’ The Lady of the Lake lifted her green-grey robe and Artor saw the rampant dragon coiling up her right leg.

‘Odin made that tattoo.’ Then his eyes darkened with the pain of grief. ‘Odin is dead. He died protecting me against Modred.’

‘Odin chose his own destiny many years ago’, Nimue explained gently.

‘I’ve missed Myrddion so much, Nimue. I’d give anything to see him again.’

‘He’s waiting for you.’

Then Anna was beside the High King, and Gallia’s gentle expression embraced him from the grave.