Then I wheeled Signus, and with young Riada his half length behind me, rode down from my vantage point and out by the wide three-angled gate gap to take my place at the head of the Companions. For a few moments, as I came out onto the open hillside, I checked Signus and sat looking down to the road far beneath me, and up the slope beyond to the green triple crown of Cader Berywen, seeing the whole battle line slung between.
Marius with the pick of the veteran foot fighting troops; and forming the center among them, clearly recognizable by their blood-red cloaks, the old royal bodyguard; on either side, the javelin men and light horse of the irregulars, forming the wings. Seeing also, as the advancing Saxons would not see it, the glint of weapons and the small movement of men and horses among the thorn scrub that swept about the lower slopes of the Downs and closed in upon the ancient track where it dropped toward the broad paved road into the heart of Britain.
Then I touched heel to Signus’s flank and rode on around the flank of the hill. Well back beyond the crest, the Companions were waiting, squadron by squadron, each with their captains out in front; Bedwyr and Flavian, my son Medraut and black-browed Pharic and the rest; they tossed up their spears in salute, and my place was waiting for me as the familiar glove waits for the hand.
Beyond, farther down the hillside and screened from the road by a dense bank of elder and thorn scrub, the main light wing of the cavalry waited, the horses fidgeting and swishing their tails against the midges.
The sounds of the nearing Saxon host, which from here had been blanketed by the bulk of Badon Hill, began to swell and sharpen again, but much of the ragged shouting had fallen away, so that I knew that the skirmish troops had broken off action and dropped back to their appointed stations. Yet a long time we waited, while the sounds drew a little nearer, until at last the van of the war host came sweeping down into the mouth of the pass, and the roar of their coming burst upon us like the roar of a charging sea when a sand bar goes. We could not see them as yet, we could see only the farther part, even of our own battle line – but the boom of war horns, the ominous roar of joining battle, told us that their van had met with our own advance troops, and the high note of rage and furious anguish cried aloud the crossfire of arrows from the thorn scrub on their flanks, and one could sense how they checked an instant, then drove forward at an increased speed. I rode forward alone, save for my trumpeter and young Riada, to a little spur of the hillside from which I could see what went forward.
The roar of conflict beat up to me now, with the vast impersonal roar of storm water on a rocky coast, and the whole bell-mouth of the pass was a solid mass of Saxons. At first sight it seemed that this whole bay of the White Horse Vale had turned to armed men, a dark Barbarian tide surging up against the slim barrier of our battle line. Here and there among them men were falling under the flights of arrows, but with such a war host as this, the hidden archers could do little save fret and thin the ranks a little, while the main rush of the Saxon vanguard swept on, their deadly loping battle trot quickening almost to a run. Again Saxon horns and old legionary trumpets flung defiance back and forth between the hosts, and again I heard, as I had heard it so often before, that long-drawn terrible German battle shout that began as the merest cold whisper and rose and rose until it beat in waves of sound upon brain and breast and belly, and then answering it, the shorter, sharper yell of the British.
The Sea Wolves were within casting distance of our main first defense line now, and as the long-drawn battle howl shattered on its final beast note, a volley of throwing axes came rattling against the British shields. Looking down from my high place as God might look down upon the battlefields of men, I saw a gap crumble here and there in our own ranks, but for the most part our men were used to the little deadly missiles, and knew how to cover themselves, and wherever a gap opened in the front rank, the man immediately behind stepped forward to fill it, so that even as the Sea Wolves sprang in across the last few yards, the British ranks were whole again. Next instant the forefront of both war hosts crashed together with a yell and a terrible thunder of meeting shields that no man who has heard it can ever forget.
For an incredibly long time our first line held the full weight of the Saxon charge, but at last, slowly, they began to yield ground. Slowly, slowly, the bright stubborn lightnings of leaping spear and sword blade never for an instant ceasing, they were giving back and back until they merged into the second line behind them, and again the Saxon thrust was held. The boil of battle that had been concentrated at first across the road and the valley bottom was spreading now up the flanks of the Downs among the thorn scrub on either side, where no battle line could be kept; and scarce a spear’s throw below the waiting cavalry the woods were full of struggling knots of warriors, the clash of arms and the high-panted war cry, the thrum of parting bowstring and the squeal of a wounded pony and the death cry of men. And beyond, where the main conflict set the whole valley roaring as a narrow gorge when a river bursts together in spate, our first and second lines, fighting desperately for every foot they yielded, were being forced back, slowly and dreadfully upon the third, the last line, the only line of reserve we had. I had given orders that the task of the center was less to hold ground than to kill men (and truly, if I had not, I think that they would have died where they stood, and Britain gone down into the dark, that day), and most assuredly they were killing men ... The ground that the Saxons pressed over was thick with bodies, and Saxon bodies more than British, though there were enough of British bodies, too; God knows that there were enough and more than enough ... And always, in the midst of the ragged line, I caught the blood-red color proudly marking out the dwindling ranks of Ambrosius’s old bodyguard.
We no longer had three lines of defense, but one, one seething line that bowed and wavered like a ribband in a high wind, yet somehow never parted, one last supple barrier of gray iron through which it seemed that the Saxon war host could not break.
For a time – short or long – the close-grappled line reeled and strained to and fro, as the ebb and flow of battle set now this way and now that, and then the British broke their hold and drew back, but as a wild animal draws back to spring, and with a bound and a roar, sprang forward with uplifted spears. Again came that rolling thunder of shield meeting shield, for a long desperate moment the two war hosts strained together, locked and immovable; so I have seen wrestlers strain together, or a pair of antler-locked stags in the rutting season, neither for the moment able to gain the least shadow of advantage over the other. And then, with a slow long heave, the British seemed not so much to thrust the Saxons back as to lift up and pass over and engulf them.
By that time the white dust cloud was hanging half the height of the valley, but through it I could still make out dimly how the Saxons gave ground, slowly at first and then more swiftly, falling back in something like disorder upon their own reserves, who had not so far been engaged. Open ground littered with dead and wounded had appeared between Briton and Barbarian, and it was as though both sides paused to draw breath. I remember now, the quietness that rushed in to fill the place of the tumult as it died away, an acute and shining quietness, wind-haunted and filigreed with the churring of grasshoppers among the seeding grasses and the blue cranesbill flowers.
The dust cloud had begun to sink, and through it I saw Aelle of the South Seax, the War King, with his house carls about him and his white horsetail standards, come forward with his reserves. The pause was over and with a roar and a bellowing of war horns, the two hosts sprang again for each other’s throats.
And again, after a sharp and bitter struggle, I saw the British battle line begin to give ground; slowly as ever, and contesting every yard of the way, back over ground that had been fought over before, back beyond it; they were level with the concealed cavalry wings now; and I knew that it was time to fling in the horse. And in that same instant, I saw what remained of the bodyguard – a score of men, maybe – led by old Aquila, heave forward from the rest of the battle line,
cleaving like a wedge of red-hot metal into the battle mass of the enemy.
They too knew it was time for the horse, and were drawing the attention of the whole war host upon themselves to give the best possible chance to the cavalry charge; they were throwing away their lives for the price of taking the greatest possible number of the Barbarians with them. It was a superb and glorious piece of waste, one of those things that men do when for the moment they cease to be quite men, and walk with the high gods.
My hand was already lifting in the signal; Prosper raised the horn to his lips and the swift notes of the cavalry charge took wing across the valley, to be caught up before the last note had died, by the trumpeter on the ramparts of Cader Berywen. Among the thorn scrub a sword flashed up, and the next instant, with Perdius at their head, the cavalry broke forward and were away at a canter, at full flying gallop, their spears swinging down as they went.
I watched them away, as one watches one’s hounds slipped on a boar, but there was no time to see how the charge took effect. I caught up my buckler, and sent Signus plunging back to rejoin the waiting squadrons of the Company. ‘Our turn now! Come on, lads!’
For us it must be the longer way around, for with the steep slope of the hill northwest, and the spread of the fighting up the flanks of it, it was impossible to bring a rear charge around that way without arriving in disorder that would rob us of half our striking power. We flung our curve right-hand-wise around Badon Camp, riding like the Wild Hunt, for we must have had the best part of a mile to cover. I heard the drum of the squadrons’ hooves behind me and on either side; the wind of our going filled the standard so that the Red Dragon of Britain seemed to spread its wings in flight above us. We struck the Ridgeway and thundered down it toward its meeting point with the road south. Signus’s flying mane whipped back over my buckler, and the round sods flew beneath his shod forehooves; and as we swung into the mouth of the pass, at full pitch of my lungs I raised the war cry of Arfon: ‘Yr Widdfa! Yr Widdfa!’ and heard it caught up behind me into a challenge, into a paean.
From both sides the cavalry wings had driven home their charge, crumpling and driving inward the Barbarian flanks to jam their own center, breaking the force of the deadly thrust against the British battle line; and now it was for us to give the crowning blow.
We took the Saxon war host in the rear, crushing in the hastily formed shield-wall as though it had been a thornwork hedge. And I saw before me a swaying and struggling mass of yelling, battle-crazed faces under horned and flanged helmets, a crimson deadly leaping of spears and short seax blades over the rims of the linden bucklers; and then it broke and crumbled back, and with a roar, we hurled through upon the reeling battle mass of the enemy beyond.
The battle of which I had decreed the pattern, and which, so short a while before, I had looked down on, magisterially aloof, seeing it spread below me in its entirety, became for me as for the youngest boy with a javelin, the few yards of howling turmoil closest at hand, the feel of my weapon striking home, the snarling face of the man next before me, the reek of blood and horse’s sweat and choking chalk dust.
My spear broke in my hand at last, as I wrenched it from the body of a gigantic Saxon, and I flung the shaft away and drew my sword as we thrust on. I was making for the place where, dimly through the rolling dust cloud, I could glimpse the white horse standard with its crimson tassels and gilded skull that staggered to and fro above the mob, marking where Aelle of the South Seax fought among his house carls; and suddenly it seemed that the solid battle mass before me was thinning, breaking up as the mailed wedges of cavalry drove into it. The muzzle of a black horse swept up on my right, and snatching a glance that way, I saw Medraut flinging his squadron forward as though the battle were his alone; his face, with a small east-wind smile on it, was white as the moon daisies that he wore like a plume in the comb of his war cap, and his sword blade was blooded to the hilt and over the hand that held it.
An alley of clear space opened for an instant, and as I thrust Signus into it, a naked figure sprang across almost beneath his breast. The Saxons had learned long since that their berserkers were the most terrible weapon they possessed for use against cavalry. For a splintered and sickening instant of time, I saw the drugged, dilated eyes, the lean body reddened from head to heel, the wicked disemboweling blade; then, as the creature dived for Signus’s belly, I took the only chance there was, wrenched the great horse away, and sent him up in a rearing half turn, screaming with rage, his hooves lashing for the man’s head. It was a hideous expedient, for the least misjudgment of time or position would give the berserker a perfect opening for his belly thrust; as it was, hampered by the reeling throng about me, I doubt if I should have made it, but in the same instant, with a deep singsong snarl, Cabal crouched, and launched himself at the man’s throat. Between the lashing forehooves I saw them go down together, and could wait to see no more ... no more ... but thrust on toward the white gleam of the horsetail standard that still showed above the sea of conflict. I was within half a spear toss of the royal shield-burg, when a young man – a chieftain to judge by his dragon-scale war shirt and the red gold about his neck – sprang in before me at the head of a yowling knot of his own kind, and caught at Signus’s bridle, and clung on, and even as the horse reared and plunged squealing with fury, his sword rang against mine; and the westering sunlight, slipping over the downland shoulder into the shadows of the pass, fell full upon his face. And for a moment as his fellows swept forward to meet the squadron the fighting that boiled around us fell away. His war cap had been struck off and the wild mane of hair that sprang to his shoulders was red as a fox’s pelt, and the eyes that blazed into mine were filled with a gray-green fire, a kind of furious laughter. And across the years that had made him a man and a leader of men, I knew him again, and he knew me. He shouted to me, ‘Did you not say that I should come again, and kill you if I was able?’
And I shouted back, ‘Or I you, Cerdic, son of Vortigern!’ and caught his stroke with a shock of blade on blade that ran up my arm in numbing flight of pain sparks, and sent it spinning from his hand, then struck again, at the neck. I saw his face contort into a choking snarl, and the bright spurt of blood, and without a sound, he was gone among the trampling hooves and feet of the battle.
But the horsetail standard had also disappeared from sight.
Presently the host of the Saxons had become a mass of swirling separated war bands that swayed and surged to and fro, each battling desperately for itself; with the cavalry busy among them. They were breaking away in flying groups, and later still, at twilight, when people in houses would be lighting candles for the women to weave by, after the evening stew, we were hunting the defeated rabble of a proud and mighty war host down the White Horse Vale.
Not today, not today, would Britain go down into the dark.
chapter thirty
Hail Caesar!
WE HUNTED HARD AND SLEW OFTEN, AND I REMEMBER THAT we were singing as we rode, one of the old triumph songs out of the Western hills. The singing made me think of Bedwyr who had so often sung us home from battle, but in the deepening twilight I could see no sign of him, and there was no time for asking of this man or that. No time for feeling much, at all, neither for triumph – despite the singing of the squadrons about me – nor for grief; I was spent and empty as I rode, the empty husk of a thing created for the purpose of killing Saxons.
The dusk was almost deepened into the dark when we came to the place below where the Ridgeway crossed the Calleva road. There was a sickly smell to the place, and the ground, even down into the Vale, was cluttered with bodies, British and Saxon; and ahead of us the red gleeds of watch fires showed where the Barbarian host had left their wagon laager. We set up a shout, and settled down into the saddle for more fighting, but the men who had been left with the baggage train had joined the rout of their comrades and nothing and no one was left to draw seax against us. With one accord, the irregulars and a good part of the cavalry dropped out in sear
ch of plunder. I could have whipped them off, I suppose, as a hunter whips the hounds off a carcass, but it scarcely seemed to matter now what they did. I left them to their scavenging, and rode on with whoever cared to follow me. But I remember that there was no more singing, we were all too weary.
Indeed we carried the hunt little farther ourselves, but a few miles down the Vale, drew rein by a little chalk stream to breathe and water the horses; and knew as by common consent that for this night, the hunting was over.
The stream ran under the lee of a hazel coppice, and the snail-shine of the rising moon was silvering the world about us, and, unbelievably, in the hazy depths of the thicket a nightingale was singing. A big shadow loomed up beside me, and I saw that it was Cei, drooping in the saddle, with his buckler hanging almost in two halves at his shoulder.
‘God! What a day! What a thundering victory! Is this all, or do we hunt them further?’
‘Let them go,’ I said. ‘Tomorrow will be time enough to scour out the countryside – when we have learned our own losses and bound up our wounds.’ I was looking at the figures on the wood-shore, some still sitting their horses, some sliding like cramped old men from their saddles. Those who, for the most part, still wore somewhere about them the withered rags of a moon daisy had thrust up closest to me. There were maybe two squadrons of them, or rather less. ‘Is this all that is left of us?’