Dan woke when it was still dark. He’d had the dream again: of death, heaped corpses and the figure with the pale blonde hair, who both was and was not Arturus hewn down by mounted men. His heart was thumping and he was drenched in sweat. The memory of where he was and what he was doing there only returned to him in small fragments. It was several hundred rapid heartbeats before he had the whole picture. He remembered then: Arturus was expecting him to somehow project his consciousness into some imaginary bird in order to view the layout of the battle scene. It still seemed mad to him and, even though he’d done it before, impossible.
He got up and stretched. Ursula lay outside, wrapped in a travelling cloak. In the firelight her hair looked pink. Her mouth was slightly open and she snored lightly. He fought the urge to kiss her, to hold her as if she was some sleeping princess in a fairytale. Perhaps that would break the spell and they could both wake up and find this whole doomed enterprise a dream. It wasn’t, of course. He ached from riding; he itched where insects had bitten him in the night. He was hungry and he needed to find the latrine.
All round, Dan could sense the muted fears of dreaming men and the less muted fears of those who could not sleep. Birds sang. It was almost time.
Arturus was at the defensive trench, sharpening Caliburn on a small piece of whetstone. It was still too dark to see his features clearly but Dan knew he, too, was afraid.
‘Are you ready?’ Arturus did not whisper and his voice sounded too loud and harsh.
Dan nodded. His mouth was dry. ‘I’ll get Taliesin. I’d like him with me.’
They walked towards Taliesin’s tent together.
‘Do you know what you will do?’ Dan asked.
‘I have a plan in mind – I need to be sure that Medraut has done what I expect him to. It isn’t hopeless – far from it. We can win, but, I’ve been thinking – about you and the Lady Ursa. If it’s a rout, go! Try to get home. This is not your place. Even if we win I fear I have failed. I thought I could bring back the stability of Roman rule – but we Combrogi are not Roman, don’t want to be Roman. I know that now.’ Arturus sighed and Dan felt his searing sense of disappointment, the pain that betrayal had caused him. Arturus kicked a loose clod of earth.
‘It was all for nothing. I’ve fought for unity for thirty years and the only time my dearest friends and brother make an alliance, it is against me.’ He shook his bowed head in disbelief. ‘I had such hope after Baddon – Aelle turned his ships back, you knew? I wonder if I had done things differently could I have got rid of the Aenglisc for good?’ Arturus looked directly at Dan, daring him to contradict. ‘I will fight, Gawain, but it is with a very heavy heart.’
‘You are known even in my time as a great king, Arturus. You will be remembered for a thousand years and more for what you did here.’
Dan hated to feel the distress of this man, the real, unheroic, ruthless, pragmatic, High King Arturus. Dan had never respected him more. Truth was more complicated than myth but over the years Arturus had become a man to honour.
Arturus smiled. ‘Taliesin tried to tell me about time, though I’m sure I never grasped it. Tell me, if you know my story – how does it end?’
Dan blanched.
‘As I thought, it’s how they all end isn’t it?’ Arturus sheathed his sword, Dan’s sword. ‘Let’s find Taliesin and Frontalis. If I’m to die I will not die unshriven.’
There was no wind, no sensation at all, just the bird’s-eye view and the vertigo of flight. Taliesin had told him what to look for, flying east into the rising sun. A flash of something metallic caught his eye. He’d found them. Arturus’s enemies. He saw the glint of a gilded helmet straight below where the arrow-straight Roman road crossed the crooked valley. He looked closer and saw more. There were hundreds of them, massed in three separate blocks, hidden by the unusual terrain. He remembered Taliesin’s advice and tried to fix their exact formations in his mind.
The crooked valley was formed by three hills, two to the north of the road, one larger hill to the south. The road, formed with Roman singleness of purpose, ran in a broadly west–east direction. The valley floor, on the other hand, formed a channel that twisted north then widened into a broad, flat, triangular plain before narrowing to a smaller passageway and turning back towards the south. A large band of light cavalry formed a disciplined block in the apex of the triangular plain, where the two northern hills met. That would be Larcius. His men were not heavily armoured and their horses wore no armour at all but they were light, fast, manoeuvrable and well trained, the Roman way. Dan realised that from the ground they would be hidden by the curve of the nearest hill. Opposite them, halfway up the gentle slope of the largest of the three hills, Gwynefa’s Cataphracts were jockeying for position to find shelter under the limited tree cover. Dan could see flashes of their red-lacquered scale armour, like bright birds among the trees. The more he looked the more he saw, like counting stars in the night.
He flew further towards the eastern end of the valley. Medraut’s infantry, two hundred or more Aenglisc in no particular order, waited, hidden from the road, behind the large hill’s eastern side. Dan could see their brightly painted Aenglisc shields, their bronze helms, their axes, their spears and their gleaming swords. He flew back towards Arturus’s waiting men with a heavy sense of doom. Were Arturus to ride along the Icknield Way to where the road crossed the wider plain, he would be attacked on his left by Larcius’s light cavalry, on his right by Gwynefa’s Cataphracts charging down the hillside. Those men who survived the combined onslaught would meet the Aenglisc horde under Medraut’s command as they poured towards them from the eastern side of the valley. It was a classic ambush and Dan could see no way out of it for Arturus or for his men.
Dan woke by the fire outside Taliesin’s tent, the scent of one of Frontalis’s herbal concoctions and the smoke and crackle of flames bringing him back to earth. Arturus listened to his debriefing carefully, nodding. He made Dan sketch his aerial vision with a stick in the earth, and then gave his orders. He was clear and decisive and had obviously worked it all out in his mind. Ursula was to take a small, hand-picked troop of sixty Cataphracts up the blind, steeper eastern side of the largest hill. They would climb to the hill’s highest point to take the higher ground above Gwynefa’s men. The entire western side of the hill was gentle enough for Ursula to charge down Gwynefa’s men and put them into a state of disarray. Thus ambushing the ambushers.
They would deal with Larcius’s light cavalry in the same way. Arturus’s remaining Cataphracts would swing wide around the nearest hill, ride through the narrow valley formed by the two smaller hills and emerge to the rear of Larcius’s force. Meanwhile, Arturus’s own infantry would march in fighting formation so that at the lituus’s signal, they would form a defensive double shield wall, presenting a double level of spears to the enemy on four sides. Any of Gwynefa’s Cataphracts who succeeded in completing the charge in the valley could not attack the infantry so long as the shield wall held.
‘I have good men,’ Arturus said proudly. ‘Trained the old Roman way – they will hold.’
Ursula bit her lip. ‘How steep is that slope?’
‘Steep enough to ensure no one will be expecting you from that direction. You want to take the younger, more agile horses, but you will have to lead them up on foot. The horses might do better without their mail.’ That made sense.
‘We won’t be silent. What if we are seen?’
‘There will be scouts – Medraut’s no fool, but if they are close enough to see what is going on with us – they are a long way from the command group – it will take time to get the message back and by then it will be too late. Gwynefa is inexperienced. She might send her men to charge you down. Believe me, a horse can get up there but a horse cannot get down, not at speed, not with a rider on his back. It would be carnage.’ Dan knew he was thinking of the fine Sarmatian horses and the fine Sarmatian soldiers who were about to die – Sarmatians who just days ago were his own, sworn men. Ursula looked grim. It was cold this early in the day and Frontalis had lent her his cloak – Arturus’s cloak. She clutched it to her throat for warmth and Dan saw that her fingers were clenched white. She gave no other evident sign of nerves.
‘Any of our Cataphracts who successfully make it through to the road must form up in front of our infantry – they will be useful against Medraut’s Aenglisc war bands.’
Dan could not tell from Arturus’s tone whether he expected most or any of his Cataphracts to make it that far. Arturus’s emotions were under tight rein and Dan did not wish to probe them.
‘Dan and Taliesin, you will have command of five riders each with golden dracos and horns that can sound the basic commands. If you see some unforeseen disaster looming send out the messengers to divert the troops as you see fit. I trust you to decide.’
Dan did not like the sound of that. He was no military strategist. ‘What about you?’
‘I will lead the Cataphracts against Larcius. We leave at once. Ursula, pick your men!’ Arturus’s tone brooked no opposition. Ursula looked distressed. Had Arturus forgotten that she knew none of these people?
‘I don’t know them. I knew their fathers!’
‘Sons are not always of the same mettle it is true – ask for volunteers. You command – they must follow you!’
Dan could feel Ursula’s battle nerves steady as she concentrated on her task. She glanced back to smile briefly at Dan, before striding off.
‘Lady Ursa!’ Arturus’s voice halted her in mid stride. ‘Take this.’ He handed her the gold face-mask she had worn at Baddon Hill. ‘For luck!’
She took it thoughtfully, more mistrustful of his motives than she had been at Baddon. Did he wish Gwynefa to believe she was Arturus? It hardly mattered. She did not have to be mistaken for Arturus to stand a very good chance of dying.
The camp dissolved around them with a blast from the tuba. They were to eat on the march. Most of the men were glad to be moving – anything was better than waiting. By the time they arrived at Camlann their enemies would have been waiting for three or four hours. Dan could not help thinking that gave their own men a psychological advantage.