‘How far is Dun Guaroy from here?’
‘A day up the coast, lord, no more.’
‘Do you serve the Saxons?’
‘Yes, my lord, but I have no choice. I was born under Saxon rule. I speak their tongue and my daughter married a Saxon.’
Huell spat and shook his head, and all the warriors’ shoulders sagged because Bernicia was truly a Saxon kingdom, and it was as men feared it would be. The Saxons came with their ships and axes first, and then came their women and children. They ruled the land and took it for themselves. They lived on farms and in halls once owned by Britons and married their sons to Briton women, and so the Bernicians would become bred out of existence within a generation.
The fisherman’s face changed, shifting from nervousness to fear. His jaw dropped open, and he shook his head, staring across Arthur’s shoulder. Arthur turned and his stomach lurched, for a dozen Saxon riders rode down the beach towards them, the sound of their hoofbeats drowned out by the rolling sea and its crashing tide.
‘Saxons!’ Arthur called. The war band spun around and Serwil cried out, backing up into the sea until the surf broke around his knees.
‘That bastard who ran set them on our trail,’ said Nyfed. He unslung his bow from across his shoulders and pulled four arrows from the quiver at his belt, burying three head down in the sand and nocking one to the string.
The Saxons charged down the beach, howling an undulating war cry and swathed in furs. Nyfed loosed his first shaft, and it sang over the riders’ heads.
‘We cannot fight them and live,’ said Serwil, shaking his head.
‘So, we fight them and die,’ said Huell. He gripped his spear and planted his feet in the sand. The fisherman scrambled in the water towards his small boat and Nyfed loosed another arrow. Its iron arrowhead hit a horse in the meat of its chest. The beast screamed and reared up on its back legs and tossed its rider onto the sand.
Arthur readied his Saxon shield, resting his spear on its iron rim, and Kai stood beside him, his spear held two-handed. Arthur had fought and killed, and the experience gave him confidence and belief in his ability and strength. Ector, the champion of Britain, had taught him to fight, and Huell, for all his faults, was a mighty warrior, as were the men beside him. The Saxons roared down the beach and tossed their spears whilst still on horseback. They had no purchase on their saddlecloths and three spears splashed harmlessly into the sea, and one smacked into the fishing boat’s hull with a thud. Another slammed into Arthur’s shield, and almost threw him off his feet. Arthur shook the weapon from his shield and set himself again as the Saxons wheeled their horses around and leapt from their backs to prepare to fight. A big man with close-cropped hair bellowed at the Rheged men and banged his axe upon his shield. The others fell in alongside him. They shouted guttural war cries, big men in furs and leather who hunted the Britons as though they were the invaders and the Saxons the natives. Each man carried a large Saxon-style shield, and they came in an organised line, shields overlapped with one another, and axes poised to strike.
‘Kill the bastards!’ Huell shouted, and he charged with his spear held low. Arthur followed him and his shield crashed into the enemy line with the sound of a falling tree. An axe blade swung at his face, and he ducked behind his shield, but the axe hooked over his shield rim and pulled it downwards, and then a spear flashed at his face, missing his eyes by less than the width of his hand. A seax came beneath the shield and Arthur had to dance backwards to avoid the blade tearing open his groin. He dropped his shield and stumbled backwards as Cynfan died with an axe buried in his chest. Huell ripped a shield from a Saxon’s hands and tore the man’s throat out with his spear. Blood spattered on the dark, damp sand and Kai caught an axe haft across his skull and fell to his knees. Arthur surged forwards, stabbing a Saxon with his long knife just as he was about to cleave Kai’s head open with a two-handed axe swing. Arthur tore his blade free, and the Saxon toppled to his knees, gaping at the wound in his chest.
It was a slaughter on a Bernician beach, and Arthur was astounded at how the Saxons fought. They fought as a group, as a wall of shields in organised movements like a yuletide dance. Their shields were part of their weaponry, and of both attack and defence. It was a new way of fighting, and Arthur gaped at their efficient movements. Britons fought as single warriors, each fighting with his war-skill, his reputation and his bravery. Their shields were smaller and used only for defence, and Arthur understood in that moment why the Saxons were so successful in war. Nyfed loosed his last arrow, and many of the Saxons carried arrow wounds upon their bodies, or carried the shafts embedded in their shields. Nyfed joined the fight only to have his belly opened by the leading Saxon warrior. Huell jabbed his spear at the big man and the Saxon barked something in his own tongue, and his men fell back so that only he and Huell faced off. Arthur pulled Kai away from the fight into the shallows where Serwil and Kadored waited, staring open-mouthed at Huell and the broad-shouldered Saxon. They charged at each other, two champions, one Saxon and one Briton, and their blades flashed and clashed together. Arthur glanced over his shoulder; the fisherman also watched the fight from his boat. The ship bobbed in the gentle swell, and an idea struck Arthur like a blow to the head. He saw a chance to live, a desperately slight chance, and he took it.
Arthur left Kai, the grunt and clang of Huell’s fight unfolding behind him, and grabbed the boat, hauling it towards the beach. The fisherman cried out, but Arthur grabbed his ragged tunic and glowered at him, the promise of death in Arthur’s fierce gaze.
‘Into the boat!’ Arthur shouted, and Kai turned to him, glanced back at Huell and then at Arthur. Serwil didn’t need asking twice and clambered aboard, rocking the ship so hard in his desperation that it almost capsized. Huell’s spear shaft broke beneath his opponent’s axe blade, but Huell recovered, spun around his foe, clutching the bladed half of what remained of his spear in his right hand. The Saxon crowed in triumph and lifted his axe for the killing blow, but Huell struck with the broken spear, driving the point deep into the Saxon leader’s throat. He gurgled and flopped like a landed fish on the end of Huell’s spear point and Huell let him fall dead to the sand.
‘Huell, come now!’ Arthur called. He charged out of the water and set himself on the shore whilst Kai and Kadored climbed into the fishing boat.
‘We do not run,’ Huell snarled.
‘Run or die!’
Huell would not listen, and the Saxons came on in a wild charge. Arthur ran forward and swung low with his seax to rip open an enemy’s thighs with the sharp blade. Huell killed a man with a brutal strike with his knife but there were too many, and even mighty Huell found himself driven backwards.
‘Arthur, we must go now,’ Kai shouted from the boat. Arthur couldn’t risk a look backwards. The Saxons bayed before them like a pack of wolves, reluctant to strike at the man who had killed their leader but given confidence by their numbers. A squat warrior with bow legs lunged at Huell with his axe, and Huell parried it with his knife, but as he did so another axe sang through the air and chopped through Huell’s wrist with a sickening crunch. Huell’s hand and knife fell into the lapping sea with a splash, and Huell stared in horror at his wrist. Blood spurted from the wound, and Arthur grabbed him around the waist and pulled him deeper into the water. Huell made a strange mewing sound, just staring at the terrible injury, and the Saxons followed them into the shallows. Kai jumped back into the water from the boat and he and Arthur waved their weapons at the Saxons, who were still wary to attack after so much bloodshed. Kadored and Serwil dragged Huell into the boat, and the warrior still stared in shock at his severed right hand, a bloody stump where his sword hand should have been.
‘Go,’ Arthur ordered, and Kai scrambled over the side. Kadored shouted in alarm as the boat almost capsized again. A Saxon slashed an axe at Arthur, but he dodged the blow and sliced his own blade across the enemy’s forearm. The Saxons fell back a pace, knee deep in the swell and wary of Arthur’s bloody blade. Their leader was dead, and half a dozen other corpses littered the beach. The terror of battle and fear of death kept the Saxons back, but there was anger on their faces as they fought to find their courage once again. ‘Pull me in!’ Kai and Kadored grabbed Arthur and hauled him aboard. The Saxons roared and shook their weapons but came no further, and Arthur grabbed one oar and Kai the other. There were too many men in the boat, including the terror-stricken fisherman, but Arthur and Kai hauled for their lives and the boat surged away from the shore. Huell lay in the bilge, still gaping at his severed wrist and his blood sloshing with filthy sea water about Arthur’s feet. A Saxon threw his axe, and it hit Serwil in the back with a thud. He screamed and fell overboard. Arthur roared with impotent rage as Serwil sank beneath the swell, his face staring up at Arthur beneath the grey-brown water.
‘Pull, pull!’ Kadored bellowed, and he threw his own knife at the Saxons and then gasped as a thrown Saxon spear took him in the chest. He looked at Arthur and Kai, his mouth flopping open wordlessly, and then slid over the side to splash in the rolling waves. Arthur and Kai rowed for their lives, and the boat soon went beyond the Saxons’ reach, out into the heaving swell. It was a day of death, their war band all but destroyed by Saxon fury. Huell rolled in the thwarts, as pale as a midnight fetch, and he continued to make the same strange mewing sound as Arthur heaved on the oar. They had set out from the Bear Fort with ten men on a druid’s quest to find a princess, but seven warriors were dead, their leader maimed and bleeding to death, and if their mission was a symbol for the future of Britain, then Arthur feared they were all surely doomed.
7
The Saxons, riding their stout ponies, followed the faering fishing boat along the coast until the headland rose into chalky cliffs and forced them inland. Arthur’s arm and back muscles burned with the exertion as he hauled on the oars, glancing over his shoulder constantly to check their course. The fisherman guided them around sharp rocks which jutted from the headland and loomed underwater like the spiked walls of Manawydan’s undersea fortress. Arthur and Kai rowed in silence, stricken by the war band’s deaths and the utter failure of their journey to find Princess Guinevere. Arthur ground his teeth, the muscles of his face working beneath his beard, trying to block out the pitiful sound of Huell’s whimpering.
‘Tie his wrist,’ Arthur said to the fisherman as the noise became too much. Huell’s whines rose above the slop of the sea against the faering’s bows, above the tide’s crash against the cliffs and above the sea wind and scraped inside Arthur’s skull like cat’s claws. They came about the headland in a wide sweep, avoiding the jagged rocks and emerging into a crescent-shaped bay with a narrow shale beach and rolling sand dunes. The fisherman tore a strip of cloth from his jerkin and soaked it with sea water. He tried to bind Huell’s wrist, but the big man batted him away with his remaining hand, shaking his head and babbling incoherently.
‘He won’t let me,’ said the fisherman, staring up at Arthur with frightened eyes.
‘Let him help you,’ Arthur said to Huell as he splashed his oar into the sea for another stroke. ‘Your wrist and back are bleeding, and you’ll die.’
‘You don’t give me orders, bastard,’ Huell spat. ‘Let me die. You should have let me die on the beach, leave me. Throw me overboard or cut my throat. Kill me!’ Huell began to roar and rock, his weight making the boat sway so violently that he threatened to turn the boat over.
‘He’s going to drown us!’ Kai shouted, holding on to the side. Arthur and Kai had learned to swim in the rivers around Caer Ligualid, but they were so far out from shore in the sweep they had taken around the headland that Arthur doubted they could make the long swim to shore if Huell turned the boat over. The boat rocked, and the fisherman cried out because for a heartbeat it seemed the small faering would toss them into the deep. Arthur reversed his grip on the oar and crashed the shaft across Huell’s skull, and the big man fell, limp and unconscious in the bilge.
‘Now, bind his wound and his wrist whilst we go ashore,’ Arthur snapped.
Kai stared at Arthur, surprised at his decisiveness, but to fall in the water was to die and Arthur had no choice but to subdue Huell before he killed them all, so he did not feel guilty for striking their leader.
The fisherman bound Huell’s wrist tightly. They rowed the fishing boat towards the shore and Arthur leapt over the side when he could see dark, ridged, shallow sand beneath the rolling waves. Kai followed, and they dragged the fishing boat ashore.
‘The Saxons will come around those cliffs soon,’ said Kai, glancing up at the dark rock which loomed above them to the south. ‘We should get away from this place.’
‘We will,’ said Arthur. ‘Where is your village?’ he asked the fisherman.
‘The other way, lord, back around the headland.’ The fisherman swallowed hard as Kai slapped the water in frustration.
‘Where can we find shelter?’
‘Follow this beach until you see a stream emptying itself on to the beach. Follow that inland and you’ll reach my cousin’s farm. They’re Britons like us and will help you.’
Arthur and Kai dragged Huell out of the boat, and he came awake with a groan as he flopped into the bracingly cold surf.
‘Let me die,’ Huell whispered, but Arthur ignored him, and they dragged Huell to shore. The fisherman scampered back to his boat and rowed back towards the headland, keeping his large, fearful eyes on the bedraggled warriors.
