Arthur

Before I knew it we were being forced back out of the door by the press of enemy. 'Hold ground!' I cried. 'Hold, Cymbrogi!' But diere were too many of us jammed in the gateway and those behind could not get in. We were trapped between the enemy and our own warriors. And there we would die.

A torch sailed high through die air towards us. I ducked aside as it struck the ground at my feet, and made to reach for it. But die brand was snatched from me and carried off. I looked and saw the torch become a shining trail of flame, whirling and spi

Sparks of fire showered all around, and wherever the torch struck, a body fell. The fire gambolled as if alive. Driving, smashing, reeling, twisting, and twirling away before the enemy could react. The barbarians screamed and fell back before this dreadful killing apparition.

In the fireshot mist of shattered shadow-light I saw the face of our deliverer: Llenlleawg, the Irishman. It was a visage I shall never forget – stark and terrible in its rage, burning like the torch in his hand, eyes bulging with madness, mouth contorted and teeth bared like the fangs of a wildcat! It was Llenlleawg, and the battle frenzy was on him.

'Cymbrogi!' I screamed, and dashed forward into the surging turmoil of the Irishman's bloody wake.

I slashed and thrust with my sword, striking out in the confused darkness at any bit of exposed flesh. I knew my strokes succeeded from the weight that first hindered, then fell from my blade. The ground beneath my feet became slick with blood. The smell of blood and bile hung thick in the air.

I could not see Arthur.

I fought forward, little heeding if any came behind me. My only thought was to overtake the battle-mad Irishman. I hewed mightily but, each time I looked, I found him further ahead – the whirling torch dancing lightly as windtossed thistledown. I heard his voice rising above the battle blare, quavering, calling, swooping like a hunting bird: he was singing.

'Cymbrogi! Fight!' Over and over I shouted, and my cry was answered by the high clear note of Rhys' horn. The forces waiting below the dun had seen the fight commence and had stormed the rock. Now they were shoving in through the gate, and swarming over the walls on ropes and the laddered poles we had prepared. The Picti were thrown into panic, rushing here and there, striking wildly and foolishly.

I lost all sight of anything but the tangled limbs of the enemy before me. I chopped with my sword as if hacking through the dense and knotted snarls of a bramble thicket.

I laboured long, ignoring the ache spreading from shoulder to wrist.

Smashing with my shield, stabbing with my sword, lunging, plunging headlong into the howling enemy…

And then it was finished.

We stood in the fire-reddened yard, Picti corpses piled around us. The stink of blood and entrails in the air and on our hands. Black blood, shimmering in the light of a rising moon. The enemy dead… all dead. The caer quiet.

I raised my head and saw three men struggling with a fourth, and went to lend my aid, thinking it must be the captured Picti chieftain. But it was Llenlleawg. He was still deep in his battle frenzy and, though the fight was over, he could not stop. Cai and Cador had found him lopping the heads from the corpses and heaving them over the wall.

'Irishman!' I shouted into his face. 'Peace! It is over! Stop!'

He could not hear me. I think he could no longer hear anything. There was no sense in him any more. I ran to the nearby trough and lifted a leather bucket, returned and dashed the water into Llenlleawg's face. He sputtered, stared, gave a sharp cry and fell back limply.

'He must be wounded,' said Cai, pushing his helmet back. 'A blow on the head.'

'I do not see any blood,' replied Cador, holding close the torch he had wrested from the Irishman's hand.

'No blood? He is verily drenched in it!'

'Stay with him,' I told Cador, 'until he wakes up, then have him taken back to camp.' To Cai I said, 'Get some more torches and begin searching for wounded. I am going to find Arthur.'

I could have saved my breath, for already scores of warriors were begi

I climbed the steep-stepped rampart and joined him. 'We have taken the fortress, War Leader.'

'Well done, Bedwyr.' He made it sound as if 7 had done it single-handed. He surveyed the torchlit yard beneath him. The flickering shadows made it seem as if the fight still raged silently all around us. The growing heap of enemy corpses told a different tale.

'Is Llenlleawg still alive?' the Duke asked presently.

'Yes,' I answered, weariness begi

'I saw.'

'He is mad,' I said. 'I can well see why he was Fergus' champion. Who can fight a whirlwind?'

Later, when all the British dead and wounded had been removed, and the Pied wounded killed – it is a hard fact of war, but we put the enemy wounded to the sword, for we were leaving the next day and they would have received no care; better the quick thrust that sends them across the Western Sea to the Fortunate Isles, or wherever they go, than the lingering torture of a slow death. We burned the bodies of our countrymen in the fortress where they fell, and threw the enemy over the southern wall to the tide flats below. Gova

We stood aloft on the walls of Caer Alclyd and watched the flames reach towards heaven. Blind Myrddin stood with his arms extended over the pyre the whole time, chanting a psalm of victory in death. The Cymry lifted their voices in the song of mourning, which begins as a sigh, grows to a wail, and ends as a triumphant shout. In this way, we sang the souls of our fallen into Blessed Jesu's welcoming arms.

Then we went down to our camps to sleep. The sun was rising, pearling the night vault in the east to glowing alabaster. The dawn was fair, and the grass inviting; I stretched out on the ground outside Arthur's tent. Exhausted as I was, I could not sleep, so lay gazing up into the sky at the slowly fading stars. In a little while the Irishman, Llenlleawg, crept silently to Arthur's tent. He did not know that I was awake, so I watched him to see what he would do. He drew his sword. Was it treachery?

My hand went to my knife. But no, I need not have feared. Llenlleawg placed the sword at his head and lay down across the entrance, as if to protect the Duke while he slept.

At midday, after we had eaten, we broke camp and moved off along the overgrown track of Little Wall – called Guaul in that region – the northernmost wall built by the Romans and then abandoned. It is a ruin mostly, a grass-covered hump; and the old road is not good. But to the east lies a good road ru

And I turned my thoughts once more to the mystery at hand: who was directing the war against us?