Bernard Cornwell - Excalibur

Balig shouted, and Galahad furled the forward flag while I struggled to free the flag at the stern. Gwydre helped me bring it down, then lost his balance as the boat tipped on a wave crest. He fell against the gunwale as the water broke over the bow. ‘Bail!’ Balig shouted, ‘bail!’

The wind was rising now. I vomited over the boat’s quarter, then looked up to see the rest of the fleet tossing in a grey nightmare of broken water and flying spindrift. I heard a crack above me, and looked up to see that our sail had split in two. Balig cursed. Behind us the shore was a dark line, and beyond it, lit by sunlight, the hills of Siluria glowed green, but all around us was dark and wet and threatening.

‘Bail!’ Balig shouted again, and those who were in the belly of the boat used helmets to scoop the water from around the bundles of treasure, armour and food.

And then the storm hit. Till now we had suffered only from the storm’s outriders, but now the wind howled across the sea and the rain came flat and stinging above the whitened waves. I lost sight of the other boats, so thick was the rain and so dark the sky. The shore disappeared, and all I could see was a nightmare of short, high, white-crested waves from which the water flew to drench our boat. The sail flogged itself to ragged shreds that streamed from the spar like broken banners. Thunder split the sky and the boat fell off a wave crest and I saw the water, green and black, surging up to spill across the gunwales, but somehow Balig steered the bow into the wave and the water hesitated at the boat’s rim, then dropped away as we rose to the next wind-tortured crest.

‘Lighten the boat!’ Balig screamed over the storm’s howl.

We threw the gold overboard. We jettisoned Arthur’s treasure, and my treasure, and Gwydre’s treasure and Culhwch’s treasure. We gave it all to Manawydan, pouring coins and cups and candlesticks and gold bars into his greedy maw, and still he wanted more, and so we hurled the baskets of food and the furled banners overboard, but Arthur would not give him his armour, and nor would I, and so we stowed the armour and our weapons in the tiny cabin under the after deck and instead threw some of the ship’s stone ballast after the gold. We reeled about the boat like drunken men, tossed by the waves and with our feet sliding in a slopping mix of vomit and water. Morwenna clutched her children, Ceinwyn and Guinevere prayed, Taliesin bailed with a helmet, while Culhwch and Galahad helped Balig and the Saxon crewman to lower the remnants of the sail. They threw the sail overboard, spar and all, but tied its wreckage to a long horse-hair rope that they looped about the boat’s sternpost, and the drag of the spar and sail somehow turned our boat’s head into the wind so that we faced the storm and rode its anger in great swooping lurches.

‘Never known a storm move so quick!’ Balig shouted to me. And no wonder. This was no usual storm, but a fury brought by a Druid’s death, and the world shrieked air and sea about our ears as our creaking ship rose and fell to the pounding waves. Water spurted between the planks of the hull, but we bailed it out as fast as it came.

Then I saw the first wreckage on the crest of a wave, and a moment later glimpsed a man swimming. He tried to call to us, but the sea drove him under. Arthur’s fleet was being destroyed. Sometimes, as a squall passed and the air momentarily cleared, we could see men bailing madly, and see how low their boats rode in the turmoil, and then the storm would blind us again, and when it lifted again there were no boats visible at all, just floating timbers. Arthur’s fleet, boat by boat, was sunk and his men and women drowned. The men who wore their armour died the quickest.

And all the while, just beyond the sea-fretted wreckage of our sail that dragged behind our labouring boat, Merlin’s body followed us. He appeared sometime after we had hurled the sail overboard, and then he stayed with us and I would see his white robe on the face of a wave, see it vanish, only to glimpse it again as the seas moved on. Once it seemed as though he lifted his head from the water and I saw the wound in his throat had been washed white by the ocean, and he stared at us from his empty sockets, but then the waters dipped him down and I touched an iron nail in the sternpost and begged Manawydan to take the Druid down to the sea’s bed. Take him down, I prayed, and send his soul to the Otherworld, but every time I looked he was still there, his white hair fanning about his head on the swirling sea. Merlin was there, but no more boats. We peered through the rain and flying spray, but there was nothing there except a dark churning sky, a grey and dirty white sea, wreckage, and Merlin, always Merlin, and I think he was protecting us, not because he wanted us safe, but because Nimue had still not finished with us. Our boat carried what she most desired, and so our boat alone must be preserved through Manawydan’s waters.

Merlin did not disappear until the storm itself had vanished. I saw his face one last time and then he just went down. For a heartbeat he was a white shape with spread arms in the green heart of a wave, and then he was gone. And with his disappearance the wind’s spite died and the rain ceased. The sea still tossed us, but the air cleared and the clouds turned from black to grey, and then to broken white, and all about us was an empty sea. Ours was the only boat left and as Arthur stared around the grey waves I saw the tears in his eyes. His men were gone to Manawydan, all of them, all his brave men save we few. A whole army was gone.

And we were alone.

We retrieved the spar and the remnants of the sail, and then we rowed for the rest of that long day. Every man except me had blistered hands, and even I tried to row, but found my one good hand was not enough to manage an oar, and so I sat and watched as we pulled southwards through the rolling seas until, by evening, our keel grated on sand and we struggled ashore with what few possessions we still had left.

We slept in the dunes, and in the morning we cleaned the salt off our weapons and counted what coins we still had. Balig and his Saxon stayed with their boat, claiming they could salvage her, and I gave him my last piece of gold, embraced him, and then followed Arthur south. We found a hall in the coastal hills and the lord of that hall proved to be a supporter of Arthur’s, and he gave us a saddle horse and two mules. We tried to give him gold, but he refused it. ‘I wish,’ he said, ‘I had spearmen to give you, but alas.’ He shrugged. His hall was poor and he had already given us more than he could afford. We ate his food, dried our clothes by his fire, and afterwards sat with Arthur under the apple blossom in the hall’s orchard. ‘We can’t fight Mordred now,’ Arthur told us bleakly. Mordred’s forces numbered at least three hundred and fifty spearmen, and Nimue’s followers would help him so long as he pursued us, while Sagramor had fewer than two hundred men. The war was lost before it had even properly begun.

‘Oengus will come to help us,’ Culhwch suggested.

‘He’ll try,’ Arthur agreed, ‘but Meurig will never let the Blackshields march through Gwent.’

‘And Cerdic will come,’ Galahad said quietly. ‘As soon as he hears that Mordred is fighting us, he’ll march. And we shall have two hundred men.’

‘Fewer,’ Arthur interjected.

‘To fight how many?’ Galahad asked. ‘Four hundred? Five? And our survivors, even if we win, will have to turn and face Cerdic.’

‘Then what do we do?’ Guinevere asked.

Arthur smiled. ‘We go to Armorica,’ he said. ‘Mordred won’t pursue us there.’

‘He might,’ Culhwch growled.

‘Then we face that problem when it comes,’ Arthur said calmly. He was bitter that morning, but not angry. Fate had given him a terrible blow, so all he could do now was reshape his plans and try to give us hope. He reminded us that King Budic of Broceliande was married to his sister, Anna, and Arthur was certain the King would give us shelter. ‘We shall be poor,’ he gave Guinevere an apologetic smile, ‘but we have friends and they will help us. And Broceliande will welcome Sagramor’s spearmen. We shan’t starve. And who knows?’ he gave his son a smile, ‘Mordred might die and we can come back.’