Page 70 of The Quest for Excalibur
Our men didn’t need telling what to do. Well used to setting up marching camps, they set to with enthusiasm, unsaddling their horses and letting them roll the sweat off their backs before pegging them out on tethers to graze.
I slid down from Alezan with relief after so many hours in the saddle. Beside me, Merlin looked as pleased as me to have his feet back on the ground.
I grinned at him. “Much more of this and I’ll end up bandy-legged.”
This made him laugh. “There’s some like that here already.”
True. A quick glance around at the men provided evidence that my worries might be well-founded. More than a few of the older ones walked with the distinct gait of those who rode more than they walked on their own two feet. Clamping my legs together, just in case, I undid Alezan’s girth and lifted off her saddle.
The scent of hot horse filled my nostrils. A smell I’d loved since my childhood riding lessons, and one I’d grown familiar with over the last twelve years. I plonked the saddle on the grass, and replaced her bridle with a rope halter and a long line. When I let the rope out to its full extent, she bent her knees and sank to the ground with an audible sigh, then rolled onto her back, legs in the air, rubbing the feel of saddle and rider off her coat.
I envied her. How I’d love to do the same as her to wash the grime of two-days’ march off my skin and out of my hair and clothes. Fat chance of that. An army on the move is a smelly thing: hot, as it’s nearly always summer when they campaign; sweaty, from having to wear thick padded tunics and heavy mailshirts; and dirty, because there’s never enough water for even the smallest wash.
Once Alezan had finished rolling, I took her over to the horse lines where the men were hammering in groundpegs to tether their horses.
Merlin came over. “Give me your peg, and I’ll knock it in for you. The ground’s rock hard after so long without rain.” He was right. The pegs were taking a lot of hammering to get them in far enough to keep the horses secure.
When he’d finished, I fastened Alezan’s rope to the ring on the top, giving her a circle of grass she could spend the night grazing down to nothing. Our horses were well used to this.
I thanked him, then went in search of Arthur. Not difficult to spot. The only person standing on top of the eastern bank, his back to the fort’s interior. I picked my way between the busy warriors and climbed the bank to stand beside him.
He didn’t glance my way, but put out a hand and took mine. “Well,” he said. “We’re here. At your Badon. Now all we have to do is wait for our allies to arrive and for the enemy. Hopefully in that order, or we’ll be buggered.”
His rough fingers threaded between mine in that most intimate of gestures. I rubbed my thumb across the back of his hand, feeling the ridge of scar tissue from where I’d stitched his wound on the first day I’d met him. “Cadwy and Cerdicwillcome. They may not be men you like– in fact, they may be men you hate, but they’re neither of them stupid.”
His lips curved in a smile, but he didn’t take his eyes from the distant view. “I’m not so sure about Cadwy. Many of his actions have proved him as not the smartest of men. And don’t forget, he’s still advised by my lovely sister.”
“Even she can’t want a Saxon victory here in the south that would leave the road to Viroconium open.” Although now I’d said it, uncertainty assailed me. Trying to second guess what Morgana might want had never proved an easy thing.
Arthur extended his free arm and pointed. “See there, right on the brow? That’s the road from Caer Celemion. Straight as an arrow. Nearly four miles away.”
I peered along the line he indicated at the view we’d both seen as children– shown by our fathers so prophetically. Trees darkened the brow– a substantial beech hanger just to the right of the road– with the land falling away behind the trees, down into a wide, sweeping valley full of small farms. The Romans had chosen the high ground for their road, following a ridge up from the Thames valley into the hills. A wise choice when so much of the lower-lying land lay wet and impassable.
“How long will it take the enemy to get here?” I asked. What I really meant was how long did we have for our reinforcements to arrive before we had to meet the enemy in battle.
He turned to face me, taking my other hand. “We can only hope they may not feel the urge to hurry. Two days to the river, perhaps. It’s not an easy march. And if they’ve stopped to attack Caer Celemion, then that will give us more time. But they marched past Caer Guinntguic and left it untouched, so it’s possible they’ll do that to Caer Celemion as well. In search of greater foes and a more meaningful victory.”
I moved closer to him, leaning against his chest, my face against the rough rings of his mail shirt, and he gently put his arms around me. I frowned. “I thought they’d not attacked Caer Guinntguic because of blood affinity to Cerdic?”
He shook his head. “I doubt very much that would move them to mercy. No, they’re not interested in him or his small town, so near their coastal holdings. Taking that would give them small gains. Their aim must be to strike the center and strike it hard. That’s why they’ll be meeting with their allies from the river landings. They mean to make this a decisive victory and cripple us.” He bared his teeth in a grin. “I’m in agreement on that– only it will bemydecisive victory and not theirs.”
I put my arms around him and stayed silent. If only I could be as confident. Yet doubts assaulted me from all directions: doubts that the legends I knew might turn out to be untrue; doubts that I’d already changed history and therefore Arthur’s fate; doubts that whatever convictions I felt might have been false ones sent by Morgana. The weight of the world settled on my shoulders, the weight of this world, at any rate, pushing me down into the ground so hard I almost felt my feet sinking into the earth.
Arthur released me. “Come on. I’m starving. Cold rations tonight, I fear. We don’t want to advertise our presence by lighting cook fires.” He grabbed my hand again and ran with me down the slope of the bank, the crowd of warriors swallowing us up.
*
Early the nextmorning, after a chilly night’s sleep, and with a thin autumn mist lying draped over the hills, Arthur led a reconnaissance party to the Roman road. With Merlin’s reassurances that no imminent danger threatened, he allowed me to accompany the party, in my guise as record keeper. Nevertheless, we all went armed and armored.
We numbered twenty– Arthur, Cei, Merlin, me, and Llacheu, with the rest made up of some of our staunchest warriors. “Just in case,” Arthur said, with a wink. “Merlin might be wrong.”
The Ridgeway track down into the valley that bisected the long run of hills proved to have changed little in fifteen hundred years, being chalky and flinty, much as in my old world. The Roman road, the Ermin Way, clung to the northerly side of the valley bottom, heading straight as an arrow toward far off Caer Ceri.
Scrubby woodland had managed to grow here in patches, sheltered more than the high ridge. Hawthorns and juniper thickets bordered a few isolated stands of large beeches that were turning red-gold now in the evening of the year. Our chalky track became a rough path, divided into simple animal-trails, that braided its way northeast between the woodland, heading for the paved road. We followed our noses.
A Roman road is a splendid thing. Those Romans knew how to build something to last, and this road was no exception. A good six or seven paces across, its graveled surface, marred here and there by growth of weeds, stretched impressive and substantial before us. The Ermin Way. Not to be confused with ErmineStreet, heading north from London to York, and named after a tribe of much later Saxon settlers.
The unshod hooves of our mounts made little noise on the short-cropped grass to either side of the road. A British army marches on its horses’ hooves– lose one hoof to lameness, and you lose a warrior, so the stony surface was asking for trouble. Thanks to the time of year and number of grazing livestock, the roadside, although a little rutted and uneven, provided a place to let the horses canter, which we took advantage of, covering the ground at speed as we approached the beech wood on the horizon.
