Gorlon was unhappy about this. His men were owed booty, he growled. Gainus replied that they were already laden with sacks of booty. Gorlon said that they wanted gold, not trinkets. Gainus told him that soon there would be more gold than they could spend in their lifetimes. King Arthur was bringing a force to this land containing many of the most prominent knights in Christendom. Any man who seized one could demand a rich ransom for his deliverance. It would be strongly in the free-companies’ interest to waylay the British swine as soon as they arrived and teach them the error of their ways.
Gorlon was not a complete fool. He knew King Arthur was a foe to be reckoned with, but he also knew that the legions of Lucius Caesar were close at hand — that would tilt the scales of battle in his favour, though again it might mean the final haul would be unevenly divided. In the light of that, it would be to the free-companies’ advantage if they were first into this next battle. So thinking, he ordered his men out of the smouldering city and had them bivouac on the great plain to the north.
News of these disasters finally reached King Hoel in Nantes.
Hoel was an active middle-aged monarch, short, squat and bearded, but famous among his subjects for his gay apparel and the liveliness of his manner. Even hawking or riding to hounds, he would wear the most colourful and fashionable garb. His court was a lavish display of pomp, its lords and ladies decked most splendidly. Hoel would positively glow with bonhomie as he received honoured guests in reception chambers clad wall-to-wall with opulent tapestries, and treated them to banquets and entertainments which bordered on being festivals in their own right. But the grandees of his court would be horror-struck if they could see his condition after hearing about the destruction of Rennes: mailed and plated, dabbled with dust and dirt, cut across the brow and the bridge of his nose by flying chips of stone, and on learning that his beloved Miranda was slain, red-eyed with tears.
His knights and men-at-arms insisted their King should flee. There was only one other major concentration of troops in Brittany, and that was on the country’s westernmost tip at Brest — its main deep-water harbour. It was essential these men remain at their posts so that Hoel’s British allies would have a safe landing, and they were more likely to do this if they had their commander-in-chief with them.
Hoel saw the wisdom in this, and that he could do no more at Nantes. The King and a group of handpicked knights eventually fled through underground tunnels, proceeding for hours along narrow galleries, knee-deep in silty water, passing though endless veils of cobwebs and beneath clusters of bats which hung like fruit on the bough. They emerged into sunlight far beyond the Roman siege-lines, at a woodland stable where horses awaited. Before escaping to the west, Hoel climbed a tree and looked back to Nantes, a broken, smouldering edifice, begirt by the multitudes of New Rome and once again under a barrage of missiles.
As he swung up into his saddle, he muttered darkly: “There’ll be a reckoning for this. The Romans are up to their old tricks. They’ve been here less than a month, and they’ve sown this land with the blood and bone of honest citizens. They may call themselves ‘New Rome,’ but when Arthur and his knights arrive, they’ll reap the same whirlwind that destroyed the old one.”
Thirteen
The roads that converged on the twin ports of Sandwich and Stonar in Kent were rivers of heraldry as the knights of Albion poured along them. The May sun beat from a depthless sky, reflecting from the sweet grasses of the surrounding meadows, but more so from the multiple colours and devices resplendent on the shields, tabards, banners and surcoats of the many households headed in noisy procession for the kingdom’s southeast corner.
Lancelot and his mesnie wore their customary white leopards on fields of blue, Gawaine and his people were in their gold pentangles on scarlet, and Bedivere’s in their black ravens on orange. Arthur’s private forces, his Familiaris Regis, were most noticeable of all in snow-white livery decked with the King’s shimmering red dragon. Less handsome were the numerous other knights and squires, errant groups and privateers, most with dented arms and ragged, patched-together livery, who were also making the journey. However, though their purses might be empty, their hearts would be stout — for each of these men knew that his performance in the coming war was a possible route to fame and fortune.
No less important were the fyrd, the peasant soldiers, who marched or rode depending on their personal wealth. Though clad in improvised harness of studded leather or quilted felt, with the occasional helm and mail-coat among them, and arms amounting to little more than scythes, mallets and hunting-knives, they also drove ox-carts laden with pole-arms, longbows and bundles of freshly-fletched arrows. The enemies of King Arthur were fast learning how dreadful the impact could be of a great cloud of cloth-yard shafts driven by the thews of common men who, by royal order, now practised at the archery butts for three days in every five.
Even the Saxons had provided Arthur with levies. Most — being as mule-headed as it was possible for any men to be — would insist on boarding their ships from the port of Stonar, which they themselves had built and thus regarded as their own, but other Saxons flocking to the coast from the south or the west shared the same roads as Arthur’s troops and made a fearsome sight. They were career warriors; battle-hardened thegns and their war-bands, their blond heads and scarred, surly faces hidden beneath elaborately carved helms, their barrel bodies slotted into heavy coats of rings, with circular linden-wood shields slung on their backs. They carried broadswords tucked into their belts and long-handled battle-axes at their shoulders; the axes, capped with a steel blade often weighing as much as twenty pounds,20 were hard to wield in combat, but every man-jack of the Saxons looked as if he was an expert.
“The sight of our yellow-haired friends will enrage the Romans even more,” Bedivere said to Arthur, as the King halted at a wayside inn and bade his senior lieutenants share a noon repast.
“Let them rage,” Arthur said, selecting a table some distance from the road. “They are making hay over in Brittany. Hoel’s official request for help arrived this morning. He’ll probably be surprised by the speed of our response, but I fear it won’t come soon enough to save the lives of a good many of his subjects.”
More of Arthur’s knights detached from the main host, trotted up and dismounted. Among them was Sir Gareth, whose insignia was a golden eagle on green, Sir Griflet, who wore white chevrons on purple, and Kay, who sported the same colours as the King. Lucan arrived with them, now in his all-black mantle, and despite the fine spring weather, with a huge wolfskin cloak — again black, still with paws attached and fangs glinting in its eyeless skull — thrown over his mailed shoulders. He remained on horseback, but removed his great cylindrical helmet and shook out his dark, sweat-damp locks.
Bedivere glanced up at him with disapproval, but said nothing.
The landlord of the inn served a haunch of venison with stewed figs, and two hot pies stuffed with cabbage, rabbit and chicken. There were also fresh-baked loaves, and a bowl of salad made from greens.
“Our main problem is numbers,” Arthur said. “At the most we have forty thousand men, not all of them prime fighting-stock, though everyone will do his job — I’m aware of that. The latest reports from Gaul hold that Lucius has mustered some three hundred thousand.”