Merlin turned to Sagramor and me. “The Blackshield Irish,” he said in a casual voice, 'are on your side. I talked with them. They will attack Gorfyddyd's men and you shall have a great victory. May the Gods give you strength." He turned again, put an arm around Nimue's shoulders and strode away through the enemy ranks that opened to let him through.
“It was a good try!” Gundleus called to Merlin. The King of Powys was on the threshold of his great victory and that giddy prospect had filled him with the confidence to defy the Druid, but Merlin ignored the crowing insult and just walked away with Tanaburs and lorweth.
Issa brought me Arthur's helmet. I crammed it back on my head, glad of its protection in these last few moments of battle.
The enemy re-formed its shield-wall. Few insults were shouted now, for few men had energy for anything other than the grim slaughter that loomed on the river's bank. Gorfyddyd, for the first time all day, dismounted and took his place in the wall. He had no shield, but he would still lead this last attack that would crush his hated enemy's power. He raised his sword, held it aloft for a few heartbeats, then brought it down.
The enemy charged.
We thrust spears and shields forward to meet them and the two walls crashed with a terrible sound. Gorfyddyd tried to thrust his sword past Arthur's shield, but I parried it and cut at him with Hywelbane. The sword glanced off his helmet, severing an eagle wing, then we were locked together by the pressure of the men thrusting from behind.
“Push them!” Gorfyddyd shouted at his men, then he spat at me over the shield. “Your whore-lover,” he told me over the battle's din, 'hid while you fought."
“She is no whore, Lord King,” I said, and tried to free Hywelbane from the crush to give him a blow, but the sword was trapped fast by the pressure of shields and men.
“She took enough gold from me,” Gorfyddyd said, 'and I don't pay women whose legs don't part." I heaved at Hywelbane and tried to stab at Gorfyddyd's feet, but the sword just glanced off the skirts of his armour. He laughed at my failure, spat at me again, then raised his head as he heard a dreadful screaming battle cry.
It was the attack of the Irish. The Blackshields of Oengus Mac Airem always charged with a ululating scream; a terrible battle-cry that seemed to suggest an inhuman delight in slaughter. Gorfyddyd shouted at his men to heave and cleave, to break our tiny shield-wall, and for a few seconds the men of Powys and Siluria struck at us with a new frenzy in the belief that the Blackshields were coming to their aid, but then new screams from the rearward ranks made them realize that treachery had changed the Blackshields'
allegiance. The Irish sliced into Gorfyddyd's ranks, their long spears finding easy targets, and suddenly, swiftly, Gorfyddyd's men collapsed like a pricked waters king
I saw the rage and panic cross Gorfyddyd's face. “Surrender, Lord King!” I shouted to him, but his bodyguard found space to hack down with their swords and for a few desperate seconds I was defending myself too hard to see what happened to the King, though Issa did shout that he saw Gorfyddyd wounded. Galahad was beside me, thrusting and parrying, and then, magically it seemed, the enemy was fleeing. Our men pursued, joining with the Blackshields to drive the men of Powys and Siluria like a flock of sheep to where Arthur's horsemen waited to kill. I looked for Gundleus and saw him once among a mass of running, mud-covered, bloody men, and then I lost sight of him. The vale had seen much death that day, but now it saw outright massacre for nothing makes for easy killing like a broken shield-wall. Arthur tried to stop the slaughter, but nothing could have checked that pent-up release of savagery, and his horsemen rode like avenging Gods among the panicked mass while we pursued and cut the fugitives down in an orgy of blood. Scores of the enemy succeeded in fleeing past the horsemen and crossing the ford to safety, but scores more were forced to take refuge in the village where at last they found the time and space to make a new shield-wall. Now it was their turn to be surrounded. The evening light was stretching across the vale, touching the trees with the first faint yellow sunlight of that long and bloody day as we stopped around the village. We were panting and our swords and spears were thick with blood.
Arthur, his sword as red as mine, slid heavily from Llamrei's back. The black mare was white with sweat, trembling, her pale eyes wide, while Arthur himself was bone-weary from his desperate fight. He had tried and tried again to break through to us; he had fought, his fnen told us, like a man possessed by the Gods even though it had seemed, all that long afternoon, as if the Gods had deserted him. Now, despite being victor of the day, he was in distress as he embraced Sagramor and then hugged me. “I failed you, Derfel,” he said, “I failed you.”
“No, Lord,” I said, 'we won," and I pointed with my battered, reddened sword at Gorfyddyd's survivors who had rallied around the eagle banner of their trapped King. Gundleus's fox banner also showed there, though neither of the enemy Kings was in view.
“I failed,” Arthur said. “I never broke through. There were too many.” That failure galled him, for he knew only too well how close we had come to utter defeat. Indeed, he felt he had been defeated, for his vaunted horsemen had been held and all he had been able to do was watch as we were cut down, but he was wrong. The victory was his, all his, for Arthur, alone of all the men of Dumnonia and Gwent, had possessed the confidence to offer battle. That battle had not gone as Arthur had planned; Tewdric had not marched to help us and Arthur's war horses had been checked by Gundleus's shield-wall; but it was still a victory and it had been brought about by one thing only: Arthur's courage in fighting at all. Merlin had intervened, of course, but Merlin never claimed the victory. That was Arthur's and though, at the time, Arthur was full of self-recrimination it was Lugg Vale, the one victory Arthur always despised, that turned him into the eventual ruler of Britain. The Arthur of the poets, the Arthur who wearies the tongues of the bards, the Arthur for whose return all men pray in these dark days, was made great by that stumbling shambles of a fight. Nowadays, of course, the poets do not sing the truth about Lugg Vale. They make it sound like a victory as complete as the later battles, and perhaps they are right to shape their story thus for in these hard times we need Arthur to have been a great hero from the very first, but the truth is that in those early years Arthur was vulnerable. He ruled Dumnonia by virtue of Owain's death and Bedwin's support, but as the years of war ground on there were many who wished him gone. Gorfyddyd had his supporters in Dumnonia and, God forgive me, too many Christians were praying for Arthur's defeat. And that was why he fought, because he knew he was too weak not to fight. Arthur had to provide victory or lose everything, and in the end he did win, but only after coming within a blade's edge of disaster.
Arthur crossed to embrace Tristan, then to greet Oengus Mac Airem, the Irish King of Demetia, whose contingent had saved the battle. Arthur, as ever, went to his knees before a king, but Oengus lifted him up and gave him a bear hug. I turned and stared at the vale as the two men talked. It was foul with broken men, pitiful with dying horses, and glutted with corpses and littered weapons. Blood stank and the wounded cried. I felt more weary than I had ever felt in my life and so did my men, but I saw that Gorfyddyd's levy had come down from the hill to start plundering the dead and wounded and so I sent Cavan and a score of spearmen to drive them away. Ravens flapped black across the river to tear at dead men's bowels. I saw that the huts we had fired that morning still smoked. Then I thought of Ceinwyn, and amid all that bestial horror, my soul suddenly lifted as though on great white wings. I turned back in time to see Merlin and Arthur embrace. Arthur almost seemed to collapse in the Druid's arms, but Merlin lifted and clasped him. Then the two of them walked towards the enemy's shields. Prince Cuneglas and the Druid lorweth came from the encircled shield-wall. Cuneglas carried a spear, but no shield, while Arthur had Excalibur in its scabbard, but no other weapon. He paced ahead of Merlin and, as he drew near to Cuneglas, he dropped to one knee and bowed his head. “Lord Prince,” he said.