Excalibur Page 12

  ‘If you’re going,’ Culhwch grumbled, ‘I suppose I’ll have to come. Just to make sure you’re not hurt.’ Then suddenly all of us were shouting for horses, weapons and shields.

  Why did we go? I have thought so often about that night. I can still see the flickering lights shaking the heavens, and smell the smoke streaming from Mai Dun’s summit, and feel the great weight of magic that pressed on Britain, yet still we rode. I know I was in confusion on that flame-riven night. I was driven by a sentimentality about a child’s death, and by Dian’s memory, and by my guilt because I had encouraged Gwydre to be at Durnovaria, but above all there was my affection for Arthur. And what, then, of my affection for Merlin and Nimue? I suppose I had never thought they needed me, but Arthur did, and on that night when Britain was trapped between the fire and the light, I rode to find his son.

  Twelve of us rode. Arthur, Galahad, Culhwch, Derfel and Issa were the Dumnonians, the others were Cuneglas and his followers. Today, where the story is still told, children are taught that Arthur, Galahad and I were the three ravagers of Britain, but there were twelve riders in that night of the dead. We had no body armour, just our shields, but every man carried a spear and a sword.

  Folk shrank to the sides of the firelit street as we rode towards Durnovaria’s southern gate. The gate was open, as it was left open every Samain Eve to give the dead access to the town. We ducked under the gate beams then galloped south and west between fields filled with people who stared enthralled at the boiling mix of flame and smoke that streamed from the hill’s summit.

  Arthur set a terrifying pace and I clung to my saddle pommel, fearful of being thrown. Our cloaks streamed behind, our sword scabbards banged up and down, while above us the heavens were filled with smoke and light. I could smell the burning wood and hear the crackle of the flames long before we reached the hill’s slope.

  No one tried to stop us as we urged the horses uphill. It was not till we reached the intricate tangle of the gateway maze that any spearmen opposed us. Arthur knew the fortress, because when he and Guinevere had lived in Durnovaria they had often come to its summit in the summertime and he led us unerringly through the twisting passage and it was there that three Black-shields levelled their spears to halt us. Arthur did not hesitate. He rammed his heels back, aimed his own long spear and let Llamrei run. The Blackshields twisted aside, shouting helplessly as the big horses thundered past.

  The night was all noise and light now. The noise was of a mighty fire and the splitting of whole trees in the heart of the hungry flames. Smoke shrouded the lights in the sky. There were spearmen shouting at us from the ramparts, but none opposed us as we burst through the inner wall onto Mai Dun’s summit.

  And there we were stopped, not by Blackshields, but by a blast of searing heat. I saw Llamrei rear and twist away from the flames, saw Arthur clinging to her mane and saw her eyes flash red with reflected fire. The heat was like a thousand smithy furnaces; a bellowing blast of scorching air that made us all flinch and reel away. I could see nothing inside the flames, for the centre of Merlin’s design was hidden by the seething walls of fire. Arthur kicked Llamrei back towards me. ‘Which way?’ he shouted.

  I must have shrugged.

  ‘How did Merlin get inside?’ Arthur asked.

  I made a guess. ‘The far side, Lord.’ The temple was on the eastern side of the fire-maze and I suspected a passage must surely have been left through the outer spirals.

  Arthur hauled on his rein and urged Llamrei up the slope of the inner rampart to the path that ran along its crest. The Blackshields scattered rather than face him. We rode up the rampart after Arthur, and though our horses were terrified of the great fire to their right, they followed Llamrei through the whirling sparks and smoke. Once a great section of fire collapsed as we galloped past and my horse swerved away from the inferno onto the outer face of the inner rampart. For a second I thought she was going to tumble down into the ditch and I was hanging desperately out of the saddle with my left hand tangled in her mane, but somehow she found her footing, regained the path and galloped on.

  Once past the northern tip of the great fire rings Arthur turned down onto the summit plateau again. A glowing ember had landed on his white cloak and started the wool smouldering, and I rode alongside him and beat the small fire out. ‘Where?’ he called to me.

  ‘There, Lord,’ I pointed to the spirals of fire nearest to the temple. I could see no gap there, but as we drew closer it was apparent that there had been a gap which had been closed with firewood, though that new wood was not nearly so thickly stacked as the rest and there was a narrow space where the fire, rather than being eight or ten feet tall, was no higher than a man’s waist. Beyond that low gap lay the open space between the outer and inner spirals, and in that space we could see more Blackshields waiting.

  Arthur walked Llamrei towards the gap. He was leaning forward, speaking to the horse, almost as if he was explaining to her what he wanted. She was frightened. Her ears kept pricking back, and she took short nervous steps, but she did not shy from the raging fires that burned on either side of the only passage into the heart of the hilltop fire. Arthur stopped her a few paces short of the gap and calmed her, though her head kept tossing and her eyes were wide and white. He let her look at the gap, then he patted her neck, spoke to her again, and wheeled away.

  He trotted in a wide circle, spurred her into a canter, then spurred her again as he aimed at the gap. She tossed her head and I thought she would baulk, but then she seemed to make up her mind and flew at the flames. Cuneglas and Galahad followed. Culhwch cursed at the risk we were taking, then all of us kicked our horses in Llamrei’s wake.

  Arthur crouched over the mare’s neck as she pounded towards the fire. He was letting Llamrei choose her pace and she slowed again. I thought she would shy away, then I saw she was gathering herself for the leap between the flames. I was shouting, trying to cover my fear, then Llamrei jumped and I lost sight of her as the wind snatched a cloak of flaming smoke over the gap. Galahad was next into the space, but Cuneglas’s horse swerved away. I was galloping hard behind Culhwch, and the heat and clamour of the fires was filling the noisy air. I think I half wanted my horse to refuse, but she kept on and I closed my eyes as the flame and smoke surrounded me. I felt the horse rise, heard her whinny, then we thumped down inside the outer ring of flame and I felt a vast relief and wanted to shout in triumph.

  Then a spear ripped into my cloak just behind my shoulder. I had been so intent on surviving the fire that I had not thought about what waited for us inside the flame ring. A Blackshield had lunged at me and had missed, but now he abandoned the spear and ran to pull me from the saddle. He was too close for my own spear blade to be of use so I simply rammed the staff down at his head and kicked my horse on. The man seized my spear. I let it go, drew Hywelbane and hacked back once. I glimpsed Arthur circling on Llamrei and flailing left and right with his sword, and now I did the same. Galahad kicked a man in the face, speared another, then spurred away. Culhwch had seized a Blackshield’s helmet crest and was dragging the man towards the fire. The man tried desperately to untie the chin strap, then screamed as Culhwch hurled him at the flames before wheeling away.

  Issa was through the gap now, and so were Cuneglas and his six followers. The surviving Blackshields had fled towards the centre of the maze of fire and we followed them, trotting between two leaping walls of flame. The borrowed sword in Arthur’s hand was red with light. He kicked Llamrei and she began to canter and the Blackshields, knowing they must be caught, ran aside and dropped their spears to show they would fight no more.

  We had to ride halfway around the circle to find the entrance to the inner spiral. The gap between the inner and outer fires was a good thirty paces across, wide enough to let us ride without being roasted alive, but the space inside the spiral’s passage was less than ten paces in width, and these were the biggest fires, the fiercest, and we all hesitated at the entrance. We could still see nothing of what happ
ened within the circle. Did Merlin know we were here? Did the Gods? I looked up, half expecting a vengeful spear to hurtle down from heaven, but there was only the twisting canopy of smoke shrouding the fire-tortured, light-cascading sky.

  And so we rode into the last spiral. We rode hard and fast, galloping in a tightening curve between the roaring blast of leaping flames. Our nostrils filled with smoke as embers scorched our faces, but turn by turn we drew ever nearer to the mystery’s centre.

  The noise of the fires obscured our coming. I think that Merlin and Nimue had no idea that their ritual was about to be ended for they did not see us. Instead the guards at the circle’s centre saw us first and they shouted in warning and ran to oppose us, but Arthur came out of the fires like a demon cloaked in smoke. Indeed, his clothes streamed smoke as he shouted a challenge and rammed Llamrei hard into the Blackshields’ hasty, half-formed shield wall. He broke that wall by sheer speed and weight, and the rest of us followed, swords swinging, while the handful of loyal Blackshields scattered.

  Gwydre was there. And Gwydre lived.

  He was in the grip of two Blackshields who, seeing Arthur, let the boy go free. Nimue screamed at us, winging curses across the central ring of five fires as Gwydre ran sobbing to his father’s side. Arthur leaned down and with a strong arm lifted his son onto the saddle. Then he turned to look at Merlin.

  Merlin, his face streaming with sweat, gazed calmly at us. He was halfway up a ladder that was leaning against a gallows made of two tree trunks struck upright in the ground and crossed by a third, and that gallows now stood in the very centre of the five fires that formed the middle ring. The Druid was in a white robe and the sleeves of that robe were red with blood from their cuffs to the elbow. In his hand was a long knife, but on his face, I swear, there was a momentary look of utter relief.

  The boy Mardoc lived, though he would not have lived for long. The child was already naked, all but for a strip of cloth that had been tied about his mouth to silence his screams, and he was hanging from the gallows by his ankles. Next to him, also hanging by the ankles, was a pale, thin body that looked very white in the flamelight, except that the corpse’s throat had been cut almost to the spine and all the man’s blood had run down into the Cauldron, and still it ran to drip from the lank, reddened ends of Gawain’s long hair. The hair was so long that its gory tresses fell inside the golden rim of the silver Cauldron of Clyddno Eiddyn, and it was only by that long hair that I knew it was Gawain who hung there, for his handsome face was sheeted with blood, hidden by blood, cloaked in blood.

  Merlin, still with the long knife that had killed Gawain in his hand, seemed dumbstruck by our coming. His look of relief had vanished and now I could not read his face at all, but Nimue was shrieking at us. She held up her left palm, the one with the scar that was the twin of the scar on my left palm. ‘Kill Arthur!’ she shouted at me. ‘Derfel! You are my sworn man! Kill him! We can’t stop now!’

  A sword blade suddenly glittered by my beard. Galahad held it, and Galahad smiled gently at me. ‘Don’t move, my friend,’ he said. He knew the power of oaths. He knew, too, that I would not kill Arthur, but he was trying to spare me Nimue’s vengeance. ‘If Derfel moves,’ he called to Nimue, ‘I shall cut his throat.’

  ‘Cut it!’ she screamed. ‘This is a night for the death of kings’ sons!’

  ‘Not my son,’ Arthur said.

  ‘You are no King, Arthur ap Uther,’ Merlin spoke at last. ‘Did you think I would kill Gwydre?’

  ‘Then why is he here?’ Arthur asked. He had one arm around Gwydre, while the other held his reddened sword. ‘Why is he here?’ Arthur demanded again, more angrily.

  For once Merlin had nothing to say and it was Nimue who answered. ‘He is here, Arthur ap Uther,’ she said with a sneer, ‘because the death of that miserable creature may not suffice.’ She pointed at Mardoc who was wriggling helplessly on the gallows. ‘He is the son of a King, but not the rightful heir.’

  ‘So Gwydre would have died?’ Arthur asked.

  ‘And come to life!’ Nimue said belligerently. She had to shout to be heard above the angry splintering noise of the fires. ‘Do you not know the power of the Cauldron? Place the dead in the bowl of Clyddno Eiddyn and the dead walk again, they breathe again, they live.’ She stalked towards Arthur, a madness in her one eye. ‘Give me the boy, Arthur.’

  ‘No.’ Arthur pulled Llamrei’s rein and the mare leapt away from Nimue. She turned on Merlin. ‘Kill him!’ she screamed, pointing at Mardoc. ‘We can try him at least. Kill him!’

  ‘No!’ I shouted.

  ‘Kill him!’ Nimue screeched, and then, when Merlin made no move, she ran towards the gallows. Merlin seemed unable to move, but then Arthur turned Llamrei again and headed Nimue off. He let his horse ram her so that she tumbled to the turf.

  ‘Let the child live,’ Arthur said to Merlin. Nimue was clawing at him, but he pushed her away and, when she came back, all teeth and hooked hands, he swung the sword close to her head and that threat calmed her.

  Merlin moved the bright blade so that it was close to Mardoc’s throat. The Druid looked almost gentle, despite his blood-soaked sleeves and the long blade in his hand. ‘Do you think, Arthur ap Uther, that you can defeat the Saxons without the help of the Gods?’ he asked.

  Arthur ignored the question. ‘Cut the boy down,’ he commanded.

  Nimue turned on him. ‘Do you wish to be cursed, Arthur?’

  ‘I am cursed,’ he answered bitterly.

  ‘Let the boy die!’ Merlin shouted from the ladder. ‘He’s nothing to you, Arthur. A by-blow of a King, a bastard born to a whore.’

  ‘And what else am I?’ Arthur shouted, ‘but a by-blow of a King, a bastard born to a whore?’

  ‘He must die,’ Merlin said patiently, ‘and his death will bring the Gods to us, and when the Gods are here, Arthur, we shall put his body in the Cauldron and let the breath of life return.’

  Arthur gestured at the horrid, life-drained body of Gawain, his nephew. ‘And one death is not enough?’

  ‘One death is never enough,’ Nimue said. She had run around Arthur’s horse to reach the gallows where she now held Mardoc’s head still so that Merlin could slit his throat.

  Arthur walked Llamrei closer to the gallows. ‘And if the Gods do not come after two deaths, Merlin,’ he asked, ‘how many more?’

  ‘As many as it needs,’ Nimue answered.

  ‘And every time,’ Arthur spoke loudly, so we could all hear him, ‘that Britain is in trouble, every time there is an enemy, every time there is a plague, every time that men and women are frightened, we shall take children to the scaffold?’

  ‘If the Gods come,’ Merlin said, ‘there will be no more plague or fear or war.’

  ‘And will they come?’ Arthur asked.

  ‘They are coming!’ Nimue screamed. ‘Look!’ And she pointed upwards with her free hand, and we all looked and I saw that the lights in the sky were fading. The bright blues were dimming to purple black, the reds were smoky and vague, and the stars were brightening again beyond the dying curtains. ‘No!’ Nimue wailed, ‘no!’ And she drew out the last cry into a lament that seemed to last for ever.

  Arthur had taken Llamrei right up to the gallows. ‘You call me the Amheramdr of Britain,’ he said to Merlin, ‘and an emperor must rule or cease to be emperor, and I will not rule in a Britain where children must be killed to save the lives of adults.’

  ‘Don’t be absurd!’ Merlin protested. ‘Sheer sentimentality!’

  ‘I would be remembered,’ Arthur said, ‘as a just man, and there is already too much blood on my hands.’

  ‘You will be remembered,’ Nimue spat at him, ‘as a traitor, as a ravager, as a coward.’

  ‘But not,’ Arthur said mildly, ‘by the descendants of this child,’ and with that he reached up and slashed with his sword at the rope that held Mardoc’s ankles. Nimue screamed as the boy fell, then she leapt at Arthur again with her hands hooked like claws, but Arthur simply back
handed her hard and fast across the head with the flat of his sword blade so that she spun away dazed. The force of the blow could easily be heard above the crackling of flames. Nimue staggered, slack-jawed and with her one eye unfocused, and then she dropped.

  ‘Should have done that to Guinevere,’ Culhwch growled to me.

  Galahad had left my side, dismounted, and now freed Mardoc’s bonds. The child immediately began screaming for his mother.

  ‘I never could abide noisy children,’ Merlin said mildly, then he shifted the ladder so that it rested beside the rope holding Gawain to the beam. He climbed the rungs slowly. ‘I don’t know,’ he said as he clambered upwards, ‘whether the Gods have come or not. You all of you expected too much, and maybe they are here already. Who knows? But we shall finish without the blood of Mordred’s child,’ and with that he sawed clumsily at the rope holding Gawain’s ankles. The body swayed as he cut so that the blood-soaked hair slapped at the Cauldron’s edge, but then the rope parted and the corpse dropped heavily into the blood that splashed up to stain the Cauldron’s rim. Merlin climbed slowly down the ladder, then ordered the Blackshields who had been watching the confrontation to fetch the great wicker baskets of salt that were standing a few yards away. The men scooped the salt into the Cauldron, packing it tight around Gawain’s hunched and naked body.

  ‘What now?’ Arthur asked, sheathing his sword.

  ‘Nothing,’ Merlin said. ‘It is over.’

  ‘Excalibur?’ Arthur demanded.

  ‘She is in the southernmost spiral,’ Merlin said, pointing that way, ‘though I suspect you will have to wait for the fires to burn out before you can retrieve her.’

  ‘No!’ Nimue had recovered enough to protest. She spat blood from the inside of her cheek that had been split open by Arthur’s blow. ‘The Treasures are ours!’

  ‘The Treasures,’ Merlin said wearily, ‘have been gathered and used. They are nothing now. Arthur may have his sword. He’ll need it.’ He turned and threw his long knife into the nearest fire, then turned to watch as the two Blackshields finished packing the Cauldron. The salt turned pink as it covered Gawain’s hideously wounded body. ‘In the spring,’ Merlin said, ‘the Saxons will come, and then we shall see if there was any magic here this night.’