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Chapter Fourteen

The Northern Squadron marched out of Lincoln in the middle of the night. Mael heard the gates squeal, then the soft thudding of hooves. Geraint's men knew the terrain well enough to be able to take up their positions in the dark. They were reinforcing the troop left as pickets at the Dubglas ford when the rest of the squadron pulled back to await Arthur.

The two remaining squadrons rode at dawn. For the first time, Arthur's men left the network of wide, stone-dressed Roman thoroughfares. Their captains led them along narrow tracks in single file through woods and between tall hedges. The forks would have been bewildering had not Geraint left guides at each doubtful turn to direct the unfamiliar troops. When the rear guard came by, the guides would join it.

Near Lincoln, the dead Saxons had all been dragged into mass graves by conscripted civilians, but from a mile beyond the walls there were constant reminders of the rout. The bodies were bloated and so blackened by decay that their skins were indistinguishable from their leather garments. Perhaps the crows and the flies who lay across the corpses like sheets had risen when the first horsemen approached. By the time Mael and Starkad passed near the end of the column, they could ride within a foot of a cadaver rolled barely to the margin of the lane. The carrion eaters would still ignore them. The horses' hooves stirred up the scent of death along with the dust.

"None of them fought," Starkad noted idly as he and Mael rode side by side on a stretch wide enough to do so. "All the wounds are from behind."

"They were afraid," Mael said, realizing that the Dane's comment was accurate. Sometimes the stub of an arrow shaft protruded, broken when the archer tried to retrieve it; sometimes a diamond-shaped wound gaped between the shoulder blades where a lance had driven in with the stunning impact of a horse and armored man behind it. Less frequently, the victims had died when swords bit through skulls or collarbones in a huge, black fan of blood.

Starkad snorted in disgust. "You can't run away from a horseman," he said. "If you stand, you can maybe take a few of them with you to Hel."

The words were not braggadocio, Mael thought to himself. The big Dane really could not imagine panic, fear so great that a man would rather die than face it . . . though the fear itself was generally of death. Mael could not be like Starkad, but the Irishman knew from a hundred bloody fights that there was no fear so great that he could not function despite it. And invariably in the past, his opponents had proven to have had the greater reason for fear.

Forest opened onto plowed land, a narrow canal of sunlit ground between wooded dikes. In the cleared area, men and beasts were milling in disorder. Unarmed handlers from the support sections were leading clumps of riderless horses out of the way of the troops debouching from the woods to the west. Beyond the handlers, dismounted Companions were filing into the eastern woods, carrying all their equipment including the spears they seemed to be bearing instead of lances this day. The men in sight all appeared to be from British tribes, armed with long self bows instead of the more handy composite bows Arthur imported for the mercenaries of other nationalities. The western Britons had grown up with their highly effective weapon. Though the shorter bow of horn and sinew bonded to wood was more useful for a horseman, Arthur had not attempted to retrain his own countrymen.

Maglos rested his hands on his double pommels, counting his men as they appeared. "All right," he shouted. "Recruit Troop, dismount! Give your horses to the handlers, four to a man. Then follow me. And bring all your goddamned gear, especially your water skins, or by god you'll parch like raisins before this day is out."

Stumbling, his legs not working quite like legs after long days of gripping a horse, Mael followed Maglos up a recent slash in second-growth forest. Just behind him strode Starkad, bubblingly happy to be afoot again. The Dane's axe arced out in fun and nipped a two-inch branch from a pine tree. One of the cadre yelped a startled protest as the blade looped back at him. The Dane laughed and wiped sap from the steel.

A Companion stood at the head of the trail where the slope flattened and occasional glints of armor and sunlight could be seen through the trees. "Which unit?" the guide snapped at Maglos, then noticed the varied gear of the men beyond. "Oh, Christ, the recruits," the Companion muttered. "Straight on ahead and spread to the right, three feet between men. And keep 'em the fuck back from the edge of the trees. Every three feet, forming on the command staff."

Ten yards further were knots of men and horses—Arthur and a cornicine, Lancelot, and a blocky man holding the red dragon standard. A fifth man walked from behind a tree at the sound of the recruits trampling through the brush. Mael recognized Cei in a helmet whose long iron nose-strap seemed to split his face. The four subordinates were on foot, though their horses stood drop-reined just behind them. The king himself was still mounted.

Mael took his position to Cei's immediate right where Maglos motioned him. He met the seneschal's eyes, then turned and knelt by a tree. Pretending the command group was not present, the Irishman slid forward to where he could look out over the east slope of the hill. Maglos was spreading the rest of the troop along the crest, man by man.

The valley below had the cross section of a shallow U, half a mile from ridge to ridge. The floor was broad and flat, marked with the darker green of reeds where the Dubglas meandered down the middle. The slope was slight but noticeable, grassy except for an occasional outcropping of limestone. At the base of the hill were a pair of incongruous pennons set on staves some two hundred yards apart. They were apparently centered on the command staff. Mael's eyes narrowed as he saw the flags. To either side the Dubglas glittered in a narrow band, but in front of Mael the water purled and whitened over shallows. Twenty of Geraint's horsemen, the only Companions in plain view, patrolled slowly up and down the meadow to the west of the ford.

Across the stream were the Saxons. The rumor that they were ten thousand strong might have been an underestimate. They were in such disorder that it was hard to say. The far side of the valley was covered with a litter of tents, cookfires, and wagons. Men sat or sprawled among draft animals and the sheep and swine driven along with the levy for food. The Saxons had built no palisade. The only guards apparent were the parties of housecarls formed in front of the largest tents around the war standards.

The Saxons were disorganized, but their numbers were stunning.

Many of the Saxons were awake and straggling down toward the stream in small groups, some to draw water but many to shout insults at the mounted vedettes on the other side. The Dubglas was no more than a hundred feet wide at the ford, though the current there was swift enough over the slick stones to make crossing an awkward business. Standing at the edge of the water, a few Saxon archers shot at the Companions. Their shafts wobbled harmlessly short. Arthur's men appeared to be paying no attention.

There was a bit of discussion among the vedettes. One of the horsemen, a Hun with a naked torso and hair streaming down his back like a horse's tail, uncased his bow and nocked an arrow. Lancelot caught the motion out of the corner of his eye. The Gaul broke off his conversation with the king. The Saxon archers began stumbling back away from the stream in sudden panic. The mud clutched at their feet. Several dropped their weapons to scrabble on all fours.

The Hun ignored them, arching his back and his bow together. He drew and loosed the arrow in a single motion. The nearby Saxons froze, but the arrow curved high beyond them. It plunged down into the group of armored housecarls in front of the largest tent, three hundred yards away. The high-pitched hiss of the dropping shaft was enough warning that the Saxons looked up from their banter in the instant before the arrow struck. Then the guards exploded apart. They left one of their number screaming on the ground with the arrow through the flesh of his right leg. The standard he had held, a boar's skull on a ten-foot pole, wobbled and dipped to the earth before any of the other housecarls could catch it. The Hun's laughter pealed into the sudden silence of the Saxon camp.

Lancelot was swearing in Celtic, his knuckles white on the hilt of his sword. "They were told not to shoot without orders, not to do anything without orders!" he snarled. "I'll have him flayed alive when he—"

"Be silent," said Arthur, without particular emphasis. The king was squinting for a better look at the archer. There was a slight smile on his face. "That was Edzil, was it not?" he asked, as much of Lancelot as of anyone. "One makes allowances for Huns, you know, Roman."

The tall Master of Soldiers said nothing, though his face grew pale. After a moment, Lancelot released his sword so that it could slip the six inches back to home in its scabbard.

Starkad nudged Mael and gestured to the left. An armored horseman from the flank was picking his way along the tree line toward Arthur's position. The rider was alone, but the gilt and silver of his arms suggested his rank. Lancelot noticed him, too, and said, "Here's Geraint. He'd better have everything in order or . . ."

Geraint nudged his horse into the command group. "Or what, Lancelot?" he asked. He was older than most of the Companions and rode with the stiffness of a man laced together with scar tissue. "Everything's fine. We set them between the two lances, from there up the slope to maybe forty yards from here. All of them you sent forward. They're waiting for the Saxons to come."

"Well, that's what they're doing now," said Cei expressionlessly. Every eye in Arthur's force riveted itself on the ford and the Saxons beginning to splash across it.

Not all of Aelle's army was advancing, nor were those who were crossing the Dubglas in as good an order as even the footing would allow. Bands of men, two or three or up to a score, plunged into the water, wearing long swords and full armor. The froth rose to their knees. They shouted, keeping their heavy shields raised to cover their faces and torsos against the expected sleet of arrows.

None of the patrolling Companions fired. Their officer gave a quick command. The squad rode north along the stream, then turned sharply away from the water and up the hill. The Saxon rabble on the other bank shrieked triumphantly and sent a useless volley of missiles after Arthur's men. Most of the arrows did not even reach the west side of the Dubglas. The last of the riders to disappear into the woods cloaking the British left flank was the Hun, Edzil. He turned toward the Saxons. They cried out in fear, but instead of firing again the Hun laughed and pumped his finger at the footmen unmistakably.

Cei and Lancelot had mounted their horses. Mael, who had been lying on his belly, rose and ran his left arm through the loops of his target. "Give me a minute, will you?" Geraint requested without concern. The squadron commander rode back toward his position at a canter.

The leading Saxons were berserkers and champions from among the housecarls, and thegns with a reputation for valor or the desire to gain one. When those leaders had waded ashore on the west bank, the mass of the army began to follow them across the ford in a brown wave. The Saxons slipped, spilling themselves and their neighbors in tangles of limbs and equipment. "Now!" Starkad shouted. The Dane had risen to his feet and slung his shield around to his back where it gave no protection but would not interfere with his axe.

Arthur gave his cornicine an order. Mael could not hear it in the din from the Saxons and the excited exclamations of the recruits nearby. The horn sounded a five-note series. Maglos and his cadre ran behind the untrained men shouting, "No farther than the standards!" as the whole British army shuddered forward into the sunlight.

The king was splendid at its head and center. He wore full mail, including chaps which covered his legs without preventing his inner thighs from gripping his horse firmly. All Arthur's armor had been silvered. The bronze wings flaring to either side of the helmet had been picked out in gold as well. The midmorning brightness made the king a lightning bolt rather than a man. The dragon standard borne at his side filled with the first breeze and unfurled its scarlet terror. The scales of bronze and gold worked into the standard's fabric hissed as though the serpent were a living creature. The Saxons fell silent, save for a few shouts of bravado which rang more fearful than frightening.

Arthur drew up just clear of the trees. His armored squadrons, tightening ranks which the forest had disarrayed, halted to either flank. And the Saxon swarm which had stopped in fear, divided by the river at the king's appearance, raised a great shout and rushed to reunite on the west bank.

Whimpering with frustration but not quite mad enough to charge alone, Starkad turned from the enemy and hugged Mael to his breast. "What's he waiting for?" the Dane demanded in a voice that half the army could hear. "We could—while the river cut them—"

"Don't worry," Mael murmured, patting his friend's iron back like someone consoling a child on the death of a pet, "it'll be all right for us, yes. . . ." Mael's eye caught the glitter of the king's helm. He looked up at the monarch. Arthur, cold and remote as a statue from Karnak, was staring at the two of them. Mael stared back, repeating, "It'll be all right."

Starkad shuddered, regained control of himself. He gave the Irishman a final squeeze before loosing him.

Arthur's force, now that Mael could see it whole for the first time, was drawn up as a line of infantry between two solid masses of ranked horsemen. The center was made up of the native Britons and the recruits, dismounted to either side of the king. The Britons were setting their spears butt-first in the soil and propping their shields against them. That accomplished, the Companions strung their longbows and waited for orders.

The cavalry on the flanks was more restive. Mael noted that the mounted Companions, too, were handling their bows. Their lances pointed vertically upward—ready, but waiting.

Like a crystal with a core of glittering steel, the Saxon host grew by accretion. Men still wandered down the hillside to the ford, yawning and shifting their equipment into more comfortable postures. When they reached the river they paused, then splashed through it to find places among the thousands of warriors already knotted on the other side. In the center of the Saxon line, the nobles and their paid men were ranked ten deep around the standards. Those placed in the forefront were there of their own will. Already they stamped and clashed blades against their shield bosses. From the second rank rose Aelle's own standard, the Battle Swine, raised from the dirt to lower over the array

The men on the fringes of the formation, two-thirds or more of the Saxon force, were of another sort. These were the peasants who owed their thegns produce at harvest time and their bodies in war. It was men like these—freeborn and free-holders, but living at a subsistence level—whom Aelle had left as a tripwire at Lincoln. They had no mail coats nor even the long tunics of iron-studded leather which some of the housecarls wore. In linen and wool and occasionally a steer-hide jerkin, the peasants eyed the archers waiting on the hill before them. They shuddered, then edged a little closer inward toward their armored betters. The peasants' weapons were generally spears, leavened with a few axes and billhooks—tools on any day of the year save days of battle. There were a few men carrying bows. Since the bowmen generally lacked even the flimsy bucklers carried by most of the carls, they were especially determined to worm their way in from the exposed fringes where they might have been of some use.

In a clear, carrying voice, Arthur cried, "Now to grind the vermin away! Loose the horse!"

The cornicine lilted out a call that horns on both wings echoed instantly. The twenty troops of horsemen under Gawain and Geraint scissored down from the flanks at a fast walk rather than a gallop. The Companions began shooting at two hundred yards. Their targets, the mass of Saxon peasantry, crumpled like grass in a hailstorm. Each horseman carried two dozen arrows in his quiver. The front rank of nomad mercenaries, Huns and easterners to whom horses and horn bows were a way of life, spent their loads in less than a minute. The remaining Companions were mostly Germans of one nation or another who had been as innocent of archery as the Saxons until Arthur trained them. They were slower to fire, but there were eight hundred of them.

The Saxon wings disintegrated under the weight of fire. The carls had no protection but shields of wicker and unstrapped wood—and the bodies of the men dying in front of them. Arthur's men were using broadheads that slashed wounds as wide as paired thumbs. In the soft targets the arrows still penetrated completely and pinned men to their dying neighbors.

Without any defense or means to retaliate, without any stiffening from the chieftains who were concentrated in the center of the array, the surviving peasants broke and ran. The Dubglas, more an incident than an impediment when the Saxons advanced across it unopposed, became a bloody deathtrap. Men who slipped were trampled into the rocks. Disabling wounds left others to die, trying to scream in the frothing water that smothered them. The ford was only a hundred yards wide. It packed the thousands of fugitives into a still denser killing zone for the arrows that ripped among them. Fallen bodies dammed the water into a bloody pond. The surface foamed repeatedly as it broke through the obstruction, then stilled again when fresh corpses took the place of those washed downstream. Mael turned to speak to Starkad as the last rank of Companions wheeled their horses. Only then did the Irishman realize that he could not shout over the cries from the river a quarter mile away.

The cavalrymen were reforming and again filling their quivers from stores borne from Lincoln by mule train. A few horses had stumbled. Their riders had either remounted their own animals or swung up on the pillions of neighboring riders. Arthur's fighting strength was undiminished.

But so, despite the carnage, was that of the Saxons.

Aelle's thegns and housecarls had not been touched by the arrows. Their shields were broad and thick, wrapped and studded with iron. Raising them, chanting a war hymn, the Saxons began to plod forward toward the thin British line. Aelle's men still outnumbered their opponents two or three to one. Rightly, they feared neither lances nor the arrows with which the squadrons were being feverishly replenished. The Saxon formation was a wedge of interlocked shields, the inexorable swine-array whose invention had been Wotan's greatest gift to men of valor.

"Look there," Starkad said and pointed. Half a dozen horsemen still loitered near the Saxons. As the wedge began to advance, these Companions cantered even closer. Extra quivers were slung across the withers of their mounts and their bows seemed extensions of their arms. They were Huns.

Saxons in the center of the array raised their shields overhead; those on the left flank facing the horsemen crouched down so that their heads and torsos were covered by their shields. Completely protected, the Saxons waited for the arrows to come.

Come they did, stabbing into the bare calves and ankles of the outermost men of the swine-array. The screams and clash of falling armor masked the machine-like snap of bowstrings and the laughter of the Huns. Every time a Saxon fell or dropped his shield to clutch at his bleeding leg, a second arrow took him in the chest or belly.

"They aren't using broadheads any more," Mael muttered. "Those must be bodkin points to do that, I don't care how strong their bows are." At fifty yards the Hunnish arrows were driving through even good ring mail.

As if the sudden clutter of bodies were an anchor dragging it back, the whole formation faltered. Then, from the front where the boar's skull threatened, Aelle's deep voice boomed, "Wotan loves brave men! Forward!"

The bellow and the clashing of armor in answer to Aelle's shout startled even the seasoned war-horses of the Huns. The Saxon ranks closed; the swine-array resumed its advance upon eight thousand feet.

Hooting and yipping more to themselves than to frighten, the Huns guided their mounts with their knees to within ten yards of the Saxons. There the little men of the steppes opened fire again. They were so close that their shafts pierced even the sturdy shields raised against them, pinning the wood to the arms that held it or gouging deeper into faces. Starkad's knuckles went white against the unyielding helve of his axe. The Dane was not an archer, and he could identify all too easily with the Saxons below.

One huge Saxon broke ranks and charged the tormentor whose arrow had lodged in his left eye-socket. The German was deaf to the shouts of those trying to bring him back. Iron medals cast in the shape of Roman horsetrappings glittered against his chest. The Hun who had pricked him wheeled his horse and retreated a dozen paces. The archers to either side waited until the footman had drawn abreast of them. They shot together. The goose-quill fletching of their arrows bloomed against the Saxon's rib cage without the hindrance of the heavy shield to penetrate. Dead on his feet, the warrior staggered on.

Shouting in high-pitched voices, the pair of Huns slapped six arrows apiece through the Saxon's cuirass. Each clump of feathers was so tight that a man's palm could cover the entry holes. The victim's arms slowly straightened so that his spear and shield were hanging as dead weights instead of weapons. Still the Saxon kept advancing.

When the dying warrior was within a yard of the Hun who was his quarry, that horseman shot once more. This time the shaft entered the right eye and clanked against the helmet at the base of the skull. The Saxon stiffened and fell backward like a tree sawn through at the roots. The Hun who had killed him bent without dismounting. He swung up again with the iron medallions in his hand.

Starkad cursed on the hill from which he watched the lethal toying. Beside him, Mael slapped his fist again and again upon his pelvis. The Irishman could see this game was almost over. It would be the Saxons' turn to strike next. Arthur's line overlapped the wedge to either side, but the Saxons were ten ranks deep and faced only a single row of longbowmen and recruits. Horns cried fierce, brassy commands from Arthur's wing squadrons. That was too late, Mael thought—the Saxons had reached the edge of the hill, only two hundred yards from the British. Aelle shouted and his men broke into a bellowing charge. Arrows could perhaps needle the margins of the swine-array, but missiles alone could never break it.

Then Mael gasped as the wedge disintegrated of its own accord at almost the instant the rush began. The whole Saxon front rank began to scream and stumble like their comrades who had been leg-pierced by the Hunnish arrows. The weight of the ranks behind the leaders pressed the charge onward. Men hopped and fell, shrieking as they stood one-legged and pulled black metal from the bare soles of their raised feet.

"Crows' feet!" Mael shouted, recognizing from the result what was breaking the Saxon line. The Irish used the devices, too, when time and location permitted. Crows' feet, caltrops, tetrahedrons—they were simply four iron nails welded with their heads together so that a spike was upward no matter how the object fell. Strewn in high grass, they were almost invisible. Their spikes ripped buskins or bare feet like so many two-inch spear blades.

The crows' feet were disabling but they could not kill. The arrows that now darted from three sides of the broken array accomplished the killing. Longbows from the hilltop thrummed as Saxons dropped their shields to pluck iron from their feet. From either flank rode three hundred archers, firing from refilled quivers. The Companions' fingers were bloody from earlier shooting and many riders were unable to draw their shafts to full nock. The body armor of the thegns was often able to turn a missile anyway, even when it missed the shields. Still, many arrows found targets and Saxons gurgled and fell.

Mael part drew and resheathed his sword a dozen times in nervous exultation. "If they run!" he was shouting. "If they run—"

Warriors in the rear of the array broke. That was their death, for the last two ranks of Arthur's horsemen whooped and charged with their lances couched. The wave of steel lance heads bit into the backs and necks of the running Saxons like saw-teeth in soft pine. The victims flew forward. Their arms windmilled; sometimes a bright froth of pulmonary blood sprayed from their nostrils. The killers rode over the fallen Saxons, pivoting their wrists at the balance of the lance shafts and dragging the points free. Then the Companions could strike again, either with butt spikes or the already bloodied heads.

As a week before at Lincoln, as other armies for a thousand years, the Saxons proved that to run from a lance was to die. The darting steel left them food for the battlefield crows, whether they were thegn or earl, naked or mailed.

Some of the Saxon peasants who had survived to recross the stream lay on the far bank watching. They were shivering spectators for whom the price of admission had been the death of the men to every side of them. Now, as their screaming superiors rushed toward the water to die, the carls turned again. They began to straggle off toward their homes as swiftly as exhaustion allowed their legs to move. War was coming too close again, and the peasants had had their bellies full of it for this day.

Not all the Saxons ran. The men in the front ranks thrust forward and up the hill because it never occurred to them to go in any other direction. Some wore wooden-soled sandals which turned the points of the crows feet. Some were simply lucky, skipping across ground which, though thickly sown, was not interlocked with spikes. A few showed enough intelligence to shuffle forward instead of striding, scuffing the devices harmlessly out of their way. Most of the Saxon champions, however, twisted the bloody iron from their feet and walked on, treating the wound as one more incident of war like a bee sting or sunburn. Men who could not do that fled and died fleeing, but among warriors whose honor and livelihood was physical valor, it would have been surprising had there not been many who ignored injuries in order to close with the enemy.

The longbowmen, their quivers emptied, were snatching shields and spears. "All right, you bastards!" Maglos roared to his recruits. "Time to earn your pay!"

Mael shrugged once more to settle his armor comfortably. With a shout that tried to equal all the battle noise around him, Starkad bounded toward the nearest of the oncoming Saxons. Mael ran at the Dane's left and a step behind him. The Saxon, a great walleyed ruffian in chain mail, thrust his target forward to block Starkad's axe. The axe blade sheared the iron-bound linden wood from one rim to the other, gouging so deeply that it opened the Saxon's forearm as well. The Saxon screamed, spinning off balance from the torque of the blow he had received. Mael's sword tip laid the falling man's throat open, drowning his cries in a spray of blood.

Still bellowing his berserk challenge, Starkad met a clot of a dozen Saxons. They split apart at his fury. Some of them were engaged by the other recruits and Britons following the Dane to battle. Starkad's axe was making broad figure-eight passes in the air before him. One housecarl counted on the pattern he imagined in the Dane's offense. Starkad, reversing the direction of the axe in mid-sweep, dashed the Saxon's brains out with the peen. A thegn to Starkad's left saw the Dane's back open, forgot Mael, and raised his spear. Mael thrust and the thegn took the Irishman's sword through the rib cage. The Saxon fell, his bones gripping the blade. Mael tried to tug his weapon clear as two of the dead man's housecarls pressed him. The blade bent as it came out, cocking up in the middle at a thirty-degree angle.

Cursing and suddenly in fear of death, the Irishman jumped back to avoid the spear which licked at his face. Mael's missing earlobe burned as if afire. The sword he carried was the one he had taken from Ceadwalla's body, a well-polished blade and solid to look on. But the metal was soft, and now it would be his death for not testing it earlier. . . . The Saxons struck together, both holding their spears overhand at the balance. Mael backed again, letting the points notch his shield facing. He set his blade under his right sandal and tried to straighten the weapon.

The leftward Saxon howled and thrust with both hands, driving his spear six inches deep in Mael's shield. The Irishman slashed from a crouch. The stroke severed the Saxon's wrists before he could step away from it. The dying man threw his spurting stumps in the air and turned, fouling his companion's blow so that the spear only ripped Mael's side instead of splitting his breastbone as intended. The Irishman's mail shirt was as good as could be forged, but its links parted before the spear head.

Mael countered with a backhanded slash at the remaining Saxon. Ceadwalla's blade had twisted axially under the stress of lopping through the previous opponent's wrists. The edge did not bite, but the effect on the Saxon was that of being slapped across the head with a long iron club. The man went down. Mael finished him with his shield edge. He dropped his useless sword so that he could use both hands to slam the iron rim down on the Saxon's neck.

Ignoring the swords sheathed at the dead men's belts, Mael worked the spear out of his shield to rearm himself. The weapon had a long, double-edged blade, and its shaft for several feet back was wrapped with iron wire. To free the spear, Mael pumped the shaft up and down. His eyes darted about the immediate battlefield to be sure that none of the men brawling nearby was about to stab him.

Lancelot's fine armor had drawn more than its share of attackers. The Gaul was handling them in easy—almost leisurely—fashion, striking with both the head and the butt spike of his lance. As Mael watched, Lancelot cleared a Saxon from his left side with a jolt from his buckler.

Arthur's own style was as lethal, though more frantic than that of his Master of Soldiers. The king was wheeling his horse in a tight caracole that intimidated footmen while he slashed at them to either side with his sword. Arthur's silvered armor danced as he moved. A blow of some sort had severed one wing from his helmet and scarred the plating beneath it. The war-horse foamed as it trampled over the bodies of two slain Saxons. Nearby lay the British standard bearer, his teeth locked in the throat of the berserker who had killed him. The red dragon lapped over both men like a shroud. Cei was nowhere to be seen, but his horse trotted riderless at the edge of the woods.

Below, the melee begun when Starkad had struck the foremost Saxons had expanded into a full battle. Men had flowed together from both sides. Now the lines were beginning to disintegrate again from attrition. Aelle, the Saxon king, traded spear thrusts with two Companions. Twenty feet away, Starkad and a Gothic swordsman fought a trio of Saxons. As Mael wrenched his own weapon free, Starkad finished one opponent by chopping through his left thigh. At almost the same moment, the Gothic Companion doubled over with a surprised expression and both hands spread to catch the intestines spilling out of his torn jerkin. Starkad turned to block the bloody sword which had killed the Goth, leaving his right side and the Saxon there unattended.

Mael took a step forward with his spear cocked in his right hand. He loosed. The Irishman's legs were rubbery from exertion and the heat, but they held him. The shaft flew straight. The Saxon's upraised sword glanced off Starkad's shoulder, but dead fingers had released it even as the blow had started. The impact of Mael's spear punching into his chest drove the Saxon a step backward. He fell there, hemorrhaging bright streams from mouth and nose.

Mael knelt, panting hugely against the weight and constriction of his armor. His eye settled on the Saxon king. Aelle was not a young man; his beard was a grizzled red like the fur of an old fox. But the Saxon was as cunning as a fox as well, survivor of more battles than most men could dream of fighting. Mael saw him thrust one Briton through the thigh and drag him like a harpooned fish into the path of the second. When that Companion stumbled, Aelle's shield boss laid him out as surely as a club to the head could have. Pulling his spear point free, the Saxon king stepped over the litter of bodies and hurled his spear at Arthur.

Arthur had just dispatched the last of his attackers. He was shouting with triumph when the Saxon spear took his horse in the right ham. The beast gave a whinny that was almost a scream. It reared. Arthur, terrified of being afoot, screamed himself. He dropped his sword and clutched his saddle with both hands.

Lancelot's eyes were as cold as the iron frame of his helmet. He spurred his horse from a walk to a gallop. His lance was couched under his arm, the point aimed at the center of Aelle's breastbone where the impact would knock the Saxon down even if he managed to interpose his shield to the blow. Aelle had drawn a hand axe from his belt. With a feral grin and the timing of a man who had seen thirty years of battle, Aelle brought his axe around in an overhand arc. It intersected the lance an inch behind the head. The wood sheared and the point flew away, its sharpened edges glistening like the facets of a gemstone. The shaft, swung downward by the blow, drove into the ground and lifted Lancelot by directing his own momentum onto the sudden fulcrum. With hideous perfection, Aelle made disaster certain by sweeping his target around. Its boss took the horse on the left eye as the beast drove past him. The horse shied. Its feet skidded out from under it, narrowly missing Aelle as the hindquarters slewed around. The beast's weight pinned the struggling Lancelot's right leg against the turf beneath it. The animal's rib cage thudded like a drum. Man and horse cried out together.

Aelle, midway between Arthur and Mael, regained his balance. He cried, "You at least will get your death this day, Unfoot!" As if in response, the legs of Arthur's wounded mount collapsed. The king slid to the ground despite his screams and his grasping at the mane and saddle. Brandishing his shield and hand axe, Aelle ran toward his fallen opponent thirty feet away.

To either flank, lancers were riding uphill to help finish the Saxons, but there was no Briton as close to the two kings as Mael was. The Irishman grunted and took a step toward Aelle. The Saxon was moving away from Mael, and besides, Mael had no weapon left but his target. He slipped his left arm out of the loops and gripped the rim with both hands. The shield was five layers of birch plywood, faced with leather and locked together by an edge band of iron. Slightly convex at the face, it weighed almost forty pounds. With all his remaining strength, Mael brought the shield up from his left side and released it. The target spun like a huge discus, curving uphill toward the point at which Aelle and Arthur were about to meet.

Aelle was raising his axe high overhead and shouting down at Arthur when the shield caught him in the back of the neck. It killed him instantly. The Saxon's cries snapped off as his spine parted. His head scissored back and met his shoulder blades while the target spun off to the side. Aelle's axe flew high over Arthur to stick in the ground near the fallen standard. Aelle's flaccid body slammed face-first at the feet of the British king.

Arthur stood up very slowly, bracing himself with a hand on the ground. His eyes were on Aelle, ignoring Mael and the riders spurring toward their Leader from both flanks. The Pendragon's face was white except for his moustache and the blood trailing from his bitten lip. With his twisted foot, Arthur kicked at Aelle's head. It lolled on the broken neck. The helmet rolled off and the sun gleamed on the Saxon's bare pate. Arthur kicked him again and spat. "Swine!" he shouted. "You Saxon swine will all kiss my feet or burn, burn!"

Arthur suddenly straightened and glared at the men around him. The Companions had paused when their Leader rose. Now the naked fury of the king's stare drove at them like a gust of chill wind. "Lancelot! Where are you, Lancelot?" the king shouted.

Mael turned. Lancelot's horse had scrambled to its feet. The Master of Soldiers raised himself to his left knee. Blood was dripping from the top of his other boot. Though Lancelot's leg had not been broken, its flesh, pinioned against the bone by the horse's half ton of weight, had been torn as if by an axe. When the Gaul tried to stand, his face went sallow and his right leg buckled under him.

"God damn you, Roman!" Arthur shouted. "You always fail when I need you!" Mael's own expression blanked. The Irishman had a momentary urge to put a sword through Lancelot's heart as a mercy, despite his hatred for the tall captain.

The king's eyes flicked aside. They focused for the first time on Mael. "You, Irishman, you'll not fail me. I need you to ride to Merlin. Tell him to loose the dragon now." Arthur's face was growing red. He paused, then the words began to spatter out again. "Tell him it must kill and burn and waste the whole land from here to the seacoast. Tell him to sear the Saxons until they either wade into the sea or beg me, beg me, for mercy! And that mercy I may grant or not grant!"

Mael licked at the sweat rimming his upper lip. "I—I'll need equipment—"

"Yes, yes," Arthur snapped, "anything, horses . . . Lancelot, write him out a warrant to take whatever he needs along the way. Hurry!"

Two men were helping Lancelot sit up. He had taken off his helmet and was sucking wine greedily from a skin bottle. He winced. "In my saddlebags," the Gaul muttered. "There's parchment there and an ink stick."

One of the pair holding the Master of Soldiers leaped up and caught the nearby horse before Arthur could flare again in rage. The Companion rummaged in the bag for the materials, then brought them back quickly. Lancelot spat on the ink and began to scratch words on the scroll with a reed pen.

Arthur had unlaced his helmet. He mopped his face with a towel soaked in water. There was a long welt on the left side where the cheek piece of his helmet had been driven into the skin. Otherwise, the king had his normal color back. "There'll be Saxons scattered from here to Glevum," he said to Mael.

The Irishman was examining the sword he had just taken from Aelle's body. It was a long horseman's blade of Roman pattern and Spanish manufacture, old and well cared for and deadly.

"Plenty of British cutthroats, too," Arthur was saying. "Battle draws them." He looked back down the slope. Some Saxons were still writhing amidst the crows' feet, trying to crawl away from the squads of Companions who carefully picked their way in to finish the wounded. Nearer the river, there was a denser carpet of men with arrows and sometimes broken lance heads protruding from their vitals. The Dubglas still choked on bodies. Its current had not yet washed all the blood away from them.

With unexpected insight, Arthur added, "Maybe that's the only kind of men that battle does draw. But I'll send Gawain with you. I want the message to get through."

Mael looked up. "Leader," he said, "send Starkad along instead of Gawain."

The king glared at the Dane who was now shambling up the hill to his friend's side. Starkad's smile was contented. He had lost his steel cap somewhere, and blood, slung from his axe head after his first stroke, speckled him all over. He himself appeared to be uninjured. "The Dane?" Arthur said. "He rides a horse like a sack of grain."

"He fights like any three of your Companions," Mael said, with no attempt to keep the edge out of his voice. "Send him with me or send someone else in my place."

The good humor of victory held. Arthur shrugged and called, "Lancelot, add the Dane to the warrant."

The Gaul's face was impassive as he scratched a flourish on the parchment. He handed the document and pen to his Leader. Arthur signed his name laboriously, chewing at the corner of his lip as he formed each letter. He gave the result to Mael. "Don't fail me, Irishman," the king said. "Don't even think of failing me."

 

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