Gawain said urgently, “Let’s charge them now.”

“I’m for that,” Kay agreed through chattering teeth. “The only way to get warm.”

~* 273

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“Wagons!” Gareth said suddenly.

We stared at him.

Gareth jiggled with his inspiration. “That’s it, high king! The wagons for the carrying of food. He can’t have many yet. Can he push oxen so fast as running men? Nay, he cannot. And if that’s so, are not most of them straggled out from here to Winchester?”

I beamed at him. The secret of being a brilliant general is to have men like Gareth. “You’re my eyes, then. Get down close as you can, circle the hill. And .count his wagons.”

Gawain watched him depart, grumbling. “What he can see, indeed? What’s to see but a pocky lot of foreigners? Why wait?”

I didn’t bother explaining. “Your grace, will you see to your men?”

His craggy face broke into a sudden, warm smile. “A long time since Eburacum, Arthur. Remember what a clout of fools we were then?”

“You were brave ones, though.”

“Haggling over who was to be first, as if someone might think we were afraid.” — “If I remember right, Gawain, it’s Orkney’s turn.”

The King of Orkney brightened. “So it is. And to think my brother missed it. Ah, well, did he not have his chance?”

“That he did.” But somehow I couldn’t grieve for Agrivaine’s misfortune.

Take a wide disk and lay three disks over it, each smaller than the last, and you have the shape of Mount Badon. The hill is not terribly high but consists of four separate rings of defense all round with the inner redoubt at the top, each level ramparted with log and stone. There are timber halls at the top to shelter men and horses; narrow causeways join the levels to one another.

The earthworks were there before Caesar came and were perhaps used to repel him. When Ambrosius refortified it, he added little beyond the halls and cleaning off the levels. The hill itself is the fort. To take it, infantry must fight upward, level by level, as Cerdic no doubt planned to do.

But his men were tired as mine. They’d have to rest. They had to eat.

Decision: we could stay in his rear, make him split his force, but how far can a thousand horse push six times their number? Lancelot may have done it with eighteen men, but I suspect he

was opposed by untrained, poorly armed troops without cohesive strategy or leadership. Against the sheer weight of Cerdic’s disciplined force, I could only push them indecisively one way or another, like shoveling sand in a desert.

And we were too vulnerable on the open plain. Cavalry is formidable in attack, helpless when it rests. They seldom have time or equipment to dig defenses, and it’s very hard to explain to an exhausted horse why there is no food or rest, and ours badly needed both.

We would smash through to the fort and then attack from it, rested and fed. Except for the combrogi who would do what Vortigern dreamed them for, led by the man bom for it.

I formed my force in a wedge, Orkney first, a squadron wide at the head, the rest fanned out behind. While we waited for Gareth, I splashed through the cursing ranks as they milled into formation and then draped blankets over their mounts and rested between the beasts’ legs, whetstoning razor points to their lance heads.

Waiting was worst. The rain soaked through everything, cloaks, mail and clothing, and then to our shuddering, clammy skins. After three days of this, we felt as if we’d never been warm or dry in our lives.

“Will it never stop?”

The irritation rose from a mound of damp misery under a cloak and several blankets.

“Ah, Luculius! Ready to ride?”

He poked his head out and glared at me. The cowl of his mail was pushed back and some of the dye had soaked out of his hair, revealing a few white ones like pariahs among the black.

“You’re a hard man, Artorius.”

“One way or another, what we do here today will change a lot of tomorrows. You can tell your children you saw it.”.

Luculius wiped the rain from his dripping nose. “My son is an Augustinian monk and far too lofty to care. Tedious boy, but men his mother was a Gaul.”

“You saw service in Gaul?”

“As in this case, quite unwillingly. The court sent me with letters to Sidonius of Auvergne. The Goths surrounded us as soon as I arrived.” ; “So you fought with Ecdicius?”

Where most men would be proud, the Epicurean Luculius was annoyed. “One of the tiresomely immortal eighteen,

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“Cousin, you astonish me!”

“And myself. I have always resisted heroism with all the moral fiber of my being.”

“Why, when it’s usually just dumb tuck?”

Lucullus explained with the patience of a tutor. “It gets you killed, and death impairs the senses that are our only perception of existence. If I must die, let it be at the age of ninety-five, slightly drunk on a rare vintage, the best lines of Catullus beating in my head and a beautiful body taking my last love-cry to Venus.”

I said, “That’s not the worst way to go.”

He snuffled wetly. “Nor the best, perhaps. But it’s leagues ahead of this.”

“Artos!”

Bedivere bounded down the line of men, legs scissoring wide over deep pools of rain. “Gareth’s back.”

“Good. Pass the word: Kay, Gawain and all commanders meet me forward.”

With the commanders huddled around him, Gareth rendered his report, using his round blue-and-gold shield for illustration. The hill was totally surrounded and under continual attack. The first level was hard pressed but holding, manned by stone slingers and Maelgwyn’s archers. His catapults were playing merry hob with the heathens, but they kept coming. Cerdic had enough men that he could rest them in shifts, retiring one to the rear while another came forward.

“How many wagons, Gareth?”

He struck his hands together with relish. “Scarce half a dozen, sir, east of the hill. It’s as we guessed. He ieft them to catch up as best they could.”

I walked away alone to a vantage point on the slope where I could see all Badon and the mile of muck we must flounder across. Under the rain came the other dull, unceasing roar.

Well, Cerdic, here we are. Committed. All of you and all of

us.

I trudged back through the rain to where my commanders hunched against the downpour, disconsolate as grounded birds.

“We’re going into the fort. The mud will slow us down, but keep moving. Anyone who stops is dead. Gareth!”

“Sir.”

“Detach the combrogi and destroy those six wagons. Then ride east after the others, no matter how many or how far. I don’t want one stinking mouthful of food to reach Cerdic.”

“I;

Kay protested. “We’re too bloody few already. Take out the combrogi and we’re scarce seven hundred.”

“But we’ll be warm and fed, Kay. They’ll shiver and starve. Who’ll feel more like fighting then? My lords, to your men. Bedivere, advance the dragon to the front of our line.”

They all moved out to execute their orders. I hooked Gareth’s arm and drew him apart. “Leinsterman, it’s a long cold ride I’ve given you. Orders clear?”

His monkey face peered up at me out of the cowl. “Like crystal, high king. No food to Badon.”

“When you get back, don’t try to make the hil!.”

Gareth’s mouth dropped open. “But, Mother of God, sir, we’ll be half frozen.”

“Don’t try to make the hill. Stay in his rear, keep moving. Wherever he’s weakest, hit him and run. No pitched fights, you understand?”

Gareth smiled ruefully. “Sir, is mat a warning for a man within a finger’s width of fifty and a worrying wife at home?”

I took him by the shoulders. “You’re the best. I’m counting on you. Every hour we keep him from Badon, he gets hungrier for food that won’t come. It’s you who’ll win this battle.”

“If I don’t freeze.” He looked away across the plain toward Badon and beyond. The weather would be his most remorseless enemy. “Rhian, now. Is she not one for the taking of notions? It’s been thirty years in the sweeting’s head that I catch cold easily. And here I’m out three days in Noah’s own flood and not a. sniffle.”

“Stay out of wet drafts, Gareth. We wouldn’t want you to go home ill.”

“We’d never hear the end of mat.”

“Take them out, Lord Gareth.”

• He saluted in the old alae fashion, hand to his shoulder. “God with you, sir.”

• Bedivere had my horse ready at the head of Gawain’s Orkney men. I mounted and sat for a moment watching the combrogi file by twos down the hill after Gareth.

Behind me, lances raised like a deadly forest, the seven hundred Orkney and Dobunni awaited my order. I stood erect hi the stirrups, glancing back at Gawain.

v “It’s a sorry Yule I’ve brought you, but I’m glad you’re jiere.”

“And a happy Christmas to you, Arthur!”

“Forward—”

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“Orkney squadrons, fo-wtui—”

“Debunni, forward—”

My arm came down. “Ho!”

And so it began. We had a mile of mud to cross and kept the pace easy, saving the horses for the final run to the causeway. Cerdic was well prepared. Two files of men ran out toward us to form a wedge of shields. Behind them more spearmen broke off from the attack and turned to face us, a wedge facing a wedge. The deeper in we got, the thicker they’d be. The lethal wedge waited, spined with spears above and more below to thrust out between the legs of the shield-bearers.

I let up a little on the rein. We were still far, still at half normal speed because of the mud, struggling to keep formation as the distance narrowed.

Bedivere rode without lance, guiding the horse with practiced knees, dragon banner in his shielded hand, sword in the other. He vented a sibilant curse on the stones and arrows still flying from the fort.

“Hold off, hold off, damn it! Artos, they’ll hit us if they don’t

stop.”

But Maelgwyn knew his time. Almost as Bedivere said it the missiles ceased to fly.

“Couch lances!”

The forest behind me bent as under a wind.

We let out the horses to spend their last. The whole lumbering tide of us rippled forward like a wind-stirred wave, but not fast enough, nor near fast enough. I roweled my mount’s flanks, keeping my lance centered on the point of the shield wedge. Toy figures grew taller, doll heads became leather-and-iron helmets over hard eyes. Bedivere raised his sword—and then we hit them.