‘The truth?’
‘About your father,’ I said, ‘or about Merlin.’ Already there were songs that gave the credit for Mynydd Baddon to Meurig, of all people, and many songs that extolled Lancelot above Arthur. I looked around for Taliesin and wondered if he would correct those songs. That morning the bard had told us that he had no intention of crossing the sea with us, but would walk back to Siluria or Powys, and I think Taliesin had only come with us that far so that he could talk with Arthur and thus learn from him the tale of his life. Or perhaps Taliesin had seen the future and had come to watch it unfold, but whatever his reasons, the bard was talking with Arthur now, but Arthur suddenly left Taliesin’s side and hurried towards the shore of the sea-lake. He stood there for a long while, peering northwards. Then, suddenly, he turned and ran to the nearest high dune. He clambered up its face, then turned and stared northwards again.
‘Derfel!’ Arthur called, ‘Derfel!’ I slithered down the fort’s face and hurried over the sand and up the dune’s flank. ‘What do you see?’ Arthur asked me.
I stared northwards across the glittering sea-lake. I could see Prydmen halfway down its slip, and I could see the fires where salt was panned and the daily catches were smoked, and I could see some fishermen’s nets hanging from spars planted in the sand, and then I saw the horsemen. Sunlight glittered off a spear point, then another, and suddenly I could see a score of men, maybe more, pounding along a road that led well inland of the sea-lake’s shore. ‘Hide!’ Arthur shouted, and we slid down the dune, snatched up Seren and Arthur-bach, and crouched like guilty things inside the fort’s crumbling ramparts.
‘They’ll have seen us, Lord,’ I said.
‘Maybe not.’
‘How many men?’ Culhwch asked.
‘Twenty?’ Arthur guessed, ‘thirty? Maybe more. They were coming from some trees. There could be a hundred of them.’
There was a soft scraping noise and I turned to see that Culhwch had drawn his sword. He grinned at me. ‘I don’t care if it’s two hundred men, Derfel, they’re not cutting my beard.’
‘Why would they want your beard?’ Galahad asked. ‘A smelly thing full of lice?’
Culhwch laughed. He liked to tease Galahad, and to be teased in return, and he was still thinking of his reply when Arthur cautiously raised his head above the rampart and stared west towards the place where the approaching spearmen would appear. He went very still, and his stillness quieted us, then suddenly he stood and waved. ‘It’s Sagramor!’ he called to us, and the joy in his voice was unmistakable. ‘It’s Sagramor!’ he said again, and he was so excited that Arthur-bach took up the happy cry. ‘It’s Sagramor!’ the small boy shouted, and the rest of us clambered over the rampart to see Sagramor’s grim black flag streaming from a skull-tipped spear shaft. Sagramor himself, in his conical black helmet, was in the lead and, seeing Arthur, he spurred forward across the sand. Arthur ran to greet him, Sagramor vaulted from his horse, stumbled to his knees and clasped Arthur about the waist.
‘Lord!’ Sagramor said in a rare display of feeling, ‘Lord! I thought not to see you again.’
Arthur raised him, then embraced him. ‘We would have met in Broceliande, my friend.’
‘Broceliande?’ Sagramor said, then spat. ‘I hate the sea.’ There were tears on his black face and I remembered him telling me once why he followed Arthur. Because, he had said, when I had nothing, Arthur gave me everything. Sagramor had not come here because he was reluctant to board a ship, but because Arthur needed help.
The Numidian had brought eighty-three men, and Einion, Culhwch’s son, had come with them. ‘I only had ninety-two horses, Lord,’ Sagramor told Arthur. ‘I’ve been collecting them for months.’ He had hoped he could outride Mordred’s forces and so bring all his men safe to Siluria, but instead he had brought as many as he could to this dry spit of sand between the sea-lake and the ocean. Some of the horses had collapsed on the way, but eighty-three had come through safe.
‘Where are your other men?’ Arthur asked.
‘They sailed south yesterday with all our families,’ Sagramor said, then pulled back from Arthur’s embrace and looked at us. We must have appeared a sorry and battered group, for he offered one of his rare smiles before bowing low to Guinevere and Ceinwyn.
‘We have only one boat coming,’ Arthur said worriedly.
‘Then you will take that one boat, Lord,’ Sagramor said calmly, ‘and we shall ride west into Kernow. We can find boats there and follow you south. But I wanted to meet you this side of the water in case your enemies found you too.’
‘We’ve seen none so far,’ Arthur said, touching Excalibur’s hilt, ‘at least, not this side of the Severn Sea. And I pray we shall see none all day. Our boat comes at dusk, and then we leave.’ ‘So I shall guard you till dusk,’ Sagramor said, and his men slid from their saddles, took their shields from their backs and planted their spears in the sand. Their horses, sweat-whitened and panting, stood exhausted while Sagramor’s men steexctad their tired arms and legs. We were now a warband, almost an army, and our banner was Sagramor’s black flag.
But then, just an hour later, on horses as tired as Sagramor’s, the enemy came to Camlann.
Ceinwyn helped me pull on my armour for it was hard to rnanage the heavy mail shirt with only one hand, and impossible to buckle the bronze greaves that I had taken at Mynydd Baddon and which protected my legs from the spear thrust that comes under the shield rim. Once the greaves and the mail were in place, and once Hywelbane’s belt was buckled around my waist, I let Ceinwyn fasten the shield to my left arm. ‘Tighter,’ I told her, instinctively pressing against my mail coat to feel the small lump where her brooch was attached to my shirt. It was safely there, a talisman that had seen me through countless battles.
‘Maybe they won’t attack,’ she said, tugging the shield straps as tight as they would go.
‘Pray that they don’t,’ I said.
‘Pray to whom?’ she asked with a grim smile.
‘To whichever God you trust the most, my love,’ I said, then kissed her. I pulled on my helmet, and she fastened the strap under my chin. The dent made in the helmet’s crown at Mynydd Baddon had been hammered smooth and a new iron plate riveted to cover the gash. I kissed Ceinwyn again, then closed the cheekpieces. The wind blew the wolftail plume in front of the helmet’s eyes slits, and I flicked my head back to throw the long grey hair aside. I was the very last wolftail. The others had been massacred by Mordred or taken down into Manawydan’s keeping. I was the last, just as I was the last warrior alive to carry Ceinwyn’s star on my shield. I hefted my war spear, its shaft as thick as Ceinwyn’s wrist and its blade a sharpened wedge of Morridig’s finest steel. ‘Caddwg will be here soon,’ I told her, ‘we won’t have long to wait.’
‘Just all day,’ Ceinwyn said, and she glanced up the sea-lake to where Prydmen floated at the edge of the mudbank. Men were hauling her mast upright, but soon the falling tide would strand the boat again and we would have to wait for the waters to rise. But at least the enemy had not bothered Caddwg, and had no reason to do so. To them he was doubtless just another fisherman and no business of theirs. We were their business.
There were sixty or seventy of the enemy, all of them horsemen, and they must have ridden hard to reach us, but now they were waiting at the spit’s landward end and we all knew that other spearmen would be following them. By dusk we could face an army, maybe two, for Nimue’s men would surely be hurrying with Mordred’s spearmen.