Even before the men were in clear view, Niall had become Berserker and was raging and screaming at the limits of his chains, his face distorted, his body rigid with muscle and anger as he reached into the distance to pluck heads, to take lives!
The leader of the men was tall and darkly bearded, and he stared at the sparsely bearded, filthy-skinned Connachtman for long minutes when he finally reached the bog-dwelling. There were seven riders, heavily armed and clad in thick leather jackets and trousers; bone and metal strips were sewn into the jackets, and pointed iron studs protected their arms and calves. Shields hung from their saddles. No spears, no heads, no stains of blood on the horses’ withers where such trophies might have been carried, and yet they had been recently in battle, that much Niall could see; and the Bear could see it too: the sight and smell of blood drove him more berserk, more furious!
One of the riders dismounted and dragged two unhappy looking men towards the Berserker. Niall had not noticed them before. They were flaxen haired, and thickly moustached; they might have been men of Eriu, but their demeanour was wrong, their clothes were wrong; they roared a strange language.
Their bonds were cut, and they were flung at Niall, who took them and feasted on their lives, and when his snow sword was torn from the ground and flung towards him, the Fomorian’s spell now broken, there was just redness and the intense and almost overwhelming pleasure of slaughter.
And then calmness, satiation.
He sat down, breathing heavily, amid the dismembered corpses. Niall came into possession and watched the tall leader walk towards him.
The man crouched before the Mad Bear, and nodded in a way that suggested satisfaction with what he had seen. In broken and clumsy Erish he said, ‘I am Arthur ap Powys, Warlord and Bull Chief and law councillor to half the tribes of the Britons. The men you have just killed were Saxons from the east of the country. A thousand times a thousand more remain and it is my intention to drive them back into the sea. I can use your sword arm, and your invincibility, if you will agree to fight for me.’
‘I am Niall mac Amalgaid. I am Niall the Mad Bear. I am the Sneachta Doom of all who cross swords with me. I am Swiftaxe. I am a raging bear. I am a god called Odin who knows no compassion or fairness. Cut me loose and I shall fight for you with pleasure. But stand distant when you do, or my blade will know the song of your own heart.’
Arthur grinned and then, using his broad bladed war-axe, he tried to cut the great links of the chain. The chain held fast and strong. Finally Niall himself cut the chain off, using his red gored snow sword.
He stood, massaging his wrist, and staring at the desolate bog that had been his home for so long, Conan Halfbrain shuffled away around the crude shelter, passing from Niall’s life forever.
‘A ruined henge. A circle of stones,’ said Niall. ‘Does such a place exist in your land?’
Arthur nodded. ‘I know of such a place. It lies in the over-lapping zone of Briton and Saxon.’
‘After I have fought for you, you must take me there. It is my only hope of release from this curse.’
‘That I shall do,’ said Arthur. ‘With the grace of Christ, and the strength of Lug!’
When they had gone Conan emerged from hiding and wrote down in ogam, on the stones of the ruined house, what he had heard. Henceforth this place of dry land, in the Swamp of the Mad Bear, was known as Mag na Beirdia – the plain of the Two Gods.
PART FOUR
The Warlord of the Britons
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Kingdom of Morgannwg, South Wales, AD 495
Although only two encounters between the celtic peoples of Britain and the invading Saxons under their warlord, Cerdic, are recorded in the Saxon Chronicles, these were only the major encounters. The first of these occurred in AD 495 when Arthur, already a headstrong and powerful leader of men at the age of twenty-two, led 250 Britons against the numerically superior forces of the Saxons at a place known as Cerdicesora – Gerdic’s Frontier. This place was to remain Cerdic’s Frontier. The Saxons were badly beaten and withdrew behind their own lines. Not for nineteen years would this rout be fully revenged, and by that time the invincible and unstoppable war machine that was Niall of Connacht, the Mad Bear, would have long since passed from the world of Arthur and his Britons.
Between these two great battles were fought a continual series of skirmishes against Cerdic in the south, as well as a hundred battles a year against the Angles in the north and east, and the continually harrassing Erish reivers who found so many convenient waterways along which to sail their black hulled ships into the tribal lands of the West Britons.
Up one of these waterways a war queen called Grania had sailed. A few days after her had come a dark and angry man called Fergus. But Fergus had run into a Saxon raiding party, and had been taken as their slave.
For a while, though, he had glimpsed the beacons that marked the earthen fortress of Powys, high on its hill, strong and secure. The flame that burned from its walls was a testimony of the celtic arrogance of the man who lived there, planning for the day when he would sweep back into the eastern provinces and the northern wastes and repossess his ancestral lands.
Against the brilliance of the fire, Arthur, the Dragon Lord of Powys, the Bull Chief of the Britons, was a tall and angry silhouette. He stood, hands resting tensely on his hips, head bowed and long hair curled around his neck as he thought of war, and planned.
After a while he walked back to the small house that stood in the centre of the raised hill between the circular earthen defences. Tents were scattered about, most of them clustered inside the wooden palisade wall to protect them from arrows fired up from any raiding party that might arrive down below. So far only three houses had been built inside the fort. Two of them, long and shallowly rooted to the ground, were for Arthur’s crack troops, his horsemen, resting their bodies and their minds after the long march they had just completed back from battle. The horse-troop, of all the men who fought for the Bull Chief, were called upon to give everything they could in battle.
The third house was small and round, and here Arthur and his officers slept. Inside that house, now, three men sat staring silently and sombrely at the small cooking fire between them.
As Arthur entered the house, stooping beneath the crossbeam, they all looked up; tired eyes, unshaven faces, the strain and sweat of skirmishing etched into their skins, as if each line told of the multitude of times they had been a hair’s breadth from death.
The darkest of the three men, his lank hair greasy and combed back from his high forehead, his body heavy and stocky with the excesses of peacetime, spoke immediately Arthur entered. ‘We must rest. It would be suicide to go out again; you work the soldiers too hard.’
Arthur squatted by the fire, reached to it and pulled out a burning ember which he held up before his eyes. ‘I know.’
The dark man smiled, glanced at the others as if to say, By the True God! What’s come over the man?
This was Bryn of Morgannwg, known as Bryn the Merciless, but even his lust for slaughter was second, now, to his lust for peace, if only for just a few days.
The second man of the three was brown haired and grey eyed, his hair cut short in a series of stiffened spikes, worn on his scalp like the bizarre plume of an exotic bird. He carried a giant broadsword across his lap, caressed it all the time as others might caress a woman’s body. ‘Cerdic will take weeks to rethink his strategy. We can afford the time.’
Arthur looked at him. ‘I think that Cerdic will have come to that conclusion too. He might decide to strike when it is least practical.’
‘He would never come to Din Powys. Would he?’
Arthur shrugged. ‘Who knows? Not I.’
The other man fell silent. He was Kei, son of Kynyr, whom some called Kei Ironhand because of the sword he carried, and others Kei son of Llew because of the warrior’s indiscreet and notorious womanising.
The third man in the house laughed softly, and when the others glan
ced at him angrily he bragged in the fashion of his countrymen: ‘I am Niall, the Snow Destroyer of Connacht, the invincible holder of forts and fords, and if Cerdic attacks us, then don’t worry your heads about it, for I shall hold him off single handed while you snooze strength back into your limbs.’
Although Kei remained placid and silently amused, Bryn the Merciless spluttered with indignation and tried to climb to his feet to draw his sword. A sharp word from Arthur stopped him and he settled, grumbling, back to the floor.
‘Do you doubt what our Erish mercenary says?’ asked the Bull Chief.
‘No,’ said Bryn coldly. ‘I just dislike the way he says it.’
‘But I am glad he has the confidence of it,’ said Arthur, grinning at Niall. ‘For without my war queen I feel uncomfortably vulnerable. Fortunately she will be back at the fort within a few days, battle weary no doubt. Then, Niall, you shall see a woman whose strength and beauty has not been known in these lands for far too long.’
Niall said nothing. He knew nothing of this War Queen lover of Arthur’s, and too much time had passed for him to remember …
They settled quietly and comfortably around the fire, staring at the flickering flame and the gradually dying embers. The night spread towards its darkest hour. Everything seemed peaceful …
The piercing note of a war trumpet, blown in alarm, brought Niall instantly awake. Arthur had already sprung to his feet and was ducking out into the night. Kei followed, and Bryn the Merciless struggled to wipe sleep from his eyes and understand what was going on.
Outside, eerily illuminated by the blazing beacon, men were scattering to the walls, weapons reflecting bright, bodies a strange red in the firelight, for there was no time to dress for war.
Still the carnyx on the seaward wall was sounding, and then a second from the north wall.
Out in the darkness, then, came the answering cries from the Saxon war horns. Ten, perhaps, then more, then a hundred, a great harsh wailing cry of triumph, a deafening blast of attack.
Leather cowls were flung from where they concealed firebrands, and on the cleared land around Din Powys the army of the Saxons was revealed, running towards the hill slopes.
Arthur screamed orders, moving swiftly around the ramparts, occasionally reaching out to pick a far-flung javelin from the ground and sling it back down at the advancing wall of horn-helmeted men.
Arrows flew like night birds into the fort, clattered off shields, thudded in earth and flesh. Men screamed, men died. Fire was brought to all approaches and the brands burned noisily, their acrid smell covering, for a while, the stench of blood.
Then the surprise was over and it was pointless using arrows or javelins, and the pagan army just slogged its way across the ditch and up to the first shallow slope, behind which an angled frieze of pointed stakes would hold them for just a few seconds.
As they came across it the air above the fort resounded to the buzzing swirl of slings, and the sound of stones on skull and metal helmets was like thunder.
Then slings too were useless as a major weapon, and battle was joined on the earth ramparts, and across the wooden palisade, which rapidly collapsed in one section before the onslaught of the Saxons.
Metal clashed and scraped; leather was rent and mail cracked and rattled. Less screams, now, but a volley of grunting and gasping, as the men of the fort applied themselves to the task of defence.
Arthur was deep among them, his sword hewing limbs and taking off scalps, but he ran perpetually from site to site on the wall, assessing numbers, crying encouragement.
‘It’s just a small raiding band,’ he yelled. ‘No more than two hundred.’
This was encouraging news to the men on each side of the fort, who battled, of course, with the uncanny sense that behind them the main strength of the Saxons might be working its way into the compound.
In the middle of the main force of the enemy a single figure could be seen and heard, its voice a shrill and animal cry of anger, its blade a scything wind, reaping an unnatural harvest of lives with its edge and point.
Where Niall the Mad Bear fought, the spirit of Odin in full possession, its ecstasy reflected in the intensity of the young man’s blood lust, the Saxons soon became discouraged, and broke from the tightly clustered onslaught, ran down the hill and into the night. Finding himself alone, without victims, the Mad Bear raced up the hill and launched himself at the nearest sword-wielder. The man screamed for him to stop, for he was a Celt himself, but Niall hewed him down, leapt towards the next man.
The Britons scattered, pushing Niall before them, and straight at a second concentration of Saxons. Here too Niall was a whirlwind of death, and in time the northern walls of the fort were safe.
Niall’s berserk rage left him and he collapsed heavily to his knees, blood running freely from his mouth where he had bitten and savaged himself in his fury. His arms and legs were cut to ribbons, but he seemed unbothered by these wounds. After a while he stood and calmly walked to the southern walls where men still flowed up the slopes, only to be shredded on reaching the swords of the Britons.
For a second or two Niall’s attention was snared by two rapidly moving brands of fire, some way distant. Men on horseback! There could be no other explanation for the sight, and he felt he should warn Arthur of this, for if the skirmishers pitted horses to the battle there could be some valuable booty for the Britons.
Arthur was down the slope, surrounded by a throng of Saxons, who were cutting at him with maniacal fury. He bled and screamed, whirling like the Berserker himself, but without Niall’s power and mindless invulnerability.
Niall leapt down the slope, savaging and cutting all who stood before him, Celt and Saxon both.
Try as he might he could not get near to the Warlord, and he called for the Bear to possess him, but the unpredictable whim of the god acted against him, this time, and the blood lust refused to take him.
Then the two horsemen burst into the light from the beacon, and showed themselves not as Saxons, but as young Celtic warriors.
Swords swinging, legs pumping the flanks of their black steeds, they cut their way through the ranks of the Saxons, and surrounded the weakening Arthur. Arthur raced up the slope, and Niall cut down towards him. The enemy fell back in one of those sudden and often inexplicable mass panics that lasts, perhaps, a second or two.
It was enough. By the time the attack was under way again Arthur was safe, and the two mounted warriors had added their own kind of chaos to the Saxons’ ranks, driving many of them away, sustaining deep wounds themselves, but fighting with an almost joyous excitement.
They rode up the slopes and leapt across the earth walls, were led round to the gate in the palisade, and inside to safety.
After a while the skirmish ended and the blooded Saxon force faded into the night. The fort resounded to the cheers of the Britons, and repair began immediately: first the fort, then the wounded.
A renewed attack was unlikely, but not impossible. Most probably, Arthur explained to Niall as they sat and closed each other’s wounds, they’ll ship back up the channel to a safe beaching point along the Saefern river and repair their own wounds.
‘They’re fools if they do,’ said Niall. ‘If they have any sense they’ll attack again. We’re far weaker than we seem.’
‘I agree,’ said Arthur. ‘But if they had had any sense they’d have come in force, Cerdic with them. We’ll have to trust to luck, and God, that they don’t suddenly discover the best strategy.’
‘I’ll trust to luck and my own gods, and mine are war gods. I have no time for this weak god of yours.’
Arthur said nothing, merely watched as his body was repaired.
Towards dawn he rose, and followed by Niall and Bryn the Merciless, went to where the two horsemen were curled asleep, losing their pains to their dreams, recovering their strength after their ride from whatever province had fostered them.
One of the young warriors awoke and sat up, brushing back his hair and gri
nning.
‘For your help,’ said Arthur, ‘my sincere thanks.’ He was about to say more when he noticed something. The youth still smiled, waiting, it seemed, for Arthur to realise just who he was.
Arthur was reaching out and touching the ivory amulet that hung around the youth’s neck.
As Arthur touched it, so Niall recognised it! It was his, the amulet that had been given to him before the skirmish with his brother Feradach, and the war queen Grania!
Niall felt an immediate urge to rip the amulet from this boy’s neck, but something prevented him from acting so violently.
Arthur was saying, ‘It’s you, the boy who kept my brother alive until …’ he glanced round at Niall, frowned for a second as he saw Niall’s dark expression. Looking back at the boy: ‘So. You’re a warrior, now, and by God you use a sword well. Who taught you?’
‘I taught myself,’ said the boy. ‘Do you remember my name?’
‘I confess that I don’t,’ said Arthur. ‘But I remember that I slapped your face when you lied to me. You may slap me now, young dragon, and even the score: a bad memory is the scourge of older men. I am ashamed.’
The fresh-faced boy, his features framed in half-length black hair, reached his hand to Arthur’s face and touched finger to cheek, then laughed. ‘My name is Owain, and the score is settled. No man shall fight more fiercely for you, no warrior shall pledge his soul more completely, no Celt shall behave more honourably. I am your servant, until the sword decides otherwise.’
‘And that gives my heart fresh hope,’ said Arthur, and glanced angrily – and pointedly – at Bryn the Merciless as that rather boorish warrior grumbled with annoyance.
‘This, then,’ said Arthur, reaching towards the still sleeping warrior next to Owain, ‘is your eagle sister; her name, I also forget …’