When it was all told, we looked at each other, Cei and Bedwyr and I, in the wind-torn firelight. Bedwyr had brought out his beloved harp as he did most evenings when the food was eaten; he plucked a little inquiring flight of notes from it that seemed to leap into the wind and be whirled away like the first yellow birch leaves. “Tonight?”
“Tonight,” I said. “For one thing, we may not have a wind like this again, to cover the sound of Cei plunging through the undergrowth.”
Indeed the wind stood friend to us that night in more ways than one. It covered the sound of our general advance as we made our way over the ridge and down through the birch and hazel woods into the shallow valley. (For though the main part of our horses were under guard on the far side of the ridge, even a few horses make more noise than many men in dense undergrowth.) It covered, with its soft turmoil among the bushes of the steep fortress hillside, the movements of Bedwyr and his dismounted squadron as they crept and clambered around beneath the red sandstone walls toward the unmended breach that the scouts had spoken of; though I think that they would have made little sound in any case, for they had laid aside their ring-mail shirts, which always chimed a little in action, however carefully one moved in them, and gone into their venture with nothing but buckler and drawn sword. . . . It covered the sound of brushwood and wagon straw being piled against the main barricades (five men it cost us, though, to keep it there) and when it caught light from the firebrands that we flung into it, the wind caught and fanned the flames and roared them up and drove the licking tongues against the timbers of the barricade so swiftly that the first warning shouts had scarcely broken from the men within before the whole gateway was ablaze.
The archers, whom we had kept standing by, had light for shooting now, and crouching among the nearer bushes began to loose with a high trajectory that carried the arrows over the ramparts on either side of the gate towers, to fall on the heads of the defenders. Some of the arrows had flaming spirit-soaked rags tied to them, and their arc showed like shooting stars on a winter’s night. A few enemy arrows answered, but not many; the defenders were too intent on the gate itself to have much time for shooting (surely we had their whole attention now, and Bedwyr had his chance if ever he was to have it!). The uproar inside the gate was so wild that at one moment, sitting old Arian with my own squadron, just beyond the reach of the flame light, I was troubled lest I should not hear Bedwyr’s signal from the far side of the fort to tell me that he was ready, fearing even that he might not hear my horn sounding the charge. Where timing meant so much, we could ill afford to miss each other’s signals.
The barricade went with a roar and a crash, and a sheet of flame leapt toward the stormy sky, its crest caught by the wind and bent over like the crest of a wave before it breaks; rags of flame were flying across the fortress; and faintly, in the moment’s stunned hush that followed the fall of the barricades, I heard the war cry of Arfon sounding across the distance and the storm: “Yr Widdfa! Yr Widdfa!” and knew that the moment had come.
Arian was sweating; I felt him start and tremble under me, for like all horses, he was terrified of fire. All horses . . . How if they refused to face the flaming gateway? I should have ordered the whole assault on foot, but we needed the crash and sweep of a cavalry charge. No time for regrets or wavering now; no time to let the flames die down, though already our lads, close under the wall where the arrows and throw spears of the defenders could not reach them, were flinging on masses of fresh bracken to damp them down for the moment. The white steam hissed up, and the flame-wall sank and grew ragged as I called to my trumpeter, “Now, man — the Charge!”
The familiar notes of the hunting horn leapt into the wind, and I bent forward onto Arian’s sweating neck. “Now! Now, brother!” He snorted and shook his head, beginning to swerve aside, and I flung a fold of my cloak across his eyes. Blind, I knew that he would go where I urged him, because he trusted me. “Git up! On, boy!” He hesitated an instant longer, and then with a defiant and despairing neigh broke forward into a canter, and I heard the hooves of the others drumming on his heels. The heat of the gateway struck at my face like a blow, the smitch of half-quenched flames choked and blinded me. My face was down against Arian’s neck, partly to shield my own eyes, partly that my voice might reach him above the tumult. I was managing him with my knees alone, the reins loose on his neck, that I might have one hand for my spear and the fold of my cloak across his eyes. I sang to him, shouted in his laid-back ear. “On, brave heart! Sa sa sa — up, come up, bold and beautiful! Come up, my hero!”
And old Arian answered me like a hero indeed. He gathered himself together, greathearted as he was, and with the terror of the fire in his nostrils, galloped straight forward into the dark, through the steaming and crackling inferno of the gateway and the massed spears beyond. And after me crashed the rest, tramping the fire under round hooves and scattering the red embers like sparks from a swordsmith’s anvil. I raised the war cry, and heard it echoed back to me from across the roaring chaos of the camp. “Yr Widdfa! Yr Widdfa!” The hunting horn was sounding again, and suddenly from the heart of the camp ahead of us came the hollow booming of the Saxon war horns, and the deep throbbing snarl of the eight-foot war horns of the Scots. We charged on toward them.
The fire arrows and torn-off flames from the burning barricades had fired the rough thatch on some of the buildings; and by the leaping wind-torn light, we charged and charged again through the solid masses of the enemy, carrying the Red Dragon of Britain on toward the heart of the camp where the war horns and the up-reared standards told us that we should come at Huil Son of Caw, his household warriors and his allied chieftains. Our foot swarmed in over the still-smoking embers that we had scattered for them, and hand-to-hand fighting had spread into every corner of the great fort. And from the northern quarter, where Bedwyr and his war band had leapt in over the crumbling wall, the war cry, taken up by a score of triumphant voices, was sweeping nearer.
I remember little of the last phase. When once all vestige of the pattern is gone, there is little to remember of any battle save the chaos and the smell of blood and sweat that are common to all battles; and one is very tired, and not very clear in the head. . . . In the end they broke and streamed away — those who could — over the broken parts of the wall, leaping from the rampart walks and down the bush-grown hill scarp, leaving their dead behind them.
The time came when the last fighting was done, and a sudden quietness fell over the great camp; and even the wind seemed to drop for the moment. Men were putting out the flames of the roofs that had caught, and I was standing beside the remains of a cooking fire, with an arm over Arian’s neck, praising and consoling him for the red spear gash in his flank. Presently, I thought dimly, I must get it bathed; presently, if there was any water. Surely there had been something about a shortage of water, a long while ago? My head began to clear slowly, and I saw Bedwyr limping toward me, with the blood trickling from a gash just above his knee.