‘Letan will send twenty spearmen south with you to Rheged,’ Balin said as Arthur sat down opposite him.
‘He is a gracious king,’ said Arthur, ‘and pleased to have his son returned to him.’
‘Gawain might look every bit the high-born prince up there with his father, but he is a brave and skilled warrior. He will march with me and my men when we leave Gododdin.’
‘Where will you go, now that…’ Arthur didn’t want to mention the deaths of so many of Balin’s men. They were the last warriors of Bernicia and could not be easily replaced.
‘I need more men,’ Balin sighed, ‘because the fight must go on. We must resist the Saxons, harry them wherever we can. For that, I need spearmen.’
‘Where will you find them?’
‘In the badlands. Amongst the roving bands of mercenaries, raiders and masterless men. I’ll seek them out, try to have them join the fight.’
‘I wish to come with you, if you’ll have me.’ Arthur stared into Balin’s hard eyes, hoping the noble warrior would accept his request. Arthur was not ready to return to Rheged and Ector’s service, not after he had been through and seen so much. The war was not within Rheged, but beyond in Lloegyr, and Merlin had entrusted Arthur with Excalibur, so Arthur must swing the sword against the enemy.
‘Men will follow the man given the sword of Britain by Merlin himself. Men are fickle and strange. They would follow a legend where they would not fight for their own people. So, yes. I would be glad to have you with me, Arthur of Nowhere.’
‘Men will follow Balin of the Two Swords, as will I.’ Arthur bowed his head and left Balin in peace. He returned to Kai, who frowned in surprise when Arthur told him of his plan to march with Balin.
‘But we must return to Rheged, with Guinevere, and to my father,’ said Kai as though Rheged were all that mattered.
‘Ector and Urien fight to protect Rheged’s borders when we must take the fight to the Saxons. Balin does that, and I will join him,’ said Arthur. He held out his hand for his foster brother to take in agreement.
‘No, Arthur. Our place is at my father, our father’s side. Balin fights for a lost kingdom and to find his treacherous brother. His path is a dark road full of death and defeat, there is bad luck and an ill doom woven into his fate, and we must defend Rheged. We are warriors now, you and I.’ Kai lifted the sleeve of his tunic to show the death rings around his forearm. ‘We can’t even make enough rings to tell of the Saxons we have killed since leaving Rheged. Our country needs men like us, brother. Father needs our spears and our experience. Come home.’
‘I cannot. I must fight, Kai, come with me.’
Kai picked up a horn cup of ale, drained the contents, and slammed it down onto the bench. ‘Merlin has filled your head with nonsense,’ he spat, standing and glaring down at Arthur. ‘I don’t know why he gave you that sword, but ever since that day, you have been under his spell, and that cursed Saxon gwyllion. I ride for home tomorrow with the spearmen of Gododdin to return Guinevere to King Urien, and then I will join my father’s men. We leave at midday. If you are not there, I will know where your loyalty lies. Remember though, brother, all my father has done for you and what you owe him.’
Arthur let Kai leave the feast and brooded over his brother’s words. He owed Ector everything, a debt he could never repay. But Arthur could see clearly that the way to fight for Rheged was to take the fight to Ida and Octha, rather than wait for them to attack and destroy each kingdom of Britain one by one. The kingdoms must be united, and Merlin had entrusted Arthur with the sword to make that happen. The choice Kai had presented him with was no choice at all. Arthur had to fight for Britain. So, before sunrise, Arthur packed his meagre belongings and met Balin and his seven black cloaks at Dunpendyrlaw’s gates. He did not say goodbye to Kai, for he knew his brother would not accept his decision, but Guinevere found them at the gates, and she gave each man a kiss on the cheek for luck, and every burly warrior blushed like a small boy at the gesture. She pulled Arthur aside and pressed a cold metal object into his hand. It was the silver cloak pin given to her by King Letan.
‘Carry this with you,’ she said. ‘I hope it brings you luck and keeps you safe.’ She kissed him on the cheek and ran off towards the great hall, leaving Arthur dumbstruck. He held the pin in his hand as they left Dunpendyrlaw’s hill but marched with a heavy heart. He would miss Kai. The two young men had never been apart. Theirs had been a life of brotherly friendship, training, fighting, playing together in the forests and orchards around Caer Ligualid. But that time was over. Now it was time for war.
16
Arthur, his oathmen and the black cloaks marched south-east into the dark lands that lay between Lloegyr, Gododdin and Rheged. Masterless men flocked to those border regions, which were not under the protection of spearmen or kings. There, they could raid, plunder, rape, murder and fight each other, and any who tried to stop them. Bucellari mercenaries camped in the dark lands when they could not find a lord to pay them to fight, and the folk who lived in the deep valleys, around its winding rivers, or in the mountain passes, lived in fear. In a continuous cycle, they paid the bad men to fight for them, to protect them from other roving war bands, with food, milk, butter, salt, cheese, slaves, women and what paltry silver they could muster. There were old families in the hills and even older blood feuds. The hills, springs, caves and trees bore ancient names and spirits and legends clung to landmarks with stories passed down by word of mouth across the generations.
For a year, Arthur and Balin roamed the bad lands, fighting vicious war bands whose members were both Briton and Saxon. Men who had lost favour with their lords, had committed a crime, or their lord had died in battle, leaving them with no one to fight for and nowhere to go. Balin sought such men, defeated them in battle, bound them to him with oaths, always seeking news of his dread brother Balan, and bound them to him with oaths. During the long months of skirmish and battle, Arthur also bound men to his service. He discussed with them the importance of Merlin, Excalibur and their role in the war that would determine the destiny of Britain. Hardened men swore oaths to serve Arthur, swayed by the legends, but also by the promise of spoils and glory in the wars to come. So it was that by the following summer Balin led a force of sixty warriors, and of those thirty were oathsworn to be Arthur’s men. They were a ragged band of tough men with cruel faces, grizzled beards and flinty eyes. Each carried a spear, knife or seax, and wore a mixture of hard-baked leather breastplates, simple woollen clothing, and some even wore mail. One man, Hywel, a captain of five warriors, even wore a fantastic Roman cuirass of overlaying iron plates which moved together like a skin. He had lost favour with King Gwallog of Elmet and so he and his five men had become mercenaries.
Tales of Merlin, Ambrosius Aurelianus, the Great War and Excalibur entranced men, especially those who fought without cause or master. They bound themselves to Arthur and Excalibur’s legend by kneeling and kissing the sword and swearing to serve Arthur until death. Any man sworn to Balin took to wearing the black cloak of his war band, and Arthur’s men painted their leather shield covers with a white sword. Cadog was the first to daub that simple sigil upon his shield, and the rest quickly followed so that the sword became Arthur’s recognisable sigil. There was no rivalry between Arthur and Balin, despite the Bernician’s objection at Merlin giving the sword to Arthur. They fought for the same cause, to build a force to defend Britain against the Saxons, and Balin sought revenge against his brother, who lurked somewhere deep in Lloegyr amongst the Saxon enemy. Balin was a quiet, stoic man, and he and Arthur talked and agreed on plans together before marching to battle, and the two men rarely disagreed. Their war band was a formidable force and by the early summer following their departure from Gododdin, the badlands were all but cleared of masterless men. Balin and Arthur marched north into the mountainous river lands south of Dal Riata and found wild Irish and Scots warriors there who came into their service only after savage battles and crushing defeats. The surviving men joined Balin’s ranks and swelled his numbers to forty men.
It had been a long year of ceaseless fighting against the odds, beginning with seven men and through brutal slaughter, shattered spears, broken shields, blood, wounds and suffering, Balin and Arthur had built a formidable war band. There were savage fights in dark forests, river fords and mountain passes where men sweated in leather, mail and furs to cut, stab and rend at each other, and Arthur lost count of the men he had killed and injured. His forearms were now entirely blue with death ring tattoos. Men with evil, scarred faces proved themselves loyal and brave, and men with soft beards and gentle faces who seemed good and honest proved themselves cowards or ran away in the night. Arthur came to learn the value of a man by his deeds, rather than by his words or looks. He trained his men to fight like the Saxons, using larger shields and practising shield wall tactics until their arms ached and their muscles screamed. They learned to advance, how to start a mock retreat before turning and reforming quickly, how to open a small gap to lure an enemy into the wall of shields before closing and trapping them. But the key strategy Arthur favoured was to pin an enemy with his shield wall and sharp spears, and then have ten riders encircle them on horseback before dismounting and attacking their rear. Fighting on horseback was a treacherous business which no warrior did willingly, with only a horse blanket across the steed’s back and no purchase for feet or hips, so Arthur and his men used their mounts for speed but not for battle.
Arthur captured a white stallion which he named Llamrei, and ten of his men also rode fine mounts captured from defeated warlords in the wild borderlands. Arthur also wore a captured heavy chain-mail coat of interlocked iron rings which protected him from neck to knee, and a seax in a sheath at the small of his back. He still wore the russet cloak gifted to him by King Letan and wore Guinevere’s silver swan pin on the inside of his belt behind Excalibur’s fleece-lined black scabbard. He would hold the pin at night, rubbing his thumb over the intricately wrought silver, hoping to dream of Guinevere’s beauty and wondering if she had remained with King Urien in Rheged or had travelled south to King Uther in Dumnonia. Word drifted north that Octha and his army marched south and fought the warriors of Elmet and Powys and were repelled at great cost of life to the Britons. Octha, or so said merchants and roving war bands fleeing north away from that war, had returned to Ida in Bernicia for the winter and now marshalled his Saxon forces again for a summer campaign to conquer the land he so desperately craved.
So Arthur and Balin marched their warriors south, skirting the borders of Gododdin and Bernicia, marching towards Rheged. Balin argued for a return to Bernicia so that he and Arthur could bring their spearmen against Ida and Octha’s Saxons in Lloegyr.
‘We are sixty against Octha’s three thousand, and Ida’s settled army,’ Arthur had said as they spoke beside a marching campfire. ‘Our men are battle-hardened, and we could harry the Saxons, burn their farms and kill their scouts, but we can’t defeat them. We must march for Rheged, rally King Urien to war, and then on to Elmet and Dumnonia. To defeat Octha and Ida, we need an army to match theirs, an army with spearmen from every kingdom threatened by the Saxon invaders.’
‘Uther is the Pendragon,’ Balin had replied, ‘and only he can unite the kingdoms. But you are right, we must do more than sting Ida and Octha’s arses if we are going to return Lloegyr to its rightful people.’
Swallows and martins swooped above forests blooming with fresh, leafy boughs and cold, frosty mornings gave way to sunny days which warmed Arthur’s neck as they entered Rheged’s mountainous borders. Bees and butterflies hopped on carpets of blooming wildflowers, and gentle winds stirred violets and foxgloves in seas of bright heather. Arthur and Balin did not hide their force as they rode along goat paths and beside streams, and Arthur told the farmers and villagers he met along the road who he was and why his men came to Rheged. The war band bought meat, wheat, milk and ale from the common folk, but the news in the valleys and dales was of Saxon armies gathering across the mountains in Lloegyr, waiting ominously to pounce from their Saxon fastnesses.
A line of spearmen carrying shields painted with the Rheged stag appeared at midday on a rain-soaked day as Arthur and Balin marched along a lazy river thick with reeds and wild grasses. The men of Rheged greeted Arthur warmly, for they were scouts from Ector’s stronghold at Caer Ligualid and Arthur knew most of them by name. Arthur was overjoyed to learn that both Ector and Kai were at home, and so he and his riders rode ahead of the war band, so eager was Arthur to be reunited with his spear-father and brother. Llamrei’s hooves clopped along the old Roman road and Arthur’s heart leapt as the stone and timber walls of Caer Ligualid came into view. The Romans had built a fortress of stone, oak and alder and much of their old work still stood, reinforced by a palisade, ditch and bank with Ector kept in good repair. The Roman aqueduct provided the fort and settlement with fresh water and as Arthur rode past woods, streams and outbuildings, memories of a childhood spent playing with Kai and Lunete came happily flooding back to him.
Arthur and his riders reined in before the gate and a gaggle of ruddy-faced boys took their horses to the stables. The gate banged and creaked as guards lifted the great oak spar and pushed open the wide gates. Arthur laughed for joy as the huge figure of Ector came strolling through. His bald head shone, and his long, braided beard hung thick upon his chest.
‘Arthur?’ said Ector with his huge, tattooed arms held wide in greeting. ‘Is it truly you?’
‘Spear-father!’ called Arthur in greeting and ran to embrace the old warrior.
‘By the gods, you’ve grown since you left.’ Ector squeezed Arthur’s shoulders and arms, thickened by a year of shield, sword and spear work. Arthur realised he was now as tall as Ector, the man who had always seemed so huge. ‘Are you well?’ Ector peered over Arthur’s shoulder at the ten warriors who waited behind him. Their cloaks and boots were travel stained, but each man carried a sharp spear and large linden-wood shields bearing Arthur’s sword sigil. Cadog and Hywel were there, the former no longer the thin man freed from the salt mine but now broad-shouldered and shaggy-bearded, and Hywel in his polished Roman armour.
‘I am, Father. These are a few of my men. There is news of Saxon forces shifting in Lloegyr, so we have come south to fight.’
‘Your men? Kai said you were with Balin of the Two Swords?’
‘Aye, Balin follows on foot with fifty spearmen.’
‘Fifty!’ Ector exclaimed and blew out his cheeks. He brushed a finger across the deep scar on Arthur’s cheek and stared down at the death rings on Arthur’s forearms. ‘You have been busy. And this must be Excalibur.’ Ector pointed at the sword at Arthur’s belt.
‘It has been a long year, spear-father, and yes, this is Excalibur given to me by Merlin himself. But tell me of Caer Ligualid, of you and Lunete, of the Saxons and the coming summer campaign.’
‘Lunete will be thrilled to see you. Come inside and take some food. Your men are welcome.’
‘Thank you. Is Kai here?’
‘He is, but we are preparing to march. There are Saxons on our borders again. They return like frogspawn each spring, stealing cattle, murdering our people.’ Ector sighed and shook his head at the never-ending cycle of Saxon aggression.
