‘God help us,’ gasped Kai, and he was right to pray, for the Saxons had filled Dun Guaroy with their might and trapped Balin and Bors’ desperate war band in their hilltop stronghold. The sheer number of Saxon warriors was vast beyond count, big men with hard faces, bearded, scarred and made strong by war. They stood in eerie silence, staring malevolently at the pitiful number of Britons stood at the doors of Ida’s hall. Balin tossed his torch to the rock-hewn steps and drew his swords, and he strolled down from the hall to join Bors before his men as though he had not a care in the world. Fear rooted Arthur to the spot, as was Kai beside him.
A figure shouldered its way through the mass of Saxons, a big man but bent slightly by age. He wore a shining coat of mail and carried a stone sceptre in one fist and a war axe in the other. He had long white hair and a braided beard, and next to him came a younger man of similar height and stature, but with flaxen hair, and then a hulking warrior with golden hair and eyes so blue they were almost white.
‘Ida and his sons, Theodric and Ibissa,’ said Prince Gawain through gritted teeth.
A third man joined the Saxon leaders, but this Saxon was a huge man, as big as Bors with muscled shoulders and a face so flat it looked as though a boulder had crushed it. He clutched a war axe in each of his enormous fists and came bare-chested so that his muscled torso shone in the moonlight.
‘Octha,’ whispered Guinevere.
Ida barked something in the harsh Saxon tongue and suddenly the throng behind erupted into a savage roar loud enough to shake the very earth. Arthur took a step back from that noise, and Guinevere clutched his arm even tighter. Ida raised his hand and the roar subsided. Another figure pushed his way to stand between Ida and Octha, and Arthur recognised Redwulf, the Saxon whose life he had saved in the fight at the brook, and the young man pointed up at Arthur and spoke something quietly to his king, who sneered.
‘You Wealas scum come to my home,’ Ida said slowly in Arthur’s language. The words were guttural and heavily accented and scraped from Ida’s throat like a blade from a scabbard. ‘Come to kill me and steal my captives. Now, I will cut the skin from your bodies and hang you all from my walls. I will let the ravens eat your eyes and the women laugh at your flayed manhoods. I am King Ida!’ He bellowed the last four words and his army surged forwards, seething with sharp weapons and malice. They came on like a great wave, surging around their leaders and charging towards the line of Gododdin spearmen.
‘Make for the walls,’ Balin shouted over his shoulder. ‘Get Gawain and Guinevere out of this cursed place.’
Bors barged through his men and came bounding up the stone steps. At first Arthur thought the big man was fleeing the fight, but then Bors scooped Gawain in a brawny arm, almost dragging him from his feet.
‘Come, my prince,’ Bors growled.
‘We can’t leave the men to die!’ Gawain protested, heaving against Bors’ pull.
‘I swore to your father, the king, that I would return you to Gododdin, and return you I shall.’ Bors hauled Gawain with him and raced into a thin, dark space where the hall’s south wall butted on to the edge of another long, thatched building. Arthur glanced at the charging Saxons, and then at Guinevere. He had a heartbeat to decide. Stand and fight, and surely die, or run and try to save the princess’s life. Arthur turned and followed Bors. Guinevere ran with him, her hair flowing behind her. As he dashed into the darkness between two buildings, Arthur heard a sickening crunch as the Saxon horde smashed into the thin line of Gododdin men. Screams mingled with war cries, steel weapons clashed together, and Arthur felt guilty for leaving brave men to die whilst he ran away from the fight.
‘How can we possibly escape this place?’ Kai called over Arthur’s shoulder, and as they burst out of the shadows to the hall’s rear, Arthur glanced behind with relief to see that Kai and Huell followed him.
Saxons poured from the snarl of alleyways like rats, and Bors shoved Gawain away from him to strike down two Saxons with his spear. He threw the weapon at a third, and the force in the blow threw the Saxon from his feet. Bors bent and picked up an axe from one of the men he had killed and roared his defiance at the enemy.
‘The walls!’ Kai shouted, pointing beyond where Bors fought. A jagged line of sharpened palisade stakes rose behind a line of small huts. ‘It must be the sea-facing wall.’
‘Take her and get to the wall,’ Arthur said, and he pushed Guinevere to Kai, and before his brother could question the order, Arthur charged down to Bors’ side with Excalibur drawn.
‘Are you ready to die?’ growled Bors, grinning down at Arthur with a wild look on his brutal face.
‘We hold them,’ Arthur said. ‘We back our way to the walls and jump into the sea.’
Bors sneered at the plan, jerked forward as if he would attack the Saxons again, and then remembered the oath to his king. He nodded and shuffled backwards to the line of hovels. Arthur went with him, and a bandy-legged Saxon carrying a spear charged him. Arthur parried the spear with Excalibur’s blade and brought the point back with a flick of his wrist to slice open the Saxon’s throat in a gout of dark blood. There was a score of them in the space behind Ida’s hall, and they spat and cursed at Arthur and Bors, but they feared the Britons’ blades and were reluctant to attack where four men had already died. Kai, Gawain and Huell ran around the hovels and Arthur’s boot slid on a patch of grass. He could hear the crash of the sea above the Saxons’ hateful shouts and knew that the walls were only steps away. The tide was coming in, and their only hope was to make a desperate jump into the churning waters. They could drown or smash like eggs on rocks beneath the waters, but there could be no surviving the mass of Saxon warriors come against them inside Dun Guaroy.
The Saxon host parted, and five big men marched through their midst. Each wore a coat of mail and carried a bright axe. They were broad-shouldered and strode with the confident air of champions. These men were the real Saxon warriors, the men who had won Ida a kingdom, and they did not flinch at the sight of their dead countrymen, or at Bors’ vast frame. One of them broke into a run and Arthur lunged with his sword, but the big man batted it aside contemptuously with his axe and shoulder charged Arthur. The warrior’s weight threw Arthur fully from his feet and he rolled on a patch of damp grass. As he came up, Bors and the Saxon traded axe blows, moving with terrible force and frightening skill. They hacked and punched at one another, each man parrying and striking with full force. The Saxon opened a cut on Bors’ thigh, and for a moment Arthur thought the champion of Gododdin would die, and then Bors grabbed the Saxon’s face in his hand and sliced his guts open with a sweep of his axe.
Arthur surged to his feet and ran to meet the four remaining Saxons, who all charged at Bors. He slashed open a man’s shoulder with Excalibur’s blade, but the man was already swinging his axe, and Arthur veered away from the shining blade. The big, bearded Saxon was fast, snake fast, and the axe opened a burning gash in Arthur’s face. Arthur stumbled away, and another blow raked down his back. It felt like a horse had kicked him and Arthur crashed once more into the earth. The Saxons were unlike any man he had fought before. Too big, too strong and too fast. He scrambled in the grass towards the hovels, watching as Bors killed another man, chopping his axe into the Saxon’s forehead with a wet thud. A blade slashed across Bors’ shoulder and the Gododdin man reeled, and the three Saxon champions came for him with axes raised and teeth bared, and then died as five Britons charged into them from behind and cut them down with sweeps of sword and spear.
Arthur cried out with joy, because Balin of the Two Swords lived. He limped through the dying Saxons with blood-smeared swords in each hand, flanked by four of his black-cloaked men. Each bore terrible injuries and the Saxon horde chased them, howling and baying for blood like a pack of starving wolves. Arthur ran with them, Bors and Balin holding each other up and shouting at the other to live and run. A black cloak fell as a thrown spear took him between the shoulder blades. Arthur turned and slashed at a Saxon’s face, but there were too many of them. The Saxons swarmed between huts like wild animals and Arthur tried to keep them at bay with his blade. They stabbed and grabbed at him in the narrow space between the shit-stinking slave hovels, and Arthur thought they must overwhelm him as he reached the palisade walls. Kai and Gawain hacked at the stakes with Saxon axes and there were huge gashes in the bright wood, whilst Arthur, Balin and the black cloaks desperately tried to beat at the Saxons with their weapons.
Bors roared and brought his own axe to bear, and in three great strikes two palisade stakes cracked and groaned as they fell backwards into the dark, churning sea. Rocks loomed there, dark and jagged. The flood tide heaved against Dun Guaroy’s seaward cliffs, filling the wide bay with its tidal waters.
‘We must jump!’ Kai shouted above the crashing waves. Guinevere peered over the jaggedly chopped wood and shook her head with fear at the treacherous cliffs, and then dozens of Saxons flowed around the hovels to advance on the fleeing Britons. Bors pushed Gawain through the gap without hesitating and then leapt after him without looking at what lay beyond the palisade. Balin and his men hacked at the Saxons, keeping them back. A hairy Saxon arm grabbed Guinevere’s wrist, causing her to shriek with terror until Arthur chopped the hand from the arm with a sweep of his sword.
‘Go,’ said Huell, and he hefted his spear. The one-handed Rheged man stepped in front of Arthur and Kai and stabbed his spear at the Saxons’ faces, causing them to take a step backwards.
‘We go together!’ said Arthur, but Huell turned and snarled at him.
‘I can never be the man I was. Let me die with honour. Tell men how Huell of Rheged died.’ He charged at the Saxons with a mighty war cry, and Kai pulled Arthur towards the hole in Dun Guaroy’s palisade. Huell stabbed and slashed with his spear in his left hand, its leaf-shaped blade tore out a Saxon’s throat and slashed open the face of a bald enemy. ‘Come and fight with Huell of Rheged,’ he snarled, and a big Saxon in chain mail came at Huell from the horde. The Saxon roared his war cry and set about Huell with a long sword. Huell danced around the sword cuts and cracked his spear stave across the Saxon’s skull and when the man stumbled under the blow, Huell stabbed his spear blade deep into the man’s groin and tore it free. Huell howled with joy, and Arthur’s heart soared because the maimed warrior had found a glorious doom. The Saxons came at him again. A seax cut Huell’s thigh open, and a spear opened a gash upon his shoulder. Another axe swung for Huell’s neck and just as it was about to strike him, Huell blocked it with his handless wrist. The axe chopped into the meat of Huell’s forearm with a sickening crunch and Huell ripped the axeman’s face open with a well-placed spear thrust. A sword pierced Huell’s guts and the big man sagged in pain, but miraculously he found yet more strength in the well of his courage and drove his spear point into his attacker’s chest.
‘Go!’ Huell roared, and as Arthur turned to flee from the carnage, a Saxon axe snapped Huell’s spear.
Arthur grabbed Guinevere, put one boot on the chopped timbers and leapt with her into the darkness. Kai jumped with him, as did Balin and the last of his black cloaks. Air whipped Arthur’s face and Guinevere clung to him as they plunged into the darkness. Saxons screamed as Huell made his legend inside King Ida’s stronghold and the cold sea hit Arthur like a blow from a mighty war hammer.
15
Ice-cold water pulsed around him, and Arthur gasped and pulled at his breastplate with one hand, panicking that its weight would drag him down to drown in the murky depths. With the other he kept tight hold of Excalibur. His cloak swirled about him, trapping his arms and cloying about his face. Arthur screamed underwater and kicked frantically beneath the ice-cold sea, fighting for his life whilst his mind roared at him to take a breath. But if he did, the sea would fill his lungs with its grey coldness. A hand grabbed his hair and forced him upwards and suddenly his faced punched through the waves. Arthur sucked in a huge gulp of air, and it was Kai, dragging Arthur out of the water until his thrashing boots hit the sea bottom and he could stand. Spears and arrows launched from the fortress walls, slapped into the lapping waves around them. Guinevere shivered, holding her thin arms about herself as Bors, Gawain, Kai, Arthur, Balin and two surviving black cloaks stumbled through the flood tide. Every man save Gawain was injured, and they crashed through the surf in grim silence, their blood mixing with the ocean to leave crimson smears in its dark waters.
‘We make for the men at the dunes,’ said Bors, his voice strained. All the Gododdin men save him had perished in the fight to escape from Dun Guaroy, thirty brave men dead, but their prince Gawain of Gododdin was alive and free.
‘They will follow hard on our tracks,’ said Balin through gritted teeth. His men had to help Balin walk, and even in the darkness, Arthur could see cuts and gashes on the warrior’s arms and chest.
‘I’m tired of running from these Saxon turds,’ said Bors, ‘yet run, we must.’
Arthur could not yet see them, but he knew that thousands of Ida and Octha’s men would come howling down into the bay at any moment. Arthur and his band reached the dunes where the five of Balin’s black cloaks waited with four horses and dry cloaks. Those men turned pale when they saw how few had survived the horrors of Dun Guaroy, but Guinevere, Balin and Bors mounted the horses as the band sped away from the bay. The most severely wounded rode, and the rest marched. Guinevere also rode, on a bay gelding with an old cloak wrapped about her thin shoulders. The ragged band made their desperate escape in grim silence as a sickly yellow sun crawled over the eastern horizon. Arthur shivered in his wet clothes as he half walked and half ran across the coarse grass, holding a fistful of Guinevere’s horse’s mane to stop him collapsing. The cut he had taken to his face throbbed like a line of wasp stings, the wound on his back burned like fire, and every part of his body ached. So many of their war band had died atop Dun Guaroy, and though they had rescued Gawain and Guinevere, it seemed a high price for the brave dead to have paid. Images of Ida, Ibissa, Theodric, Octha became burned into Arthur’s mind, but the overwhelming horror battering at his thought cage was the ease with which the five Saxon warriors had batted him aside as though he were a beardless boy without strength or skill. That had been a different fight, one he was ill-equipped for, and Arthur wondered how men would fare against hundreds of such Saxon champions on a battlefield.
Arthur travelled in a daze. He had survived the terror of Dun Guaroy and the forces of Ida and Octha, but Huell was dead. Brave Huell, who had always been so cruel to Arthur, and yet had given his life so Arthur and Kai could live. The treachery of Redwulf was sore to bear. The Saxon, whose life Arthur had saved despite Merlin and Balin’s protests. Redwulf had run to Dun Guaroy and alerted Ida and Octha of the approaching Briton war band and their aims. That was why the Saxons were waiting for them. Hidden and poised to catch the Britons deep inside their fearsome stronghold.
Arthur ran over rock, grass and heath, allowing the horse to drag him through nettles, ferns and briars as the survivors fled for their lives. In his half-dream state, Arthur realised he had been naïve and weak. There was no room in this world for pity or mercy. Many had told him so, but Arthur had always believed that he could live by a better standard, that folk deserved mercy and kindness. Now, as his cut face burned, and the faces of dead men rattled around his head, Arthur realised he must harden his heart. He must become as cruel and fearsome as the men he fought. He must use the sword Merlin had given him, and its legend, to strengthen himself. The Saxons must be beaten for Rheged, Gododdin, Elmet, Dumnonia and the rest of the British kingdoms to survive. If he was to have any part to play in that struggle, Arthur needed to become stronger in both body and resolve. The next time he fought Saxon champions, he would match their strength. He would be every bit as ruthless and savage as Ida and Octha.
The sun rose high in a clear sky and the survivors fled westwards where the land turned in on itself in a deep bay, until they reached another stretch of coastline, where Balin said a Roman fort called Olcaclavis once sat at its southern tip. The bay swept westwards, hacking into the coastline like a great bite out of the land. At its south-western tip, they came upon a collection of stone-made buildings with earth-covered roofs. Smoke billowed from great cauldrons boiling over charcoal pits and the stink of that burning filled the narrow hills around the bay.
‘Salt mine,’ said Balin. ‘We can find food and ale there.’
‘It’s a Saxon place. There will be guards,’ Bors replied. The big man slumped across his horse’s back and his blood smeared its riding cloth and flanks. Bors’ face was white as the patch on the gelding’s forehead and if he didn’t receive care soon, the champion of Gododdin would surely die of his wounds.
