Again I waited for him. He lunged, I struck his sword aside, but this time I did not try to counter his attack with one of my own. The crowd had fallen silent, sensing this fight was about to end. Liofa tried another lunge and again I parried. He preferred the lunge, for that would kill without endangering his precious blade, but I knew that if I parried those quick stabs often enough he would eventually kill me the old way instead. He tried two more lunges and I knocked the first clumsily aside, stepped back from the second, then cuffed at my eyes with my left sleeve as though the sweat was stinging them. He swung then. He shouted aloud for the first time as he gave a mighty swing that came from high above his head and angled down towards my neck. I parried it easily, but staggered as I slid his scything blow safely over my skull with Hywelbane’s blade, then I let her drop a little and he did what I expected him to do.
He backswung with all his force. He did it fast and well, but I knew his speed now and I was already bringing Hywelbane up in a counter-stroke that was just as fast. I had both hands on her hilt and I put all my strength into that slashing upward blow that was not aimed at Liofa, but at his sword. The two swords met plumb.
Only this time there was no ringing sound, but a crack. For Liofa’s blade had broken. The outer two thirds of it sheared clean away to fall among the rushes, leaving only a stump in his hand. He looked horrified. Then, for a heartbeat, he seemed tempted to attack me with the remnants of his sword, but I gave Hywelbane two fast cuts that drove him back. He could see now that I was not tired at all. He could also see that he was a dead man, but still he tried to parry Hywelbane with his broken weapon, but she beat that feeble metal stump aside and then I stabbed.
And held the blade still at the silver torque about his throat. ‘Lord King?’ I called, but keeping my eyes on Liofa’s eyes. There was a silence in the hall. The Saxons had seen their champion beaten and they had no voices left. ‘Lord King!’ I called again.
‘Lord Derfel?’ Aelle answered.
‘You asked me to fight King Cerdic’s champion, you did not ask me to kill him. I beg his life of you.’
Aelle paused. ‘His life is yours, Derfel.’
‘Do you yield?’ I asked Liofa. He did not answer at once. His pride was still seeking a victory, but while he hesitated I moved Hywelbane’s tip from his throat to his right cheek. ‘Well?’ I prompted him.
‘I yield,’ he said, and threw down the stump of his sword.
I thrust with Hywelbane just hard enough to gouge the skin and flesh away from his cheekbone. ‘A scar, Liofa,’ I said, ‘to remind you that you fought the Lord Derfel Cadarn, son of Aelle, and that you lost.’ I left him bleeding. The crowd was cheering. Men are strange things. One moment they had been baying for my blood, now they were shouting plaudits because I had spared their champion’s life. I retrieved Ceinwyn’s brooch, then picked up my shield and gazed up at my father. ‘I bring you greetings from Erce, Lord King,’ I said.
‘And they are welcome, Lord Derfel,’ Aelle said, ‘they are welcome.’
He gestured to a chair on his left that one of his sons had vacated and thus I joined Arthur’s enemies at their high table. And feasted.
At the feast’s end Aelle took me to his own chamber that lay behind the dais. It was a great room, high-beamed, with a fire burning at its centre and a bed of furs beneath the gable wall. He closed the door where he had set guards, then beckoned that I should sit on a wooden chest beside the wall while he walked to the far end of the chamber, loosened his drawers, and urinated into a sink hole in the earthen floor. ‘Liofa’s fast,’ he said to me as he pissed.
‘Very.’
‘I thought he’d beat you.’
‘Not fast enough,’ I said, ‘or else the ale slowed him. Now spit in it.’
‘Spit in what?’ my father demanded.
‘Your urine. To prevent bad luck.’
‘My Gods take no note of piss or spit, Derfel,’ he said in amusement. He had invited two of his sons into the room and those two, Hrothgar and Cyrning, watched me curiously. ‘So what message,’ Aelle demanded, ‘does Arthur send?’
‘Why should he send any?’
‘Because you wouldn’t be here otherwise. You think you were whelped by a fool, boy? So what does Arthur want? No, don’t tell me, let me guess.’ He tied the rope belt of his trews, then went to sit in the room’s only chair, a Roman armchair made of black wood and inset with ivory, though much of the ivory pattern had lifted from its setting. ‘He will offer me security of land, is that it,’ Aelle asked, ‘if I attack Cerdic next year?’
‘Yes, Lord.’
‘The answer is no,’ he growled. ‘A man offers me what is already mine! What kind of an offer is that?’
‘A perpetual peace, Lord King,’ I said.
Aelle smiled. ‘When a man promises something for ever, he is playing with the truth. Nothing is for ever, boy, nothing. Tell Arthur my spears march with Cerdic next year.’ He laughed. ‘You wasted your time, Derfel, but I’m glad you came. Tomorrow we shall talk of Erce. You want a woman for the night?’
‘No, Lord King.’
‘Your Princess will never know,’ he teased me.
‘No, Lord King.’
‘And he calls himself a son of mine!’ Aelle laughed and his sons laughed with him. They were both tall and, though their hair was darker than mine, I suspect they resembled me, just as I suspected that they had been brought to the chamber to witness the conversation and so pass on Aelle’s flat refusal to the other Saxon leaders. ‘You can sleep outside my door,’ Aelle said, waving his sons out of the chamber,
‘you’ll be safe there.’ He waited as Hrothgar and Cyrning went out of the room, then checked me with a hand. ‘Tomorrow,’ my father said in a lower voice, ‘Cerdic goes home, and he takes Lancelot with him. Cerdic will be suspicious that I let you live, but I will survive his suspicions. We shall talk tomorrow, Derfel, and I’ll have a longer answer for your Arthur. It won’t be the answer he wants, but maybe it’s one he can live with. Go now, I have company coming.’
I slept in the narrow space between the dais and my father’s door. In the night a girl slipped past me to Aelle’s bed while in the hall the warriors sang and fought and drank and eventually slept, though it was dawn before the last man began snoring. That was when I woke to hear the cockerels calling on Thunreslea’s hill, and I strapped on Hywelbane, picked up my cloak and shield, and stepped past the embers of the fires to go out into the raw chill air. A mist clung to the high plateau, thickening to a fog as the land dropped down to where the Thames widened into the sea. I walked away from the hall to the hill’s edge from where I stared down into the whiteness above the river.