Excalibur: A Novel of Arthur (The Warlord Chronicles Book 3) by Cornwell Bernard

Author:Cornwell, Bernard [Cornwell, Bernard]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 1999-07-15T16:00:00+00:00

We sprang our trap on a day so beautiful that the heart ached. It promised to be a long day too, for the nights were growing ever shorter and the long evening light lingered deep into the shadowed hours.

On the evening before the battle Arthur had withdrawn his own troops from all along the hills behind Mynydd Baddon. He ordered those men to leave their campfires burning so that the Saxons would believe they were still in place, then he took them west to join the men of Gwent who were approaching on the Glevum road. Cuneglas’s warriors also left the hills, but they came to the summit of Mynydd Baddon where, with my men, they waited.

Malaine, Powys’s chief Druid, went among the spearmen during the night. He distributed vervain, elf stones and scraps of dried mistletoe. The Christians gathered and prayed together, though I noted how many accepted the Druid’s gifts. I prayed beside the ramparts, pleading with Mithras for a great victory, and after that I tried to sleep, but Mynydd Baddon was restless with the murmur of voices and the monotonous sound of stones on steel.

I had already sharpened my spear and put a new edge on Hywelbane. I never let a servant sharpen my weapons before battle, but did it myself and did it as obsessively as all my men. Once I was sure the weapons were as sharp as I could hone them I lay close to Guinevere’s shelter. I wanted to sleep but I could not shake the fear of standing in a shield wall. I watched for omens, fearing to see an owl, and I prayed again. I must have slept in the end, but it was a fitful dream-racked sleep. It had been so long since I had fought in a shield wall, let alone broken an enemy’s wall.

I woke cold, early and shivering. Dew lay thick. Men were grunting and coughing, pissing and groaning. The hill stank, for although we had dug latrines there was no stream to carry the dirt away. ‘The smell and sound of men,’ Guinevere’s wry voice spoke from the shadow of her shelter.

‘Did you sleep, Lady?’ I asked.

‘A little.’ She crawled out under the low branch that served as roof and door. ‘It’s cold.’

‘It will be warm soon.’

She crouched beside me, swathed in her cloak. Her hair was tousled and her eyes were puffy from sleep. ‘What do you think about in battle?’ she asked me.

‘Staying alive,’ I said, ‘killing, winning.’

‘Is that mead?’ she asked, gesturing at the horn in my hand.

‘Water, Lady. Mead slows a man in battle.’

She took the water from me, splashed some on her eyes and drank the rest. She was nervous, but I knew I could never persuade her to stay on the hill. ‘And Arthur,’ she asked, ‘what does he think about in battle?’

I smiled. ‘The peace that follows the fighting, Lady. He believes that every battle will be the last.’

‘Yet of battles,’ she said dreamily, ‘there will be no end.

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