Outside they found that Arthur was returning, urgently, and had himself blown the war trumpet from the distant ridge.
It was quite dark as the warlord and his scouting party rode into the waiting camp; all men were in battle leathers, all carts loaded; at a shouted order the tents could be taken down and loaded in moments. The army of the Britons was ready for battle.
Arthur climbed down from his horse and scratched vigorously where his skin was chafed. He stared up into the sky and then back towards the ridge. Two torches burned there, and even as he watched them so they vanished.
‘The Saxon army lies just beyond that hill, and they know about us now. I thought they might have followed us here, but apparently not. Nevertheless, a bare three hours separates us and I don’t want to be caught sleeping if they attack at night.’
‘We nearly rode into their camp,’ said Kei. ‘We thought they were settled much further to the east.’
Bryn the Merciless said, ‘This takes council.’
‘I agree,’ said Arthur. He led the way into his tent. Grania, Bryn and Kei followed him. Niall stared into the darkness for a moment, then went after the others.
Bryn was saying, ‘We must move now, slowly, easily. If we move during the night, and reach that ridge, we will be ready for dawn battle.’
‘I agree with that,’ said Grania. ‘But what if the Saxons are moving too, thinking on a similar tactic? We’ll meet them in the darkness.’
Arthur shook his head. ‘I like Bryn’s idea. The Saxons have scouted us, and the land here, as we have scouted them. They know that we must pass through forest to attain that ridge. They won’t want to fight us in woodland, but they’ll be waiting for us as we come out. I believe we should move now, wait in the forest until dawn breaks, and then flow out on to the land beyond, and fight in the mist. It has a certain … romantic appeal to it.’
Kei laughed. ‘We can organise music too, if you like.’
‘That won’t be necessary,’ said Arthur. ‘Tell every man to sleep for three hours, no more. Even if the Saxons send a skirmish party it will take them that long to reach us. After three hours we move. Let it be known.’
Bryn and Kei rose and left the tent.
Arthur stared at Grania, and then at Niall. He said nothing, but a troubled expression passed across his dark features.
What went through Arthur’s mind that night cannot be known, for he never spoke about it, and all too soon there would be no point in speaking about it.
Niall, in his corner, curled up for his three hours sleep, easy of mind, but aware that Arthur watched him. When he woke he noticed that Arthur was still crouched by the glowing embers of the small fire, still staring at his huddled form. Grania was sitting there, too, her eyes unseeing as she gazed at the far wall of the tent. They had not spoken.
Soon all the camp was awake and in the bitter darkness after midnight they began the trek through the forest, towards a battle whose importance to history is far less than its importance to those who fought it.
And just a few hours away, having passed the Britons by in his haste to flee the Saxons who had so abused him, a slave had stopped, and his keen ears listened to the sounds of the evening.
Impossibly, the sound of a war trumpet reached across the miles, a faint sound that he spotted at once.
Something within him, some dark spirit, told him that the trumpet was a call to him, a call to fate.
He reined his horse around and spat on to the cold turf, grinned as he wiped his sleeve across his mouth. Had there been a moon his eyes would have sparkled, a bizarre animal sparkle.
He rode back the way he had come.
Dawn was breaking when he came within sight of the battle …
As the first light of the new day struggled to brighten the forest through the heavy mist that hung across the trees, so the Britons moved from the woodlands on to the flat ground before them. The land rose gently towards the ridge from which both armies had scouted the enemy just a few hours before.
Now, between that ridge and the trees, the army of the Saxons waited for the warlord, Arthur, to lead his men out for the affray.
The mist rose quickly. A great flock of rooks settled noisily in the trees, their cawing cries loud and frightening in the early morning stillness. Horses snorted and shuffled, restless with cold and inactivity; metal harnessing rattled, men murmured and coughed.
A timeless moment before the battle, with over a thousand men staring at each other across four hundred yards of green and dew-damp ground. Arthur rode up and down before the Britons, his tall, lean shape seated proud and strong in the saddle; his sword was drawn and he held it, angled downwards, the light reflecting from its honed blade so brightly that every man, on both sides, stared at the weapon, watching for the slightest move of it, the slightest signal.
Cerdic himself, a fat and fur-swathed man, rode forward from his ranks; his horse was a roan, and it walked steadily and proudly across the empty land. His helmet shone, the wide horns cleaned of the blood and gore that had covered them after his rout at Cerdicesora, much further to the south and west. The man’s face was hidden behind a thick, ginger beard, and his moustaches grew thin and shaved, so that the corners of his mouth were bare, and their arrogant smirk could be seen.
He carried a shield and a spear, and the spear he raised and cast half-heartedly at Arthur. The Briton never flinched as the gleaming point scythed past his body, missing him by a bare few inches; the weapon thudded into the ground; the challenge to war.
Arthur turned and rode towards the spear, reached down to pluck it from the grass, and broke it in two.
Cerdic yelled and smiled, his cry – in the incomprehensible language of the Saxons – a cry of triumph, of incitement to war.
The Saxon rabble ran towards the Britons.
Arthur’s Celts swarmed towards the Saxons.
Battle was joined in bare seconds, and in minutes the air was heavy with the smell of blood, and the ground was red, red, all greenness lost beneath the flowing streams of life, and the rising piles of dead.
Niall established himself most deeply in the Saxon ranks; by his screams, and the shrieking laughter that accompanied his violent action, it was apparent to Arthur that the Berserker was in possession.
Arthur himself led his élite horsemen straight at the heart of the Saxon army; fifty men surged through the howling, blond-haired ranks, hewed them down with long bladed sword and slashing spear. They met the horsemen of the Saxons, a force of some two hundred, and demonstrated their efficiency with shocking results. Not a single Briton had died by the time Arthur wheeled around and led his cavalry to quieter ground; thirty Saxon horsemen lay slain, and the rest were split into groups which fell foul of the trained foot soldiers of the Britons: three men to a horse, one to steady the beast, one to fight on the left flank, and one to spring into the saddle behind the horseman and dispatch him.
A stream of impressive stallions were being led into the woods to be stripped of the inefficient Saxon harnessing, and re-dressed with Celtic leather and chain, and ridden again by a dark-haired Briton.
Grania, Bryn the merciless and Kei Ironhand led groups of men into strategic points, trying always to divide the mightier force of the Saxons, so that a more proficient hand to hand fighting could be undertaken.
Kei did well, and Grania so shocked her enemy, riding bare-breasted and foul-masked at them, that she continually beat them back by the combined elements of surprise and sword skill.
For a while, too, Bryn the Merciless and his small band of forty riders did well, wheeling and striking at different parts of the vast conglomerate that was the surging army of Cerdic’s. Then the tide of battle in his quarter changed, and Bryn found himself separated from his men, still hacking and slashing at the soldiers around him.
A spear entered his leg with agonising effect, and he hacked at the shaft to free himself from the burden. In that moment of his lost concentration he was struck from behind, a painful blow that cut
into his shoulder and knocked him from the saddle.
He was on his feet in moments and fighting more furiously, even, than the Berserker, who screamed and scythed through Saxons just thirty paces away.
But Bryn was no Berserker and he possessed neither Niall’s mindless dedication to death nor his invulnerability to all but mortal wounds.
Though he fought like a madman, and slew more Saxons than could be counted in two men’s hands, it was inevitable that he should fall: his sword broke, and in the instant that he cast the useless hilt away and drew his dirk, an arrow hit him in the chest; a Saxon pinned his arms from behind while a second, blood-stained and ferocious, carved a Christian cross from Bryn’s forehead to jaw and across his cheeks so that the flaps of flesh gaped open to the air. Then he pushed the sword into the flesh of the Briton’s belly, and after a moment’s pause, laughing at the blood foamed screaming of the man, he split Bryn open and left him, alive and dying, to suffer the rest of the battle on that agonising border between life and death, warmed by his own viscera, cooled by the sure knowledge that he would not last out the hour.
Only Kei saw this brutal killing, and he was unable to reach the dying warrior to give him peace. The pressure of Saxon swordsmen drove him back, and he retreated after a while, and led his section against a more vulnerable part of the enemy’s ranks.
For Niall, for the Bear that feasted on the blood he spilled, the battle was too long; it was soon satisfied and withdrew into the dark recesses of the young warrior’s mind, and Niall of Connacht found himself alone and vulnerable, his body drenched in the gore of those he had killed.
He saw a horse, galloping riderless towards the woods, and ran for it, killing a man who tried to cut him down, ducking below a Saxon spear that was flung towards him. He caught the horse and mounted it, and when he turned to ride back to the battle, he saw Grania, blood smeared and sweat drenched, her breasts rising and falling rapidly as she strained to find her breath. From behind her hideous mask she was gazing at the distant ridge, and Niall, as he rode up to her, followed her gaze.
There was a horseman there, a ragged man, dressed in Saxon clothes but with a look about him that was not Saxon …
Grania shouted something, and when Niall turned to her to enquire why she seemed so upset by this strange rider, he saw she was gone, kicking her horse to the south, along the edge of the wood and out of range of the battle.
The rider turned to, and rode along the ridge, following her.
Niall fought off a dual attack by Saxon horsemen, struck the men from their saddles with all the ease of a boy swatting flies. In that moment of battle he lost sight of the rider, and of Grania too, and it was then he realised who had been observing them from a distance.
A man he had thought long dead! Fergus, the fiana, come for his revenge at last.
Men broke from the ranks of the Britons, ran back to the woods to save their skins. Arthur rode among his men, screaming at them, exhorting them to fight. Men broke, too, from the ranks of the Saxons. Cerdic was there, urging them on. It was a well matched fight, and though the casualties on each side were huge, no side could gain the advantage.
Tact, and tactic, dictated that the armies withdrew. But Cerdic would not give way before Arthur, and this mutual stubborness meant that the meaningless, pointless slaughter continued as the sun crept higher, and the last vestiges of early morning mist vanished into the grey sky.
Niall quit the battle, fighting his way through from one side of the tight knot of men to the other.
Arthur saw him, saluted him, and when Niall shouted that Grania had deserted and headed to the south the warlord looked troubled.
He stayed with his men, though, and when Niall reached a distant hill and looked back at the struggle, he could see no sign that Arthur had come after him.
Ahead of him lay a great, rolling plain, mostly treeless, and cold. A single figure was discernable in the distance, and he recognised the Saxon rider who was no Saxon – Fergus, riding like the wind in pursuit of his lifelong dream of revenge.
Niall followed.
It rained most of the day and the ground became damp and treacherous; a heavy veil of fog, which fell towards midday, made it impossible for Niall to see where he was going. For several hours he stopped, crouched miserably beneath a skeletal tree, on an area of bare rock in which the tree’s roots were gnarled and twisted. He guessed that Fergus and Grania too would be stopped by the impenetrable greyness.
The fog lifted. Niall rode on, conscious of dusk approaching. The land rolled ahead of him, almost featureless, barren but for the dark grass and the scattered knots of trees. There were no animals, here, no habitations, no warmth.
On the horizons around him he saw tumuli, low hummocks similar to those he remembered from Eriu. He could sense the presence of previous ages, the intangible ghosts of greater races than now possessed the land.
At once his excitement grew. He had followed Grania to protect her – now he remembered that they were in the area of the ruined henge, and that the henge had lain to the south of the battle!
Perhaps he was close already. Should he cease to pursue Fergus and start to search instead for the ancient place that the Fomorion had mentioned?
Ahead of him, carrying loud and shrill through the stillness, came the sound of metal clashing with metal, the unmistakeable song of combat! Niall urged his horse forward and rode through a thin woodland where birds scattered before him, their wingbeats rustling the heavy foliage. He emerged on to the slopes of a gentle hill and stared down at such a sight that his cry of surprise drifted for miles in the dusk!
Before him, resting on a part of the hill where the ground levelled for a while, stood the ring of stones – the circle of stone henges! Ruined and yet vast, silent as time, yet ringing with the cries and clashes of a duel. It was substantially collapsed in upon itself, this vast ancient structure, and yet it was an unmistakeable relic of some majestic and enigmatic past, unarguably a gateway back into a mist laden time when the creatures that now lay within the deep earth had wandered abroad, and co-existed with man.
A haven, a gateway to the Dark Ones, those dawn creatures whose magic would surely save Niall Swiftaxe, the Berserker!
Niall rode towards it, aware both of the rising splendour of these giant stones, which still stood firmly rooted in the ground, and of the ferocious combat that was occurring in and among them. The sharp striking of sword blade against rock was an uncouth and jarring sound in the mystic stillness; the laboured breathing of the combatants, their cries and curses, dispelled the peaceful ghosts of the race who had built this place.
Niall was awed by the stone henges. Even as he came in sight and smell of Grania’s blood streaked breasts, he found himself gazing at the enigmatic monoliths, stones that towered high above him, capped by massive lintels, and scarred and etched with the untranslatable marks of wind and rain and other gods.
Grania screamed and Niall saw her stumble across a half buried stone. Fergus’ blade flashed down with increasing force and she was hard put to parry the enormous blows.
‘Fergus!’ cried Niall, and the bearded man stepped back a moment, and glanced across his shoulder.
‘Niall!’ he shouted. ‘By the Queen of War, I’d thought you dead!’
He returned to the task of breaking through Grania’s weakening defence. ‘I shall slay this bitch for once and for all. I need no help.’
Grania let her arm fall and Fergus’ blade ate into her shoulder so that she screamed. Again Fergus struck, this time deeply into her breast as Niall, still struggling to dismount, watched in horror.
Grania slipped away from Fergus and crawled over the stone, then staggered upright, clutching her breasts where blood flowed free and ugly from the wound.
‘Help me,’ she screamed. Fergus laughed, followed her slowly and as she staggered away from him so he raised his sword to strike off her head.
Niall had drawn the massive Saxon pilum from its saddle slings. As Fergus made to
complete the killing blow, Niall hurled the spear and drove his old friend to the blood soaked earth, pinned through heart and lung.
Fergus’ left hand raised, fingers spread, reaching towards Niall as the Berserker, strangely calm, walked towards him and stood, staring down at the man he had once regarded almost as a brother. He realised what he had done, how he had betrayed the fiana’s trust in him, and yet – he was cold, unemotional about his deed.
Grania choked up blood and fell heavily against the dark face of one of the stones, her sword held limply in her hand, her eyes tear-filled as they watched Niall running towards her.
Niall took her in his arms and gently eased her to the ground. The sword, chipped and smeared with Fergus’ blood, slipped from her grasp.
‘I’m done for, Niall,’ she said, and reached out to touch his face.
‘Now you’ll never keep that promise,’ said the Erisman; he choked on the words, feeling sadness overwhelm him. The war queen smiled and closed her eyes. Quietly, then, she breathed her last.
As Niall let her go, straightening her limbs by her side and wiping the unsightly blood from her face, so – in the dusk light – he saw the shapes that were carved into the stone towering above Grania. It made his heart miss a beat, for he remembered what she had told him of the augur’s prophecy.
A sword from the past moves close. A dagger points at me.
Carved in an earlier heroic age, perhaps to mark an heroic death, a thin dagger had been drawn there, so shallowly etched into the stone that only when the light was at its most oblique could it be seen. The blade pointed towards the dead body of the Eriswoman.
Niall rose stiffly to his feet and went to drag Fergus’ body across to the same stone. He jerked the spear from the corpse, and stripped the Saxon rags from the man. In death Fergus was peaceful, so unlike the fierce and bitter warrior he had been in life.
Niall laid him next to Grania, countrymen together, united in the darkness of death where no motive or quest of revenge was recognised.
Then he squatted down beside them and let the darkness of night envelop the stones, and the sad sight of his dead friends.