Bernard Cornwell - Excalibur

‘It’s my rampart,’ Niall, the Blackshield leader, insisted. ‘I’ll fillet the bastard.’

‘It’s my hilltop,’ I said. It was more than just my hilltop, it was also my duty to fight the first single combat of a battle. A king could let his champion fight but a warlord had no business sending men where he would not go himself, and so I closed the cheekpieces of my helmet, touched a gloved hand to the pork bones in Hywelbane’s hilt, then pressed on my mail coat to feel the small lump made by Ceinwyn’s brooch. Thus reassured I pushed through our crude timber palisade and edged down the steep slope.

‘You and me!’ I shouted at the tall Saxon in his own language, ‘for their lives,’ and I pointed my spear at the three children.

The Saxons roared approval that they had at last brought one Briton down from the hill. They backed away, taking the children with them, leaving the saddle to their champion and to me. The burly Saxon hefted the big axe in his left hand, then spat onto the buttercups. ‘You speak our language well, pig,’ he greeted me.

‘It is a pig’s language,’ I said.

He tossed the axe high into the air where it turned, its blade flashing in the weak sunlight that was trying to break the clouds. The axe was long and its double-bladed head heavy, but he caught it easily by its haft. Most men would have found it hard to wield such a massive weapon for even a short time, let alone toss and catch it, but this Saxon made it look easy. ‘Arthur dared not come and fight me,’ he said, ‘so I shall kill you in his stead.’

His reference to Arthur puzzled me, but it was not my job to disabuse the enemy if they thought Arthur was on Mynydd Baddon. ‘Arthur has better things to do than to kill vermin,’ I said, ‘so he asked me to slaughter you, then bury your fat corpse with your feet pointing south so that through all time you will wander lonely and hurting, never able to find your Otherworld.’

He spat. ‘You squeal like a spavined pig.’ The insults were a ritual, as was the single combat. Arthur disapproved of both, believing insults to be a waste of breath and single combat a waste of energy, but I had no objection to fighting an enemy champion. Such combat did serve a purpose, for if I killed this man my troops would be hugely cheered and the Saxons would see a terrible omen in his death. The risk was losing the fight, but I was a confident man in those days. The Saxon was a full hand’s breadth taller than I and much broader across his shoulders, but I doubted he would be fast. He looked like a man who relied on strength to win, while I took pride in being clever as well as strong. He looked up at our rampart that was now crowded with men and women. I could not see Ceinwyn there, but Guinevere stood tall and striking among the armed men. ‘Is that your whore?’ the Saxon asked me, holding his axe towards her.

‘Tonight she’ll be mine, you worm.’ He took two steps nearer me so that he was just a dozen paces away, then tossed the big axe up in the air again. His men were cheering him from the northern slope, while my men were shouting raucous encouragements from the ramparts.

‘If you’re frightened,’ I said, ‘I can give you time to empty your bowels.’

‘I’ll empty them on your corpse,’ he spat at me. I wondered whether to take him with the spear or with Hywelbane and decided the spear would be faster so long as he did not parry the blade. It was plain that he would attack soon for he had begun to swing the axe in fast intricate curves that were dazzling to watch and I suspected his intention was to charge me with that blurring blade, knock my spear aside with his shield, then bury the axe in my neck. ‘My name is Wulfger,’ he said formally, ‘Chief of the Sarnaed tribe of Cerdic’s people, and this land shall be my land.’

I slipped my left arm out of the shield loops, transferred the shield to my right arm and hefted the spear in my left hand. I did not loop the shield on my right arm, but just gripped the wooden handle tight. Wulfger of the Sarnaed was left-handed and that meant his axe would have attacked from my unguarded side if I had kept the shield on its original arm. I was not nearly so good with a spear in my left hand, but I had a notion that might finish this fight fast. ‘My name,’ I answered him formally, ‘is Derfel, son of Aelle, King of the Aenglish. And I am the man who put the scar on Liofa’s cheek.’

My boast had been intended to unsettle him, and perhaps it did, but he showed little sign of it. Instead, with a sudden roar, he attacked and his men cheered deafeningly. Wulfger’s axe was whistling in the air, his shield was poised to knock my spear aside, and he was charging like a bull, but then I hurled my own shield at his face. I hurled it sideways on, so that it spun towards him like a heavy disc of metal-rimmed wood.

The sudden sight of the heavy shield flying hard at his face forced him to raise his own shield and check the violent whirling of his blurring axe. I heard my shield clatter on his, but I was already on one knee with my spear held low and lancing upwards. Wulfger of the Sarnaed had parried my shield quickly enough, but he could not stop his heavy forward rush, not could he drop his shield in time, and so he ran straight onto that long, heavy, wicked-edged blade. I had aimed at his belly, at a spot just beneath his iron breastplate where his only protection was a thick leather jerkin, and my spear went though that leather like a needle slipping through linen. I stood up as the blade sank through leather, skin, muscle and flesh to bury itself in Wulfger’s lower belly. I stood and twisted the haft, roaring my own challenge now as I saw the axe blade falter. I lunged again, the spear still deep in his belly and twisted the leaf-shaped blade a second time, and Wulfger of the Sarnaed opened his mouth as he stared at me and I saw the horror come to his eyes. He tried to lift the axe, but there was only a terrible pain in his belly and a liquefying weakness in his legs, and then he stumbled, gasped and fell onto his knees. I let go of the spear and stepped back as I drew Hywelbane. ‘This is our land, Wulfger of the Sarnaed,’ I said loudly enough for his men to hear me, ‘and it stays our land.’ I swung the blade once, but swung it hard so that it razored through the matted mass of hair at the nape of his neck and chopped into his backbone.

He fell dead, killed in an eyeblink.

I gripped my spear shaft, put a boot on Wulfger’s belly and tugged the reluctant blade free. Then I stooped and wrenched the wolf skull from his helmet. I held the yellowing bone towards our enemies, then cast it on the ground and stamped it into fragments with my foot. I undid the dead man’s golden collar, then took his shield, his axe and his knife and waved those trophies towards his men, who stood watching silently. My men were dancing and howling their glee. Last of all I stooped and unbuckled his heavy bronze greaves which were decorated with images of my God, Mithras. I stood with my plunder. ‘Send the children!’ I shouted at the Saxons.

‘Come and fetch them!’ a man called back, then with a swift slash he cut a child’s throat. The other two children screamed, then they too were killed and the Saxons spat on their small bodies. For a moment I thought my men would lose control and charge across the saddle, but Issa and Niall held them to the rampart. I spat on Wulfger’s body, sneered at the treacherous enemy, then took my trophies back up the hill.

I gave Wulfger’s shield to one of the levy, the knife to Niall and the axe to Issa. ‘Don’t use it in battle,’

I said, ‘but you can chop wood with it.’

I carried the golden collar to Ceinwyn, but she shook her head. ‘I don’t like dead men’s gold,’ she said. She was cradling our daughters and I could see she had been weeping. Ceinwyn was not a woman to betray her emotions. She had learned as a child that she could keep her fearsome father’s affections by being bright-natured, and somehow that habit of cheerfulness had worked itself deep into her soul, but she could not hide her distress now. ‘You could have died!’ she said. I had nothing to say, so I just crouched beside her, plucked a handful of grass and scrubbed the blood from Hywelbane’s edge. Ceinwyn frowned at me. ‘They killed those children?’