Jack Whyte - The Sorcer part 2 - Metamorphosis

And so the war became a struggle between a hedgehog and a tortoise, with neither side able to win a conclusive battle and Horsa's army losing steadily by attrition. Arthur's cavalry denied the Danes access to the low ground and, stranded among the hills, the enemy could achieve nothing of value. To his credit, Horsa saw the truth of this very quickly and began to lead his army back towards the coast, fighting fiercely all the way and losing heavily among the hills to the deadly Pendragon bowmen. Arthur kept pressing fiercely at their heels the whole way, throwing his mounted weight time and again to storm the shield walls. He pressed the fight to the very edges of the beach that offered Horsa access to the anchored fleet that awaited him and his men, to ferry them home again. There, Arthur halted his advance and set his cavalry to form a solid wall about the crescent of sand that he could easily have set awash in Danish blood. His clemency was easily explained, he told me later, by the fact that Horsa had been a brave and clever enemy who had learned that he could never conquer Cambria and hence would not return. Should he and Horsa meet again, elsewhere, each would respect the other and renew their battles on new ground. So Arthur Pendragon sat and watched his enemy's fleet sail off to safety.

Connor Mac Athol, Arthur discovered later, had been ravaging that fleet relentlessly since shortly after its arrival, and had caused great damage. His biremes and his galleys skirted the edges of its anchorage like hungry wolves, avoiding the counterattacking vessels sent to fight them and raiding at random and at all hours, burning and sinking ships by night and day. In consequence, the vessels that bore the Danes away from Cambria were far fewer, and far more heavily laden, than their captains had expected they would be.

In the meantime, one of my own deep held wishes had been denied me. Peter Ironhair was dead, and the knowledge was like bitter ashes on my tongue. Ambrose had told me many times that I spent too much time thinking of Ironhair and the vengeance I would take on him when finally we two came face to face, and now that all my hopes of that revenge were gone, I was curiously relieved, no longer burdened by the hatred that had driven me for so long. He had somehow fallen foul of his own ally, Horsa, and had died for it; none of us would ever know the how or why of what occurred. I was intrigued, though, that his promise in my vision had been fulfilled. I had never set eyes on him again, nor had anyone else from Camulod except Philip, who commanded the patrol that found him hanging from a tree in an abandoned Danish camp. The irony of that was not lost on me, for his predecessor in Cornwall, Gulrhys Lot himself, had suffered the same fate, hanged from a tree by hands unknown.

All of this had taken place before the end of summer, mere months after my departure from Cambria, and with campaigning time to spare, Arthur quickly moved to consolidate his victories. He dispatched a strong force of horse and foot, conveyed in three swift journeys by Connor's massive biremes, into Cornwall, under Philip, to clean out the nests that had sheltered Ironhair and his verminous followers. The remainder of his force he led himself in a lightning swift sweep up the length of Britain, following the western slopes of the mountain chain that bisects the land. He was spreading a message of his own as he progressed: a message that the time was ripe for the folk of Britain to unite and throw out the foreign invaders who swarmed everywhere. Camulod stood for freedom from invasion, he proclaimed, and offered strength and support to those who would join it in the fight to drive the aliens from Britain's shores.

He did encounter opposition as he swept northward, but very little. The mere sight of the thousands of heavily armed horsemen ranked behind him had a pacifying and reassuring effect, even for those kings who might have felt threatened by his coming. By the time he turned eastward, following the line of Hadrian's Wall towards the sea that divided Britain from its would be conquerors, his name and fame were spreading ahead of him. Following the road south from the wall to where it crossed the wide river at the old Roman fort of Longovicum, he found a garrison of sorts in residence, under siege from a large army of Saxons who had sailed upriver from the coast, some twenty miles away. Taking advantage of the Saxons' surprise, Arthur split his forces and attacked immediately, destroying many of their beached longboats with burning arrows and smashing the clumps of men who ringed the old fort's walls. The king of that region was a man called Viticus, who was now in Verulamium for the great ceremony.

Within a year of coming to command, Arthur Pendragon had proclaimed himself the length and breadth of Britain, rallying the people and their separate kings to join his cause and form a united front against the Outlanders, and in the doing of it, he had discovered that our Camulod was not the only Roman settlement of its kind in Britain. There were several such, apparently, but none were so well established and maintained, and none had cavalry.

It was on Arthur's return to Camulod that I presented him with my own parade dress armour, telling him that I had no more need of it, and with the even more splendid armour that his own father had worn. He was greatly moved, and his eyes tilled with sudden tears, but from that moment on, he chose to wear my armour, claiming it to be the armour of Camulod. His father's armour, he maintained, he would reserve for dignified and ceremonial occasions, when he would wear it in proud tribute to Uther.

"Merlyn? Forgive me, my friend, I had no thought to startle you."

I had not even heard the door open behind me, and I leaped to my feet, spilling some of my mead. But then, swiftly recovered, I waved away Enos's concern. He smiled and crossed directly to his pallet, removing his long travelling cloak as he went. As he folded his cloak carefully. I poured a cup of water and cut a small portion of cheese and bread for him, knowing he would eat little of it. He accepted it with a word of thanks.

"You had no difficulties?" he asked.

"No, but Arthur almost caught me in the act."

He laughed quietly as I told him what had happened, then went on to talk about the proceedings planned for the following day. As he talked I thought about the difference between his gentle, speaking voice and what I thought of as his command voice. No longer young, he was gaunt and stooped from the hardships of his pastoral life, which involved constant travel in all weathers as he carried the Word to his far scattered flock. Yet he was vibrant in everything he did, radiating a calm and massive conviction, and he had been indefatigable in his efforts to ensure that this unprecedented gathering would take place as planned, and would present a spectacle the likes of which this land had never seen. That much of it must be arranged in secrecy seemed only to fuel his enthusiasm, and he had handled his far flung congregation of bishops as deftly as a successful legate must handle his legions.

Throughout the ceremonies early that afternoon, he had spoken strongly and clearly, instructing the assembled throng on the Roman history of the great theatre, and on the ceremony about to take place, and I had been as fascinated as anyone, listening to him speak with such authority and certainty. Then he had led us through the steps necessary to make the conversion from theatre to ecclesia, from house of entertainments to House of God, beginning with the sanctification of the place of worship. Upon his signal, a long procession had advanced from the grounds outside the doors and made its way down through the watching, spellbound crowd. More than a hundred bishops, led by thurifers spreading clouds of sweet incense, came forward slowly, chanting the Creed in unison. The majestic prayer, the formal declaration of the Christian tenets devised and perfected and inscribed at the Great Council of Nicaea more than a hundred years earlier, had raised the hairs on my neck as I listened to it sung by the chorus of voices.