Bernard Cornwell - Excalibur

That night Taliesin sang to Mordred’s men. They had gathered in the half-finished church that Sansum had started to build on Caer Cadarn, and which now served as a roofless, broken-walled hall, and there Taliesin charmed them with his music. I had never before, and have never since, heard him sing more beautifully. At first, like any bard entertaining warriors, he had to fight the babble of voices, but gradually his skill silenced them. He accompanied himself on his harp and he chose to sing laments, but laments of such loveliness that Mordred’s spearmen listened in awestruck silence. Even the dogs ceased their yelping and lay silent as Taliesin the Bard sang into the night. If he ever paused too long between songs the spearmen demanded more, and so he would sing again, his voice dying on the melody’s endings, then surging again with the new verses, but forever soothing, and Mordred’s folk drank and listened, and the drink and the songs made them weep, and still Taliesin sang to them. Sansum and I listened too, and we also wept for the ethereal sadness of the laments, but as the night stretched on Taliesin began to sing lullabies, sweet lullabies, delicate lullabies, lullabies to put drunken men to sleep, and while he sang the air grew colder and I saw that a mist was forming over Caer Cadarn.

The mist thickened and still Taliesin sang. If the world is to last through the reigns of a thousand kings I doubt men will ever hear songs so wondrously sung. And all the while the mist wrapped about the hilltop so that the fires grew dim in the vapour and the songs filled the dark like wraith songs echoing from the land of the dead.

Then, in the dark, the songs ended and I heard nothing but sweet chords being struck on the harp and it seemed to me that the chords drew closer and closer to our hut and to the guards who had been sitting on the damp grass listening to the music.

The sound of the harp came nearer still and at last I saw Taliesin in the mist. ‘I have brought you mead,’ he said to my guards, ‘share it.’ And he took from his bag a stoppered jar that he handed to one of the guards and, while they passed the jar to and fro, he sang to them. He sang the softest song of all that song-haunted night, a lullaby to rock a troubled world to sleep, and sleep they did. One by one the guards tipped sideways, and still Taliesin sang, his voice enchanting that whole fortress, and only when one of the guards began to snore did he stop singing and lower his hand from the harp. ‘I think, Lord Derfel, that you can come out now,’ he said very calmly.

‘Me too!’ Sansum said, and pushed past me to scramble first through the door. Taliesin smiled when I appeared. ‘Merlin ordered me to save you, Lord,’ he said, ‘though he says you may not thank him for it.’

‘Of course I will,’ I said.

‘Come on!’ Sansum yelped, ‘no time to talk. Come! Quick!’

‘Wait, you misery,’ I said to him, then stooped and took a spear from one of the sleeping guards.

‘What charm did you use?’ I asked Taliesin.

‘A man hardly needs a charm to make drunken folk sleep,’ he said, ‘but on these guards I used an infusion of mandrake root.’

‘Wait for me here,’ I said.

‘Derfel! We must go!’ Sansum hissed in alarm.

‘You must wait, Bishop,’ I said, and I slipped away into the mist, going towards the blurred glow of the biggest fires. Those fires burned in the half-built church that was nothing more than stretches of unfinished log-walls with great gaps between the timbers. The space inside was filled with sleeping people, though some were now waking and staring bleary-eyed like folk stirring from an enchantment. Dogs were rooting among the sleepers for food and their excitement was waking still more people. Some of the newly woken folk watched me, but none recognized me. To them I was just another spearman walking in the night.

I discovered Amhar by one of the fires. He slept with his mouth open, and he died the same way. I thrust the spear into his open mouth, paused long enough for his eyes to open and for his soul to recognize me, and then, when I saw that he knew me, I pushed the blade through his neck and spine so that he was pinned to the ground. He jerked as I killed him, and the last thing his soul saw on this earth was my smile. Then I stooped, took the beard leash from his belt, unbuckled Hywelbane, and stepped out of the church. I wanted to look for Mordred and Loholt, but more sleepers were waking now, and one man called out to ask who I was, and so I just went back into the misted shadows and hurried uphill to where Taliesin and Sansum waited.

‘We must go!’ Sansum bleated.

‘I have bridles by the ramparts, Lord,’ Taliesin told me.

‘You think of everything,’ I said admiringly. I paused to throw the remnants of my beard on the small fire that had warmed our guards, and when I saw that the last of the strands had flared and burned to ash I followed Taliesin to the northern ramparts. He found the two bridles in the shadows, then we climbed to the fighting platform and there, hidden from the guards by the mist, we clambered over the wall and dropped to the hillside. The mist ended halfway down the slope and we hurried on to the meadow where most of Mordred’s horses were sleeping in the night. Taliesin woke two of the beasts, gently stroking their noses and chanting in their ears, and they calmly let him put the bridles over their heads.

‘You can ride without a saddle, Lord?’ he asked me.

‘Without a horse, tonight, if necessary.’

‘What about me?’ Sansum demanded as I heaved myself onto one of the horses. I looked down at him. I was tempted to leave him in the meadow for he had been a treacherous man all his life and I had no wish to prolong his existence, but he could also be useful to us on this night and so I reached down and hauled him onto the horse’s back behind me. ‘I should leave you here, Bishop,’ I said as he settled himself. He offered me no answer, but just wrapped his arms tight round my waist. Taliesin was leading the second horse towards the meadow’s gate that he tugged open. ‘Did Merlin tell you what we should do now?’ I asked the bard as I kicked my horse through the opening.

‘He did not, Lord, but wisdom suggests we should go to the coast and find a boat. And that we hurry, Lord. The sleep on that hilltop will not last long, and once they find you missing, they will send men to search for us.’ Taliesin used the gate as a mounting-block.

‘What do we do?’ Sansum asked in panic, his grip fierce about me.

‘Kill you?’ I suggested. ‘Then Taliesin and I can make better time.’

‘No, Lord, no! Please, no!’

Taliesin glanced up at the misted stars. ‘We ride west?’ he suggested.

‘I know just where we’re going,’ I said, kicking the horse towards the track that led to Lindinis.

‘Where?’ Sansum demanded.

‘To see your wife, Bishop,’ I said, ‘to see your wife.’ That was why I saved Sansum’s life that night, because Morgan was now our best hope. I doubted she would help me, and was certain she would spit in Taliesin’s face if he asked for aid, but for Sansum she would do anything. And so we rode to Ynys Wydryn.

We woke Morgan from sleep and she came to the door of her hall in a bad temper, or rather in a worse than usual temper. She did not recognize me without a beard and did not see her husband who, sore from the ride, was lagging behind us; instead Morgan saw Taliesin as a Druid who had dared to come into the sacred confines of her shrine. ‘Sinner!’ she screeched at him, her newly woken state proving no barrier to the full force of her vituperation. ‘Defiler! Idolater! In the name of the holy God and His blessed Mother I order you to go!’

‘Morgan!’ I called, but just then she saw the bedraggled, limping figure of Sansum and she gave a small mew of joy and hurried towards him. The quarter moon glinted on the golden mask with which she covered her fire-ravaged face.