Bernard Cornwell - The Winter King

It takes extraordinary courage to charge into a line of shields and spears. That is why so many men drink before the fight. I have seen armies pause for hours while they summon the courage to charge, and the older the warrior the more courage is needed. Young troops will charge and die, but older men know how terrible an enemy shield-wall can be. I had no shield, yet I was covered by the shields of my neighbours, and their shields touched others and so on down our small line so that any man charging home would be met by a wall of leather-covered wood bristling with razor-sharp spears. The Silurians began beating their shields with their spear-staffs. The rattling sound was meant to unsettle us, and it did, though none on our side showed the fear. We just huddled together, waiting for the charge.

“There'll be some false charges first, lad,” my neighbour warned me, and no sooner had he spoken than a group of Silurians ran screaming from their line and hurled their long spears at the centre of our defence. Our men crouched and the long spears banged home into our shields and suddenly the whole Silurian line was moving forward, but Owain immediately ordered our line to stand and march forward too and that deliberate motion checked the enemy's threatened attack. Those of our men whose shields were cumbered with the enemy spears wrenched the weapons loose, then made the shield-wall whole again.

“Edge back!” Owain ordered us. He would try to shuffle slowly backwards across the half-mile of grassland to Caer Cadarn, hoping that the Silurians would not raise the courage to make their charge while we completed that pitifully slow journey. To give us more time Owain strode ahead of our line and shouted at Gundleus to fight him man to man. “Are you a woman, Gundleus?” our King's champion called. “Lost your courage? Not enough mead? Why don't you go back to your weaving loom, woman? Go back to your embroidery! Go back to your spindle!”

We shuffled back, shuffled back, shuffled back, but suddenly a charge of the enemy made us stand firm and duck behind our shields as the spears were hurled. One whipped over my head, its passage sounding like a sudden rush of wind, but again the attack was a feint intended to panic us. Ligessac was firing arrows, but he must have been drunk for his shots went wildly overhead. Owain was a target for a dozen spears, but most missed and the others he swept contemptuously aside with spear or shield before mocking the throwers. “Who taught you spear-craft? Your mothers?” He spat towards the enemy.

“Come Gundleus! Fight me! Show your scullions you're a king, not a mouse!” The Silurians beat spear-shafts on their shields to drown Owain's taunts. He turned his back to show them his scorn and walked slowly back to our shield-line. “Back,” he called to us softly, 'back.“ Then two of the Silurians threw down their shields and weapons and tore off their clothes to fight naked. My neighbour spat. ”There'll be trouble now," he warned me grimly. The naked men were probably drunk, or else so intoxicated by the Gods that they believed no enemy blade could hurt them. I had heard of such men and knew that their suicidal example was usually the signal for a real attack. I gripped my sword and tried to make a vow to die well, but in truth I could have wept for the pity of it all. I had become a man this day, and now I would die. I would join Uther and Hywel in the Otherworld and there wait through the shadowed years until my soul found another human body in which to return to this green world.

The two men unbound their hair, took up their spears and swords, then danced in front of the Silurian line. They howled as they worked themselves into the battle frenzy; that state of mindless ecstasy that will let a man try any feat. Gundleus, sitting his horse beneath his banner, smiled at the two men whose bodies were intricately tattooed with blue patterns. The children were crying behind us and our women were calling to the Gods as the men danced nearer and nearer, their spears and swords whirling in the evening sun. Such men had no need of shields, clothes or armour. The Gods were their protection and glory was their reward, and if they succeeded in killing Owain then the bards would sing of their victory for years to come. They advanced one on each side of our champion who hefted his spear as he prepared to meet their frenzied attack which would also mark the moment when the whole enemy line would charge. And then the horn sounded.

The horn gave a clear, cold note like none I had ever heard before. There was a purity to that horn, a chill hard purity like nothing else on all the earth. It sounded once, it sounded twice, and the second call was enough to give even the naked men pause and make them turn towards the east from where the sound had come.

I looked too.

And I was dazzled. It was as though a new bright sun had risen on that dying day. The light slashed over the pastures, blinding us, confusing us, but then the light slid on and I saw it was merely the reflection of the real sun glancing from a shield polished bright as a mirror. But that shield was held by such a man as I had never seen before; a man magnificent, a man lifted high on a great horse and accompanied by other such men; a horde of wondrous men, plumed men, armoured men, men sprung from the dreams of the Gods to come to this murderous field, and over the men's plumed heads there floated a banner I would come to love more than any banner on all God's earth. It was the banner of the bear. The horn sounded a third time, and suddenly I knew I would live, and I was weeping for joy and all our spearmen were half crying and half shouting and the earth was shuddering with the hooves of those Godlike men who were riding to our rescue.

For Arthur, at last, had come.

IGRAINE is UNHAPPY. She wants tales of Arthur's childhood. She has heard of a sword in the stone and wants me to write of it. She tells me he was sired by a spirit on a queen and that the skies were filled with thunder on the night of his birth and maybe she is right and the skies were noisy that night, but everyone I ever talked to slept through it, and as for the sword in the stone, well, there was a sword and there was a stone, but their place in the tale is still far ahead. The sword was called Caledfwlch, which means 'hard lightning' though Igraine prefers to call it Excalibur and I shall call it so as well because Arthur never cared what name his long sword carried. Nor did he care about his childhood, for certainly I never heard him speak of it. I once questioned him about his early days and he would not answer.

“What is the egg to the eagle?” he asked me, then said that he had been born, he had lived and he had become a soldier, and that was all I needed to know.

But for my most fair and generous protector, Igraine, let me set down what little I did learn. Arthur, despite Uther's denial at Glevum, was the son of the High King, though there was small advantage to be gained from that patronage for Uther fathered as many bastards as a torn cat makes kittens. Arthur's mother was, like my most precious queen, called Igraine. She came from Caer Gei in Gwynedd and is said to have been the daughter of Cunedda, King of Gwynedd and High King before Uther, though Igraine was no princess for her mother was not Cunedda's wife, but was instead married to a chieftain of Henis Wyren. All that Arthur would ever say of Igraine of Gwynedd, who died when he was on the verge of manhood, is that she was the most wonderful and clever and beautiful mother any boy could ever wish for, though according to Cei, who knew Igraine well, her beauty was sharpened by a rancorous wit. Cei is the son of Ector ap Ednywain, the chieftain at Caer Gei who took Igraine and her four bastard children into his household when Uther rejected them. That rejection occurred in the same year Arthur was born, and Igraine never forgave her son for it. She used to say that Arthur was one child too many, and somehow she believed that she would always have ruled as Uther's mistress had Arthur not been born.