Just as the Council had planned, the chariots swung into line, four deep, and cantered up the rise to the brow of the slope. Each chariot, drawn by two chargers, carried its leader, his companions, a spearman tied to the central shaft, and footmen hanging onto the tailboard, ready to leap off into the press and use their axes when the chariot struck.
Not a word was spoken or a banner raised as the slow movement was made, but all looked towards the royal chariot, which was leading, ahead of the front rank by twenty paces, its red dragon standard trailing behind it, not to be raised until the charge was begun. And the following tribesmen saw the King, dressed now in his scarlet cloak over his gold breastplate, lean to his nearest companion and embrace him. From the silver bull’s horns that stood high from the warrior’s helmet they knew that this was Gwyndoc, and all the young chief’s clansmen felt proud that their leader should be so favoured by Caradoc.
Soon the chariot mass had gained the head of the hill, and at a sign from the King halted. The rear ranks, still below the rise, were unable to see what was going on in the plain, but the King’s chariot, positioned above the battlefield, commanded a perfect view of the action. The sun stood high in the sky now, and wherever the eye looked it saw only confusion and a tangling mass of bodies as the tribesmen harried the attackers. The ear heard only shouts, warcries, screams of men and horses, and the savage, rhythmic hiss that swordsmen make as they slash again and again. Already the crows were hovering over the swaying chaos, and at the farthest edges of the field outcast dogs snapped avidly at each other’s mangy ribs as they moved impatiently up and down, waiting.
Gwyndoc, at his lord’s side in the great gilded chariot, looked about him as they drew up to the brow of the hill. A company of long-haired Cantii were in the thick of the fighting, right under the feet of the cohort that protected the Roman general, Aulus Plautius. They were hacking and thrusting, all swordsmen, and giving no inch of ground. Gwyndoc recognised their chief by his tartan and tried to shout to him, asking him go easy on the Roman general as he, Gwyndoc, wanted a bit of fun. But his voice was drowned in the other noises of that day. Caradoc heard him, though, and looked down at him sternly. Then for a time Gwyndoc was silent. He looked away from the King’s eye and watched the battle intently. And, as he stared, he saw a strange, unpredictable thing happen that held him fascinated as it took its course, like something in a dream. The Roman shield-wall suddenly unlocked and swung open like a great door of living steel, leaving the ranks behind it uncovered. At first Gwyndoc thought that the legionaries were crumbling, but soon he saw the purpose of the movement: the Roman archers were waiting to go into action. They were arranged, neatly as a boy’s toy warriors, in three tiers, the first kneeling, the second crouching above them, and the third standing upright and clear of their comrades. Each archer had his bow held before him at the ready, an arrow already fitted to the string, waiting. They were a magnificent spectacle of military efficiency. Gwyndoc gasped at their precision and coolness, then he heard a brisk command, and each archer drew his red-hackled arrow to his ear and waited again, motionless as a statue. The harrying tribesmen halted for an instant, taken off their guard by this unexpected movement, and, as they stood amazed, there was yet another command, this time more urgent than before, and the bowstrings twanged in a ghastly, vibrant unison. Yet hardly had this sound died on the ear when it was repeated again, and then again. Three flights of arrows had flown into the mass of the oncoming attackers while a man could have counted three. And, as Gwyndoc stared, the Cantii melted and fell into a huddle of writhing forms before his eyes. Then the shield-wall closed again and the terrible bowmen were hidden.
Gwyndoc glanced up at the King’s face. It was pale and tense. Caradoc had seen, too, and his long fingers twisted and untwisted the gold bracelet on his left arm. He spoke, or rather whispered, so softly that his friend could not be quite sure that he had heard correctly. “We must attack soon or the footmen will lose heart, and then our cause is lost,” he thought the King said.
To the left the Trinobantes were working hard with their knives and long lances. Again and again they broke upon their section of the shield-wall like the savage breakers of a ravenous sea. Singing their own war-song, a desperate and melancholy dirge, the tall spearmen prized open the long Roman shields while the shorter, more agile knifemen ran in quickly and stabbed right and left at throat and arms. As Gwyndoc watched, they surged once more against the motionless wall, and suddenly their song grew louder and louder, becoming derisively victorious, rising to a shriek as the shieldmen crumbled and retreated before them. The Romans were breaking formation! They were falling before the knifemen at last!
Then, with a forlorn attempt at the precision they had shown before, the shieldmen tried to swing back like a great gate. They tottered and fell, lying on the ground helpless while the Trinobantes thrust at their faces and their sides, howling now like wolves, and already looting helmets and swords as they passed on. The remnants of the Roman defence stood gallantly, re-forming even as their neighbours died, and then pulled to one side to show the archers once more, as magnificently ordered as before. But even as they drew their long arrows the spearmen were upon them, thrusting and yelling. That volley of arrows was never fired, and Gwyndoc bobbed up and down on the chariot floor like a man possessed as he watched the green-tartans rolling in, and on and on, almost too tired with slaughter now to howl their song, keeping their strength only for maiming and mutilating, drunk with glory, right in amongst the enemy. Three hundred men at least went through that shrieking gap, with victory already in their wild hearts. Then the shield-wall closed again, almost as solid and impassive as ever. For a few seconds Gwyndoc still heard the spearmen’s chant, and here and there the shield-wall quivered and shook, as though it were being attacked from behind. A few shields fell from their places. Then there was no movement at all, and nothing more was seen of the Trinobantes. It was as though they had never been.
Gwyndoc plucked excitedly at the King’s kilt. “Let us attack now, lord,” he said. “To the left, where the spears went in. It must be weaker there.” But Caradoc’s blue eyes were sweeping far to left and right, away from the battlefield, towards the distant hill and the woods. He made no sign that he was even conscious of his friend’s presence.
Then Morag began to swear, as he stood on the central shaft of the war-chariot, turning his dark face up at the sun and chattering, imploring, the muscles of his tense throat moving up and down within his gold gorget. “Let us go now, lord of the greater light! Let us attack them now! I do not ask for victory, lord, only for sword-meat and the mist of blood in my eyes! I do not ask——” Caradoc suddenly stiffened and struck Morag full across the mouth with the flat of his sword-scabbard. The King’s cousin gabbled on, insensitive to the sharp blow, still staring up and mumbling towards the sun. Blood trickled from the corners of his mouth into his black beard. Then the King struck him again, this time on the neck, and a low hiss of awe rose from the assembled charioteers behind who had seen the blow.
Morag turned this time, spitting out blood from his wounded mouth. He shouted, almost in the King’s face, “Attack! Attack! Bite with your sharp teeth, Little Badger, for the Sun-god gives you his leave.” His hands fumbled at the broad strap that bound him by the waist to the chariot shaft. He intended to leap from his post and run among the enemy. He was battle-mad, and Gwyndoc, infected by Morag’s hysteria, half rose and had his sword almost out of the scabbard to join him when Caradoc spoke. His voice was cold and hard as he half-turned to the axemen. “Tie him up! He’s useless! The Roman magic has curdled his brains.” But before the axemen could drag Morag down from the shaft he had cut one of them deeply in the shoulder and had almost severed another’s wrist. Then they tied his arms and ankles with belts and flung him, still snarling and yapping like a dog, on the floor of the chariot, at the King’s feet. But Caradoc did not look down at him once. Only Beddyr seemed to show any concern. He flung a cloak over his brother’s face to keep the sun from his head and then turned again, apparently unconcerned, to watch the battle.
Then came the signal they had been waiting for; two long blasts on the horn, one from the left, beyond the sheltering wood, the other from the right, over the crest of the far hill. The claws were about to close! And even as the sad misty sounds hung on the wind, a light shower passed over the field, and then a great rainbow shone out, brilliant and prophetic.
Caradoc raised his voice and laughed for the first time. “An omen!” he shouted to all near him. “At one end of the bow, Reged; at the other, Catuval! We must be victorious this day!”
And as he spoke he touched Gwyndoc on the shoulder, and the red dragon banner was raised and stood fluttering magnificently in the sunlight. As Gwyndoc, the standard-bearer, thrust the thick shaft into its socket in the chariot floor, he was conscious of the Catuvellauni all around them, their faces turned towards the royal chariot, like dogs waiting in silence for the order to attack. They all seemed so confident, so proud, that Gwyndoc wanted to weep with happiness. His stomach suddenly seemed light, and he wanted to dance. For the first time that day his mind was completely free of Ygerne, free of his possessions every one—his lands and his houses, his clothes and his weapons. He stood, in the King’s chariot, almost a disembodied spirit, his whole identity concentrated in the length of his sword, Rhashidd, with no thought any more for safety or comfort, food or warmth, no regrets for the past or hopes for the future. Light-headed with slaughter, the young man was gloriously dead and alive at the same instant, a throbbing cipher in isolation from all emotions but the desire to kill.
Suddenly out of the corner of his eye he saw one of the men in his company break ranks and run forward, laughing and shrieking. It was Bobyn, the idiot, still swinging his long wooden sword! The excitement had turned his head completely, and he ran across the broad expanse of heavily-trodden ground that separated the chariots from the Roman formations.
As he gradually approached the shield-wall the tribesmen could hear the Romans beginning to laugh. Even the shield-bearers had lowered their wall so that all could see this strange mad Briton who could not wait to strike his blow at them. Gwyndoc could see their white teeth glistening in the sunlight as they laughed aloud. He would have shouted to Bobyn, threatening him with death, but he turned and saw that Caradoc himself was smiling. Gwyndoc gnawed at his knuckles and fumed. Still Bobyn raced on, no longer the shambling, whining imbecile of the midden-heaps, but a bright warrior, racing towards death and victory!
Still the Romans laughed at him, their shield-wall wide open; and as the screaming man came nearer, they leaned forward as he attempted to poke at them, thrusting and slashing with the wooden sword that the village-boys had given him, being pushed and buffeted jocularly among the roaring legionaries. . . .
Gwyndoc groaned, and tears of shame stood out in his eyes. “Look!” said Caradoc, placing his hand on his friend’s shoulder to comfort him. A man of the Bibroci had stripped himself naked of his tunic and breast armour and was leaping, his short sword held firmly in his teeth, towards the cluster of men round Bobyn. “That must be one of his lodge brothers,” said the King, “for he bears the same blue mark between his shoulder-blades.”
As he spoke the Roman humour changed suddenly. It was one thing to humour an idiot, another to let the enemy send dangerous fighting-men one by one into the lines. An archer stepped forward and took careful aim, and his arrow picked off the berserk clansman when he was less than six yards from Bobyn. The man ran on for a few paces with the arrow sticking from his neck, tearing at his throat, and then dropped and lay still. How confident these legionaries were! As Gwyndoc looked, the Roman standard-bearer came down from the dais, where he had been standing with Aulus Plautius, bowed ironically to Bobyn and offered him the golden eagle. The madman stretched out his hands to accept the trophy, and then the horns sounded again, louder and clearer, in a final signal, and the King raised his hand in the order to advance. The long lines of chariots began to move, slowly at first, each one decorated with bright paints, some with heads hanging by the hair from the shafts, some even decorated with flowers, and each one carrying its own coloured pennant. The shield-wall closed as if controlled by pulleys, and Bobyn’s end was never known. Then the chariots began to canter, then to trot, and at last to gallop in an immense and magnificent wave down the long slope that kept them from the waiting army.
And Gwyndoc, his cloak flung back to free his sword-arm, and his great helmet with its silver horns fastened securely over his flaxen head, noticed as they charged that the rainbow which had promised victory had now disappeared.
In the rear of the cohorts, but strongly protected by infantry and cavalry, stood the great screens. The Numidian slaves who had carried them for some days now squatted on their haunches, showing their big white teeth as they yelled to each other above the noises of the battle; their high-pitched African voices making a strange contrast to the babble of Latin, or German, or Gallic, that sounded everywhere. To each side the black carriers saw only the legs of men and the feet of horses, and before them the legs of more men and still more men, and then the great dais on which the general stood.
They did not mention the general’s name: he was a god. They hardly dared to think of him, and when they did they bowed their heads, automatically, woodenly, like puppets. It was possible to know of whom they were thinking even though their eyes were shut and they spoke not a word.
From time to time they laughed and pointed in amusement when the men before them surged. Sometimes stray arrows fell amongst them, piercing the screens or vibrating in the hard ground. But only once did an arrow strike one of their company: it struck in his backside as he turned to make a joke to the next man down the line. He howled till a legionary kicked him in the ribs and then removed it. Then he just rubbed the place and sat on the other cheek. But he did not joke any more that day.
They were children in their hearts and minds. They hated no one, they loved no one—at least, not in this damp land, where the sun hadn’t enough strength to strike through their dark skins. But they had been put in ships and taken across the seas and so they were in Britain. All they had to do was to lift the screens and march forward when bidden by their Arab slave-master. He was almost as much a god as the general. His visitations were certainly more frequent. He had told them, “When I say ‘Move’, get up and carry your screens forward in time to the drum. I shall quarter with meat-hooks all slaves who do not march in step. But, in your anxiety to please, do not run into the general’s dais.” The slaves noted that he did not bow his head when he said “general”. “You must move to the side of that. If any slave approaches within five paces of the general’s dais I shall have his teeth knocked out, his ears torn off, his eyes burnt with needles, and his arms and legs broken in three places—immediately!”
When they heard these words the slaves grinned amiably and nodded their heads in understanding. They made up their minds not to knock against the general’s dais, whatever might happen. Most of them had known Abu Yussef long enough to listen to what he said. And they laughed again in the cold British sunshine.
They were still laughing when men began to tumble over them, with red all over their heads or their arms flapping in the air like a scarecrow’s sleeves. They were laughing as the javelins split their skulls or broke their ribs; when horses and wheels and knives suddenly broke into their pallid sunshine; dust in the nostrils and the smell of dung, the thick cloying blood splashing the face and mouth, and the yellow-haired men coming in from every side, laughing till the blood spurted from their mouths, hacking with long swords till their hands fell to the ground, thrusting with their crimson spears till their legs broke under them and let them tumble beneath the grinding, screaming wheels. . . . Then Abu Yussef stood up and patted his burnous straight. “Move!” he said.
Caradoc saw the shield-wall growing bigger and bigger. He stood upright only with difficulty, for by now the chariot was racing over the bodies of men. For a moment he put his arms round Gwyndoc and kissed him on both cheeks. Then he gave Beddyr the order to untie his brother, who was now quiet again, and Caradoc turned as the chariot swayed and bumped, and smiled to his cousins. He had only just time then to prepare himself for the clash. Setting his feet in the two niches, he tensed himself and shouted loud. Not words, but just sounds to convince himself that he was brave and alive. Then his chariot, the first of them all, struck the shield-wall. As in a remarkably clear dream, he saw to the left of him Catuval’s chariot, its lord driving like a handsome demon in ecstasy straight for the Roman flank; to the right Reged’s chariots bearing down in an orderly fashion, his brother standing bareheaded and smiling with the reins round his body and his arms held up to the sky. . . .
Then it was shock after shock, and mist before the eyes and gratings in the skull like teeth being drawn, and Caradoc hacked with his sword and saw blood on it and his chest; then he turned and went back, but only with difficulty, and made another charge, and it was the same again only not so violent. Then the mist cleared and he said, “Where are the Belgians?” And as he spoke he saw Catuval’s chariot, his black and gold chariot, blazing on the ground, and his chargers lying on their sides, full of spears. Then he turned and shouted, “Reged! Reged! Where are you now?” And it seemed to him that a croaking raven swooped down from the blue sky and screamed in his ear, “Look, King! Look! Reged is only a few yards from you, still standing in his chariot! But he won’t stand for long! He can’t! There’s an arrow sticking through his throat! Look, Caradoc, he is calling for you! The blood is coming out of his mouth!” Then, weeping in his nightmare, the King heard a strange thin voice, not a Roman voice, yell “Move!” Then the tall screens moved and fell away and an obscene scent came into his nose and his mouth. Then his horses snorted and screamed and pawed the air and became unmanageable. They turned against the rein and swung away from the fighting; but as they turned, Caradoc saw what they were fleeing from, and what he had smelled—the elephant and camel “cavalry” of Claudius, moving relentlessly forward, their heads swaying heavily, like the heads of idiots, stepping mincingly, their lips thrust out arrogantly, like flea-bitten whores! Claudius the Emperor had attacked with his cavalry and Caradoc, looking back on the chaotic mass of men and horses, sobbed and fell to his knees in his chariot, broken and ashamed.
At last he felt a hand holding his and he dared to look round at Gwyndoc, who lay by his side. Then they both got to their feet and saw that they were racing in the middle of a broad stream of chariots, away from the field. But no chariot was being driven.
Then they were on the road leading to the capital, a road littered with dying men and horses and broken chariots. They wept no longer, but whipped on the terrified horses. What had happened? Was Reged dead? Dead, with a mole in his hand, talking about philosophy and barbarians? Caradoc began to laugh brokenly. And Catuval—he in his ebony breastplate, wearing Cunobelin’s tartan—was he dead too? And all the others? All dead? Just because of the Romans and their half-witted Emperor with his elephants and his camels? It could not be: fighting was not thus. Fighting was gay and spirited, and one always returned home in glory with one’s brothers and uncles, to feast and sing and boast, battered and sometimes a little hurt—but always gay and victorious. . . .
And at last they clattered into the courtyard they had left so recently. Gwynedd and Ygerne were at the door, both pale and weeping. The King almost fell from his chariot and laid his head on his wife’s breast. “The battle is lost,” said Gwynedd quickly. “They are both dead, Reged and Catuval. We must do as you say and go to Caerwent.”
And Ygerne ran to the chariot and took Gwyndoc’s trembling hand. “Husband,” she said, “thank God they have not hurt you! Oh, my love, look up! We shall fight them yet and conquer them!”