‘Kill the rest. No prisoners,’ Arthur said coldly. He wiped Excalibur’s blade clean on the dead man’s cloak and realised that the men of Gododdin were all staring open-mouthed at him. It has been a quick, ruthless fight, and Arthur supposed that shocked the spearmen. He took the helmet from the dead man’s head and held it aloft. Bors and the Gododdin men cheered and set off to slaughter any Saxon survivors they could find in the woods, beginning with the men who had stood at the end with their leader.
Arthur picked up the Saxon’s sword and tossed it to Hywel. ‘You earned it today,’ he said, and the Elmet man bowed to him, grinning with delight at his prize.
‘Lord Arthur,’ said one of his men, running across the clearing with an anguished look upon his face. He carried a broken bow, its stave hanging from the string in two shivered pieces.
‘What is it?’
‘Your sister, lord, the archer.’
Arthur’s heart sank. ‘What of her?’
‘She’s gone, lord.’
‘Gone where?’
‘I saw a gang of Saxons bustling her away into the trees. I went after them, but they’re gone and her with them.’
22
Arthur searched for Lunete until Llamrei could ride no further without rest, and then he doubled back, leading the horse on foot upon a different path, searching for any sign of Lunete and her captors but unable to find anything other than the marks of hundreds of Saxon boots. Bors sent his finest trackers into the deep forest, but they returned before nightfall with no sign of her trail. The woodland was too well trodden by Saxon war bands, as were the hills and dales. Their detritus was everywhere: campfires, bones from their food, pits filled with shit, broken spears and dead Britons. But no sign of Lunete.
After two days of exhausting, sleepless searching, Arthur came to accept the painful fact that she was lost. He wept for his sister, and cursed himself for not staying close to her once the fighting began, but to stay and search longer was to abandon the war. The decision ripped at his soul like sharp talons, but without hope of finding his beloved foster sister and with the fate of Gododdin upon his shoulders, Arthur eventually tore himself away from the forest.
Arthur and Bors led their men north. Columns of smoke in the south and east told of more Saxon war bands raiding Gododdin’s countryside, and any of them could have taken Lunete as their prisoner, if she still lived. Arthur couldn’t fight every roving band of Saxons, and so he camped a day’s march from Dunpendyrlaw. His men cowered beneath their cloaks as a summer thunderstorm tore the sky and hammered the land with torrential rain. Ector arrived from the midst of that swirling storm, with Balin, Nimue, Idnerth, Kai and Malegant. Owain mab Urien rode at the head of their column alongside Balin and Ector and the prince of Rheged’s men swelled their ranks with five hundred warriors, so that a thousand men trudged through driving rain and found what shelter they could beneath their cloaks and shields.
Ector, Britain’s champion, its greatest warrior, shuddered like a spear hitting a tree trunk when Arthur told him of Lunete’s capture. He told Ector of the dead Saxon found where she had been taken, an arrow driven into his eye at close quarters. Lunete must have fought like a bear, killing one of her assailants before the others could carry her away. Kai raged like a wild boar at the fell news, tearing at his hair and banging his fists against his chest. Ector’s face trembled, and only the sheeting rain hid the tears rolling down his scarred cheeks. Kai wanted to ride off in search of Lunete and railed at Arthur for not searching harder for their lost sister until Bors calmed him and told of their desperate search.
‘We must find her!’ Kai cried, grasping fistfuls of Arthur’s chain mail. ‘She can’t be gone.’
‘We’ll find her when the battle is over,’ said Arthur, and Kai spluttered incredulously in his face.
‘Battle? A pox on your battle. Saxons have taken our sister!’
‘Arthur’s right, son,’ said Ector, pulling Kai into his massive arms. His face stretched, drawn, made long by unthinkable grief. ‘She could be anywhere amongst a hundred Saxon war bands by now. She could even be in Bernicia. We must fight them first, and then, if we live and enough Saxons are dead, we’ll find her. She’s my daughter. I’ll tear all of Britain apart to find her.’
‘Why was she here? She should never have been allowed to ride with the warriors.’ After spitting those last, cruel words at Ector, Kai stormed off and refused to be consoled. Lunete’s disappearance was a knife in Arthur’s heart. He wanted to weep, shout, rage and kill, to abandon the war, take his warriors and his sword and find his sister. But he could not abandon Gododdin, and he could not leave until the battle was fought. So Arthur steeled himself, clenching his jaw and holding on to Excalibur’s hilt until he mastered the grief, bottling it up like a sealed amphora of Roman wine.
The rain continued to soak Gododdin, coming from low sky, clouds dark and broiling like heated pitch.
‘The gods prepare for battle,’ Nimue said, raising her hands and staring up into the driving rain, letting it soak her through. ‘Our gods do battle with the Saxon gods, and there shall be a great battle before the moon turns full. They say Kadvuz is here. I must find him and ask of Merlin. We must prepare ourselves to seek the gods’ favour.’ She strode off, calling to Arthur that she would make her charms, and use her Irish draíocht cailleach magic to bring luck to his men for the fight to come.
Arthur wanted to ask Nimue to use her powers to find Lunete, if that could be done, but before he could follow her with that request, Prince Gawain of Gododdin arrived with five hundred spearmen so that one thousand and five hundred warriors filled a sprawling dale, the sound of their chatter, footsteps, armour and weapons undulating like the sigh of the sea.
‘The Saxons mass in a vale beside the mouth of the river Glein,’ Gawain said later, as Arthur, Bors, Owain, Ector, Kai, Idnerth and Malegant sheltered from the incessant rain beneath a sailcloth tent.
‘They have seen our forces marching,’ said Balin, ‘and now they seek to destroy us in one monstrous battle.’
‘I thank you all for coming to Gododdin’s aid,’ said Gawain, tall and lean, wearing a bronze circlet upon his brow. He looked far removed from the tortured, battered prisoner Arthur, Bors, Balin and Kai had dragged from Dun Guaroy. ‘We have men of Dumnonia, Elmet, Rheged and Bernicia here, united against our common enemy. But there is still no word or sight of Merlin.’
‘They outnumber us two to one,’ said Kai, his eyes red-ringed and his face drawn with grief for his lost sister.
‘And yet we must fight,’ said Prince Owain, ‘if we don’t stop the Saxons here, they will take each of our kingdoms one by one until they have everything, and we have nothing. We fight not just for our pride, or for glory, but for our people’s very existence.’
‘That river is but a day’s march south from here,’ said Bors. ‘A wide, flat plain split by a river. We can make our fight there. A hard fight, a fight for the bloody ages.’
‘They want us to meet them on ground of their choosing,’ said Ector. ‘If the land is wide and flat, they can use their greater numbers to outflank us. They want the fight on their terms.’
‘Then let them have it,’ said Arthur. ‘Let them think we blunder onto land of their choosing. But we shall be ready. We will not march blindly into the shield wall. We can use cunning of our own.’
‘We are princes and champions here,’ said Owain, frowning at Arthur. ‘When I want war advice from an orphan, and a masterless man to boot, I shall ask for it.’
‘Arthur has proven himself,’ said Ector, ‘and he should have a voice at this council.’
‘Why? Because he carries an old sword, and Merlin says we should all bow down to him? Where is Merlin? I do not think so, Ector. My father only agreed to this fight because he believed I would lead our men, not this pup.’
The council broke down into a shouting match, Bors growled at Owain, and Owain squared up to him. Balin stood back, arms folded, shaking his head, whilst Idnerth and Kai did their best to split up the champion of Gododdin and the prince of Rheged.
‘Silence!’ Malegant bellowed, and the men all turned to stare at the Dumnonian. He held up the fasces, the axe wrapped in birch bundles, and held it slowly before each man, letting them stare into its sharp blade so that the significance of the symbol sunk deep into their minds. ‘Arthur speaks for the Pendragon, for the high king of Britain. So, we shall hear his plan. It was he who marched across our country, from Gododdin, to Rheged, Bernicia, Elmet and fair Dumnonia. How many of you have ever left your own kingdoms before, never mind marched the breadth of Britain?’
‘Out with it, then,’ said Owain, begrudgingly accepting that Uther’s blessing gave Arthur the authority to be heard and to lead.
‘Let them believe we blunder into their trap,’ said Arthur, ‘form up on the riverbank, and wait for them to make their shield wall. The Saxons believe they are superior to us, that we do not know how to make war. We can forge that arrogance to our advantage. Once they advance, we feign retreat across the water, then turn, form up swiftly and kill them as they scramble up our side of the bank. They won’t be able to resist the advance. They need this fight decided in one battle, so they will attack.’
‘What if our men do not turn? What if they become swept up in the feigned retreat and flee the field?’
‘The men of Gododdin won’t flee,’ said Bors. ‘I cannot vouch for the faint hearts of Rheged spearmen.’
‘And what of our flanks?’ asked Owain, rewarding Bors with a murderous frown.
