Jack Whyte - The Saxon Shore

"When in Rome, Caius," he said, and I wondered what he meant until I heard his next words. "My men now fight like Saxons, with good reason. One of the first things that impressed me about Hengist's people was the way they fight. I've heard them speak of it as the weirding way, or something like that. Whatever it means, it's very strange and very different from the way I was taught. These people have an absolute lack of fear of death. To die in battle offers the greatest state of beatitude they can attain. It seemed to me we would be well advised to learn their methods, since we will surely have need of them some day—not necessarily against Hengist's own, but certainly against their countrymen and former allies."

My attention had focused on the fight the moment he began to speak, and I was already taking note of what was truly happening here in front of me. It became obvious immediately, after the first analytical glance, why the Saxons, or Northmen, as Vortigern's own people called their mercenary warriors, favoured the heavy axe in their warfare. The weapon was awkward and cumbersome, requiring no apparent grace or skilled technique in its employment, both of these sacrificed to pure, brute strength and violence. That strength and violence were demanded, however, by the enemies against whom they fought, or, more accurately, by the shields those enemies carried. These were circular, and because of that, they appeared enormous, although they were no greater in actual extent, from top to bottom, than our rectangular shields, which covered the bearer from knee to chin. Their overall circumference, however, dictated a different style of attack from any would-be assailant, since the extent of the shielded area, laterally, eliminated the normal avenues of penetration that swordsmen, our swordsmen at least, were trained to exploit. There was simply no way to get around these things in a normal attack with a sword, and any effort to do so would expose the sword wielder's body, fatally, to the axe being swung from behind the shield.

Even as I absorbed this, one of the two contestants—it turned out to be Jenner, the giant in the yellow tunic—smashed through his opponent's guard with a mighty, overhand swipe that cut deeply into the edge of Marek's shield, and in moments I received a chilling lesson in our own military shortcomings in the face of such weaponry. The blow landed, the sword's edge bit deep into the rim of the shield, and Marek flung his shield arm up, straight out and away from his body, his own body uncoiling in a surge of strength that locked the edge of Jenner's sword tightly and pulled him forward and off balance, leaving him open and vulnerable so that the only thing he could do was to sweep his own shield across in front of him, thrusting it between himself and his opponent, but unbalancing himself even further, so that all his body weight was pushed to the right. At that point Marek froze my blood by doing something for which I was completely unprepared. He followed the direction of Jenner's crosswise impetus with his own body, turning himself inward into Jenner's imbalance, spinning completely in a wrenching twist until his back was to Jenner, then slamming his left shoulder into the shield that separated them and kicking Jenner's feet from under him with his right heel. Jenner's sword hilt was torn from his grasp and he fell heavily, to what would have been death.

The spectators broke into a chorus of cheers and jeers, but I stood gaping. Ambrose had been watching me and now he spoke again.

"They look heavy, don't they? The shields." I merely nodded, looking at him. "Well they're not," he continued. "But they are very strong. Woven wickerwork wheels, feather light but immensely strong, at least two but sometimes three of them bound together, with an unwoven, handspanwide perimeter of straight canes around the outer edges; the whole covered in a double layer of heavy, hardened hide reinforced and thickened around the rim to catch and snare a sword blade. They're light, immensely strong and virtually impregnable. Arrows, even long arrows, are trapped by the woven layers of cane wickerwork before they can pass through. Same thing happens to spears. And swords, as you have just seen, can't get around them."

"Only an axe," I said.

"Yes, only an axe can give an opponent the chance of smashing one down."

"An axe or a horse."

"True. No man on foot can stand for long against a man on a horse." He signalled one of his men to come forward and asked him to show me his shield, and for the next while we examined the thing, although only I was unfamiliar with the device. I found it completely admirable, and far lighter, much less cumbersome, than I had expected. Somehow, in the course of our discussions, the sun sped across the sky and suddenly it was almost dark, the air around us filled with the smells of newly roasted venison and fresh-baked bread.

When we had eaten and were sitting together by the fire outside our tents, I set out to bring my companions up to date on developments since Donuil and I had parted company, but I quickly found that I had far more to impart to them than I had thought to deal with. Donuil, for example, knew nothing of his sister Ygraine's death, or of her involvement with Other, and I knew that I would have to approach those topics with a degree of preparation, care and solicitude. Neither man had heard either of the death of Uther or Gulrhys Lot, and Ambrose's first interest was, naturally enough, in the nature of the emergency that had caused me to send Donuil in search of him. In order to explain that, I accepted that I would have to share the secret of Excalibur, and it seemed to me the only way to do that adequately was to tell the entire story of the great Dream of Caius Britannicus and Publius Varrus, and the Colony called Camulod they had founded between them.

I talked for hours, starting from the first meeting between my grandfather and Publius Varrus, and as I spoke, they listened without interrupting and the camp gradually grew still around us until we three were the only ones left awake, and still I talked on. I told them of the foresight of my grandfather Caius, and how Publius Varrus had adopted his vision and helped make it the world we call Camulod, and I spoke of Varrus's own dream of finding a Skystone, and of how he had succeeded, and what he had done with what he found. I talked of the prescient wisdom of these men, combined with that of Ullic Pendragon, and how they had foreseen and set in motion the birthing of an entire new race of Britons, formed of the bonding of native Celts and Romano-British citizens. And I led them along the path towards the culmination of the Dream in the birth of the child Arthur. When I completed my tale with our meeting that day, my two listeners sat silent, each lost in his own world, and I knew better than to expect either to respond immediately. I left them to their thoughts and moved to replenish the fire, which had almost died out.

Donuil was the first to speak, and by the time he did the fire was high again.

"It has been five years since I came here. I would not have believed it. . . would not have believed I could forget the end of that term." He was speaking to himself and sought no response from me, so I offered none.

"Excalibur." This was Ambrose. "No one else knows of it?"

"No one, except for my aunt. That frightened me when I came to realize the truth of it. I didn't know what to do, then. The best solution I could find seemed to be to explain it in a letter and send for you. Had you arrived and had I not returned within the year, the letter would have been given to you and you would have found the sword."

He looked at me, his face twisted in what was not quite a smile. "What if I had merely kept it for myself?"

"What of it? It would have been yours by then, to do with as you willed."