Bernard Cornwell - The Winter King

One of Gundleus's men saw us, then Gundleus himself recognized Nimue and he shouted that the witch should be taken alive and thrown back into the flames. The cry of the chase went up, great whoops like the sound of hunters pursuing a wounded boar to its death, and the two of us would surely have been caught if some of the other fugitives had not already ripped a gap in the stockade on the Tor's southern side. I ran towards the new gap only to discover Hywel, good Hywel, lying dead in the breach with his crutch beside him, his head half severed and his sword still in his hand. I plucked up the sword and hauled Nimue onwards. We reached the steep southern slope and tumbled down, both of us screaming as we slithered down the precipitous grass. Nimue was half blind and utterly maddened by her pain while I was frantic with terror, yet somehow I clutched on to Hywel's war sword, and somehow I made Nimue get to her feet at the Tor's foot and stumble on past the sacred well, past the Christians' orchard, through a grove of alders and so down to where I knew Hywel's marsh boat was moored beside a fisherman's hut. I threw Nimue into the small boat of bundled reeds, slashed the painter with my new sword and pushed the boat away from the wooden stage only to realize I had no quant pole to drive the clumsy craft out into the intricate maze of channels and lakes that laced the marsh. I used the sword instead; Hywel's blade made a sorry punting pole, yet it was all I had until the first of Gundleus's pursuers reached the reedy bank and, unable to wade out to us because of the glutinous marsh mud, hurled his spear at us instead.

The spear whistled as it flew towards me. For a second I could not move, transfixed by the sight of that heavy pole with its glittering steel head hurtling towards us, but then the weapon thumped past me to bury its blade in the punt's reed gunwale. I grabbed the quivering ash staff and used it as my quant pole to drive the boat hard and quick out into the waterways. We were safe there. Some of Gundleus's men ran along a wooden track way that paralleled our course, but I soon turned away from them. Others leaped into coracles and used their spears as paddles, but no coracle could match a reed punt for speed and so we left them far behind. Ligessac fired an arrow, but we were already out of range and his missile plunged soundlessly into the dark water. Behind our frustrated pursuers, high on the green Tor, the flames leaped hungrily at huts and hall and tower so that grey churning smoke rose high in the blue summer sky.

“Two wounds.” Nimue spoke for the first time since I had snatched her from the flames.

“What?” I turned to her. She was huddled in the bow, the black cloak wrapped about her thin body and with one hand clasped over her empty eye.

“I've suffered two Wounds of Wisdom, Derfel,” she said in a voice of crazed wonderment. “The Wound to the Body and the Wound to the Pride. Now all I face is madness and then I shall be as wise as Merlin.” She tried to smile, but there was a hysterical wildness in her voice that made me wonder whether she was not already under the spell of madness.

“Mordred's dead,” I told her, 'and so are Norwenna and Hywel. The Tor is burning." Our whole world was being destroyed, yet Nimue seemed strangely unmoved by the disaster. Instead she almost seemed elated because she had endured two of the three tests of wisdom.

I poled past a line of willow fish traps, then turned into Lissa's Mere, a great black lake that lay on the southern edge of the marshes. I was aiming towards Ermid's Hall, a wooden settlement where Ermid, a chieftain of a local tribe, kept his household. I knew Ermid would not be at the hall for he had marched north with Owain, but his people would help us, and I also knew that our boat would reach the hall long before the swiftest of Gundleus's horsemen could gallop around the lake's long, reed-thick and marshy banks. They would have to go almost as far as the Fosse Way, the great Roman road that ran east of the Tor, before they could turn around the lake's eastern extremity and gallop towards Ermid's Hall, and by then we would be long gone south. I could see other boats far ahead of me on the mere and guessed that the Tor's fugitives were being carried to safety by Ynys Wydryn's fishermen. I told Nimue my plan to reach Ermid's Hall and then keep going southwards until the night fell or we met friends. “Good,” she said dully, though I was not really sure she had understood anything I had said.

“Good Derfel,” she added. “Now I know why the Gods made me trust you.”

“You trust me,” I said bitterly, and thrust the spear into the muddy lake bottom to push the boat forward,

'because I'm in love with you, and that gives you power over me."

“Good,” she said again, and said nothing more until our reed boat glided into the tree-shaded landing beneath Ermid's stockade where, as I pushed the boat still deeper into the creek's shadows, I saw the other fugitives from the Tor. Morgan was there with Sebile, and Ralla was weeping with her baby safe in her arms next to Gwlyddyn her husband. Lunete, the Irish girl, was there, and she ran crying to the waterside to help Nimue. I told Morgan of Hywel's death, and she said she had seen Guendoloen, Merlin's wife, cut down by a Silurian. Gudovan was safe, but no one knew what had happened to poor Pellinore or to Druidan. None of Norwenna's guards had survived, though a handful of Druidan's wretched soldiers had reached the dubious safety of Ermid's Hall, as had three of Norwenna's weeping attendants and a dozen of Merlin's frightened foundlings.

“We have to go soon,” I told Morgan. “They're chasing Nimue.” Nimue was being bandaged and clothed by Ermid's servants.

“It's not Nimue they're after, you fool,” Morgan snapped at me, 'but Mordred."

“Mordred's dead!” I protested, but Morgan answered by turning and snatching at the baby that lay in Ralla's arms. She tugged the rough brown cloth away from the child's body and I saw the clubbed foot.

“Do you think, fool,” Morgan said to me, 'that I would permit our King to be killed?“ I stared at Ralla and Gwlyddyn, wondering how they could ever have conspired to let their own son die. It was Gwlyddyn who answered my mute look. ”He's a king," he explained simply, pointing to Mordred,

'while our boy was just a carpenter's son."

“And soon,” Morgan said angrily, “Gundleus will discover that the baby he killed has two good feet, and then he'll bring every man he can to search for us. We go south.” There was no safety in Ermid's Hall. The chief and his warriors had gone to war, leaving only a handful of servants and children in the settlement.

We left a little before midday, plunging into the green woods south of Ermid's holdings. One of Ermid's huntsmen led us on narrow paths and secret ways. There were thirty of us, mostly women and children, with only a half dozen men capable of bearing arms and of those only Gwlyddyn had ever killed a man in battle. Druidan's few surviving fools would be no use, and I had never fought in anger, though I walked as a rear guard with Hywel's naked sword thrust into my rope belt and the heavy Silurian war spear clasped in my right hand.

We passed slowly beneath the oaks and hazels. From Ermid's Hall to Caer Cadarn was no more than a four-hour walk, though it would take us much longer for we travelled on secret, circuitous paths and were slowed by the children. Morgan had not said she would try to reach Caer Cadarn, but I knew the royal sanctuary was her probable destination for it was there that we were likely to find Dumnonian soldiers, but Gundleus would surely have made that same deduction and he was just as desperate as we were. Morgan, who had a shrewd grasp of this world's wickedness, surmised that the Silurian King had been planning this war ever since the High Council, just waiting for Uther's death to launch an attack in alliance with Gorfyddyd. We had all been fooled. We had thought Gundleus a friend and so no one had guarded his borders and now Gundleus was aiming at nothing less than the throne of Dumnonia itself. But to gain that throne, Morgan told us, he would need more than a score of horsemen, and so his spearmen would surely even now be hurrying to catch up with their King as they marched down the long Roman road that led from Dumnonia's northern coast. The Silurians were loose in our country, but before Gundleus could be sure of victory he had to kill Mordred. He had to find us or else his whole daring enterprise would fail.