Somehow all this took place in silence – yet a more noise-battered silence I never want to hear! An entire age passed in the space of a few terror-fraught heartbeats.
Llenlleawg disappeared over the rim of the wall. And then…
Nothing.
A figure rose from the gloom beside me. Arthur's voice whispered urgently, 'Make for the gate! Go!'
I edged my way along the rough wall face, moving as quickly and quietly as possible. From the walltop above I heard not a sound – only the echoed shrieks rising from the camps. The dun was entered from the north by a single narrow door. I peered cautiously round the eastern corner and saw no sign of a guard above. I ran to the gate, reached it, and pressed my ear to the thick wood. I heard nothing from within.
I hunched down before the door and waited, signalling the others behind me to stay well back. An age passed, and another… I was about to go back to Arthur, when I heard a slight scratching noise on the other side of the door.
I pressed myself against the coarse wood. The scratching sound became a sharp rap, followed by another, and the muffled sound of someone cursing under his breath. It was Llenlleawg – the gate was stuck!
Seeking to help him, I pushed with all my might, and one of the warriors behind joined me and together we heaved our weight at the gate. But it would not budge.
'Get back!' came a hushed cry from the other side.
There came a whir in the air and the dull chunk of an arrow striking into the wooden planking of the door. Then another.
The Picti had found the Irishman! Our attack was discovered.
'Get back!' Llenlleawg called loudly – silence was no use to us now. 'You are pushing the wrong way!'
I stumbled back, and at once the door swung wide. The gate opened outward! How was I to know that?
I dived through the narrow opening, rolled on the stone flagging and came up with my sword in my hand. Warriors followed on my heels. Arrows whirred around our heads like bees, chunking into the wood or shattering against the stone and bursting into stinging fragments.
We swarmed into the yard and onto the walls. The Pied, newly roused and wakened, raised the alarm with their piercing battle wail as we hewed into them.
Suddenly, there was torchlight all around. More and more Picti were pouring into the yard. Their blue-stained bodies writhed in die dancing light, garish as nightmares. They rushed upon us with their long knives and double-headed axes. They howled in rage at our invasion.
Before I knew it we were being forced back out of the door by the press of enemy. 'Hold ground!' I cried. 'Hold, Cymbrogi!' But diere were too many of us jammed in the gateway and those behind could not get in. We were trapped between the enemy and our own warriors. And there we would die.
A torch sailed high through die air towards us. I ducked aside as it struck the ground at my feet, and made to reach for it. But die brand was snatched from me and carried off. I looked and saw the torch become a shining trail of flame, whirling and spinning into the barbarian host.
Sparks of fire showered all around, and wherever the torch struck, a body fell. The fire gambolled as if alive. Driving, smashing, reeling, twisting, and twirling away before the enemy could react. The barbarians screamed and fell back before this dreadful killing apparition.
In the fireshot mist of shattered shadow-light I saw the face of our deliverer: Llenlleawg, the Irishman. It was a visage I shall never forget – stark and terrible in its rage, burning like the torch in his hand, eyes bulging with madness, mouth contorted and teeth bared like the fangs of a wildcat! It was Llenlleawg, and the battle frenzy was on him.
'Cymbrogi!' I screamed, and dashed forward into the surging turmoil of the Irishman's bloody wake.
I slashed and thrust with my sword, striking out in the confused darkness at any bit of exposed flesh. I knew my strokes succeeded from the weight that first hindered, then fell from my blade. The ground beneath my feet became slick with blood. The smell of blood and bile hung thick in the air.
I could not see Arthur.
I fought forward, little heeding if any came behind me. My only thought was to overtake the battle-mad Irishman. I hewed mightily but, each time I looked, I found him further ahead – the whirling torch dancing lightly as windtossed thistledown. I heard his voice rising above the battle blare, quavering, calling, swooping like a hunting bird: he was singing.
'Cymbrogi! Fight!' Over and over I shouted, and my cry was answered by the high clear note of Rhys' horn. The forces waiting below the dun had seen the fight commence and had stormed the rock. Now they were shoving in through the gate, and swarming over the walls on ropes and the laddered poles we had prepared. The Picti were thrown into panic, rushing here and there, striking wildly and foolishly.
I lost all sight of anything but the tangled limbs of the enemy before me. I chopped with my sword as if hacking through the dense and knotted snarls of a bramble thicket.
I laboured long, ignoring the ache spreading from shoulder to wrist.
Smashing with my shield, stabbing with my sword, lunging, plunging headlong into the howling enemy…
And then it was finished.
We stood in the fire-reddened yard, Picti corpses piled around us. The stink of blood and entrails in the air and on our hands. Black blood, shimmering in the light of a rising moon. The enemy dead… all dead. The caer quiet.
I raised my head and saw three men struggling with a fourth, and went to lend my aid, thinking it must be the captured Picti chieftain. But it was Llenlleawg. He was still deep in his battle frenzy and, though the fight was over, he could not stop. Cai and Cador had found him lopping the heads from the corpses and heaving them over the wall.
'Irishman!' I shouted into his face. 'Peace! It is over! Stop!'
He could not hear me. I think he could no longer hear anything. There was no sense in him any more. I ran to the nearby trough and lifted a leather bucket, returned and dashed the water into Llenlleawg's face. He sputtered, stared, gave a sharp cry and fell back limply.
'He must be wounded,' said Cai, pushing his helmet back. 'A blow on the head.'
'I do not see any blood,' replied Cador, holding close the torch he had wrested from the Irishman's hand.
'No blood? He is verily drenched in it!'
'Stay with him,' I told Cador, 'until he wakes up, then have him taken back to camp.' To Cai I said, 'Get some more torches and begin searching for wounded. I am going to find Arthur.'
I could have saved my breath, for already scores of warriors were beginning to carry out the wounded. Due to the closeness of the stronghold not all of our attack force could crowd into the yard. Most, it appeared, had remained outside and only now were able to move in. These carried torches and hastened to the task of caring for their fallen sword brothers. Arthur stood on the wall above the gate directing them.
I climbed the steep-stepped rampart and joined him. 'We have taken the fortress, War Leader.'
'Well done, Bedwyr.' He made it sound as if 7 had done it single-handed. He surveyed the torchlit yard beneath him. The flickering shadows made it seem as if the fight still raged silently all around us. The growing heap of enemy corpses told a different tale.
'Is Llenlleawg still alive?' the Duke asked presently.
'Yes,' I answered, weariness beginning to seep into my arms and legs. 'He lives, and not a scrape on him that I could see. How? I do not know. Did you see?'
'I saw.'
'He is mad,' I said. 'I can well see why he was Fergus' champion. Who can fight a whirlwind?'
Later, when all the British dead and wounded had been removed, and the Pied wounded killed – it is a hard fact of war, but we put the enemy wounded to the sword, for we were leaving the next day and they would have received no care; better the quick thrust that sends them across the Western Sea to the Fortunate Isles, or wherever they go, than the lingering torture of a slow death. We burned the bodies of our countrymen in the fortress where they fell, and threw the enemy over the southern wall to the tide flats below. Govannon would take them to feed his fishes.