Bernard Cornwell - Excalibur

‘Shields! Shields! Shields!’ Sagramor roared, reminding us to keep the wall continuous, and my right-hand neighbour knocked his shield on mine, grinned, and stabbed forward with his spear. I saw an enemy’s sword being drawn back for a mighty blow and I met it with Hywelbane on the man’s wrist and she cut through that wrist as though the enemy’s bones were made of reed. The sword flew into our rear ranks with a bloody hand still gripping its hilt. The man on my left fell with an enemy spear in his belly, but the second rank man took his place and shouted a great oath as he slammed his shield forward and swung his sword down.

Another burning log flew low over us and fell on two of the enemy, who reeled apart. We leapt into the gap, and suddenly there was empty sand ahead of us. ‘Stay together!’ I shouted, ‘stay together!’ The enemy was breaking. Their front rank was dead or wounded, their second rank was dying, and the men in the rear were those who least wanted to fight and so were the ones who were easiest to kill. Those rear ranks were filled by men who were skilled at rape and clever at pillage, but had never faced a shield wall of hardened killers. And how we were killing now. Their wall was breaking, corroded by fire and fear, and we were screaming a victor’s chant. I stumbled on a body, fell forward and rolled over with my shield held above my face. A sword slammed into the shield, the sound deafening, then Sagramor’s men stepped over me and a spearman hauled me upright. ‘Wounded?’ he asked.

‘No.’

He pushed on. I looked to see where our wall needed strengthening, but everywhere it was at least three men deep, and those three ranks were grinding forward over the carnage of a slaughtered enemy. Men grunted as they swung, as they stabbed and as they drove the blades into enemy flesh. It is the beguiling glory of war, the sheer exhilaration of breaking a shield wall and slaking a sword on a hated enemy. I watched Arthur, a man as kind as any I have known, and saw nothing but joy in his eyes. Galahad, who prayed each day that he could obey Christ’s commandment to love all men, was now killing them with a terrible efficiency. Culhwch was roaring insults. He had discarded his shield so that he could use both hands on his heavy spear. Gwydre was grinning behind his cheekpieces, while Taliesin was singing as he killed the enemy wounded left behind by our advancing shield wall. You do not win the fight of the shield wall by being sensible and moderate, but by a Godlike rush of howling madness. And the enemy could not stand our madness, and so they broke and ran. Mordred tried to hold them, but they would not stay for him, and he fled with them back towards the fort. Some of our men, the rage of battle still seething inside them, began to pursue, but Sagramor called them back. He had been wounded on his shield shoulder, but he shook off any attempt we made to help him and bellowed at his men to stop their pursuit. We dared not follow them, beaten though they were, for then we would have found ourselves in the wider part of the spit and so have invited the enemy to surround us. Instead we stayed where we had fought and we jeered at our enemies, calling them cowards. A gull pecked at the eyes of a dead man. I looked away to see that Prydrven was bows on to us now and free of her mooring, though her bright sail was hardly stirring in the gentle wind. But she was just moving, and the colour of her sail shivered its long reflection on the glassy water. Mordred saw the boat, saw the great bear on her sail, and he knew his enemy might escape to sea and so he screamed at his men to make a new wall. Reinforcements were joining him minute by minute, and some of the newcomers were Nimue’s men for I saw two Bloodshields take their place in the new line that formed to charge us.

We fell back to where we had started, making our shield wall in the blood-soaked sand just in front of the fire that had helped us win the first attack. The bodies of our first four dead were only half burned and their scorched faces grinned foully at us through lips shrivelled back from discoloured teeth. We left the enemy’s dead on the sand as obstacles in the path of the living, but hauled our own dead back and piled them beside the fire. We had sixteen dead and a score of badly wounded, but we still had enough men to form a shield wall, and we could still fight.

Taliesin sang to us. He sang his own song of Mynydd Baddon, and it was to that hard rhythm that we touched our shields together again. Our swords and spears were blunted and bloodied, the enemy was fresh, but we cheered as they came towards us. Prydwen was scarcely moving. She looked like a ship poised on a mirror, but then I saw long oars unfold like wings from her hull.

‘Kill them!’ Mordred screamed, and he now had the battle rage himself and it drove him onto our line. A handful of brave men supported him, and they were followed by some of Nimue’s demented souls, so it was a ragged charge that first fell on our line, but among the men who came were new arrivals who wanted to prove themselves, and so again we bent our knees and crouched behind our shield rims. The sun was blinding now, but in the moment before the crazed rush struck home, I saw flashes of light from the western hill and knew that there were still more spearmen on that high ground. I gained the impression that a whole new army of spearmen had come to the summit, but from where, or who led them, I could not tell, and then I had no time to think of the newcomers, for I was thrusting my shield forward and the blow of shield on shield made the stump of my arm sing in pain and I keened a sound of agony as I sliced Hywelbane down. A Bloodshield opposed me, and I cut him down hard, finding the gap between his breastplate and helmet, and when I had jerked Hywelbane free of his flesh I slashed wildly at the next enemy, a mad creature, and spun him away with blood spurting from his cheek, nose and eye. Those first enemies had run ahead of Mordred’s shield wall, but now the bulk of the enemy struck us and we leaned into their attack and screamed defiance as we lunged our blades across our shield rims. I recall confusion and the noise of sword ringing on sword, and the crash of shield striking shield. Battle is a matter of inches, not miles. The inches that separate a man from his enemy. You smell the mead on their breath, hear the breath in their throats, hear their grunts, feel them shift their weight, feel their spittle on your eyes, and you look for danger, look back into the eyes of the next man you must kill, find an opening, take it, close the shield wall again, step forward, feel the thrust of the men behind, half stumble on the bodies of those you have killed, recover, push forward, and afterwards you recall little except the blows that so nearly killed you. You work and push and stab to make an opening in their shield wall, and then you grunt and lunge and slash to widen the gap, and only then does the madness take over as the enemy breaks and you can begin to kill like a God because the enemy is scared and running, or scared and frozen, and all they can do is die while you harvest souls.

And beat them back again we did. Again we used flames from our balefire, and again we broke their wall, but we broke our own in the doing of it. I remember the sun bright behind the high western hill, and I remember staggering into an open patch of sand and shouting at men to support me, and I remember slashing Hywelbane onto the exposed nape of an enemy’s neck and watching his blood well up through severed hair and seeing his head jerk back, and then I saw that the two battle lines had broken each other and we were nothing but small struggling groups of bloody men on a bloody stretch of fire-littered sand.

But we had won. The rearmost ranks of the enemy ran rather than take more of our swords, but in the centre, where Mordred fought, and Arthur fought, they did not run and the fight became grim around those two leaders. We tried to surround Mordred’s men, but they fought back, and I saw how few we were and how many of us would never fight again because we had spilt our blood into Camlann’s sands. A crowd of the enemy watched us from the dunes, but they were cowards and would not come forward to help their comrades, and so the last of our men fought the last of Mordred’s, and I saw Arthur hacking with Excalibur, trying to reach the King, and Sagramor was there, and Gwydre too, and I joined in the fight, throwing a spear away with my shield, stabbing Hywelbane forward, and my throat was dry as smoke and my voice a raven’s croak. I struck at another man, and Hywelbane left a scar across his shield and he staggered back and did not have the strength to step forward again, and my own strength was ebbing and so I just stared at him through sweat-stung eyes. He came forward slowly, I stabbed, he staggered back from the blow on his shield and thrust a spear at me, and it was my turn to go backwards. I was panting, and all across the spit tired men fought tired men. Galahad was wounded, his sword arm broken and his face bloody. Culhwch was dead. I did not see it, but I found his body later with two spears in his unarmoured groin. Sagramor was limping, but his quick sword was still deadly. He was trying to shelter Gwydre, who bled from a cut on his cheek and was attempting to reach his father’s side. Arthur’s goose-feather plumes were red with blood and his white cloak streaked with it. I watched him cut down a tall man, kick away the enemy’s despairing lunge and slice down hard with Excalibur.