I stepped back from him, unsurprised and unimpressed, and then I heard running steps approaching. I glanced over my shoulder and saw three of his companions rushing at me, one with a spear and two with short, Roman style swords. Almost without thinking I struck the head from the thrusting spear and spun on my right heel, whipping the sword about again in a complete circle to decapitate the spearman. As his body reeled off to one side, I dropped to my right knee and drew back my sword arm so that my hand almost grazed the ground by my ankle. The first sword bearer was coming on much too quickly and had realized his error, but before he could slow down he died from a long, stabbing thrust beneath his breastbone. I jerked my point free, sprang to my feet again and launched myself at the third man. To his credit, he hunched his shoulders and, throwing up the small round shield he carried, came straight towards me. He was helmetless, and I cleaved his skull before his short sword could begin to come anywhere close.
Then I was alone on top of the knoll, whirling again to face the sound of feet scrabbling against the stony surface of the hill's flank. But even as I began to launch myself towards the sounds, my sword arm whirling high, I saw the horsehair crest of one of my own helmets and then Donuil's face surged into view beneath it. I grounded my point immediately and reached out to pull him up to join me, and we both stood wordlessly, looking at the carnage around us. Small knots of men were fighting everywhere, but the enemy were fighting with the desperation of doomed men and they were dying quickly, in large numbers, most of them picked off by the deadly arrows being fired from the ridge above us. One massive, huge bellied man, swinging a long, clumsy looking blade, was thrown into a gully by the force of an arrow that struck him just above the ear, plucking him off his feet and hurling him aside as though he were weightless.
I became aware then that Donuil was shouting at me. There was noise everywhere, and apparently I had been deaf to all of it for some time. I shook my head and forced myself to listen. Donuil was asking me if I was hurt, or wounded, and that surprised me until I looked down to see myself covered in crimson; my armour, my tunic, my arms and hands and the sword I gripped were all running with blood, and I experienced a surge of fear as I thought, for a moment, that all of it was mine. But I had escaped unscathed.
I shook my head and looked about me again, this time taking better note of all that I was seeing. The fighting had died down and now only a few fierce, widely separated struggles were still being waged. Murder was being committed before my eyes, for men were throwing down their weapons, attempting to surrender, and were being killed out of hand, mainly by arrows from the ridge above. I drew a deep breath and ordered Donuil to find our trumpeter and sound the recall, and as I spoke I heard the tremor in my voice. He looked at me, wordlessly, then turned and disappeared over the edge of the knoll again.
I walked stiff legged to the other side of the small eminence. I do not remember going down to my horse, but I found myself kneeling by his head, staring through tears at his noble face and at the milky glaze that was already forming in the one large eye that I could see. The spear had pierced him cleanly, plunging deep into his chest even before its butt lodged against the ground and the full weight of his plunging corpse fell upon it, hammering the point home to burst his great heart. For almost a score of years, this magnificent beast had borne me bravely, offering nothing but total obedience and love in return for the meagre attentions I bestowed upon him. Now the spectacle of his egregious death unmanned me completely and I sat down and wept, leaning my back against his shoulder and laying my left arm flat along his solid, silky neck. All around me, strewn among the rocks and gullies of this inhospitable place, the bodies of dead and dying men lay like discarded garments and lacked any power to move me to grieve for diem. Their deaths had been a natural consequence of their lives as warriors and mercenaries. The death of my noble and unselfish friend Germanicus, on the other hand, was intensely personal, and it overwhelmed me with a sense of loss and destitution.
Some time later, I felt Donuil's hand upon my shoulder and I stood up, dry eyed by that time, and followed him to where he had tethered another horse for me. We rode in silence to meet Huw Strongarm.
The victory, Huw told me later, had been much greater than I had realized. The invaders had been summoned to Dolaucothi in numbers far surpassing our expectations, gravitating towards the gold mines in large bands. Surprised from the north and the south simultaneously, however, they had been broken and routed, their ranks decimated and devastated by the Pendragon bowmen on the hillsides above them. The survivors, thousands of them despite their enormous losses, were now in full flight westward, back towards the sea, harried and pursued relentlessly by the terrifying hillmen who could strike men dead with their long arrows from nigh on half a mile away.
Huw was in high spirits, full of excitement and enthusiasm, and he seemed larger than I remembered him, far more regal. It took me only moments to identify the change in his appearance, and he saw me notice it and broke off what he had been saying, looking at me strangely.
"What?" he asked. "What is it? You look... Is something wrong, Merlyn?"
"Your helmet," I replied, shaking my head. "I recognize it, though I've never seen it. It belonged to Ullic Pendragon. I've read descriptions of it in my uncle's books. But it must be a hundred years old, and yet it looks new. How can that be?"
His eyes flared in surprise, and with both hands he removed the war helmet and held it out to me. The head of the great golden eagle that fronted it looked alive, so fierce were its eyes. The huge wings were folded on either side of the helmet's dome and the spread tail feathers fanned out and down to cover his shoulders. 'Take it," he said. "Look closely. This bird was in the air, last year. Ullic's was similar, but this is mine, new made for me." I examined the eyes, made of glass or polished stone, and the precise way the neck feathers had been arranged over the helmet's brow. "The eagle helmet is the ceremonial helmet of the War Chief of Pendragon, Merlyn, and each new War Chief receives his own. Uric and Uther were both King, as was Dergyll ap Griffyd, but only Ullic was both King and War Chief, so he had the helmet. I am the first War Chief of all Pendragon since Ullic. "
I handed the helmet back to him with the reverence it deserved, and he led us then to where his huge new tent was being erected and his senior sub chiefs and captains were already assembling to await his next dispositions. As I listened thereafter to the details of his planning and the way he absorbed and adjusted to every new report being brought to him, I found my excitement rekindled, and I felt myself more able to accept the aching loss of Germanicus with a resigned pragmatism.