Page 78 of The Quest for Excalibur
He grinned again, his smile so achingly like his father’s. “Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing.”
Rhiwallon had probably felt the same.
I wanted to grab him and hold him tight and never let him go, but I couldn’t. This was a man’s world, and all men, from the lowliest swineherd to the king himself, saw their role as fighters, defenders, champions of the rest of us. And despite my armor and weapons, I was firmly in the category of ‘the rest of us’.
Wedging his saddle against his hip, Llacheu hastened away to find his horse.
I watched him go, rooted to the ground while the chaotic order raged around me, an island of stillness amongst the maelstrom. Self-doubt arose unbidden.Badon.We were marching to Badon. Had I chosen right? Was this really to be the battle from the history books? Was I helping to write them?
“Get your helmet and saddle and hurry up.” Merlin, shouting, grabbed my arm and gave me a tug. “This way. We have to make haste.”
Snatched back into the here and now, the shouts of men battered my ears. I bent and grabbed my helmet by its straps. Merlin shoved my bridle into my hands. “You’re to come with me.”
He carried both our saddles, one wedged against each hip. At the horse lines the mood had stayed with our beasts, and none of them seemed keen to stand quietly while we readied them. Alezan danced on her long rope, hooves churning up the short-nibbled turf, and Merlin had to hold her still while I saddled her with too much haste, my fingers clumsy on the straps from fear.
Further up the line, some of the men had mounted already, and were weighing lances in one hand while holding their excited horses’ reins tightly in the other.
With difficulty, Merlin got a bridle onto an impatient Alezan for me, despite her excited head-tossing, then gave me a leg up into the saddle. Before I’d settled and found my stirrups, she whirled around, snorting, tossing her head some more, her tail whipping back and forth. She would have sent Merlin flying had he not dodged out of her way. She wasn’t a war horse, but today she thought she was.
I set both hands on the reins and shoved my feet into my stirrups, whispering sweet nothings to her that she completely ignored. My own heart beat a rapid tattoo against my mailshirt, trying in vain to break out.
Low overhead, a flight of crows twisted on the rising wind, their backs bent, ragged wings outspread. Thunder rumbled in the distance. Did the birds sense the coming weather or the coming battle? Or both? Were they here like gory camp-followers to predate upon the casualties of war? Already?
Merlin shortened his horse’s reins in an effort to hold her still, but even so, she swung around and he had to spring into the saddle instead of using his stirrup to mount. He held her tight as his feet groped for his stirrups, and her nostrils flared as she snorted.
In the center of our now ravaged camp a forest of lances protruded from the ground like quills on a porcupine, amid the detritus of three days inactivity strewn across the grass.
At a canter, Merlin seized one of the lances and swung it up, turning his horse on a sixpence and riding back to me.
My anxious eyes scanned the seething mass of riders, almost every man mounted now, the forest of lances transforming fast into a sparse copse. Where was Arthur?
If only he’d still had Llamrei, who with her gleaming white coat had been so easy to spot. I searched in desperation for his bay, spotted the banner held aloft again by Anwyll, found Cei’s red-head, helmetless and shining like a fiery beacon, but no Arthur.
Thunder rumbled again, closer this time, and a wind came whipping in from across the plain. The clouds on the western horizon had darkened to a threatening slate gray.
A shout rang out above the clamor of voices, the squealing of horses, and the whistle of the wind as it blew across the summit of the hill. “To me. In ranks. Archers to the front.”
There he was. Astride his bright bay, his white shield on his arm with the rampant black bear rearing up across it, rallying his men.
Beside him, the slight figure of Gwalchmei raised the battle horn to his lips and blew three short sharp blasts. Like magic, the chaos of churning riders formed into ranks of ready warriors behind their king. I’d seen all this before, many times, both in practice and in action, but the alacrity with which they accomplished it never ceased to amaze me.
What a splendid sight they made.
The banner, held aloft by Anwyll, snapped out in the obliging wind, allowing the black bear that was Arthur’s sigil to shimmer with life. Rank after rank of well-oiled mailshirts shimmered like the scales on a slippery trout. Helmets glittered, and lances bristled upright.
“We’re to keep to the rear,” Merlin said, close beside me. “Whatever happens, you’re to stay with me. We’re to join Cadwy’s army and wait out of sight in the woodland.”
I nodded, unable to find words, as a churning lump of emotion welled inside me. Pride had its home there, but beside it, other things jostled for position. Foremost rose the thought that not all these brave men lined up in front of us would be returning. Some, perhaps many, were riding out to die.
Not cleanly or mercifully, but perhaps the way Cei’s son Rhiwallon had died, sobbing for their mothers with their insides hanging out. A cold lump of fear settled in my belly. Even if Badon turned out as the legends said, and this became the victory I longed for, we, the victors, would not really be the winners at all.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
The quiet ofthe day was not really quiet at all. Half a dozen buzzards rode the turbulent air overhead, circling in the slate-gray sky and surveying us with the air of interested spectators, their mewling, plaintive calls snatched away by the rising wind.
Hidden within the sheltering woodland, our restive horses snorted and fidgeted, and that same wind rattled the branches, making the leaves chatter like long forgotten, angry ghosts. The first drops of rain pattered on our helmets.
Bridles jangled and saddles creaked, but any rider who had to speak kept his voice to the lowest of murmurs. The noisy wind and our own silence were our friends.
