‘More men to kill,’ Sagramor said curtly, but I think he knew that by staying he was assuring his own death. Caddwg’s boat might take twenty people to safety, but certainly no more. ‘We can swim to the other shore, Lord,’ he said, jerking his head towards the eastern bank of the channel that ran deep and fast about the tip of the sandspit. ‘Those of us who can swim,’ he added.
‘Can you?’
‘Never too late to learn,’ Sagramor said, then spat. ‘Besides, we’re not dead yet.’
Nor were we beaten yet, and every minute that passed took us nearer safety. I could see Caddwg’s men carrying the sail to Prydmen, which was canted at the edge of the sea. Her mast was now upright, though men still rigged lines from the masthead, and in an hour or two the tide would turn and she would float again, ready for the voyage. We just had to endure till the late afternoon. We occupied ourselves by making a huge pyre from the driftwood, and when it was burning we heaved the bodies of our dead into the flames. Their hair flared bright, then came the smell of roasting flesh. We threw on more timber until the fire was a roaring, white-hot inferno.
‘A ghost fence might deter the enemy,’ Taliesin remarked when he had chanted a prayer for the four burning men whose souls were drifting with the smoke to find their shadowbodies. I had not seen a ghost fence in years, but we made one that day. It was a grisly business. We had thirty-six dead enemy bodies and from them we took thirty-six severed heads which we rammed onto the blades of the captured spears. Then we planted the spears across the spit and Taliesin, conspicuous in his white robe and carrying a spear shaft so that he resembled a Druid, walked from one bloody head to the next so that the enemy would think that an enchantment was being made. Few men would willingly cross a ghost fence without a Druid to avert its evil, and once the fence was made we rested more easily. We shared a scanty midday meal and I remember Arthur looking ruefully at the ghost fence as he ate. ‘From Isca to this,’ he remarked softly.
‘From Mynydd Baddon to this,’ I said.
He shrugged. ‘Poor Uther,’ he said, and he must have been thinking of the oath that had made Mordred King, the oath that had led to this sun-warmed spit beside the sea. Mordred’s reinforcements arrived in the early afternoon. They mostly came on foot in a long column that straggled down the sea-lake’s western shore. We counted over a hundred men and knew that more would be following.
‘They’ll be tired,’ Arthur told us, ‘and we have the ghost fence.’
But the enemy now possessed a Druid. Fergal had arrived with the reinforcements, and an hour after we first saw the column of spearmen, we watched as the Druid crept near the fence and sniffed the salt air like a dog. He threw handfuls of sand towards the nearest head, hopped on one leg for a moment, then ran to the spear and toppled it. The fence was broken, and Fergal tipped his head to the sun and gave a great cry of triumph. We pulled on helmets, found our shields and passed sharpening stones amongst ourselves.
The tide had turned, and the first fishing-boats were coming home. We hailed them as they passed the spit, but most ignored our calls, for common folk all too often have good reason to fear spearmen, but Galahad waved a gold coin and that lure did bring one boat which nosed gingerly into the shore and grounded on the sand near the blazing balefire. Its two crewmen, both with heavily tattooed faces, agreed to take the women and children to Caddwg’s craft, which was almost afloat again. We gave the fishermen gold, handed the women and children into the boat, and sent one of the wounded spearmen to guard them. ‘Tell the other fishermen,’ Arthur told the tattooed men, ‘that there’s gold for any man who brings his boat with Caddwg.’ He made a brief farewell to Guinevere, as I did to Ceinwyn. I held her close for a few heartbeats and found I had no words.
‘Stay alive,’ she told me.
‘For you,’ I said, ‘I will,’ and then I helped push the grounded boat into the sea and watched it slowly pull away into the channel.
A moment later one of our mounted scouts came galloping back from the broken ghost fence.
‘They’re coming, Lord!’ he shouted.
I let Galahad buckle my helmet strap, then held out my arm so he could bind the shield tight. He gave me my spear. ‘God be with you,’ he said, then picked up his own shield that was blazoned with the Christian cross.
We would not fight in the dunes this time because we did not have enough men to make a shield wall that would stretch right across the hilly part of the sandspit, and that meant Mordred’s horsemen could have galloped around our flanks, surrounded us, and we would have been doomed to die in a tightening ring of enemies. Nor did we fight in the fort, for there too we could have been surrounded and thus cut off from the water when Caddwg arrived, and so we retreated to the narrow tip of the spit where our shield wall could stretch from one shore to the other. The balefire still blazed just above the line of weed that marked the high-tide limit, and while we waited for the enemy Arthur ordered still more driftwood to be heaped on its flames. We went on feeding that fire until we saw Mordred’s men approaching, and then we made our shield wall just a few paces in front of the flames. We set Sagramor’s dark banner in the centre of our line, touched our shields edge to edge and waited. We were eighty-four men and Mordred brought over a hundred to attack us, but when they saw our shield wall formed and ready, they stopped. Some of Mordred’s horsemen spurred into the shallows of the sea-lake, hoping to ride about our flank, but the water deepened swiftly where the channel ran close beside the southern shore and they found they could not ride around us; so they slid out of their saddles and carried their shields and spears to join Mordred’s long wall. I looked up to see that the sun was at last sliding down towards the high western hills. Prydwen was almost afloat, though men were still busy in her rigging. It would not be long, I thought, before Caddwg came, but already there were more enemy spearmen straggling down the western road. Mordred’s forces grew stronger, and we could only grow weaker.
Fergal, his beard woven with fox fur and hung with small bones, came to the sand in front of our shield wall and there he hopped on one leg, held one hand in the air and kept one eye closed. He cursed our souls, promising them to the fire-worm of Crom Dubh and to the wolfpack that hunts Eryri’s Pass of Arrows. Our women would be given as playthings to the demons of Annwn and our children would be nailed to the oaks of Arddu. He cursed our spears and our swords, and threw an enchantment to shatter our shields and turn our bowels to water. He screamed his spells, promising that for food in the Otherworld we would have to scavenge the droppings of the hounds of Arawn and that for water we would lick the bile of Cefydd’s serpents. ‘Your eyes will be blood,’ he crooned, ‘your bellies shall be filled with worms, and your tongues will turn black! You will watch the rape of your women and the murder of your children!’ He called some of us by name, threatening torments unimaginable, and to counter his spells we sang the War Song of Beli Mawr.
From that day to this I have not heard that song sung again by warriors, and never did I hear it better sung than on that sea-wrapped stretch of sun-warmed sand. We were few, but we were the best warriors Arthur ever commanded. There were only one or two young men in that shield wall; the rest of us were seasoned, hardened men who had been through battle and smelt the slaughter and knew how to kill. We were the lords of war.
There was not a weak man there, not a single man who could not be trusted to protect his neighbour, and not a man whose courage would break, and how we sang that day! We drowned Fergal’s curses, and the strong sound of our voices must have carried across the water to where our women waited on Prydwen. We sang to Beli Mawr who had harnessed the wind to his chariot, whose spear shaft was a tree and whose sword slaughtered the enemy like a reaping hook cutting thistles. We sang of his victims scattered dead in the wheatfields and rejoiced for the widows made by his anger. We sang that his boots were like millstones, his shield an iron cliff and his helmet’s plume tall enough to scrape the stars. We sang tears into our eyes and fear into our enemy’s hearts.