Bernard Cornwell - The Winter King

“I know.”

“Then kill them,” he ordered me, and Nimue echoed her approval.

“No,” I insisted. Sagramor was my commander for the rest of this day and I did not enjoy disagreeing with him, but Arthur wanted to bring peace to the Britons and killing helpless prisoners was no way to bind Powys to his peace. Besides, my men had taken the prisoners, so their fate was my responsibility and, instead of killing them, I ordered them stripped naked, then they were taken one by one to where Cavan waited with a heavy stone for his hammer and a boulder for an anvil. We placed each man's spear hand on the boulder, held it there, then crushed the two smallest fingers with the stone. A man with two shattered fingers would live and he might even wield a spear again, but not on this day. Not for many a day. Then we sent them southwards, naked and bleeding, and told them that if we saw their faces again before nightfall they would surely die. Sagramor scoffed at me for displaying such leniency, but did not countermand the orders. My men took the enemy's best clothes and boots, searched the discarded clothing for coins, then tossed the garments on to the still burning huts. We piled the captured weapons by the road.

Then we marched north to discover that Arthur had ended his pursuit at the ford, then returned to the village that lay about the substantial Roman building which Arthur reckoned had once been a rest house for travellers going into the northern hills. A crowd of women cowered under guard beside the house, clutching their children and paltry belongings.

“Your enemy,” I told Arthur, 'was Valerin."

It took him a few seconds to place the name, then he smiled. He had removed his helmet and dismounted to greet us. “Poor Valerin,” he said, 'twice a loser," then he embraced me and thanked my men.

“The night was so dark,” he said, “I doubted you would find the vale.”

“I didn't. Nimue did.”

“Then I owe you thanks,” he said to Nimue.

“Thank me,” she said, 'by bringing victory this day."

“With the Gods' help, I shall.” He turned and looked at Galahad who had ridden in the charge. “Go south, Lord Prince, and give Tewdric my greetings and beg his men's spears to our side. May God give your tongue eloquence.” Galahad kicked his horse and rode back through the blood-stinking vale. Arthur turned and stared at a hilltop a mile north of the ford. There was an old earth fort there, a legacy of the Old People, but it seemed to be deserted. “It would go ill with us,” he said with a smile, 'if anyone was to see where we hide." He wanted to find his hiding place and leave the heavy horse armour there before he rode north to roust Gorfyddyd's men out of their camps at Branogenium.

“Nimue will work you a spell of concealment,” I said.

“Will you, Lady?” he asked earnestly.

She went to find a skull. Arthur clasped me again, then called for his servant Hygwydd to help him tug off the suit of heavy scale armour. It came off over his head, leaving his short-cut hair tousled. “Would you wear it?” he asked me.

“Me?” I was astonished.

“When the enemy attack,” he said, 'they'll expect to find me here and if I'm not here they'll suspect a trap.“ He smiled. ”I'd ask Sagramor, but his face is somewhat more distinctive than yours, Lord Derfel. You'll have to cut off some of that long hair, though.“ My fair hair showing beneath the helmet's rim would be a sure sign I was not Arthur, 'and maybe trim the beard a little,” he added. I took the armour from Hygwydd and was shocked by its weight. “I should be honoured,” I said.

“It is heavy,” he warned me. “You'll get hot, and you can't see to your sides when you're wearing the helmet so you'll need two good men to flank you.” He sensed my hesitation. “Should I ask someone else to wear it?”

“No, no, Lord,” I said. “I'll wear it.”

“It'll mean danger,” he warned me.

“I wasn't expecting a safe day, Lord,” I answered.

“I shall leave you the banners,” he said. “When Gorfyddyd comes he must be convinced that all his enemies are in one place. It will be a hard fight, Derfel.”

“Galahad will bring help,” I assured him.

He took my breastplate and shield, gave me his own brighter shield and white cloak, then turned and grasped Llamrei's bridle. “That,” he told me once he had been helped into the saddle, 'was the easy part of the day.“ He beckoned to Sagramor, then spoke to both of us. ”The enemy will be here by noon. Do what you can to make ready, then fight as you have never fought before. If I see you again then we shall be victorious. If not, then I thank you, salute you, and will wait to feast with you in the Otherworld." He shouted for his men to mount up, then rode north.

And we waited for the real battle to begin.

The scale armour was appallingly heavy, bearing down on my shoulders like the water yokes women carry to their houses each morning. Even lifting my sword arm was hard, though it became easier when I cinched my sword belt tight around the iron scales and so took the suit's lower weight away from my shoulders.

Nimue, her spell of concealment finished, cut my hair with a knife. She burned all the loose hair lest an enemy should find the scraps and work an enchantment, and then I used Arthur's shield as a mirror to hack my long beard short enough so that it would be concealed behind the helmet's deep cheek pieces. Then I pulled the helmet on, forcing its leather padding over my skull and tugging it down until it enclosed my head like a shell. My voice seemed muffled despite the perforations over the ears in the shining metal. I hefted the heavy shield, let Nimue fasten the mud-spattered white cloak around my shoulders, then I tried to get used to the armour's awkward weight. I made Issa fight me with a spear-shaft as a single-stick and found myself much slower than usual. “Fear will quicken you, Lord,” Issa said when he had rounded my guard for the tenth time and whacked me an echoing blow on the head.

“Don't knock the plume off,” I said. Secretly I was wishing I had never accepted the heavy armour. It was horseman's gear, designed to add weight and awe to a mounted man who had to batter his way through the enemy's ranks, but we spearmen depended on agility and quickness when we were not locked shoulder to shoulder in the shield-wall.

“But you look wonderful, Lord,” Issa told me admiringly.

“I'll be a wonderful-looking corpse if you don't guard my flank,” I told him. “It's like fighting inside a bucket.” I tugged the helmet off, relieved when its constricting pressure was gone from my skull. “When I first saw this armour,” I told Issa, “I wanted it more than anything in the world. Now I'd give it away for a decent leather breastplate.”

“You'll be all right, Lord,” he told me with a grin.

We had work to do. The women and children abandoned by Valerin's defeated men had to be driven south away from the vale, then we prepared de fences close to the remnants of the tree fence. Sagramor feared that the overwhelming weight of the enemy could drive us clear out of the vale before Arthur's horsemen arrived to our rescue and so he prepared the ground as best he could. My men wanted to sleep, but instead we dug a shallow ditch across the vale. The ditch was nowhere near deep enough to stop a man, but it would force the attacking spearmen to break step and maybe stumble as they closed on our spear-line. The tree barricade lay just behind the ditch and marked the southern limit to which we could retreat and the place we must defend to the death. Sagramor anchored the felled trees with some of Valerin's abandoned spears that he ordered driven deep into the earth to make a hedge of angled spear-points inside the pine branches. We left the gap where the road ran through the centre of the fence so we could retreat behind the fragile barrier before we defended it. My worry was the steep and open hillside down which my men had attacked in the dawn. Gorfyddyd's warriors would doubtless attack straight up the vale, but his levies would probably be sent to the high ground to threaten our left flank and Sagramor could spare no men to hold that high ground, but Nimue insisted there was no need. She took ten of the captured spears and then, with the help of a half-dozen of my men, she cut the heads from ten of Valerin's dead spearmen and carried the spears and bloody heads up the hill where she had the spear-shafts driven butt-first into the ground, then she rammed the bloody heads on to the spears' iron points and draped the dead heads with ghastly wigs of knotted grass, each knot an enchantment, before scattering branches of yew between the widely spaced posts. She had made a ghost-fence: a line of human scarecrows imbued with charms and spells that no man would dare pass without a Druid's help. Sagramor wanted her to make another such fence on the ground north of the ford, but Nimue refused. “Their warriors will come with Druids,” she explained, 'and a ghost-fence is laughable to a Druid. But the levy won't have a Druid." She had fetched an armful of vervain down from the hill and now she distributed its small purple flowers among the spearmen who all knew that vervain gave protection in battle. She pushed a whole sprig inside my armour.