From time to time word reached them of how things were going elsewhere. Ceawlin was in his capital at Wilton. His sons, holding his borders from Surrey to the edge of the Aquae Sulis territory, had already taken the first shock, as Coel and Coelwulf with the men of the new western settlements came down upon them like wolves in a famine winter. They had taken the first shock and been driven back with heavy losses, and Ceawlin had gathered his host and was pressing north to their support.
Then came the word that father and sons had met, and knowing themselves to be outnumbered, had fallen back upon the ancient hill fort of Wodensbeorg, to wait for their enemies in the strongest place in all North Wessex.
That news was brought in by Coel and Coelwulf with their victorious war-bands, who came swarming round and down from the north to join the men of Kent and Sussex and the Chiltern Hills, some thirty miles short of the chosen place. Now, save for the British bands, the whole allied war-host had come together. And that night a great fire burned in the midst of the camp, and Owain, hastily summoned before his evening bannock was half eaten, stood in the full fierce glare of it, confronting the appraising scrutiny of half a score of men. Haegel he knew, and Einon Hen; the rest were strangers, but he guessed, for he had seen them ride in, that the two broad-shouldered young men with hot blue eyes and beards arrogantly cocked, were Coel and Coelwulf. He gave them back look for look in the firelight, holding himself braced for whatever it was that was coming. He did not know why they had sent for him, but Einon Hen was explaining that now, in the Saxon tongue, that the others might understand and fear no treachery.
‘Owain, to our people there has fallen a great honour, though—maybe a costly one. Ceawlin and his whole war-host are encamped at a place that the Saxons call Wodensbeorg, turning there to wait our coming as a boar turns at bay. It is an ancient war-camp of our people, and like most of its kind it has more than one possible way in, but the chief one is on the south-eastern side. Therefore the great attack we shall unloose against them from this side, but when it is at its height the British will take them from the rear, striving to break in through the hinder gates, and so carry sword and confusion into the very heart of the enemy camp. All that has been arranged, and the thorn woods will give them cover for surprise to the foot of Wodensbeorg; but the thing must be timed as perfectly as a spear-throw if it is to succeed, and the Hour of the Ravens could not be determined until the two halves of the allied war-host had come together. Therefore the message must go now to the British Camp—upward of two days’ march north-west of Wodensbeorg—and a man must carry it.’
Owain heard very clearly the sounds of the camp, men singing softly about one of the fires, the squeal of a bad-tempered horse in the picket lines. ‘Do I volunteer, or is it an order?’ he asked at last.
‘I think that you volunteer. You are British; the only man save myself in all this great camp who can say that.’
The old man and the young one held each other’s gaze for a moment in shared pride.
Coel, who already called himself King of Wessex, flung the last scrap of his supper to the hound crouching at his feet, and leaned forward abruptly into the firelight. ‘We can send a man with you who knows the country, two men, or three, to make sure that you reach the British Camp—’
Owain felt the blood suddenly hot under his eyes, and he cut in, but quietly enough, ‘Why not send the whole war-host with me?’
‘You are insolent, my friend.’ Coel’s brows snapped together.
‘I do not mean to be, but I have not had my faith doubted before.’
Coel stared at him a moment longer under down-drawn brows, then he made a small gesture as though he screwed something up and tossed it into the fire. ‘All things have to have a first time. But I was not calling your faith in question, for Einon Hen has vouched for it. I was going to say, had you not been so quick to put your hackles up, that we could make sure of your reaching the British Camp, but that save for sending one man with you to act as your guide, we should count the matter already assured. I was also going to say that the only means we have of being sure, completely sure, that the message has gone safely through, lies in your return to the Saxon Camp afterwards.’ His eyes narrowed a little on Owain’s face, and the Briton realized for the first time how shrewd they were. ‘Can we be certain also, that having returned to your own people, you will come back to the White Horse Standard?’
‘I will come back,’ Owain said. He glanced at the British Envoy. ‘Einon Hen knows that I will come back.’
Einon Hen nodded. ‘I came among you as an envoy for my people, but more than once I have heard myself spoken of as a hostage, by Saxon tongues.’ He glanced about him at their suddenly stiffened faces, with a gleam of fierce amusement in his one yellow eye. ‘Oh yes, I may lack for an eye, but I have always had keen hearing. Now therefore, let me offer myself for a hostage indeed, for my fellow countryman’s return.’
There was another silence, and then Haegel of the South Saxons said loudly and defiantly, ‘That will not be needful!’
A murmur rose from the men about the fire; and Coel with his hot blue gaze still on Owain’s face said, ‘No, that will not be needful. When you reach the British Camp, go you to Gerontius, Prince of Powys, and tell him that the Time of the Ravens comes at Sun-up on the fourth morning from now—the morning of Thor’s Day. That is all; he knows the rest, and if he is in position along the woodshore he will hear the war-horns and the ring of battle to judge his own attack by.’ He was pulling a ring from his finger as he spoke, and now he held it out to Owain; a delicate thing of wreathed gold and silver wires, oddly womanish for the man’s strong hand, but Owain had noticed the delicacy of the Saxon goldsmith’s work often enough before now. ‘This is the agreed token. Give it to Gerontius in proof that you do in truth come from Coel of Wessex and the allied war-host; and bring me back his agreed token in exchange.’
An hour later, mounted on one of the spare horses—a good one, for they would have to make fast travelling—Owain rode out of the Saxon Camp, with the man who was to guide him riding another; and a queer mingling of feeling within him because he was riding to his own people, but only as a message-bearer for the Saxon kind.
They rode through the night, and lay up through the day among some furze bushes in a little hidden valley, while the horses grazed, knee-haltered, then rode again through the second night. It was open downland country for the most part, and the Saxon knew it well. They met with no trouble, and before the second dawn, they rode into the British Camp.
A short while later, having left his weary guide with the still more weary horses, Owain was speaking with a tall man in the lee of a hazel thicket. There too, a fire burned, figures standing and moving about it, figures with Roman faces and Celtic faces; but he was so tired that they seemed the faces and figures of a dream. Only the tall man he was speaking to seemed quite real, a very dark man with a cloak of British plaid hastily flung on over an ancient legionary breastplate, his black brows bound with a narrow golden fillet. Owain heard his own voice speaking in the British tongue, as though it were the voice of a stranger, and even thought vaguely how hoarse it sounded.
The man listened, his head a little bent. When the message had been delivered, he said only, ‘What token do you bring me that you come indeed from Coel of the West Saxons?’
‘The agreed token,’ Owain said, and drew the ring of gold and silver wires from his own hand.
Gerontius took it, and stood turning it between his fingers, examining it in the fitful firelight while Owain watched him. He was thinking that maybe if the Prince of the Cymru had joined with the Princes of Glevum and Viroconium, that last battle might not have ended in disaster. Oh, but if it had not, it would only have stemmed the tide for a little while, not turned it. This way—he remembered the treaty—at least the Western Hills would remain free of the Saxon kind. But his world had died by Aquae Sulis, and it was hard to judge without bitterness.
A little wind was rising with the morning
and something stirred and billowed at the edge of the firelight, teasing the corner of his eye so that he glanced aside to see what it was. A spear-shaft had been planted upright in the soft ground that edged the hazel thicket, and a great battle standard hung from it. It caught the morning breeze and rippled in the wind, and on the greenness of it, he saw quivering in flame and gold the Red Dragon of Britain.
Something rose in Owain’s breast as he looked at it, something that hurt and shone at the same time, mingled partly of bitterness, that the ancient standard should go into battle in fellowship with the White Horse of the Saxon hordes, partly of joy, because he had not thought to see the Red Dragon of Britain, the Red Dragon of Artos, flying in the wind of any battlefield again.
Suddenly he was aware that Gerontius had turned from examining the ring between his fingers and was watching him. He looked round quickly, and met the gaze of the Prince of Powys.
‘Yes, you’re British, aren’t you, though not of the Cymru?’ said the Prince of Powys.
Owain said, ‘It is because I am British that I was chosen to bring you the word.’
‘So it came to my mind as soon as I saw you. And you are not one of our grey-headed envoys. How do you come to carry your shield with the Saxon war-host?’
‘Simply enough. I have been the thrall of a Saxon master,’ Owain said. ‘This spring when the war-summons came he gave me my freedom and a sword, in return for a certain service.’
‘And so now you come again to your own people?’
‘Only to bring the message that I have brought from the Saxon Camp. Give me a meal for myself and the man who rode with me as my guide, let us rest a few hours, then lend us fresh horses, for our own are well-nigh foundered. I must be gone again by noon.’
The other’s eyes held his own, questioning a little, contemptuous a little. Then Gerontius shrugged. ‘It seems the thrall-ring bites deep. If you had sooner ride into battle with the White Horse than the Red Dragon …’
Owain said rather desperately, ‘God knows that I would give …’ and checked to know exactly what he would give, for he was not using a mere idle form of words. He looked again at the tattered standard as it swung and rippled in the dawn wind. ‘That I would give three fingers of my sword-hand, afterwards, if I might go into battle—this battle—with my own kind. But I must go back. Later, when I am free and if I live, I will come again to my own. Not now.’
He felt as though he were being torn in two as he said it, but the words came out steadily enough, and something in them, or perhaps in his haggard face, must have carried conviction to the tall man with the gold fillet round his brows, for when he met his gaze again, it was kinder than it had been.
‘There are freedoms and freedoms,’ said the Prince of Powys. ‘I take back what I said about the thrall-ring. And someone must go again to the Saxon Camp, to take my return token to Coel of Wessex.’ With a swift gesture he pulled the great brooch from the shoulder of his cloak, and held it out to Owain. ‘There, take it to the Wessex King and tell him that Gerontius and the men of the Cymru will be in their appointed place when the Ravens spread their wings. No, look at it first,’ for Owain had been about to thrust it into the breast of his leather shirt.
He did as he was bid, and saw that what he held in the hollow of his hand, glowing in wrought gold and blood-red enamel, was the likeness of another dragon.
‘One might almost say that you hold the fate of Britain in your hand,’ said the voice of Gerontius, Prince of Powys. ‘Go now. My folk will see to the food and fresh horses. May you come safe through the battle, to fight with your own people another day.’
Two mornings later the first light creeping across the high country around Wodensbeorg found two great war-hosts waiting for each other, where there should have been only brambles and bracken and the plovers calling.
It was a fitting place, Owain thought, looking about him as he shifted his grip on his buckler and felt for the twentieth time that his sword was loose in its sheath.
It had been long after dark when he and his guide had ridden in last night, and Wodensbeorg had been only a blackness upreared against the western sky. He had found Coel of Wessex beside the royal fire in the heart of the Allied Camp, and given him the dragon brooch with Gerontius’s message. He did not remember much about it, he had been too weary, but he knew that Einon Hen had been there and he remembered the look on the fierce falcon face; at the time he had thought it was satisfaction, now he thought that it had been an odd kind of hope, but he did not know what for. The weariness had broken over him like a wave after that, and he supposed that he had slept until someone shook him into wakefulness before dawn. It was not a long sleep, but it must have been a deep one. His body still creaked from the long hours in the saddle, but his head and all his senses felt as though they had been washed in cold water, so that he was sharply aware of sight and sound and smell—the yelp of a raven overhead, pricking the quiet of the waiting war-host, the shape of the clouds banking low along the western sky—great flat-topped anvil clouds. Thunder before evening, he thought …
Against those piled cloud-banks Wodensbeorg rose with its triple crown of turf ramparts that were old almost as the hill they circled. He could see already the darkness of massed men along the ramparts and at the gateway barricades, and the first level sunlight splintered on axe-blade and helmet-comb, though the great wings of men outspread down the hillside on either flank, and the long curved battle-line of the Allied war-host were still in shadow.
Looking along that battle-line Owain could make out the White Horse standard of Coel upreared in the centre, and away on either side the winged and taloned and serpent-tailed standards of lesser Kings spreading and lifting a little in the faint stirring of the air. Close before him, where Haegel stood among his hearth-companions, his glance caught the gleam of the new scarlet cloak that Athelis had woven for her lord last winter—scarlet as the Red Dragon of Britain that was not flying with the Saxon standards today but waiting in the dark woods for its hour to come. Suddenly he knew that like the men on either side of him, he had something to fight for, and not, as he had once thought, only something to fight against. He was one with the men crouching in the woods beyond Wodensbeorg, waiting to go into battle for the sake of a frontier and a free people among the Western Hills. And in that instant with the knowledge of his oneness with them, he was one with the Saxon warriors at his shoulders. ‘One band, one brotherhood …’
A few moments later, above the waiting sounds of the host, the quickened breathing of men, the faint jar of weapons, he heard the hollow booming of the warhorns.
It was a long day and a bloody one, and when it was over, Ceawlin was no more King of the West Saxons but a fox hunted through the furze; and Owain was still a long way from his freedom.
He did not know that; he was thinking of his freedom as he knelt beside the little upland stream washing the spear-gash in his sword-wrist. It was a shallow gash but it had bled a lot. He was remembering the trampling roaring struggle about the great gateway that had surged to and fro for what seemed like an eternity; the sudden tumult in the enemy’s rear that he knew was the British attack. He was seeing again, as the men behind Coel and Haegel broke yelling through and stormed up against the inner defences, the Red Dragon seeming to hover on spread wings above the battle …
The British had earned their frontier. And soon now, by summer’s end at latest, he would be free to seek his own people; free to find Regina again. It crossed his mind, as he held his wrist in the cold running water and watched the bright wisp of flowing blood grow thinner, that the Thorn Forest could not be so very far from here … No, he would not go to look for her until he was free—really free.
He heard a movement behind him, and looked up quickly. The blue-black storm-clouds had crept almost across the sky, and little uneasy puffs of wind were stirring all ways at once among the fern and the brambles; and standing at the top of the bank, outlined against the coming storm, stood Vadir the Hault, leaning on hi
s spear as though it were a staff, and looking down at him. The man had fought like a hero that day; now, though there was no mark on him, he looked utterly spent and his face against the gloom was drawn and white, but his pale eyes were as bright as ever, and Owain wondered how long he had been standing there watching him.
‘Ah, here you are,’ said Vadir, conversationally. ‘Beornwulf is asking for you. They have carried him into the inner berm of the fort with the rest of the wounded.’
‘He is wounded then?’ Owain said stupidly, scrambling up from his knees. ‘Badly wounded?’
Vadir shrugged very slightly. ‘As wounds go, it is quite a small one. Surprising, when you come to think of it, how small a rent in a man’s hide will serve to let the life out, like Marat from a punctured wine-skin.’
And as the first distant mutter of thunder trembled on the air, he turned without another word, and hobbled off towards the place where they had picketed the horses.
A short while later Owain was crouching beside Beornwulf in the lower berm between the earthworks, trying with his own cloak spread round him, to shelter him from the first white lances of the rain. He had seen the wound; it was quite a small one, as Vadir had said, round and dark just under the breast-bone, ragged round the edges where they had tried to cut the arrow-barb out; it did not even bleed very much, outwardly, but he knew that it would bleed internally and there would be no stopping that.
Beornwulf knew it, too.
He lay propped against the foot of the bank because breathing hurt him less that way, and looked at Owain with eyes as blue as Lilla’s and Helga’s. ‘You—have been a long time coming,’ he said.