‘Excalibur,’ he said to me.
‘Quiet, Lord,’ I said.
‘Take Excalibur,’ he said. ‘Take it and throw it into the sea. Promise me?’
‘I will, Lord, I promise.’ I took the bloodied sword from his hand, then stepped back as four unwounded men lifted Arthur and carried him to the boat. They passed him over the gunwale, and Guinevere helped to take him and to lay him on Prydwerts deck. She made a pillow of his blood-soaked cloak, then crouched beside him and stroked his face. ‘Are you coming, Derfel?’ she asked me. I gestured to the men who still formed a shield wall on the sand. ‘Can you take them?’ I asked. ‘And can you take the wounded?’
‘Twelve men more,’ Caddwg called from the stern. ‘No more than twelve. Don’t have space for more.’
No fishing-boats had come. But why should they have come? Why should men involve themselves in killing and blood and madness when their job is to take food from the sea? We only had Prydwen and she would have to sail without me. I smiled at Guinevere. ‘I can’t come, Lady,’ I said, then turned and gestured again towards the shield wall. ‘Someone must stay to lead them over the bridge of swords.’ The stump of my left arm was oozing blood, there was a bruise on my ribs, but I was alive. Sagramor was dying, Culhwch was dead, Galahad and Arthur were injured. There was no one but me. I was the last of Arthur’s warlords.
‘I can stay!’ Galahad had overheard our conversation.
‘You can’t fight with a broken arm,’ I said. ‘Get in the boat, and take Gwydre. And hurry! The tide’s falling.’
‘I should stay,’ Gwydre said nervously.
I seized him by the shoulders and pushed him into the shallows. ‘Go with your father,’ I said, ‘for my sake. And tell him I was true to the end.’ I stopped him suddenly, and turned him back to face me, and I saw there were tears on his young face. ‘Tell your father,’ I said, ‘that I loved him to the end.’
He nodded, then he and Galahad climbed aboard. Arthur was with his family now, and I stepped back as Caddwg used one of the oars to pole the ship back into the channel. I looked up at Ceinwyn and I smiled, and there were tears in my eyes, but I could think of nothing to say except to tell her that I would wait for her beneath the apple trees of the Otherworld; but just as I was phrasing the clumsy words, and just as the ship slipped off the sand, she stepped lightly onto the bow and leapt into the shallows.
‘No!’ I shouted.
‘Yes,’ she said, and reached out a hand so that I would help her onto the shore.
‘You know what they’ll do to you?’ I asked.
She showed me a knife in her left hand, meaning she would kill herself before she was taken by Mordred’s men. ‘We’ve been together too long, my love, to part now,’ she said and then she stood beside me to watch as Prydwen edged into the deep water. Our last daughter and her children were sailing away. The tide had turned and the first of the ebb was creeping the silver ship towards the sea reach.
I stayed with Sagramor as he died. I cradled his head, held his hand and talked his soul onto the bridge of swords. Then, with my eyes brimming with tears, I walked back to our small shield wall and saw that Camlann was filled with spearmen now. A whole army had come, but they had come too late to save their King, though they still had time enough to finish us. I could see Nimue at last, her white robe and her white horse bright in the shadowed dunes. My friend and one-time lover was now my final enemy.
‘Fetch me a horse,’ I told a spearman. There were stray horses everywhere and he ran, grabbed a bridle and brought a mare back to me. I asked Ceinwyn to unstrap my shield, then had the spearman help me onto the mare’s back and, once mounted, I tucked Excalibur under my left arm and took the reins with my right. I kicked back and the horse leapt ahead, and I kicked her again, scattering sand with her hoofs and men from her path. I was riding among Mordred’s men now, but there was no fight in them for they had lost their Lord. They were masterless and Nimue’s army of the mad was behind them, and behind Nimue’s ragged forces there was a third army. A new army had come to Camlann’s sands. It was the same army I had seen on the high western hill, and I realized it must have marched south behind Mordred to take Dumnonia for itself. It was an army that had come to watch Arthur and Mordred destroy themselves, and now that the fighting was done the army of Gwent moved slowly forward beneath their banners of the cross. They came to rule Dumnonia and to make Meurig its King. Their red cloaks and scarlet plumes looked black in the twilight, and I looked up to see that the first faint stars were pricking the sky.
I rode towards Nimue, but stopped a hundred paces short of my old friend. I could see Olwen watching me, and Nimue’s baleful stare, and then I smiled at her and took Excalibur into my right hand and held up the stump of my left so that she would know what I had done. Then I showed her Excalibur. She knew what I planned then. ‘No!’ she screamed, and her army of the mad wailed with her and their gibbering shook the evening sky.
I put Excalibur under my arm again, picked up the reins and kicked the mare as I turned her about. I urged her on, driving her fast onto the sand of the sea-beach, and I heard Nimue’s horse galloping behind me, but she was too late, much too late.
I rode towards Prydwen. The small wind was filling her sail now and she was clear of the spit and the wraithstone at her bows was rising and falling in the sea’s endless waves. I kicked again and the mare tossed her head and I shouted her on into that darkening sea, and kept kicking her until the waves broke cold against her chest and only then did I drop the reins. She quivered under me as I took Excalibur in my right hand.
I drew my arm back. There was blood on the sword, yet her blade seemed to glow. Merlin had once said that the Sword of Rhydderch would turn to flame at the end, and perhaps she did, or perhaps the tears in my eyes deceived me.
‘No!’ Nimue wailed.
And I threw Excalibur, threw her hard and high towards the deep water where the tide had scoured the channel through Camlann’s sands.
Excalibur turned in the evening air. No sword was ever more beautiful. Merlin swore she had been made by Gofannon in the smithy of the Otherworld. She was the Sword of Rhydderch and a Treasure of Britain. She was Arthur’s sword and a Druid’s gift, and she wheeled against the darkening sky and her blade flashed blue fire against the brightening stars. For a heartbeat she was a shining bar of blue flame poised in the heavens, and then she fell.
She fell true in the channel’s centre. There was hardly a splash, just a glimpse of white water, and she was gone.
Nimue screamed. I turned the mare away and drove her back to the beach and back across the litter of battle to where my last warband waited. And there I saw that the army of the mad was drifting away. They were going, and Mordred’s men, those that survived, were fleeing down the beach to escape the advance of Meurig’s troops. Dumnonia would fall, a weak King would rule and the Saxons would return, but we would live.
I slid from the horse, took Ceinwyn’s arm, and led her to the top of a nearby dune. The sky in the west was a fierce red glow for the sun was gone, and together we stood in the world’s shadow and watched as Prydwen rose and fell to the waves. Her sail was full now, for the evening wind was blowing from the west and Prydwen’s prow broke water white and her stern left a widening wake across the sea. Full south she sailed, and then she turned into the west, but the wind was from the west and no boat can sail straight into the wind’s eye, yet I swear that boat did. She sailed west, and the wind was blowing from the west, yet her sail was full and her high prow cut the water white, or maybe I did not know what it was that I saw for there were tears in my eyes and more tears running down my cheeks. And while we watched we saw a silver mist form on the water.