Page 54 of Warrior Queen
Each wedge-shaped section of mounted warriors rode with short lances tucked under their arms, their horses’ hooves beating a drum tattoo on the ground. Arthur galloped at the front, too obvious by far with the only white horse there. Without thinking, I grabbed Ystradwel’s hand, thin and bony in mine. She clutched me back with a strength I’d not expected from one so old.
Arthur’s charge crashed into the enemy’s left flank, scattering Saxon foot soldiers like spilled barley. At the same time, on the opposite flank, Coel’s cavalry hacked at the enemy with solid determination, his white head visible for a moment in the fray. The Saxons, caught between two ferocious armies, fought like demons.
Chaos reigned. Impossible from where we stood to see who was where, to tell friend from foe, as the clouds thickened and the rain fell ever more heavily in solid sheets. On the walls, we stood like drowned rats, the water sluicing down our faces, soaking our clothes.
I’d seen battles before, many times now, but this was the biggest, the most chaotic, the most frenzied. Perhaps these Saxons were a more determined foe. Though how it would have been possible to be worse than the Dogmen from north of the Wall, I didn’t know. But our British warriors were also more determined, fiercer, angrier.
My knuckles whitened on the cold stone parapet as I leaned out, straining to watch through the falling rain. Ystradwel did the same beside me, and Cadman, standing behind her, stared out over our heads.
Time stretched out; the rain fell ever more heavily. The battlefield churned with mud and bodies, blood and death. The screams of horses rose above the shouts of men, the shrieks of the dying. Nowhere could I see Llamrei or Arthur. Coel’s white mane of hair had vanished. Like a scene from Dante’sInferno,hell was reenacted before my eyes on the plain before Ebrauc.
I couldn’t watch a minute more. Desperate, the fear running through me making me braver than I’d ever been, I swung round on Cadman. “We need to help them.” I waved my hand along the city walls. “The old men, the young. Get them out there. We can’t stand by and watch them die.”
Cadman met my eyes, his faded eyes alight with something wild and young, a rekindled memory of his youth, perhaps. “You’re right.” He drew his sword. “My king wouldn’t have me stand by like this.” He turned and bellowed along the wall. “To me, to the gates. Now.”
Releasing Ystradwel’s hand, I ran after him, down the slippery steps to the road, as the old warriors, the men, and even some of the women, clattered down behind us. At the bottom, I drew my own sword, and followed him toward the gates.
Some sixth sense must have told him I was there. He spun, his face contorted with fury. “What are you doing? Get back to the walls. Iftheywere no place for a queen, then this is worse. You’re not coming with us.”
“I can fight,” I snarled back at him, swiping my wet hair out of my eyes. “That’s my husband out there. You can’t stop me.”
“Can’t I?” he roared, as the warriors from the wall crowded round us: stiff old men, young boys, townspeople. “I’ve heard tales of the High King’s wife, but I never heard one that said she was mad.”
The guards on the gate were swinging one side open.
Cadman reached out to the baker with his peel. “You, hold her tight. You’re not coming.”
The baker, a huge man with a massive belly and arms like hams, scowled back at Cadman, but grabbed me by the shoulders and dragged me out of the way. “I’m sorry, milady. I has to do what Milord Cadman says.”
I didn’t struggle. He was too strong for me. Cadman’s reinforcements charged through the gates, and the gate guards slammed them shut. I sagged in the baker’s arms, defeated.
He loosened his hold. “Best get ourselves back up onto the walls, milady. T’see what happens.”
He was right. I ran, and he lumbered, up the steps to the wall again.
Our meager reinforcements ran toward the fray, slipping and sliding in the mud churned up by all those feet and hooves. And all that bloody rain. But the battle had shifted. Now the fighting was further from the walls. Damn this rain. I couldn’t see at all.
Ystradwel caught my hand. “Where did you go?” Her voice rose in panic, her grip like a vice.
I didn’t answer but leaned out through the crenellation, desperate to spot Llamrei’s white coat.
Nothing.
A young boy peering out of the neighboring crenellation, no older than Llacheu and armed only with a sickle, raised a thin arm and pointed. “Look, they’re on the run. At the back there. I sees it.”
I strained my eyes, swiping the rain out of them on my already soaked sleeve. “Where? I don’t see.”
“There, milady. Right there. I sees ’em runnin’.”
He was right. If the enemy were on the run, surely it was nearly over?
But not quite. Our army appeared to be following them. Mounted warriors, the only ones I could be sure were ours, ran them down. Even the men on foot struggled through the mud in pursuit. At least, I thought they were our men. The thick rain swallowed them up.
Left behind them on the plain, a morass of mud, as deep and wet as the Somme itself must have been, remained. Bodies sprawled in that mud, dead horses made mounds, here and therethingsmoved. Cries rang out, plaintive and terrible. And down came the crows, settling on the corpses and the not quite dead without discrimination. A farmer friend had once told me how crows will take the eyes from living newborn lambs, while their mothers are distracted. I had to look away.
Ystradwel turned to me, the flesh on her face sagging, suddenly loose and old, her eyes full of fear. “In all my time as queen,” she whispered, “I’ve never been present at a battle. This… this is the most terrible of sights.”
I nodded. “Every battle is terrible.” I bit my lip. Where were our men? Nennius had dismissed this battle in a few short words– the Battle of the City of the Legion. Words that did nothing to carry the enormity of what had happened here. Nothing could convey how dreadful a battle was.
