The Dragon's Banner (14 page)

About a league east they found a break in the
cliffside, and there a twisty, but manageable pathway leading off
the beach. Shortly they were up on the plateau and making much
better time than they had on the soft sand. Long they rode, and on
their way they found three villages, all of them burned to the
ground. In each they found the villagers slain, and it appeared
that many had died in great torment. There were charred bodies
lying next to burned stakes and disfigured corpses strewn
about.

At the last village they found a battlefield,
for there were ten Britannic warriors lying slain along with eight
of the Saxon invaders. They dismounted and looked closely. One of
the warriors carried a standard they didn't know, a red hawk on a
black field. Six of the bodies had been hideously disfigured after
they had been slain. These bore the coat of arms of Cameliard.

Uther leaned over and picked up one of their
shields, staring at it somberly. "Indeed, these are your father's
warriors, and if I read their arms correctly, they are from his
personal retinue."

Leodegrance's voice was cold as ice. "You
read correctly, my friend. The fiends have dishonored the dead. We
must find whomever did this." There was death in his tone.

"Then we should ride now, for I swear these
tracks leading off are not two hours cold. Perhaps we can catch
them in their camp if we follow without rest." It was Caradoc, who
was kneeling on the ground along the path leading from the
village.

"Can you track them?" asked Uther.

"Indeed, for little have I had to do most of
my life save hone my skills at the hunt. It will be harder in the
darkness, but they have left a sloppy trail, easy to read. This way
they rode." He pointed northeast.

They mounted and set out, following Caradoc's
instructions. Many times he dismounted to read the ground more
closely by torchlight, and twice he had them turn back and change
their course, but he never lost the trail.

At two hours past midnight he called quietly
for them to stop. He turned to Uther and Leodegrance. "They are
very close, perhaps just over this next rise. We should go forward
on foot to scout."

The three of them dismounted and drew their
swords. Silently, they crept forward, crouching low as they reached
the top of the gentle hillside in front of them. In the small
valley below was a camp. There was no moon, and all they could see
was illuminated by the dying campfires. It was a large camp; that
much they could tell.

"At least three score warriors I would say,
perhaps more.” Uther whispered softly to his companions. “We are
outmanned, yet surprise would be our ally."

There was blood in Leodegrance's eyes, and
Uther needed no words to know his friend's heart. "Caradoc, half
our swords are your men and not ours. It is not for us to command
them. What say you?"

The Visigoth looked at his two companions,
and in his expression was steely resolve. "You are now my brothers,
and your battle is mine as well. Let us send forth the word to your
enemies that you have returned."

The three of them silently clapped hands
together and crept back down the hillside. Uther ordered the
servants to remain until he came back to retrieve them and
commanded the warriors to follow. They would attack at the gallop
and slay as many as they could before the foe was roused and able
to resist. Those with torches were to set the tents aflame. Uther
forbade battle cries until they were in the camp and fully engaged.
Tristan he ordered to remain, for the boy was still too young, and
he had no time to watch over him in this fight.

Uther and Leodegrance were in the fore, with
Caradoc at their side. Behind came their men, also three abreast.
Over the hillside they rode, torches held high and swords drawn,
and then they were in the camp. Uther rode past a large red tent
and let his torch fly through the open flap, and he plunged into a
group of the enemy who were sitting around the embers of a fading
camp fire.

They rose with shock, just as Uther's blade
struck. The first fell, his chest cleaved open and his collarbone
shattered by the mighty blow. Again and again the massive sword
struck, and Uther's enemies died amid great sprays of blood, their
screams of alarm quickly silenced. Five he had slain before any
even fought back, and still did he ride forward, killing all those
he could find.

Leodegrance rode to the right of Uther and
cried, "Cameliard!" His first blow struck at a warrior just
bringing his spear to bear, and it took the man's head clean off.
Next he rode at a group of three Saxons who were running toward
Uther. His sword clanged on his target's shield, yet so strong was
his blow that he broke the Saxon's arm, sending him to his
knees.

All through the camp the fighting raged, and
sounds of sword striking sword reverberated through the still night
air. The enemy tents were ablaze, and half-naked warriors stumbled
out into the paths of the attackers. The surprise was total and the
battle a massacre. Ten minutes after it had begun there were two
score of the enemy dead or dying, and the rest had yielded and
dropped their weapons.

Among the captured were ten Britons, all
wearing the black and red insignia they had seen in the sacked
village. Caradoc's men guarded the captives, and the Visigoth
prince, who had been dismounted in the fight, stood before
Uther.

"Know you what men have we lost, Caradoc?"
Uther was covered in his enemies’ blood, and he wiped his face with
a rag as he spoke.

"Yes. One of your men was slain, and another
wounded seriously, though I think he will live. One also of my men
was slain, and two injured, though neither of those
grievously."

Uther let out a deep breath, "God has been
merciful to us this night, for we have prevailed more decisively
than we dared hope. And we have avenged the destroyed
villages."

The camp was searched, and they found a bag
of copper coins, and a box full of trinkets of little value, likely
all the treasures that had been possessed by the villages. Near the
center of the camp they found a pole sunk into the ground, and
chained to it were half a dozen women. They were of various ages,
and all were naked and shivering in the frigid night. One, a girl
of no more than twelve summers, lie dead, burns on her body and her
thighs covered with blood. Uther called for his warriors to unchain
the women and give them their cloaks. Other women did they find in
the tents, similarly assaulted. He sent a messenger to bring up the
servants and the mules, and ordered that the women be given water
and food.

The prisoners, huddled together miserably,
called for mercy, falling to their knees before their captors.
Leodegrance looked over them with contempt in his eyes. "And what
of them?"

Uther stared at the distraught captives, his
gaze like the face of death. "Behead the Saxons." His voice was
ice.

"And the Britons?" asked Caradoc.

Uther called to a pair of his warriors who
stood at his side. "Gather brush," he told the two men. "Burn them
alive."

His arms burned with exhaustion, and his legs
were numb from the cold, but King Urien swung his blood-soaked
sword yet again, and another Pictish warrior fell from the wall
onto the frozen ground twenty feet below. All day the enemy had
been testing the walls of Carlisle and the resolve of the men of
Rheged, but the defenders held firm and repulsed every attack with
a river of Pictish blood.

For ten months, Carlisle had withstood the
siege, and Urien, the young king, was the heart of the defense.
Everywhere he was, wherever the threat was greatest. Anywhere his
men lost heart, at whatever point the enemy was pouring over the
walls, there was the king, his great sword singing the song of
death to the invader.

Caelin also had won great honor, for he had
slain a score of foes, and twice he had made his way through the
night to carry the king's messages to Uxelodunum, half a league
away across the river. The great fort still held out as well, and
Owain, the king's uncle who commanded there, had three times
sallied out to burn the enemy's camps and steal their supplies.

Yet a pall of gloom lay over the town and
sapped the strength of the defenders. More than half their number
had been lost, and even arming every old man and boy, they would
soon be unable to hold the walls. They were down to a quarter loaf
of bread and a small piece of salt pork daily, and that was for the
fighting men. The townsfolk got even less. The horses had long ago
been eaten, and now even a rat was such a prized meal that a man
might be murdered for it.

The enemy had suffered greater losses, that
is true, and for a brief time Urien thought his men might break the
siege. His hopes were dashed the month before when the enemy's
ranks were swelled with new arrivals. Another band of Picts,
perhaps two thousand strong had joined, and from the south, bearing
strange black and red banners, came an army of Britons, at least
three thousand strong, which joined the besieging forces. It was
thus that all of the foe's losses were made good, while Urien still
gazed south each day in vain, looking for the help that had been
promised him. Naught had he heard either from Constantine and his
alliance or from King Lot of Luthien, whose domains lay north and
east of Rheged.

Pestilence raged in the city, and nightly the
dead were buried in great pits, hastily covered with a few shovels
of dirt. Stories had come to the king of corpses devoured by
starving townsfolk and of human bones found sucked dry of marrow.
Twice Urien himself had been down with the fever, and the last time
it had come close to taking him. But his resolve remained strong.
Three times he had refused offers of terms if he would open his
gates, and he swore that only marching over his body would the
enemy have his capital.

Next to the king, one of his men strained to
push over a scaling ladder, and Urien joined him and helped topple
the thing, dumping three Picts onto the rock-hard frozen ground
below. All along the walls the enemy were breaking and falling back
to their camps. A ragged cheer went up among Urien's men. They had
held once again.

The king walked slowly down the narrow stone
stairs from the battlement, his guards falling in behind him. Well
have we done, he thought, yet still I will soon have to abandon the
walls and pull the defense back to the keep itself. He knew that
when he gave that order he would be consigning the townsfolk to a
hellish fate, for he could not take them all into the keep. The
Picts were savages in the best situations. What horrors would they
inflict on the peasants after almost a year of siege and five
thousand of their number slain?

His thoughts were grim as he walked back to
the keep, and he ordered the guard on the battlements reduced to
the minimum number, for he could not bear the thought of his men
freezing all night on the windswept walls. They had torn down
almost all of the timber buildings, yet the supply of firewood was
not going to last the winter. For almost a fortnight, the men on
the walls had gone without fires, and Urien had commanded that none
serve more than two hours a night in the bitter cold before being
relieved.

Back at the keep Urien walked to his
bedchamber, for he had ordered the hearth in the massive throne
room left unlit. The wood consumed there in a day could keep a
hundred of his soldiers warm, and thus was his priority. His
chamber was warm, the fire in the small hearth crackling noisily.
On the table was set the king's dinner, a roast fowl, with bread
and butter, and a flagon of hot spiced wine. Urien poured himself a
cup of the wine and tore a leg off the fowl. He sat in the chair by
the fire and sighed deeply, feeling the warmth bring feeling back
to his legs. He took a drink of the wine and savored the hot liquid
sliding down his throat, driving the chill from his bones. Urien
called to his chamberlain and ordered that Caelin be brought to
him, then he ate sparingly of the leg of fowl while he waited. A
few moments later there was a knock on the door.

"Enter.”

The heavy oaken door swung open and Caelin
walked in. The young warrior was clad in a simple tunic and a heavy
woolen cloak. Around his head was tied a coarse bandage, partially
soaked through with blood. He stood rigidly before Urien. "You
called for me, sire?"

Urien looked up and stared at Caelin
intently. The two had become close, perhaps because they were
nearly the same age and, though both young, each had proven his
worth in battle. Indeed, Caelin had shown himself to be a warrior
with few equals, and Urien had lost count of the foes he had
slain.

"Yes, Caelin. I wanted to speak with you. But
first, have you eaten?"

"Yes, sire, I have finished my evening
meal."

"And what was that, pray tell, a crust of
bread? I am fatigued, my friend, but not blind. To my eye you weigh
two stone less than when you staggered into this keep ten months
ago. I would not have you lose the last of your strength, for you
have become one of my greatest warriors."

"Still have I the strength to serve my king
and realm." The young warrior stood proudly. "The day that not be
so, let God take me."

"Nonetheless, eat." Urien motioned toward the
platter of roast fowl.

Caelin did not move. "That is your majesty's
supper, and you should finish it, for you need strength even more
than I."

"I am quite finished with it, Caelin. Sit.
Eat."

Caelin wavered, and did not sit until Urien
motioned a third time. Finally he lowered himself into one of the
chairs and took a small portion of fowl onto a plate, though with
Urien's encouragement, he soon set to the entire bird and devoured
it, leaving naught on the platter but bones sucked clean.