‘I am Merlin! Druid of Britain and you will heed my words!’ Merlin roared and brought his staff down hard into the sand. ‘It is I who decides to whom the sword should pass, and it will pass to Arthur. All men know how we lost the Great War, and nobody regrets that more than I. Now is the time to make amends, to recover what was lost. We must trust the gods, Balin. We need their favour if we are to triumph. This time it will be different.’
Balin glanced at Arthur, a look of desperation etched on his scarred face. ‘I hope you’re right, druid, or our people will suffer like never before. On the souls of my dead wife and children, I hope you are right.’ Balin stalked off to join his men, who had risen to their feet at the sound of raised voices.
‘If you say it, Merlin, then so it shall be,’ said Bors, and he laid a heavy hand upon Arthur’s shoulder. ‘I will stand with you, lad, but you must prove yourself if you want others to follow.’ Bors followed Balin back to the warriors, leaving Arthur alone with Merlin.
Merlin stared out at the night-black sea, its distant waves rumbling on an unseen horizon. Arthur stood beside him for what seemed like an age, aware that the war band stared at them from the dunes, unable to understand why Merlin had spoken as he had, but not wanting to disturb the druid’s thoughts. Merlin whispered something to himself which Arthur could not hear, and the chill sea wind whipped their faces. A single tear rolled down Merlin’s face into his clipped beard and he smiled sadly to himself.
‘Balin is right,’ Merlin said eventually. ‘It was my fault. Ambrosius could have led us to victory. We had Dumnonia, Rheged, Elmet, Gododdin, Kernow and Gwent allied and fighting as one under Uther the Pendragon of Britain. But it all turned to ashes when Gorlois of Kernow died in battle against the Saxons. I brought an injured Uther to Kernow, and I knew of his love for Gorlois’ queen. Gorlois died, and Uther took Queen Igraine to Dumnonia and our alliance fell apart. I believed Uther and Igraine’s union would birth a great king, a glorious warrior-king to return Britain to the old ways. The alliance of kings disagreed and forced Igraine to marry Urien of Rheged to keep the peace, and to spite Uther. Urien, who was and is a brute. Poor Igraine. Uther never recovered from that heartbreak. Then came the night of the long knives, Ambrosius died, King Gwyrangon of Kent died, even Vortigern who brought the Saxons to our shores was toppled from his throne. We had peace, but to get it, we surrendered half our island to Ida and Horsa.’
‘I am not the man to wield the sword of Ambrosius, Lord Merlin.’
Merlin held the sword up and peered at its bright blade and ancient inscriptions, which Arthur could not read. ‘This sword was forged in the days when the gods walked the mountains, rivers, glens and fields beside us, Arthur. Can you imagine that? Before the Romans came, before the nailed god. No man alive today can read what they etched on its blade. The words are lost to us. But you are the man to wield it. Trust me, both I and Nimue have seen it.’
‘Nimue is a Saxon, and I…’
‘Nimue is no more a Saxon than you or I. She is an Irish volva, a powerful gwyllion and seeress. She cares nothing for the Saxons, but not for us either. She craves only the chaos of war and the power it gives her over men, the elemental fury in it.’ Merlin sheathed the sword and held it to Arthur, who shook his head and waved the blade away. Merlin sighed and his shoulders sagged. ‘I do not know how old I am. I was old when Balin, Ector, Urien, Uther and Igraine were young. I was born into the wrong time, Arthur. There was a time when this land was great, when it was a haven of plentiful harvests, long summers and the people worshipped the right gods. Druids were powerful then, as powerful as kings. But then the Romans came, and they were clever. They saw the power of the druids and slaughtered all but a few who escaped to Ireland. They burned our sacred groves on Ynys Môn, and druids never wrote down our mysteries and so much of our old knowledge was lost. Now, the Saxons are here. We must fight, Arthur. I don’t know how I have stayed alive this long. Perhaps it is the spectacles I produce, the tricks, the fearsome acts, the belief in the old ways. Take the sword. It is your destiny. The sword has the power of Britain in its steel. Men will follow and fight for the man who wields it. Take it.’
‘I cannot, Merlin. It is not meant for me.’ He didn’t wish to refuse Merlin, but he was just an orphan. How could he wield such a sword? Perhaps the old druid had gone mad, or Nimue had entranced him and sought to ruin Britain with her Saxon seidr magic?
‘It is for you, and you will take it. I must leave now, Arthur, but next time we meet I will tell you that which you crave, who you are and where you come from. Take the sword and fight for Britain, for our people. For me, for what was, and what could be again.’
Merlin thrust the sword at Arthur’s chest, and he grasped it before it fell onto the sand. Merlin made to march away, but Arthur grabbed the druid’s wiry arm.
‘Wait, you know who my mother and father were?’
‘Not now. Wield the sword. Fight, Arthur, and if you live, if you can return Guinevere and Gawain, then we will talk. I give you my word as a druid.’
Arthur let him go and watched Merlin march away to where Nimue waited for him across the dunes. They were gone in the blink of an eye, leaving Arthur alone with an unwanted sword, a head full of questions and a fortress to assault.
14
Arthur ran across the beach, wet sand slapping beneath his boots and his breath coming in short, cold gasps. The tide was out beyond sight in the deep darkness, leaving the bay a vast swathe of cold, ridged sand beneath Dun Guaroy’s mighty crag. He wore Excalibur strapped to his belt, and the scabbard banged awkwardly against Arthur’s leg as he ran, threatening to make him trip and fall amongst the war band, who eyed him with suspicion since Merlin’s departure. Forty warriors ran across Dun Guaroy’s bay under cover of darkness, their weapons clanking against their shields as they dashed across the sands. Earlier, Octha’s campfires had been as numerous as the stars in the sky, but now all but a few had gone out as the Saxon army slept in the deep of the night. Fifty boots slapped on the wet sand. Men shushed each other if a spear clanked on a shield, or a warrior spoke. Three thousand Saxons lay across the bay, and more inside Dun Guaroy. To be heard or spotted was to die, so every man in the war band ran with fear in his belly and the hot thrill of danger in his chest.
The fortress loomed above them, the sharpened stakes of its unfinished palisade lit by burning torches at intervals around its perimeter. Arthur ran alone. He had kept his distance from Kai, Balin and Bors after Merlin’s departure. They would have questions for him, and he did not have the answers. Everything Merlin had said roared in Arthur’s head like the sea crashing against rocks in a storm, and he knew not what to do about it. All he knew was that Merlin and Nimue were gone, and he had an ancient sword, Merlin’s trust, and the suspicion of a war band who had welcomed him so warmly into the ranks.
Balin and Bors took the lead, and the warriors stretched out behind them like a flock of starlings. Their best hope rested on the fortress not being closely guarded. Balin had spoken to that hope before they had left the dunes. Balin believed that Dun Guaroy was so deep within Lloegyr that Ida would not fear a Saxon attack on his new stronghold. Octha’s army would only add to that hubris. That, along with Bors’ utter fearlessness, brushed away some of the shock of Merlin’s departure and imbued the men with courage once more.
Arthur gulped in mouthfuls of chilly night air as they reached the far side of the beach. The rock upon which Dun Guaroy stood loomed above him, much higher and more formidable than it had looked from the distant dunes. The war band leaned their backs against the damp, lichen-covered rocks that the sea would cover when the flood tide came. Each man took a moment to catch his breath, staring up nervously at the hard rock and grass-covered plateaus stretching above them in the darkness. The feel of the rock beneath Arthur’s hand sent a shiver running up his back. It was a dark place, half sunken in the treacherous sea and linked to the land by its raised, sloping causeway. Dun Guaroy was a dread fortress, the centre of Ida’s grip on Lloegyr, and the king himself was in there somewhere, looming like a monstrous beast in a cave. Arthur took a deep breath of sea air and calmed himself. He was about to creep into the lair of a vicious Saxon king and his brutal warriors, and if he considered it too closely, Arthur feared his guts would turn to liquid and his resolve would disappear like the ebb tide.
‘Remember,’ whispered Balin, ‘we must be in and out before the tide comes in. Otherwise, we are trapped, the only way out then will be through Octha’s army.’ The men nodded, Balin had spoken that warning twice already as they mustered for departure, but to ignore his warning was to embrace death, so no man grumbled at the repetition.
‘My men will skirt the north wall and make for the hall,’ said Bors, also repeating what they had already decided. ‘Balin’s men cut through the fort’s centre and meet us there. The five we have left in the dunes will sound the carnyx if the tide reaches the crag and we have not yet emerged. That will be our final warning. If we don’t leave then, we die.’
Arthur dropped his hand to the iron ball on Excalibur’s pommel, and its hard coldness felt comfortable, even reassuring beneath his touch. Mighty warriors had wielded Excalibur, it drank the blood of Britain’s enemies and now Arthur would wield it, and he whispered a prayer to God, to the old gods, to the soul of Ambrosius Aurelianus and the warriors of distant past who had held the sword before him. He prayed for victory, for battle luck, and for the chance to live. He, Kai and Huell would go with Balin’s men. Splitting the war band in two made the approach to Ida’s hall less conspicuous, fifty men clambering through gaps in yet to be completed palisade would make a lot of noise, and fifty pairs of boots stomping through the lanes and pathways would wake even the soundest of sleepers. Balin’s men were supposed to climb the rock first, and Arthur nervously glanced at one-handed Huell, who insisted that he would not be left behind. The rock was a monstrous mass of sharp planes, jutting buttresses, grass-covered knots, ledges and notches cut into the rock by crashing waves across millennia. The higher parts of the crag remained hidden in the night’s gloom, and they had to climb it quickly if they were to find Guinevere and Gawain and get out before the tide came in.
‘Time to go,’ said Balin, and he leapt up from the sand to sink his hand into a rocky crevice. Balin hauled himself up, his boots skittering on the sea-slick face, and Dewi, the black cloak, thrust his shoulder beneath Balin’s arse to give him a shove. The black cloaks followed Balin up the face, grunting and cursing in whispers as hands and nails scuffed and tore on the rocks. A man fell on his arse in the sand, but two others hauled him up again. Kai began his climb and Arthur pushed him from beneath to help Kai surge up to the closest buttress. Kai clambered over it, turned and lay on his belly. He dangled his spear shaft down to Huell, who gripped it with his left hand, and Kai hauled him up whilst Arthur gave him a push. The spear came down again and Arthur grabbed the smooth ash shaft and allowed Kai to pull him up whilst he sought purchase on the rock face with his boots. His left foot slipped on a layer of slimy bladderwrack, and Arthur’s shoulder slammed into a jagged rock edge which numbed his arm. Around him men grunted and heaved, slipped and scraped their way up the crag.
Eventually, Arthur reached the summit. He, Kai and Huell were last. It took longer to help Huell make the climb than it took Balin and his men to scramble up the rocks. They paused for a few heartbeats to recover their breath and followed the tail end of Balin’s twenty warriors into a gap between two high oak stakes and into the fortress. The palisade stakes were much higher close up, each three times as tall as a man and cut from stout oak sharpened to vicious points. When the palisade was completed, Arthur doubted any army could assault the place, so he placed his hand on the cold wood and slipped into the gap between the walls and thanked his luck that it was unfinished. A flaxen-haired warrior with fur at his neck and shoulders slumped inside the gap, open-eyed in the moonlight with a wide slash across his throat so that he seemed to have a second, gaping mouth below his open, dead one. Fresh blood pulsed from his wound, and its stink mixed with the smell of freshly cut wood.
They were inside Dun Guaroy, and all around Arthur were wattle and daub buildings cast in different shades of black and grey by the night. Thatch hung low from the old buildings built by the Britons of Bernicia before the Saxons came, and then higher, tighter-cut thatch on the Saxon buildings which sat lower to the ground like squat boxes with too-heavy roofs pressing down on their wattle walls. In the snarl of streets and pathways, the place stank of fish and piss, but the sharp smell of freshly cut timber masked the fouler stenches. Arthur followed Balin’s men through the muddy lanes between the buildings. Dull torches glowed dimly behind window holes closed against the cold by wooden shutters. A dog barked from inside a house as Arthur ducked beneath an open window so as not to be seen and his breath came in quick, ragged gasps. The air grew heavier, as though the wet thatch and high walls closed in on him. There were Saxon warriors in the fortress somewhere, waiting and unseen. Ida slept in his hall, the peerless warrior and victor of countless battles, and as Arthur ran, he felt small, like a mouse trying to steal food from the lair of a great cat.
There was no sign of any Saxon guards as Arthur and the war band scampered through the fortress. He glanced through a gap between a blacksmith’s forge and stable and saw the silhouette of Bors and his warriors skirting the northern rampart like ghosts cast in black against the night sky. Arthur ran into Huell’s back and the big man cursed as he stumbled forwards. They had reached the edge of where the snarl of buildings led to an open square where three Saxons huddled around a burning brazier, warming their hands against the cold. Balin whispered to the warriors to wait, and he dashed off along the narrow space between two wattle buildings. Beyond the courtyard, the guards and the brazier loomed Ida’s hall. It sat upon a higher part of Dun Guaroy’s crag, with high, dark walls and a swooping lintel running across its top like the hull of a Saxon warship. Thick, fresh thatch covered the roof, which shimmered like silver in the moonlight, and a lazy column of smoke drifted from it to be snatched away by the sea breeze.
Moments later, Balin appeared from behind a long, pale building only ten paces away from the Saxon guards. Three chopped logs in their brazier crackled and spat with an orange glow. Balin tiptoed towards the Saxons, a sword held in each hand. He was black in the darkness, save the glint of his blades, and he moved lightly on the balls of his feet like a demon floating through the night. The Saxons did not hear or see the warrior approach and the first of them died with a swift lunge from behind as one of Balin’s sword points punched through his throat to send a spatter of blood into the brazier where it hissed and bubbled in the fire. The two remaining Saxons turned, but Balin was deadly quick, and he cut them down with sword strokes so fast they came as a blur.
‘Let’s go,’ whispered Dewi, and the black cloaks surged from where they crouched into the courtyard and up slippery stone steps carved into the rock towards the hall. Arthur, Kai and Huell followed, and Arthur winced as Balin dragged open a huge oaken door but, iron-hinged, it did not creak and Balin opened the hall doors only wide enough for them to slip inside one at a time. Arthur’s breastplate touched the wooden door as he slid inside, and he slowly drew Excalibur to meet whatever horrible fate awaited him inside Ida’s hall.
Arthur tiptoed along a timber floor through a corridor lit dimly by an almost spent rushlight further ahead, where the bobbing heads of Balin’s black cloaks made shifting shadows on the walls. Men’s breath steamed in the narrow space, the stink of garlic, sweat and leather thick in Arthur’s nose. Kai glanced at him with large, fearful eyes and Arthur knew his face looked the same as they pressed ahead into the belly of Ida’s hall. Arthur followed Huell’s broad back into a vast black space. Their boots echoed as they scuffed on the hard-packed earthen floor scattered with floor rushes. Ahead, Balin held aloft a wood torch which cast firelight around him in wide circles. The light revealed high rafters and two floors of living platforms, then the light moved to show feasting benches pushed to the hall’s sides and a huge hearth fire glowed like a sleeping dragon at the monstrous room’s centre. Men and women snored at the edges, covered in furs on the raised sleeping platforms so that they looked like sleeping wolves as the torchlight passed across them.
‘There,’ Balin hissed, and his bloody sword point pointed to where two figures slumped against a great timber post which ran from the hall floor up to the high rafters. Arthur was closest to the figures, and as he dashed towards them, a broad face stared up at him, cheeks filthy and blue eyes fearful.
‘Gawain?’ he whispered, and the face nodded. Arthur sighed with relief and sawed at the man’s rope bonds with Excalibur’s blade. The sword cut through the hemp rope like butter, and Gawain rubbed at his rope-burned wrists in disbelief. Then Gawain glanced at the stooped figure next to him, and Balin came closer with the torch. The figure looked up at Arthur, and his breath caught in his throat, for staring up at him was the most beautiful woman Arthur had ever seen. Her hair shone like copper in the torchlight, her face was long and gentle with full lips, and eyes the green of a summer sea.
‘Come with me,’ Arthur whispered, and he cut her bonds. She took his outstretched hands, and her touch was like a warm nettle sting upon his flesh, shocking him with its intensity.
‘Take them and go,’ Balin hissed and then set off down the hall’s length with his torch.
‘Where are you going?’ Kai whispered after him.
‘To kill Ida,’ Balin said, but just as he was about to turn and find the Saxon king in his bed, a long sonorous sound broke the silence, like the wailing of a beast of legend beyond the sea.
‘The carnyx!’ hissed Arthur, an eyebrow raised in shock.
Balin cursed, glanced once more at the hall’s higher platforms where he thought his mortal enemy Ida, the Saxon who had stolen Bernicia, lay abed. But the carnyx signal meant the tide had begun to flood the bay, and Balin knew his men would not leave without him. So, with a grim face, Balin took Gawain by the arm and dashed towards the hall doors.
‘Princess Guinevere, stay close,’ Arthur said, and the beautiful princess nodded at him with huge, fearful eyes. She wore a plain woollen dress with fur around its neck and sleeves, and she held Arthur’s arm tight as they ran through Ida’s hall. Dogs barked beyond the hall door, and Arthur heard voices in the hall behind him as he followed Kai and Huell back through the corridor and out of the huge oak doors into the courtyard beyond. The chill sea breeze hit Arthur’s face, and then he reared up to stop as the sight before him hit him like a punch to the stomach.
Bors and his men of Gododdin stood in a half-circle before the hall with spears levelled and shields ready. Bors stood before them, huge and poised to fight. Beyond the Gododdin men, Saxon warriors thronged the courtyard. They held spears, axes and shields. Torchlight glinted off their helmets and blades and as Arthur peered out across Dun Guaroy, he saw blades and warriors also packed into the narrow pathways and streets.
