It was then that Loholt attacked. I had not seen him till that moment, but he saw his father and he spurred his horse and drew his spear back with his one remaining hand. He screamed a chant of hate as he charged into the tangle of tired men. The horse was white-eyed and terrified, but the spurs drove it on as Loholt aimed his blade at Arthur, but then Sagramor plucked up a spear and hurled it so that the horse’s legs were tangled by the heavy staff and the animal fell in a shower of sand. Sagramor stepped into the flailing hoofs and scythed his sword’s dark blade sideways and I saw blood spurt up from Loholt’s neck, but just as Sagramor snatched Loholt’s soul, so a Bloodshield darted forward and lunged at Sagramor with a spear. Sagramor backhanded his sword, spraying Loholt’s blood from its tip, and the Bloodshield went down screaming, but then a shout announced that Arthur had reached Mordred and the rest of us instinctively turned to watch as the two men confronted each other. A lifetime of hatred rankled between them.
Mordred reached his sword out lowly, then swept it back to show his men he wanted Arthur for himself. The enemy obediently stumbled away. Mordred, just as he had been on the day when he had been acclaimed on Caer Cadarn, was all in black. A black cloak, black breastplate, black trews, black boots and a black helmet. In places the black armour had been scarred where blades had cut through the dried pitch to fleck open the bare metal. His shield was covered in pitch, and his only touches of colour were a shrivelled sprig of vervain that showed at his neck and the eye sockets of the skull that crested his helmet. A child’s skull, I thought, for it was so small, and its eye sockets had been stuffed with scraps of red cloth. He limped forward on his clubbed foot, swinging his sword, and Arthur gestured at us to step back to give him room to fight. He hefted Excalibur, and raised his silver shield that was torn and bloody. How many of us were left by then? I do not know. Forty? Maybe less, and Prydmen had reached the turn in the river channel and was now gliding towards us with the wraithstone grey in her prow and her sail barely stirring in the small wind. The oars dipped and rose. The tide was almost full. Mordred lunged, Arthur parried, lunged with his own blade, and Mordred stepped back. The King was quick, and he was young, but his clubbed foot and the deep thigh wound he had taken in Armorica made him less agile than Arthur. He licked dry lips, came forward again, and the swords rang loud in the evening air. One of the watching enemy suddenly staggered and fell for no apparent reason, but he did not move again as Mordred stepped fast forward and swung his sword in a blinding arc. Arthur met the blade with Excalibur, then shoved his shield forward to strike the King and Mordred staggered away. Arthur drew his arm back for the lunge, but Mordred somehow kept his footing and scrambled back with his sword countering the lunge and flicking fast forward in reply. I could see Guinevere standing in Prydwen’s prow with Ceinwyn just behind her. In the lovely evening light it seemed as though the hull was made of silver and the sail of finest scarlet linen. The long oars dipped and rose, dipped and rose, and slowly she came until a breath of warm wind at last filled the bear on her sail and the water rippled faster down her silver flanks, and just then Mordred screamed and charged, the swords clashed, shields banged, and Excalibur swept the grisly skull from the crest of Mordred’s helm. Mordred swung hard back and I saw Arthur flinch as his enemy’s blade struck home, but he pushed the King away with his shield and the two men stepped apart. Arthur pressed his sword hand against his waist where he had been struck, then shook his head as though denying that he was hurt. But Sagramor was hurt. He had been watching the fight, but now he suddenly bent forward and stumbled down into the sand. I crossed to him. ‘Spear in my belly,’ he said, and I saw he was clutching his stomach with both hands to stop his guts from spilling onto the sand. Just as he had killed Loholt, so the Bloodshield had struck Sagramor with his spear and had died in that achievement, but Sagramor was dying now. I put my one good arm about him and turned him onto his back. He gripped my hand. His teeth chattered, and he groaned, then he forced up his helmeted head to watch as Arthur went cautiously forward.
There was blood at Arthur’s waist. Mordred’s last swing had cut up into the scale armour, up between the scale-like flakes of metal, and it had bitten deeply into Arthur’s side. Even as Arthur went forward new blood glistened and welled where the sword had torn through his armoured coat, but Arthur suddenly leapt forward and turned his threatened lunge into a downwards chop that Mordred parried on his shield. Mordred threw the shield wide to throw Excalibur clear and stabbed forward with his own sword, but Arthur took that lunge on his shield, drew back Excalibur, and it was then that I saw his shield tilt backwards and saw Mordred’s sword scrape up the torn silver cover. Mordred shouted and pushed the blade harder and Arthur did not see the sword tip coming until it broke over the shield’s edge and stabbed up into the eyehole of his helmet.
I saw blood. But I also saw Excalibur come down from the sky in a blow as strong as Arthur ever struck.
Excalibur cut through Mordred’s helmet. It slit the black iron as though it were parchment, then broke the King’s skull and sliced into his brain. And Arthur, with blood glistening at his helmet’s eyehole, staggered, recovered, then wrenched Excalibur free in a spray of bloody droplets. Mordred, dead from the moment Excalibur had split his helmet, fell forward at Arthur’s feet. His blood gushed onto the sand and onto Arthur’s boots, and his men, seeing their King dead and Arthur still on his feet, gave a low moan and stepped backwards.
I took my hand from Sagramor’s dying grip. ‘Shield wall!’ I shouted, ‘shield wall!’ And the startled survivors of our small warband closed ranks in front of Arthur and we touched our ragged shields together and snarled forward over Mordred’s lifeless body. I thought the enemy might come back for vengeance, but they stepped backwards instead. Their leaders were dead, and we were still showing defiance, and they had no belly for more death that evening.
‘Stay here!’ I shouted at the shield wall, then went back to Arthur. Galahad and I eased the helmet from his head and so released a rush of blood. The sword had missed his right eye by a finger’s breadth, but it had broken the bone outside the eye and the wound was pulsing blood. ‘Cloth!’ I shouted, and a wounded man ripped a length of linen from a dead man’s jerkin and we used it to pad the wound. Taliesin bound it up, using a strip torn from the skirts of his robe. Arthur looked up at me when Taliesin was finished and tried to speak.
‘Quiet, Lord,’ I said.
‘Mordred,’ he said.
‘He’s dead, Lord,’ I said, ‘he’s dead.’
I think he smiled, and then Prydwen\ bow scraped on the sand. Arthur’s face was pale and bloody rivulets laced his cheek.
‘You can grow a beard now, Derfel,’ he said.
‘Yes, Lord,’ I said, ‘I will. Don’t speak.’ There was blood at his waist, far too much blood, but I could not take his armour off to find that wound, even though I feared it was the worse of his two injuries.