Bernard Cornwell - Excalibur

I realized then what Bors was hinting. ‘My Lord Arthur,’ I said carefully, ‘has no quarrel with you.’

‘Nor I with him,’ Bors said through a mouthful of apple. ‘So maybe we shall meet again, Lord Derfel. It’s a great pity I couldn’t find you this morning. My Lord King would have rewarded me richly if I had killed you.’ He grinned and walked away.

Two hours later I watched Bors leave with Cerdic, going down the hill where the clearing mist shredded among red-leaved trees. A hundred men went with Cerdic, most of them suffering from the night’s feast, just like Aelle’s men who formed an escort for their departing guests. I rode behind Aelle whose own horse was being led while he walked beside King Cerdic and Lancelot. Just behind them walked two standard-bearers, one carrying Aelle’s blood-spattered bull skull on a staff, the other hoisting aloft Cerdic’s red-painted wolf skull that was hung with a dead man’s flayed skin. Lancelot ignored me. Earlier in the morning, when we had unexpectedly encountered each other close to the hall, he had simply looked through me and I made nothing of the encounter. His men had murdered my youngest daughter, and though I had killed the murderers, I would still have liked to avenge Dian’s soul on Lancelot himself, but Aelle’s hall was not the place to do it. Now, from a grassy ridge above the muddy banks of the Thames, I watched as Lancelot and his few retainers walked towards Cerdic’s waiting ships.

Only Amhar and Loholt dared challenge me. The twins were sullen youths who hated their father and despised their mother. In their own eyes they were princes, but Arthur, who disdained titles, refused to give them the honour and that had only increased their resentment. They believed they had been cheated of royal rank, of land, of wealth and of honour, and they would fight for anyone who tried to defeat Arthur whom they blamed for all their ill-fortune. The stump of Loholt’s right arm was sheathed in silver, to which he had attached a pair of bear’s claws. It was Loholt who turned back to me. ‘We shall meet next year,’ he told me.

I knew he was spoiling for a fight, but I kept my voice mild. ‘I look forward to the meeting.’

He held up his silver-sheathed stump, reminding me how I had held his arm as his father had struck with Excalibur. ‘You owe me a hand, Derfel.’

I said nothing. Amhar had come to stand beside his brother. They both had their father’s big-boned, long-jawed face, but in them it had been soured so that they showed none of Arthur’s strength. Instead they looked cunning, almost wolf-like.

‘Did you not hear me?’ Loholt demanded.

‘Be glad,’ I told him, ‘that you still have one hand. And as for my debt to you, Loholt, I shall pay it with Hywelbane.’

They hesitated, but they could not be certain that Cerdic’s guards would support them if they drew their swords, and so at last they contented themselves with spitting at me before turning and strutting down to the muddy beach where Cerdic’s two boats waited.

This shore beneath Thunreslea was a miserable place, half land and half sea, where the meeting of the river and the ocean had spawned a dull landscape of mudbanks, shoals and tangling sea-creeks. Gulls cried as Cerdic’s spearmen plunged across the glutinous foreshore, waded into the shallow creek and hauled themselves over the wooden gunwales of their longboats. I saw Lancelot lift the hem of his cloak as he picked his delicate way through the foul-smelling mud. Loholt and Amhar followed him and, once they reached their boat, they turned and pointed their fingers at me, a gesture designed to cast ill-luck. I ignored them. The ship’s sails were already raised, but the wind was light and the two high-prowed boats had to be manoeuvred out of the narrow ebbing creek with long oars wielded by Cerdic’s spearmen. Once the boats’ wolf-crested prows were facing towards the open water the warrior-oarsmen began a chant that offered a rhythm to their strokes. ‘Hwaet for your mother,’ they chanted, ‘and hwaet for your girl, and hwaet for your lover who you hwaet on the floor,’ and with every ‘hwaet’ they shouted louder and pulled on their long oars and the two ships gained speed until at last the mist curled about their sails that were crudely painted with wolves’ skulls. ‘And hwaet for your mother,’ the chant began again, only now the voices were thinner through the vapour, ‘and hwaet for your girl,’ and the low hulls became vague in the mist until, at last, the ships vanished in the whitened air, ‘and hwaet for your lover who you hwaet on the floor.’ The sound came as if from nowhere, and then faded with the splashing of their oars. Two of Aelle’s men heaved their lord onto his horse. ‘Did you sleep?’ he asked me as he settled himself in his saddle.

‘Yes, Lord King.’

‘I had better things to do,’ he said curtly. ‘Now follow me.’ He kicked back his heels and turned his horse along the shore where the creeks rippled and sucked as the tide ebbed. This morning, in honour of his departing guests, Aelle had dressed as a warrior King. His iron helmet was trimmed with gold and crowned with a fan of black feathers, his leather breastplate and long boots were dyed black, while from his shoulders there fell a long black bearskin cloak that dwarfed his small horse. A dozen of his men followed us on horseback, one of them carrying the bull-skull standard. Aelle, like me, rode clumsily. ‘I knew Arthur would send you,’ he said suddenly and, when I made no answer, he turned to me. ‘So you found your mother?’

‘Yes, Lord King.’

‘How is she?’

‘Old,’ I said truthfully, ‘old, fat and sick.’

He sighed at that news. ‘They start as young girls so beautiful they can break the hearts of a whole army, and after they’ve had a couple of children they all look old, fat and sick.’ He paused, thinking about that. ‘But somehow I thought that would never happen to Erce. She was very beautiful,’ he said wistfully, then grinned, ‘but thank the Gods there’s a constant supply of the young ones, eh?’ He laughed, then gave me another glance. ‘When you first told me your mother’s name I knew you were my son.’ He paused. ‘My firstborn son.’

‘Your firstborn bastard,’ I said.

‘So? Blood is blood, Derfel.’

‘And I am proud to have yours, Lord King.’

‘And so you should be, boy, though you share it with enough others. I have not been selfish with my blood.’ He chuckled, then turned his horse onto a mudbank and whipped the animal up its slippery slope to where a fleet of boats lay stranded. ‘Look at them, Derfel!’ my father said, reining in his horse and gesturing at the boats. ‘Look at them! Useless now, but nearly every one came this summer and every one was filled to the gunwales with folk.’ He kicked his heels back again and we rode slowly past that sorry line of stranded boats.

There might have been eighty or ninety craft on the mudbank. All of them were double-ended, elegant ships, but all were now decaying. Their planks were green with slime, their bilges were flooded and their timbers black with rot. Some of the boats, which must have been there longer than a year, were nothing but dark skeletons. ‘Threescore folk in every boat, Derfel,’ Aelle said, ‘at least threescore, and every tide brought more of them. Now, when the storms are haunting the open sea, they don’t come, but they are building more boats and those will arrive in the spring. And not just here, Derfel, but all up the coast!’

He swept his arm to encompass all Britain’s eastern shore. ‘Boats and boats! All filled with our people, all wanting a home, all wanting land.’ He spoke the last word fiercely, then turned his horse away from me without waiting for any response. ‘Come!’ he shouted, and I followed his horse across the tide-rippled mud of a creek, up a shingle bank and then through patches of thorn as we climbed the hill on which his great hall stood.