Pendragon

Arthur, deriving great pleasure from his wife's appearance, grinned and put his hand to her chin. He took a dab of woad onto his finger and applied it to his own face: two slashes high on his cheeks beneath each eye.

'Allow me,' said Gwenhwyvar, taking some of the paint from her arm. She put her fingertips to his forehead and drew two vertical lines down the centre of his brow. In a stroke, the Bear of Britain became a Celt like the warrior kings of old who first faced the Roman Eagles across the ditch.

'How do I look?' he asked.

Cai and Bedwyr were as taken with the transformation as I was, and acclaimed it by demanding marks of their own. 'I will have woad-paint made for all of us,' Gwenhwyvar told them as she dabbed their faces. 'From now on we will greet the enemy with the blue.'

A shout came from the platform above the gate. 'A rider approaches!'

'Llenlleawg returns,' Arthur said, starting towards the gate as the gatemen hastened to admit the rider. The sound of hooves reached us, and a moment later, Llenlleawg pounded through the gap and into the yard. He slid from the back of his mount and, ignoring Conaire and the Irish chieftains who called out to him, strode instead directly to Arthur.

'They want to talk to you,' Llenlleawg told him.

'Do they indeed?' wondered Arthur. 'When and where?'

'On the plain,' Llenlleawg answered. 'Now.'

'How many have come?' asked Bedwyr.

'A thousand and two hundreds at least, maybe more.' While the others strove to take this in, he added, 'I think they have all come ashore now.'

'God save us,' Bedwyr muttered under his breath. 'Twelve hundred to our three.'

'Treachery for certain,' Cai declared.

Conaire arrived, angry at being made to run to Arthur for word of what Llenlleawg had discovered. 'Am I to beg for every scrap from your table?' he demanded. 'Will someone yet tell me what is happening here?'

'They want to talk to us,' replied Arthur simply.

'By all means,' spat Conaire, 'let us talk to them. Our spears will be tongues, and our swords teeth. We will give them such a splendid conversation.'

'They say that if we do not talk to them,' Llenlleawg continued, 'they will rub us out and burn everything. Then they will strew the ashes in the sea, so that nothing will remain.'

'If this is how they parley, then we are speaking to the wind,' Cai replied.

'Who told you this?' I asked Llenlleawg. 'How did you come by this message?'

The lean Irishman's face fell and he blushed with shame. He drew a deep breath and confessed: 'I was taken prisoner, Emrys.'

'How could this happen?' wondered Fergus.

'I alone am to blame. I saw the foemen assembled on the plain, and thought to ride close.' He paused. 'I rode into a band of enemy chieftains scouting ahead of the host. They were in the wood and I did not see them until it was too late.'

'Why did you not fight them, man?' demanded Fergus.

'I would have welcomed such a fight!' declared Conaire.

'Let him speak!' shouted Arthur, growing annoyed.

'They surrounded me,' Llenlleawg said, 'and before I could draw sword one of them began shouting to me in our own tongue. He begged me to save my own life and that of my kinsmen by taking word back to our lords.'

'You did well,' Arthur told him. 'Let us hope it is the saving of many lives.'

'It is a coward's ruse,' Conaire announced. 'They can have nothing to say that we care to hear.'

'No doubt,' allowed Arthur judiciously. 'Still, we will listen all the same.'

'Listen? Let them listen! I mean to give them words of my own to chew on,' boasted Conaire. He was becoming exasperated at finding himself pushed aside by this turn of events.

'They want to speak to Arthur alone,' Llenlleawg told him. 'They said they would only speak to the king who ordered the night raid.'

Fergus shook his head. 'It is surely a trick,' he warned. 'Revenge for last night's attack.'

Cai agreed. 'Hear him, Artos. Fergus may be right. We cannot allow you to meet them alone.'

Arthur made up his mind at once. 'Very well. We will go out to them together,' he said, 'then Myrddin and I will advance to speak to them.'

We mounted with the war host and rode to the wide grassy plain south of the stronghold where, as Llenlleawg had said, the Vandal horde waited. The ground sloped slightly away towards the west, rough and uneven with hillocks of turf and rocks. A ragged little stream meandered through the centre of the plain, dividing it from north to south. We rode to the head of the plain and halted to overlook the battleground.

'Earth and sky bear witness!' Bedwyr gasped when he saw the battle throng. 'Twelve hundred only? It seems twice that many at least, or I never drew sword.'

The barbarians swarmed thick across the western half of the plain in untidy clusters around standards of various kinds: some of skin, others of cloth, or metal, but all of them bearing the image of a black boar in their design. These were, I decided, their clan groupings. Like the Saecsen, the Vandali entered battle surrounded by their kinsmen, under leadership of their tribal chieftain.

Continuing on, we advanced slowly onto the plain. At our approach, a knot of barbarians drew apart from the centre mass, crossed the stream, and marched towards us. One of the chieftains carried a standard – the head and pelt of a great black boar fixed upon a pole. The boar's mouth was open, his curving yellow tusks exposed.

We proceeded to within a hundred paces of one another, whereupon the barbarian delegation stopped. 'This is far enough,' Arthur said. 'Stay here.' The war host halted, and Arthur and I rode on to meet the Vandal chiefs.

Like the others we had seen, they were big, well-muscled men; they carried the heavy wooden shield and stout black spear. Naked to the waist, they wore either leather leggings or coarse-woven cloth breeches. Their flesh was the colour of pale honey or aged parchment; and, to a man, their hair was black – they wore it long and braided thick. Several had thin moustaches over their wide mouths, but most did not; none wore a beard. Their eyes were strange – sly and narrow, slanting upwards in their broad, brutal faces, keen and wary, and set deep under heavy brows; made more mysterious by a thick band of black paint slashed across their wide cheeks.

A tall, lanky man stood with them; his skin was milk-white and his hair the colour of flax. On his neck he wore a thick iron ring, with slightly smaller bands on each wrist. Ragged scars of vicious slash marks, livid still, marked the flesh of his chest and stomach.

It was this man who addressed us, speaking in our own tongue. 'In the name of Amilcar, War King of the Vandal nations, we greet you,' he said. 'It is Amilcar's war host you see before you; it is by his hand that you are alive this day.'

By way of reply, Arthur said, 'It is not my custom to exchange greetings with any who threaten war against me or those I have sworn to protect.'

The tall man replied with benign indifference. 'I understand, lord.' Touching his neck ring he said, 'I am often made to bear tidings others find offensive.'

'Since you are a slave, I will assume that the words you speak are not your own. Therefore, I hold no enmity towards you.' The slave said nothing, but inclined his head slightly, giving us to know that Arthur understood his predicament aright. 'What is your name, friend?'

'I am Hergest,' he said. 'And though I am a slave, I am a learned man.'

'As you are a Latin speaker,' Arthur said, 'are you also a holy man?'

'I own no king but the Lord Christ, High King of Heaven,' Hergest answered proudly. 'Formerly, I was a priest. The barbarians burned our church and killed our bishop along with many of our brothers. The rest were made slaves. I alone survive.'

At this, the slave lifted his hand as if presenting the barbarian company to us. Instead, he said, 'You may speak freely. They understand no tongue but their own.'