Arthur: Book Three of the Pendragon Cycle

  Llenlleawg turned to me. “It is the supreme dishonor for a battlechief to fall behind his warriors.”

  “Cai, are we to be taught our duty by an Irishman?”

  “Never!” Cai cried. “Flay me for a Pict! I will not have it flaunted about that we neglected our duty.”

  “Brave Cai,” I said, “foremost in war and wall building!”

  Together we marched from the wood. Llenlleawg fell into step beside us. I confess, I had begun to warm to that man. He was Irish, there is no denying it, but a deal less vile than others of his race. The soul within him was noble, and his heart was true. More the shame for men like Cerdic when the barbarians reveal higher nobility than right-born Britons!

  We advanced to where Arthur and the others labored at the rocks. “What do you here, Bear?” I asked.

  Arthur straightened. “I am building a wall.”

  “This we have observed,” said Cai. “Are we to know the reason for this unseemly toil?”

  The Duke hefted a stone and lifted it above his head. He stepped onto the pile of rocks he had raised. “Men of Britain!” he called. “Listen to me!”

  Warriors pressed close to hear him. The cold wind fluttered the red cloak about Arthur’s shoulders; mist pearled in his hair. “Look in my hand and tell me what you see.”

  “A stone!” they cried. “We see a stone!”

  Arthur lofted the stone before them. “No, I tell you it is not a stone. It is something stronger than stone, and more enduring: it is a prayer!

  “I tell you,” Arthur continued, “it is a prayer for the deliverance of Britain. Look around you, my brothers; this hillside is covered with them!”

  We scanned the rough and rocky steeps of Baedun as Arthur directed. Baedun was, as he said, covered with stones—as if we had not known this already!

  “You ask what I am doing. I will tell you: I am gathering up the prayers and making a wall with them. I am raising a stronghold to surround the enemy.

  “Our Wise Emrys has decreed that we must erect a fortress whose walls cannot be battered down or broken—a caer that cannot be conquered. My countrymen, that is what I am doing. When I have finished, not a single barbarian will escape.”

  With that Arthur stepped down and placed his stone upon the pile he had made. Men regarded him as if he had become mad. The wind whipped through the crowd and uttered sinister whispers against the Duke. The silence grew dense with accusation: he is mad!

  Then, throwing his cloak over his shoulder, Cai stooped, every sinew straining, and lifted an enormous rock and, grinning with the exertion, heaved his rock on top of Arthur’s. It fell with a solid and convincing crack. “There!” Cai declared loudly. “If stones be prayers, I have sung a psalm!”

  Everyone laughed, and suddenly other stones began toppling onto the pile as one by one we all stooped to the stones at our feet and lifted them atop the foundation Arthur had made. In this way, the wall was begun.

  The lords of Britain held themselves aloof from this toil, but when they saw the fervor of their men, and the zeal of the Cymbrogi, they put off their cloaks and directed the work. It was a triumph to see them—Ennion and Custennin, Maelgwn and Maglos and Owain, Ceredig and Idris, all of them barking orders and urging on the men.

  We are a song-loving people, and no labor is long without a melody to lighten it. Once the work began in earnest, the singing began. Holy songs at first, but when these gave out we turned to the simple, well-known songs of hearth and clan—and these I believe are holy too. The wall rose stone by stone, each stone a heartfelt prayer.

  High up in the hilltop stronghold, the barbarians looked down upon our strange labor. At first they did not know what to make of it, and then as the line of the wall appeared and stretched along the hillside, they began to shout and jeer. When the wall began to rise, their jeers became angry taunts. They threw stones and shot arrows at us, but we were beyond hurtful range, and the stones and arrows fell spent long before reaching us. They raged, but they did not leave the protection of their fortress.

  Now, two men working diligently can raise a twenty-pace section chest-high in a day. How much more, then, can three thousand times that many accomplish? Saints and angels, I tell you that wall raised itself, so quickly did it appear!

  See it now: hands, thousands of hands reaching, grasping, lifting, placing, working the rough stone into a form. Backs bending, muscles straining, lungs drawing, cheeks puffing with the effort, sweat running. Palms and knuckles roughened, fingers bleeding. The wind billowing cloaks, rippling grass, curling mist and rain.

  Dusk fell full and fast. And though dark clouds swirled about the hilltop, light, clear and golden, shone in the west. In that light’s last gleam we placed the final stone on the wall and stood back to see what we had done. It was marvelous to behold: a long, sinuous barrier rising to shoulder height and surrounding the entire hill.

  The enemy wailed to see it. The barbarians howled in frustration. They cursed. They screamed. They saw themselves surrounded by stone, and called upon one-eyed Woden to save them. But their cries were seized by the wind and flung back in their faces. The wall, Arthur’s Wall, stood defiantly before them, encircling Baedun with its stern message: you will not leave this battleground. Here you will die, and here your bones will lie unmourned forever.

  My arms ached, and my legs and feet and back. My hands were scraped raw; my arms were cut. But I looked upon that wonderful wall, and my small agonies were less than nothing. It was more than a wall—it was faith made manifest. I looked upon the work of our hands, and I felt invincible.

  The barbarians looked upon the wall and despaired. For they saw that Arthur had cut off his own retreat—no one does that who doubts the victory. Thus was Arthur telling them: your doom is sealed; you are lost. They keened their death songs into the gathering gloom. And then, though the day was far spent, they attacked.

  Why they waited so long I will never know. Perhaps God’s hand prevented them. Perhaps Arthur’s Wall of Prayer daunted them. But all at once they swarmed out from their stronghold and flew down the hill toward us. Rhys signalled the alarm and we snatched up our weapons, turned and formed the line, then raced to meet them. The shock of the clash shuddered the mountain to its roots.

  Fighting at night is difficult and strange. The enemy has a shape, but no face; a body of limbs, but no features and no definite form. It is like fighting shadows. It is like one of those Otherworldy battles the bards sing about, where invisible armies meet in endless combat on a darkling plain. It is strange and unnatural.

  We fought, though exhaustion hung like a sodden cloak upon us. We fought, knowing that all our work would be for nothing if we could not now shake off our fatigue and keep the enemy from reaching the wall. Indeed, the barbarians seemed more intent on gaining the wall than in fighting us. Perhaps they thought to escape. Or perhaps they saw in Arthur’s Wall something which they could not abide—something they feared worse than defeat or death.

  Gloom enwrapped the hill. The wind shrieked in our ears and rain drove down. The barbarian host pressed us back and back. Heedless of danger, heedless of death, they swarmed before us, driving at us out of the storm-tossed darkness. On and on and on they came, torches flaming, forcing our backs to the wall our hands had raised.

  Clear and high, Arthur’s hunting horn sounded; short blasts cutting through the tumult: the rallying call. I looked to the sound and saw Arthur—his white shield a gleaming moon in the darkness; Caledvwlch flashing as his arm rose and fell in graceful, deadly arcs; crimson cloak streaming in the wind, muscled shoulders heaving as he leaned into the maelstrom…Arthur.

  I could not see his face, but there could be no doubt. He fought like no other warrior I had ever known. Such controlled ferocity, such deadly grace. The dread purity of his movements, spare and neat, each flowing into and out from the other, became a dazzling litany of praise to the fearful hand that had framed him.

  It came into my mind that it was for this Arthur was born; this was
why his spirit was given. To be here now, to lead the battle in just this way. Arthur had been created for, and summoned to, this moment. He had heard his call and he had obeyed. Now all was delivered into his grasp.

  I wanted to be near him, to pledge faith to him with my blade and with my life. But when I fought to his side, he was gone.

  I also saw Llenlleawg. He had taken up a Saecsen torch and now became once more a whirling firebrand of a warrior. Torch in one hand, short sword in the other, he danced in his mad battle ecstasy. The enemy fell before him and on every side, scattering like the sparks that flew from the flame in his hand.

  Garish faces came at me out of the darkness—tattooed Picti and blue-painted Cruithne, fair-haired Saecsens and dark Angli, all of them writhing and grimacing with hatred, livid with blood-lust, inflamed with death.

  The blood ran hot in my veins, drumming in my ears, pounding in my temples. My sides ached and my lungs burned. But I struck and struck again and again and again, sword rising and falling in deadly rhythm: falling like judgment from the night-dark sky, falling like doom upon the heads of the unheeding.

  With each stroke I grew stronger—like the ancient hero Gwyn, who increased in strength as the day wore on. I felt the ache leave my muscles, melting away in the rain that drenched me. My hands were no longer stiff on the grip of my sword and shield. My head cleared. My vision grew keen. I felt the heat of life rising in me, the battle glow which drives out all else.

  My men pressed close beside me; shoulder to shoulder we hewed at the enemy. To be surrounded by brave men faithful through all things is deeply to be wished, and my heart swelled within me. We labored in combat as we had labored on the wall, matching thrust for thrust and stroke for stroke. I felt their spirits lift with mine. No longer were we being driven back. We had somehow halted the advance of the enemy and now stood against it.

  Though the darkness round about was filled with the howls of barbarians and the shrieks of berserkers and the dire blast of Saecsen battlehorns, we did not give ground. The enemy became the sea surging angrily against us as against the Giant’s Steps. Like the sea they battered the rock, washed over it, and whelmed it over; but when the waves broke, the rock remained unmoved.

  Wild the night, wild the fight! Buffeted by wind and battle roar, we stood to the barbarian host and our swords ran red. I killed with every thrust; every blow stole life. My arm rose and fell with swift precision, and at each stroke a soul went down into death’s dark realm.

  The foemen fell around me, and I saw all with undimmed clarity. I was fierce. I was cold as the length of steel in my hand. Jesu save me! I slaughtered the enemy like cattle!

  I killed, but I did not hate. I killed, but even as they fell before me, I did not hate them. There was no hate left in me.

  * * *

  Dawn drew aside the veil of night and we saw what we had done. I will never forget that sight: white corpses in the grey morning light…thousands, tens of thousands…strewn upon the ground like the rubble of a ruin…limbs lifeless, bodies twisted and still, dead eyes staring up at the white sun rising in a white sky and the black blurs of circling, circling crows…

  Above, the keen of hawks. Below, the deep-stained earth. All around, the stink of death.

  We had won. We had gained the victory, but there was scarcely a hair’s breadth of difference between the victors and the vanquished on that grim morning. We leaned upon our spears and slumped over our shields. Wide-eyed and staring, too tired to move. Numb.

  Anyone coming upon us would have thought that we were one with the dead. Though we lived, it was all we could do to draw breath and blink our swollen red eyes.

  I sat with my back to a rock, my sword stuck in my unbending fingers. My shield lay beside me on the ground, battered and rent in a hundred places. “Bedwyr!” A familiar voice called out my name, and I looked and saw Arthur striding toward me. I drew up my knees and struggled to rise.

  Grey-faced with fatigue, his arms crisscrossed with sword cuts, his proud red cloak rent to rags and foul with blood, the Duke of Britain hauled me to my feet and crushed me to him in his bear hug. “I have been searching for you,” he whispered. “I feared you must be dead.”

  “I feel as if I am.”

  “If all the barbarians in the world could not kill you, nothing will,” Arthur replied.

  “What of Cai? Bors? Cador?”

  “Alive.”

  I shook my head, and my gaze returned once more to the corpse-choked field and the glutted crows swaggering upon the pale bodies. My stomach turned and heaved; I vomited bile over my feet. Arthur stood patiently beside me, his hand upon my back. When I finished, he raised me up and led me aside with him.

  “How many are left?” I asked, dreading the answer. But I had to know.

  “More than you think.”

  “How many?”

  “Two divisions—almost.”

  “The kings?”

  “Maglos and Ceredig are dead. Ennion is sorely wounded; he will not live. Custennin is dead.”

  “Myrddin?”

  “He is well. Do you know—when the battle began he climbed up on the wall and stood there the whole night with his staff raised over us. He upheld us through the battle, and prayed the victory for us.”

  “What of Gwalchavad? He was near me when the battle began, but I lost him…So much confusion.”

  “Gwalchavad is unharmed. He and Llenlleawg are searching the bodies.”

  “Oh,” I said, though his meaning at the moment escaped me.

  We walked a little down the hill, and I saw others moving about, slowly, carefully, picking their way somberly among the silent dead. As we approached the wall there came a shout from behind us up the hill. Gwalchavad and Llenlleawg had found what they were looking for.

  We turned and made our way to where they stood. I saw the skull-and-bones standard lying beneath the body and knew what they had found.

  Arthur rolled the body with the toe of his boot. Cerdic gazed up into the empty sky with empty eyes. His throat was a blackened gash, and his right arm was nearly severed above the elbow. His features had hardened into a familiar expression: the insolent sneer I had so often seen on him—as if death were an insult to his dignity, a humiliation far beneath him.

  He was surrounded by his Saecsen guards. All had died within moments of each other—whether in the first or last assault no one could tell; no one had seen him die. But Cerdic was dead, and his treachery with him.

  “What are we to do with him?” asked Gwalchavad.

  “Leave him,” said Arthur.

  “He is a Briton,” Gwalchavad insisted.

  “And he chose this place for his tomb when he made war against me. No one forced him to it—it was his own choice. Let him lie here with his barbarian kin.”

  Already men were removing the bodies of our comrades for burning. As a witness and warning to all future enemies, the corpses of the barbarians would be left where they had fallen. They would not be buried. So Arthur decreed; so was it done.

  The westering sun stretched our shadows long on Baedun’s hillside as the funeral flames licked the wooden pyre on which were placed the bodies of our countrymen. Priests of Mailros Abbey prayed and sang Psalms, walking slowly around the burning pyre with willow branches in their hands.

  Myrddin walked with them, holding a thorned length of rose cane before him. The rose, called Enchanter of the Wood, signified honor in druid lore, the Emrys explained; and to the Christians it symbolized peace. Peace and honor. These brave dead had earned both.

  The ashes were glowing embers, and twilight softly tinted the sky when we finally left Baedun Hill. We did not go far, for we were tired and sore, and the wagons bearing the wounded could not travel any great distance before dark. But Arthur would not stay another night beside that hill; so we went back through the wood to the lake where we had baptized our sword brothers and consecrated ourselves for battle.

  There beside its placid waters we made our camp and slept under
a peaceful sky in the Region of the Summer Stars.

  Book Three

  Aneirin

  1

  In the day of strife, the heathen swarms gazed across the wave-worried sea to this green and pleasant land and coveted the wealth of Britain. Their oar-blades churned the bright water in their haste to forsake their wretched shores and despoil ours. Of bloodshed and battle, plunder and pillage, rape and ravage, death and destruction, flames and fear and failure there was no end.

  Great the disgrace, the lords of Britain were no better. Full many a petty king ruled in this worlds-realm, and ever waging war each upon the other wasted all the land—till Arthur came.

  Scoff if you will! Mock me, viper’s brood! But the Kingdom of Summer was founded on the rock of Jesu’s holy name.

  Do I not know the truth? Does a bard forget his tales? Well, I was a bard. I was a warrior, too. I am a learned man. Aneirin ap Caw is my name—though now I am known by a name of my own choosing.

  I was born in the year of Baedun. Therefore I am a man of fortunate birth, for I began life in that happy time when all wars ceased and peace greatly abounded in this worlds-realm.

  Baedun…a word for triumph in any tongue.

  At Baedun’s summit, the Duke of Britain halted the slaughter in what the bards now deem foremost of the Three Great Battles of Ynys Prydein. I tell you the victory was not yet one day old when Arthur retired to the ruined chapel at Mailros to pray thanks for the Almighty Father’s deliverance.

  Arthur, High King of All Britain; Pendragon of Rheged, Celyddon, Gwynedd, Dyfed, and the Seven Favored Isles; Emperor of Alba and Logres, Bear of Britain, Arthur of the Double Crown, of whom perpetual choirs sing. Not many alive today realize the significance of this: Arthur was crowned twice. The first time on a hill above his northern capital at Caer Edyn; the second time in the south at Londinium. Both crown-takings were conducted before God in a rightwise manner and in all holiness. But each was different from the other as gold from grain.