The Britons split the Saxon shield wall in two, causing their wall to crumble into the Britons’ way of fighting as men squared off into individual combat. One war band filled with hate for the men who had invaded and stolen their land, the other maddened with desire to protect their families who cowered twenty paces away at the river ford. A bald man surged at Arthur with an axe, swinging the weapon so wildly that he was as much of a danger to his own men as the black cloaks. Arthur let the weapon sing past him, leaning away from its murderous scythe, and the Saxon ran onto Arthur’s seax blade, the point punching hard into the man’s stomach. Fiery blood pulsed over Arthur’s hand, and he ripped the blade free, kicked the axeman in the groin and cut his throat with his long knife. Kai fought with a big Saxon, both men trading blows cautiously from behind their shields. Arthur sheathed his seax at the small of his back and picked up the dead man’s axe. He ran to Kai, and without hesitating, he chopped the axe overhand. The bearded blade slammed into the big Saxon’s shield rim and Arthur hauled it down, and the instant the shield dipped, he rammed his long knife into the Saxon’s gullet. He stared at Arthur with surprised blue eyes and Arthur pulled his blade free. The battle calm had descended on him, the heightened sense of war pulsing through his veins like fire. He felt alive and strong. It was as though he was as fast as a hare and everyone else was slow like they fought in a bog.
A black cloak fell to one knee, beaten down by a Saxon shield, and Arthur threw his captured axe. The blade turned over and over in the air and then crunched into the Saxon’s chest to send him sprawling on the grass. Balin fought with his two blades, seemingly uninjured or subdued by his wild charge, and his twin blades cut high and low, slicing legs, necks, faces, and slamming into shields. Arthur looked for a new enemy to fight, but the skirmish was already over. Four Saxons backed away towards their homes and families. They dropped their weapons and warily raised their hands to show that they surrendered. The rest of the Saxons lay dead or injured. Three black cloaks were down, one with his throat laid open, and two others writhing in pain.
Balin stalked amongst the Saxon wounded, stabbing down with his blood-soaked blades into their throats and hearts. ‘Kill them all! Kill, kill, kill!’ he roared and pointed at the settlement. His warriors set off again, streaming towards the houses, and Arthur took off after them. I can’t let them kill the women and children. Ector had always told him that a warrior followed a code of honour, and never harmed women, children or the elderly. But what could he do? How could one man stop a war band from their slaughter? Arthur reached the surrendering Saxon warriors just as a black cloak cut one down with his spear.
‘No!’ Arthur said and blocked a thrust at a second Saxon with his knife. The black cloak snarled at him, his eyes as dead and hungry as a feral animal. ‘Merlin said to let one live.’ The black cloak grunted and set off towards the houses. Arthur guarded the remaining three Saxons; Kai joined him, and they turned away from the slaughter beside the ford. The screams and cries of that afternoon burned into Arthur’s mind like the hot iron Merlin used to seal Huell’s wrist. It sickened him, and the murder lasted ten times as long as the battle. Balin’s men burned the houses, barns, and slaughtered everything that moved in the Saxon village, even the pigs and dogs.
‘My father would never allow such a slaughter,’ said Kai. The three prisoners cowered between Arthur and Kai, their eyes streaming with tears for the dead relatives, but unable to do anything for fear of Balin and the wrath of his black-cloaked Britons.
‘Ector is not a killer of women and children, and nor are we,’ said Arthur, and then set his jaw as Merlin came striding across the battlefield with his white cloak streaming behind him.
‘You kept me one,’ Merlin called cheerfully, ‘well done, well done. Perhaps your head isn’t as full of rocks as I thought it was.’ He stared down at the three Saxons with a puzzled look on his face. ‘There are three miserable Saxons there, Arthur, and I only require one.’
‘We shouldn’t butcher them,’ Arthur said, his voice weak and unconvincing. Who was he to stand up to the mighty Merlin?
‘Ha!’ Merlin scoffed. ‘You’ll learn. Before you return to Rheged, you will see the face of war, young warrior. This is but one side of it. Had you seen what the Saxons did to Balin’s lands, and to Bernicia, you would neither question nor deny their revenge. This is why we fight the Saxons. Before they came to our shores, Britain had not seen death and suffering on such a scale since the Romans left our land a pit of lawless desolation. War breeds slaughter. Balin is what the Saxons have made him. He is a child of war, an instrument of the war god. Balin’s thirst for Saxon blood will never be quenched, not until all the Saxons are dead and gone from Britain.’
‘You are no better than us,’ said a heavily accented voice through gritted teeth. Arthur glanced down to see that it was one of the surrendered Saxons who spoke. He was young, of an age with Arthur and Kai with a fuzz of golden beard around a broad face. ‘You Wealas are the baby killers, the rapers and killers.’
‘Well, well,’ said Merlin, scratching his beard. ‘A Saxon who speaks our tongue. Mark him, Arthur and Kai, mark his words. Wealas is the Saxons’ name for us Britons, but it is also their word for slave, which tells you what they think of the people whose land they have stolen. I’ll take the sullen one.’ Merlin pointed his staff at an older man who wore fox fur around his shoulders above a leather breastplate. ‘The rest of them can die.’
‘Let this man live,’ Arthur blurted without thinking. He had no right to stand up to Merlin, but something inside him rankled at the impending slaughter, and he would save one life if he could.
Merlin fixed Arthur with an icy stare, a wry smile playing at the corner of his mouth. ‘Very well, young warrior. Keep your pup, but the rest die.’
‘You saved my life,’ said the young Saxon to Arthur. ‘So, my life is yours now. I must be your man until the debt is repaid.’
Merlin cackled. ‘Your first follower, Arthur of Nowhere, watch he doesn’t slit your throat in the night.’
‘What is your name?’ asked Arthur.
‘Redwulf,’ said the Saxon.
‘How is it you can speak our tongue?’
‘My mother was a Wealas.’
That surprised Arthur, but he beckoned the man to rise. First, however, he knelt and took Arthur’s hand in both of his and swore a solemn oath in the Saxon tongue. Then he rose and fell in beside Arthur. Kai stared at the Saxon as though he had just crawled from the pit of hell, whilst Merlin dragged the sullen Saxon prisoner he had picked away by the hair. Arthur shuddered to think what Merlin would do when he questioned the prisoner, but thankfully, Merlin took him behind an as yet unburned barn and so spared Arthur whatever horrors he would use to extract the information he required.
Balin came striding from the burning settlement, his two swords held low, blades thick with dark blood and his face a mask of grim determination. Behind him, thatch caught fire and the Saxon buildings roared into towering bonfires, sending plumes of smoke into the sky. Balin had chosen not to wear his full-faced helmet for the slaughter, resulting in soot and blood smearing his cheeks, as well as splashes of blood across his arms and chest.
‘These men have surrendered,’ Arthur stuttered as Balin noticed the Saxon men and marched towards them. ‘This one has sworn an oath to be my man.’
Balin didn’t break stride and swung his two swords cross ways across one another and sliced the third Saxon’s head clean off. Arthur jumped back involuntarily as the kneeling man toppled sideways and his head landed in the grass pumping blood, eyes open and staring straight at Arthur.
‘All Saxons must die,’ Balin said in a hard, bitter voice. ‘You can keep your slave if Merlin allows it, but next time, do not hesitate. Any man left alive now will have a spear in his hand within days. So, kill them all.’
‘Even the women and children? This is not the honourable way of the warrior,’ said Arthur, and instantly regretted it.
‘Last time I looked, Balin leads here, not Arthur. A child today is a warrior at manhood, and a woman can birth more Saxons. All Saxons must die. Do not speak to me of it, boy, until you have seen what I have seen. You speak of honour? Where was honour and the warrior’s way the day my brother and his Saxons came to my home? Imagine, if you can, the love a man holds for his children. My children were my everything. The sun rose and set with them. They filled my heart with joy, and you will only truly understand when you have children of your own, but there is no greater bond, no feeling like the love of a parent for his little ones, they are part of man’s very soul. The Saxons ripped that away with greed, malice and brutal savagery. They dashed my children’s heads in and tore their little bodies with blades as though they were nought but sacks of meat. My wife, my most precious beloved, was raped and burned and left for me to find. That sight became etched into my skull forever, and not a moment passes when I cannot see their ravaged, dead bodies in the place I once called home. My hate for the Saxons is as white-hot as iron in a forge. They came here from across the sea and did that to me and my family, so I will kill as many of them as I can until they are gone, or I am dead. Never talk to me again of this. I talk only of war, only of where to march, which enemies to kill, where to find supplies and where to camp. Nothing else matters.’ Balin shook with rage, and Arthur bowed his head, shocked by Balin’s reasoning and cowed by his hate.
Balin left Arthur and Kai standing with Redwulf. The three young men exchanged nervous glances, unsure what to say in the wake of Balin’s words. Arthur couldn’t imagine the suffering Balin and his men had endured, their families slaughtered, and their lands stolen. The war with the Saxons was different for them. It was a thing of vengeance and hate, where for Rheged and the rest of the kingdoms of Britain it was a war to keep the Saxons out, to protect their borders and hope that the fate of Bernicia would not be their own. Arthur was ashamed to have challenged Balin about honour and the warrior’s code, and saw then that Balin fought a different war, a war that all of Britain should fight if they wanted to avoid Bernicia and Deira’s doom.
Merlin emerged from behind the barn. He walked with his hands clasped behind his back, deep in thought. Arthur peered over Merlin’s shoulder but could see no sign of the Saxon he had taken to question. ‘We must leave this place,’ Merlin said to no one in particular. ‘Dun Guaroy lies two days from here, and we must find more warriors on the way.’
‘What did he say, Lord Merlin?’ Kai called after Merlin.
‘Who, the Saxon? He told me of a fortress of timber built upon a high crag. Not yet finished. Half the men from this village, along with the rest of the Saxons in Bernicia, were called in by Ida to help with its construction. He provided some useful information about the buildings and layout before the end.’
There had been no screams from Merlin’s questioning, and Merlin showed no signs of blood upon his white cloak. Though Arthur saw a black cloak emerge from the same direction with a bloody axe in his fist. Arthur had more questions as they left the burning settlement behind. He could not understand the slaughter, though clearly Balin and his men thought it justified. Even Merlin seemed comfortable with the deaths, but the old druid was strange and hard to understand. Merlin was one moment jovial, and a heartbeat later terrifying and powerful.
The war band followed the river’s meander through cattle pastures and Arthur turned to glance at the towering plume of smoke which twisted high into the sky behind them. It would surely be a sign, or a message, to all the Saxon warriors in old Bernicia that a Briton war band was loose in their lands, burning and killing. It was another mystery which Arthur chewed over as he marched with a Saxon shield slung across his back, his seax and knife at his belt and a leaf-shaped spear in his hand. If they were to get to Dun Guaroy alive, find a way into the fortress and rescue Princess Guinevere, surely it would be better to do so without a host of Saxons pursuing them? Balin and his men were both skilled and fierce, but they were only twenty warriors in a land full of Saxons. The Saxon King Ida, who had wrested the land from Balin’s people, and Octha, the warlord with his three thousand warriors fresh from the Saxon homeland, were out there somewhere.
Arthur kept his eyes on the hills, expecting a wild Saxon horde to come howling from the east or north to crush him and his new companions, but they marched onwards, deeper into the heart of Lloegyr, where the vicious enemy waited.
11
Merlin led the war band northwards, and the river brought them to a farm with a large hall, a barn and a pen full of bleating sheep waiting to be sheared. Balin’s men killed the Saxon farmer and set free four slaves who cowered in a cow byre. Two of those pitiful people were Britons, and they wept with surprised joy when Balin put a spear in their hands. They were not warriors, but simple men who had lived in Bernicia before the fall but seemed eager to strike a blow against their Saxon overlords. The remaining slaves were middle-aged women with lank hair and hands made raw by hard work. One was a Gododdin woman captured in a Saxon raid when she was a girl, and the other was an Irish slave who could not remember a time when she was free. Balin sent the women westwards, away from Lloegyr, with plenty of food and ale for their journey. The war band was no place for women, and though they were afraid of travelling alone in the wild, they scampered away from the farm and on into the fields beyond.
The war band spent the night at the farm. They shared a hock of ham found hanging in the rafters to dry, and there was plenty of wheat and barley, a wheel of strong cheese and a crock of goat’s milk. Balin and Merlin talked alone in a dark corner of the farmhouse, and the rest of the black cloaks gathered around the hearth fire to take their evening meal. Arthur and Kai found a corner of their own, still not confident enough to sit with the war band, and not asked to do so. Arthur offered Redwulf a share of his food, which he accepted thankfully. Though one of the black cloaks cuffed the Saxon hard around the head as he left the barn to piss, and the blow was hard enough to make the Saxon dizzy. Arthur didn’t complain about Redwulf’s treatment. Balin’s men were kind enough, and he knew better than to provoke their anger towards the Saxon. The black cloaks shared food and ale with Arthur and Kai and mostly left them alone, except for the hateful glances they shot at Redwulf whenever he crossed their path.
‘When did you come to Britain?’ Kai asked Redwulf. Kai drank from a skin of ale and passed it to Arthur, who took a long pull and then finished his share of the smoked ham. To drink water was to risk stomach sickness or worse, so all men drank ale or mead.
‘I was born here,’ said Redwulf with a shrug. ‘My father came across the sea with King Ida, and when he settled, I was born to his slave woman.’
‘Did you have a family at the place we burned?’ asked Arthur.
‘My uncle and his family. I helped with the farm work in spring.’
