The Circle of the Gods (24 page)

He had then a black sense of shame that he, whose eyes watched always for signs from the gods who controlled his destiny, saw now a sign from the peaceful, gentle Latis which should not have been necessary.

He rose and with the Latis rain dewing his face went into the camp and found the youth Felos.

Arturo, the shame still clouding him, said, “Go to Marcos. Tell him to give you a horse, weapons and food. Ride back to the lady Daria and give her all the count of our days and progress. Then, returning, bring with you all news.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Say that I am well and bear her always in my thoughts and heart.”

“Yes, my lord. And where will I find you, my lord?”

Sharply, Arturo said, “Only the gods can say. But”—he smiled, to ease his tartness—“find me and from that day you and your brother Barma shall ride as companions.”

Felos, beaming, raised his hand in salute and was gone at a smart trot to find Marcos.

Three weeks later they rode out from the great elms which crested the high ground to the northwest of Londinium. They were now a company of two troops of thirty-two horse, each still commanded by Gelliga and Durstan, and a reserve troop of fifteen horse commanded by one of the new companions, Cuneda, from Lactodorum in the country of the Catuvellauni, a man of forty, built like an ox, black-bearded but without a hair on his head. Their camp servants had increased and they now had two carts, the second taken from a burned-out farmstead which they had repaired and fitted with runners to carry their food supplies and grain for their horses—though, the grass being abundant and sweet at this time of the year, their mounts needed no more than a few handfuls of corn a day. Five of the companions bore wounds which, under Pasco's care, were fast healing; and two companions had been killed the day after leaving Pontes when, riding ahead of the column as scouts, they had been ambushed by a band of robbers and cutthroats who stripped them of clothes and weapons and disappeared into the thickness of the surrounding forest where none could follow them. They were buried where they lay and, as Pasco finished his prayers for them, Arturo turned aside and rode alone with his grief, knowing it to be the beginning of a burden of the soul which he must from now on learn to endure as the never-ceasing lot of a commander of men.

Below them now the silver loops of the Tamesis snaked away eastward to the sun-blazed spread of its estuary, and at their feet lay the once great city of Londinium. Only a few wisps of smoke rose from its houses. It was a dead city; for these days, without true commerce or trade, there was no gain or security to be found in it. People in these times drew away from towns and settled where a living was to be found, in their hovels and sparse communities close to their poorly cropping fields and cattle grounds.

Arturo sent two of the companions to ride down to the city gate close to the ruined fort at the northwest comer of the walls to bring him back news of the place. When they returned they reported that the two western gates, though unmanned, were open and in good repair, that the fort was empty and that the great wooden bridge over the river was broken and gapped in many places and would give no crossing. There were people in the half-ruined city still, but they were a miserable set of wretches. Where there had been greatness and the noisy bustle of commerce and trade, and the ring of horses'hooves and the clank of armour as well-furbished and well-ordered troops had garrisoned the great fort and the walls, there was heard now only the scavenging cries of the kites and the carrion birds and the barking of dog packs that roamed the alleyways and deserted houses. And that they were there was due to one thing. The slow sickness had swept through the city since the beginning of summer and although it was now almost abated, the streets and houses still held the corpses of the dead, lying as they had fallen to make a feasting for all the city's carrion eaters.

Hearing this, Arturo was for a while in two minds whether he should risk his company in such a place, but then the conviction came strongly to him that since the gods had led him thus far under their favour, that favour would still run only if he entered the place and raised the white-horse banner for all to see so that the report of his coming would spread like a great ripple across the country. This was Londinium Augusta, once sacked and burned by the great Queen Boudicca, greater than Camulodunum or any other city, the capital, and his country would one day become great again.

He left the reserve troop of horse to guard the baggage train and with the rest of his companions, Lancelo carrying the white-horse banner before them, he rode down to the city and entered it through the most southerly of the two western gates. Men, women and children, dull-eyed from the slow sickness, lay in the gutters and doorways and gave them no greeting as they waited their deaths. Hooves clattering on the broken paving and rubble of the streets, the crows and kites rising in wild flight from the bodies that here and there littered their way, the dog paeks retreating from them, snarling and barking, they moved along the Tamesis side, past the ruined warehouses and collapsed river stockades, the gulls and river birds, disturbed from their low-tide feeding, flighting from the beaches. Past the broken and burned and pillaged Londinium bridge and the ruin of the great river palace they went, and then swung north to breast the rising ground and finally rode in proud formation into the old Forum and drew up in a long line of horse across the face of the ruined Basilica. With them came a growing drift of miserable men and women with nothing to lose but their lives, which for most would be a happy release, ragged, half-starving and moving like famine-weary cattle.

Arturo rode forward a little and to these, as though they were proud, well-set citizens he made his declamation. When he had finished there was for a while a low muttering amongst them and then it died as the sound of a slow flurry of passing rain dies before the wind. Arturo and his men rode away and the crowd stayed where they were, no strength or curiosity in them to fire their wasted limbs and weak spirits. Helmet plumes tossing, the white-horse banner before them, the companions passed from the city, splashing over the summer-low river, past the ruined baths, past the shells of once noble buildings with their broken statues and defaced and cracked tablets of dedication, and out into the clean air and the green grass of the hillslopes where the rest of the company awaited them.

At Arturo's side Lancelo said, “Can such a city ever live again?”

Arturo, stiff-faced, moved by all he had seen, said with curt emotion, “Under the gods, someday, it must and will.”

The next day, at low tide, they forded the river well above the city and the column turned south to begin a great sweep which should bring them westward to move along the fringes of the great forests that rolled northward from the shore line of the country of the Regnenses, from the sea towns of Anderida and Noviomagus.

Twelve days later they fought their first and only true battle of the progress. In the early hours of the morning, as they were camped below the crest of a steep scarp of the hills, it started to rain heavily. Since they lay in the open, rolled in their blankets without cover, Arturo gave the order to break camp and move. Every campaigner amongst them knew that the misery of rain soaking through blankets and clothes is abated if it can be met marching rather than lying on wet ground.

The companions formed into their two troops and moved off while the baggage train followed them more slowly with the half-troop of reserve horse in their rear to prevent surprise attack from behind. As the morning wore on, the ground became soaked and soft and slowed up the movement of the two baggage-carts and the rear guard screen of cavalry. Little by little the leading troops gradually drew out ahead. Two troopers rode wide on each flank of the column as scouts, their cloak hoods drawn about their heads against the still driving rain. At midmorning as they rode along the crest of a broad upland sheep run, the two leading troops dropped, down into a great dip in the land and disappeared from the sight of the following reserve troop and baggage column.

At this, moment, from the bushes well to the left flank, there arose a party of fifty or sixty Saxons, who came running hard, howling and shouting and brandishing their weapons, to drive a wedge between the head of the baggage train and the forward two troops of horse now lost to sight. Then, too, from the right flank more Saxons ran from their hiding places and raced to the rear of the train to form a barrier between it and the following guard troopers.

Long before Cuneda, the rear guard commander, could reach for his horn and call the alarm the two parties of Saxons had swept around and amongst the baggage carts, killing all those who had not escaped at the sight of their coming. As the first notes of Cuneda's horn wailed the alarm the Saxons formed a circle about the carts and stood firm in three ranks to defend their position and their plunder.

That morning as Arturo, the alarm horn sounding in his ears, forced the White One hard back up the slope to the down top and saw the Saxon force surrounding his baggage carts, he learned a lesson he was never to forget. Hard rain makes a man seek, even on the move, what comfort he can. His scouts had ridden with their cloaks cowling their heads, their eyes part-blinkered, their minds on their discomfort rather than on the country around them. The situation before him now was none that had ever been faced in mock attack at the Villa of the Three Nymphs. He acted from impulse and instinct without time even for a prayer to the gods to be with him.

He shouted a command to Lancelo at his side and as his horn began to sound, he drove the White One forward into a gallop with the troops of Gelliga and Durstan following him in a combined wedge-shaped formation.

Pasco, who had been riding his pony with the leading troops, came back up the slope onto the level ground in time to see the tight wedge of flying horses, great scuds of turf flung up behind them by their pounding hooves, burst into the ring of massed Saxons, the swords of the companions swinging and flashing in the rain.

But the Saxons, shouting insults, held their ranks as the cavalry swirled round them on either side, the horses neighing with excitement and others squealing with pain as they were cut down or hamstrung, leaving their riders to fight on foot. Around the baggage carts men and horses circled like a great whirlpool. Watching, Pasco realized—for he had travelled far and seen much in his time—that these were no cutthroat, outcast, plunder-hungry men such as harried the valley of the Tamesis. They stood and fought like warriors and there was one among them, towering head and shoulders above the rest, who wore an iron-banded leather helmet and a short white sheepskin cloak that fell to his waist and was caught by a sword belt with a silver clasp, who was clearly the leader. These men were Hengist's men from the settled Saxon lands to the east, seasoned men who would stand their ground so long as the faintest flicker of victory burned for them.

Lancelo's horn blew and the two troops drew back and re-formed, and then the horn blew again to send in the rear guard troop under Cuneda. Arturo watched Cuneda's attack break against the Saxon ring, swirl about it and pass by, and then, his anger passing and his brain clearing, he realized that cavalry could only do so much against men who stood and fought and kept their ranks.

Durstan's troop followed Cuneda's to the attack. As it went in, Arturo dismounted, followed by Gelliga, Borio and all their men, to attack on foot. The cavalry swung left and right of the Saxon ring to harry its flanks and the dismounted companions flung themselves against its front. Leading them was Arturo, sword swinging, his buckler held low to prevent the swift Saxon thrust to the groin, cutting and hacking his way into the ring of men, forcing his way toward their leader in the sheepskin cloak. The Saxon chief, seeing him come, recognizing he must be the leader of the companions, pressed forward through his men to meet him. They met with a great clash of sword and scramasax, Arturo silent while the Saxon shouted taunts and insults at him. In the few moments before the lust of battle claimed him Arturo called silently to the gods to be with him, and then all thought deserted him as he became one with the flash and hiss of his sweeping, jabbing sword.

Pasco, watching them fighting face to face in the confused and bloody throng of men, saw the swing and thrust of cavalry sword and scramasax flash above the sea of heads and straining bodies, lost them, saw them again while the air rang with the fierce shouting of men and the screams of those who fell. Then suddenly, the white-fleeced cloak was gone. A great shout went up from the companions and, like the concerted movement of a raiding flock of crows taking wing in alarm from a field of young corn, the Saxons broke and ran. Pasco, who had seen battle against Saxons many times, knew their mind and their temper. With hope of victory they would fight and stand and die, but when hope or strong leadership went, they would turn and run. Only if they were hopelessly surrounded would they bunch and face their enemy and fight to the end, taking their wounds from the front and going gladly to their death to claim a warrior's welcome from Woden.

As the Saxons ran, the cavalry re-formed and harried them along the down top until Lancelo's horn blew the recall. Pasco, riding up on his pony into the carnage and destruction that surrounded the baggage train, found Arturo standing over the dying Saxon chief.

Blood running over his white fleece cloak from a great sword thrust in his chest, he lay with his eyes closed. But after a few moments he slowly opened his eyes, looked up at Arturo and said something in his own language. Then his head dropped to one side as life passed from him.

Arturo, leaning on his sword, said to Pasco, “You know their tongue?”

Pasco nodded. “Yes, my son. He said that now in Hengist's hall the name of Arturo of the White Horse will no longer make men laugh in scorn.”

Arturo, after a moment's pause, said solemnly, “May his gods honour him, as this day we humbly honour ours for the victory they have given us.”