Page 36 of The Bear's Heart
He pressed his lips to my hair. “You should try. We have far to ride in the morning.”
What? Had I heard him right?
“Why?” My heart was in my mouth.
“Because I’m not leaving you here.”
My breath caught. Was this what I wanted to hear? That I was to accompany the army and be where I could see he was safe? Or watch him die. Fear clutched at my heart. Would it be better than sitting here alone at Din Cadan waiting for his return– possibly over many months with no news of his safety?
“You’re not?” was all I could think of to say.
He put a finger under my chin, raising my face to his. “I couldn’t leave you, could I? You’re the Luck of Arthur. All my people think so. It’s because of you I’m king– or so they say.”
Was there just the smallest hint of resentment in his voice?
I swallowed. I’d heard them say this, that I’d brought luck with me when I’d come from Ynys Witrin. A heavy responsibility to bear.
“And you?” My voice was small and hollow. “Do you think that’s true?”
He bent his head and kissed me on the lips. “Of course not. It was me that made me king, not some prophecy. But my people think it, and that’s what matters. I wouldn’t disillusion them even if I could. Their belief reinforces their trust and ties them tighter to me. With you at my side as we ride north, they’re already confident we’ll triumph.”
He put his arm around my shoulders, and I nestled in against his still cold body, but sleep wouldn’t come. I lay awake a long time, listening to the steady rhythm of his beating heart.
Chapter Fourteen
The flock ofrooks rose in a cloud of dirty washing, black wings beating the heavy air, their harsh cries plaintive in the silence of the battlefield. Only it wasn’t silence, was it? There’s never silence in the aftermath of a battle.
There are groans. Because the dead are not all dead. They’re wounded, grievously, mortally, fatally, and they’re a long time in dying. A sword bites through flesh and blood vessels, sinew and tendons. It punctures intestines and lungs and stomachs, but it doesn’t always kill.
And the stench. I’d read about battles in books, seen them dramatized in films, in TV dramas, in documentaries, but never had anyone mentioned the smell. You had to be there, in it, amongst the dead and the dying, to know what that smell was like. It was blood and sweat, and above all, it was shit. Because dying men vacate their bowels at the point of death as all the muscles finally relax.
But I wasn’t in the fray. I was just an outsider– an observer. Stationed with my guard in the tree line above the river, I’d watched it all unfold before me as the early morning mist cleared and the sun came creeping up over the far horizon, gilding the forest’s treetops with its warm glow. A deceptive warmth. For there was no warmth in what lay before me now. The sun had turned its face away to hide behind a veil of cloud, as though disowning what lay before it, brutal and raw upon the banks of the river.
Smoke rose from the burning boats drawn up on the foreshore, and the camp the Saxon raiders had made lay broken and twisted, unrecognizable in the dirt.
Like them.
Shock held me mesmerized. Shock and fear, although it wasn’t a fear for my husband, whose white horse singled him out amongst the riders now clustering near the ruin of the boats. He was safe. He was alive. He had won. Blood streaked his horse’s shoulders– the blood of the enemy, and I could see him giving orders as his dismounted men sorted through the stolen booty won back from the Saxons.
If I turned my head, I’d see Merlin, stationed like a guard dog to my left. On my right, Bran sat his restless horse, the animal a window to his own feelings. He was the young warrior whose arm I’d stitched all those months ago, on the day I’d first set eyes on Arthur. He’d missed the battle and all that entailed, and here he was sitting nursemaid on the Queen while all the others got first pickings over the stolen booty.
All I could feel was shock. It seemed such a small span of time since we’d come to the edge of the forest and looked down at the sleeping Saxon camp through the pre-dawn gloom. I’d certainly been shocked when I’d seen its size. Five ships were drawn up on the shore, burnt skeletons now, embers still glowing, the oily black smoke from their tarry sides rising skywards.
“Two hundred warriors,” Merlin had informed me in the lowest of low voices. “Forty to a ship.”
Thinking Manogan’s army had retreated to lick its wounds in his stronghold at Caer Lind Colun, the Saxons had posted few lookouts. Arthur’s scouts had dealt with them, making the edge of the forest ours, with its view down toward the dark, peaty snake of the River Glein and the low-lying marshes beyond.
Faced with the reality of two hundred enemy warriors in the camp, fear had seized my entrails in its icy hand. Even the curt order from my husband– for Merlin and Bran to take me to a place of safety on a little rise just inside the treeline– hadn’t steadied my anxious heart.
I could make no pretense to having had any understanding of the battle. How could I have? I was used to keeping books in order in a library, and the most fighting I’d needed to do was in the January Sales. Yes, I’d seen action in the skirmish on the road to Viroconium with the Saxon foederati belonging to Arthur’s brother, Cadwy. I’d even stabbed a man in an effort to save myself, but that had been nothing like a full-blown battle.
So when it began, I watched with a horrible fascination as though it were far away and nothing could possibly touch me. I’d felt like this before– detached from a reality I couldn’t understand or accept. Those weren’t the men I knew, galloping their horses down the muddy slope toward the river, shooting fire arrows into the furled sails of the boats, shrieking war cries at the tops of their voices.
“Dumnonia!”
“For Arthur the Bear!”
“Linnuis!”
