I had not known Guinevere was close, and the first I knew was when she laughed and that laughter rather spoiled my gesture for I was embarrassed. She brushed away my apology. ‘You do look fine, Derfel,’ she said.
I swung the helmet’s cheekpieces open. ‘I had hoped, Lady,’ I said, ‘never to wear this gear again.’
‘You sound just like Arthur,’ she said wryly, then walked behind me to admire the strips of hammered silver that formed Ceinwyn’s star on my shield. ‘I never understand,’ she said, coming back to face me,
‘why you dress like a pigherder most of the time, but look so splendid for war.’
‘I don’t look like a pigherder,’ I protested.
‘Not like mine,’ she said, ‘because I can’t abide having grubby people about me, even if they are swineherds, and so I always made certain they had decent clothes.’
‘I had a bath last year,’ I insisted.
‘As recently as that!’ she said, pretending to be impressed. She was carrying her hunter’s bow and had a quiver of arrows at her back. ‘If they come,’ she said, ‘I intend to send some of their souls to the Other world.’
‘If they come,’ I said, knowing that they would, ‘all you’ll see is helmets and shields and you’ll waste your arrows. Wait till they raise their heads to fight our shield wall, then aim for their eyes.’
‘I won’t waste arrows, Derfel,’ she promised grimly.
The first threat came from the north where the newly arrived Saxons formed a shield wall among the trees above the saddle that separated Mynydd Baddon from the high ground. Our most copious spring was in that saddle and perhaps the Saxons intended to deny us its use, for just after midday their shield wall came down into the small valley. Niall watched them from our ramparts. ‘Eighty men,’ he told me. I brought Issa and fifty of my men across to the northern rampart, more than enough spearmen to see off eighty Saxons labouring uphill, but it soon became obvious that the Saxons did not intend to attack, but wanted to lure us down into the saddle where they could fight us on more equal terms. And no doubt once we were down there more Saxons would burst from the high trees to ambush us. ‘You stay here,’ I told my men, ‘you don’t go down! You stay!’
The Saxons jeered us. Some knew a few words of the British tongue, sufficient to call us cowards or women or worms. Sometimes a small group would climb halfway up our slope to tempt us to break ranks and rush down the hill, but Niall, Issa and I kept our men calm. A Saxon wizard shuffled up the wet slope towards us in short nervous rushes, jabbering incantations. He was naked beneath a wolfskin cape and had his hair dunged into a single tall spike. He shrilled his curses, wailed his charm words and then hurled a handful of small bones towards our shields, but still none of us moved. The wizard spat three times, then ran shivering down to the saddle, where a Saxon chieftain now tried to tempt one of us to single combat. He was a burly man with a tangled mane of greasy, dirt-matted golden hair that hung down past a lavish golden collar. His beard was plaited with black ribbons, his breastplate was of iron, his greaves of decorated Roman bronze, and his shield was painted with the mask of a snarling wolf. His helmet had bull’s horns mounted on its sides and was surmounted by a wolf’s skull to which he had tied a mass of black ribbons. He had strips of black fur tied around his upper arms and thighs, carried a huge double-bladed war axe, while from his belt hung a long sword and one of the short, broad-bladed knives called a seax, the weapon that gave the Saxons their name. For a time he demanded that Arthur himself come down and fight him, and when he tired of that he challenged me, calling me a coward, a chicken-hearted slave and the son of a leprous whore. He spoke in his own tongue which meant that none of my men knew what he said and I just let his words whip past me in the wind. Then, in the middle of the afternoon, when the rain had ended and the Saxons were bored with trying to lure us down to battle, they brought three captured children to the saddle. The children were very young, no more than five or six years old, and they were held with seaxs at their throats. ‘Come down,’
the big Saxon chieftain shouted, ‘or they die!’
Issa looked at me. ‘Let me go, Lord,’ he pleaded.
‘It’s my rampart,’ Niall, the Blackshield leader, insisted. ‘I’ll fillet the bastard.’
‘It’s my hilltop,’ I said. It was more than just my hilltop, it was also my duty to fight the first single combat of a battle. A king could let his champion fight but a warlord had no business sending men where he would not go himself, and so I closed the cheekpieces of my helmet, touched a gloved hand to the pork bones in Hywelbane’s hilt, then pressed on my mail coat to feel the small lump made by Ceinwyn’s brooch. Thus reassured I pushed through our crude timber palisade and edged down the steep slope.
‘You and me!’ I shouted at the tall Saxon in his own language, ‘for their lives,’ and I pointed my spear at the three children.
The Saxons roared approval that they had at last brought one Briton down from the hill. They backed away, taking the children with them, leaving the saddle to their champion and to me. The burly Saxon hefted the big axe in his left hand, then spat onto the buttercups. ‘You speak our language well, pig,’ he greeted me.
‘It is a pig’s language,’ I said.
He tossed the axe high into the air where it turned, its blade flashing in the weak sunlight that was trying to break the clouds. The axe was long and its double-bladed head heavy, but he caught it easily by its haft. Most men would have found it hard to wield such a massive weapon for even a short time, let alone toss and catch it, but this Saxon made it look easy. ‘Arthur dared not come and fight me,’ he said, ‘so I shall kill you in his stead.’
His reference to Arthur puzzled me, but it was not my job to disabuse the enemy if they thought Arthur was on Mynydd Baddon. ‘Arthur has better things to do than to kill vermin,’ I said, ‘so he asked me to slaughter you, then bury your fat corpse with your feet pointing south so that through all time you will wander lonely and hurting, never able to find your Otherworld.’
He spat. ‘You squeal like a spavined pig.’ The insults were a ritual, as was the single combat. Arthur disapproved of both, believing insults to be a waste of breath and single combat a waste of energy, but I had no objection to fighting an enemy champion. Such combat did serve a purpose, for if I killed this man my troops would be hugely cheered and the Saxons would see a terrible omen in his death. The risk was losing the fight, but I was a confident man in those days. The Saxon was a full hand’s breadth taller than I and much broader across his shoulders, but I doubted he would be fast. He looked like a man who relied on strength to win, while I took pride in being clever as well as strong. He looked up at our rampart that was now crowded with men and women. I could not see Ceinwyn there, but Guinevere stood tall and striking among the armed men. ‘Is that your whore?’ the Saxon asked me, holding his axe towards her.