Bernard Cornwell - Excalibur

‘So we abandon Arthur?’ Issa asked, shocked at the thought.

‘We keep a Saxon warband away from Corinium,’ I said. But I was not happy with my choice, for Issa was right. I was abandoning Arthur, but I dared not risk the lives of Ceinwyn and my daughters. The whole careful campaign that Arthur had plotted was destroyed. Culhwch was cut off somewhere to the south, I was trapped at Aquae Sulis, while Cuneglas and Oengus mac Airem were still many miles away. I rode back to find my armour and weapons. I had no time to don the body armour, but I pulled on the wolf-plumed helmet, found my heaviest spear and took up my shield. I gave the mare back to Guinevere and told her to take the families up the hill, then ordered the men of the levy and my younger spearmen to turn the seven food wagons round and get them up to the fortress. ‘I don’t care how you do it,’ I said to them, ‘but I want that food kept from the enemy. Haul the wagons up yourself if you have to!’ I might have abandoned Argante’s wagons, but in war a wagon-load of food is far more precious than gold and I was determined to keep those supplies from the enemy. If necessary, I would burn the wagons and their contents, but for the moment I would try to save the food. I went back to Issa and took my place at the centre of the shield wall. The enemy ranks were thickening and I expected them to make a mad charge down the hill at any minute. They outnumbered us, but still they did not come and every moment that they hesitated was an extra moment in which our families and the precious wagon-loads of food could reach the hill’s summit. I glanced behind constantly, watching the wagons’ progress, and when they were just over halfway up the steep slope I ordered my spearmen back.

That retreat spurred the Saxons into an advance. They screamed a challenge and came fast down the hill, but they had left their attack too late. My men went back along the road, crossed a shallow ford where a stream tumbled from the hills towards the river, and now we had the higher ground for we were retreating uphill towards the fortress on its steep slope. My men kept their line straight, kept their shields overlapping and held their long spears steady, and that evidence of their training stopped the Saxon pursuit fifty yards short of us. They contented themselves with shouting challenges and insults, while one of their naked wizards, his hair spiked with cow dung, danced forward to curse us. He called us pigs, cowards and goats. He cursed us, and I counted them. They had one hundred and seventy men in their wall, and there were still more who had not yet come down the hill. I counted them and the Saxon war-leaders stood their horses behind their shield wall and counted us. I could see their banner clearly now and it was Cerdic’s standard of a wolf skull hung with a dead man’s flayed skin, but Cerdic himself was not there. This had to be one of his warbands come south from the Thames. The warband far outnumbered us, but its leaders were too canny to attack. They knew that they could beat us, but they also knew the dreadful toll that seventy experienced warriors would cull from their ranks. It was enough for them to have driven us away from the road.

We backed slowly up the hill. The Saxons watched us, but only their wizard followed us and after a while he lost interest. He spat at us and turned away. We jeered mightily at the enemy’s timidity, but in truth I was feeling a huge relief that they had not attacked.

It took us an hour to heave the seven wagons of precious food over the ancient turf rampart and so onto the hill’s gently domed top. I walked that domed plateau and discovered it to be a marvellous defensive position. The summit was a triangle, and on each of its three sides the ground fell steeply away so that any attacker would be forced to labour up into the teeth of our spears. I hoped the steepness of that slope would keep the Saxon warband from making any attack, and that in a day or two the enemy would leave and we would be free to find our way north to Corinium. We would arrive late, and Arthur would doubtless be angry with me, but for the moment I had kept this part of Dumnonia’s army safe. We numbered over two hundred spearmen and we protected a crowd of women and children, seven wagons and two Princesses, and our refuge was a grassy hilltop high above a deep river valley. I found one of the levy and asked him the name of the hill.

‘It’s named like the city, Lord,’ he said, apparently bemused that I should even want to know the name.

‘Aquae Sulis?’ I asked him.

‘No, Lord! The old name! The name before the Romans came.’

‘Baddon,’ I said.

‘And this is Mynydd Baddon, Lord,’ he confirmed.

Mount Baddon. In time the poets would make that name ring through all of Britain. It would be sung in a thousand halls and fire the blood of children yet unborn, but for now it meant nothing to me. It was just a convenient hill, a grass-walled fort, and the place where, all unwillingly, I had planted my two banners in the turf. One showed Ceinwyn’s star, while the other, which we had found and rescued from Argante’s wagons, flaunted Arthur’s banner of the bear.

So, in the morning light, where they flapped in the drying wind, the bear and the star defied the Saxons.

On Mynydd Baddon.

The Saxons were cautious. They had not attacked us when they first saw us, and now that we were secure on Mynydd Baddon’s summit they were content to sit at the southern base of the hill and simply watch us. In the afternoon a large contingent of their spearmen walked to Aquae Sulis, where they must have discovered an almost deserted city. I expected to see the flare and smoke of burning thatch, but no such fires appeared and at dusk the spearmen came back from the city laden with plunder. The shadows of nightfall darkened the river valley and, while we on Mynydd Baddon’s summit were still in the last wash of daylight, our enemy’s campfires studded the dark beneath us. Still more fires showed in the hilly land to the north of us. Mynydd Baddon lay like an offshore island to those hills, and was separated from them by a high grassy saddle. I had half thought we might cross that high valley in the night, climb to the ridge beyond and make our way across the hills towards Corinium; so, before dusk, I sent Issa and a score of men to reconnoitre the route, but they returned to say there were mounted Saxon scouts all across the ridge beyond the saddle. I was still tempted to try and escape northwards, but I knew the Saxon horsemen would see us and that by dawn we would have their whole warband on our heels. I worried about the choice till deep into the night, then picked the lesser of the two evils: we would stay on Mynydd Baddon.

To the Saxons we must have appeared a formidable army. I now commanded two hundred and sixty-eight men and the enemy were not to know that fewer than a hundred of those were prime spearmen. Forty of the remainder were the city levy, thirty-six were battle-hardened warriors who had guarded Caer Cadarn or Durnovaria’s palace, though most of those three dozen men were old and slow now, while a hundred and ten were unblooded youngsters. My seventy experienced spearmen and Argante’s twelve Blackshields were among the best warriors in Britain, and though I did not doubt that the thirty-six veterans would be useful and that the youngsters might well prove formidable, it was still a pitifully small force with which to protect our hundred and fourteen women and seventy-nine children. But at least we had plenty of food and water, for we possessed the seven precious wagons and there were three springs on Mynydd Baddon’s flanks.

By nightfall on that first day we had counted the enemy. There were about three hundred and sixty Saxons in the valley and at least another eighty on the land to the north. That was enough spearmen to keep us penned on Mynydd Baddon, but probably not enough to assault us. Each of the flat and treeless summit’s three sides was three hundred paces in length, making a total that was far too great for my small numbers to defend, but if the enemy did attack we would see them coming from a long way off and I would have time to move spearmen to face their assault. I reckoned that even if they made two or three simultaneous assaults I could still hold, for the Saxons would have a terrible steep slope to climb and my men would be fresh, but if the enemy numbers increased then I knew I must be overwhelmed. My prayer was that these Saxons were nothing more than a strong foraging band, and once they had stripped Aquae Sulis and its river valley of whatever food they could find they would go back north to rejoin Aelle and Cerdic.