“It's not a gift, Derfel. Morfans is just borrowing it, and every day for the past week he has been riding close to Gorfyddyd's men. They think I'm already there, and maybe that has given them pause? So far, at least, we have no news of any attack.”
I had to laugh at the thought of Morfans's ugly face being concealed behind the cheek pieces of Arthur's helmet, and maybe the deception worked for when we joined King Tewdric at the Roman fort of Magnis the enemy had still not sallied from their strongholds in Powys's hills. Tewdric, dressed in his fine Roman armour, looked almost an old man. His hair had gone grey and there was a stoop in his carriage that had not been there when I had last seen him. He greeted the news about Aelle with a grunt, then made an effort to be more complimentary. “Good news,” he said curtly, then rubbed his eyes, 'though God knows Gorfyddyd never needed Saxon help to beat us. He has men to spare."
The Roman fort seethed. Armourers were making spearheads, and every pollard ash for miles had been stripped for shafts. Carts of newly harvested grain arrived hourly and the bakers' ovens burned as fierce as the blacksmiths' furnaces so that a constant pyre of smoke hung above the palisaded walls. Yet despite the new harvest the gathering army was hungry. Most of the spearmen were camped outside the walls, some were miles away, and there were constant arguments about the distribution of the hard-baked bread and dried beans. Other contingents complained of water fouled by the latrines of men camped upstream. There was disease, hunger and desertion; evidence that neither Tewdric nor Arthur had ever had to grapple with the problems of commanding an army so large. “But if we have difficulties,” Arthur said optimistically, 'imagine Gorfyddyd's troubles."
“I would rather have his problems than mine,” Tewdric said gloomily. My spearmen, still under Galahad's command, were camped eight miles to the north of Magnis where Agricola, Tewdric's commander, kept a close watch on the hills that marked the frontier between Gwent and Powys. I felt a pang of happiness at seeing their wolf-tail helmets again. After the defeatism of the countryside it was suddenly good to think that here, at least, were men who would never be beaten. Nimue came with me and my men clustered about her so she could touch their spearheads and sword blades to give them power. Even the Christians, I noted, wanted her pagan touch. She was doing Merlin's business, and because she was known to have come from the Isle of the Dead she was thought to be almost as powerful as her master.
Agricola received me inside a tent, the first I had ever seen. It was a wondrous affair with a tall central pole and four corner staffs holding up a linen canopy that filtered the sunlight so that Agricola's short grey hair looked oddly yellow. He was in his Roman armour and sitting at a table covered in scraps of parchment. He was a stern man and his greeting was perfunctory, though he did add a compliment about my men. “They're confident. But so are the enemy, and there are many more of them than there are of us.” His tone was grim.
“How many?” I asked.
Agricola seemed offended by my bluntness, but I was no longer the boy I had been when I had first seen Gwent's warlord. I was a lord myself now, a commander of men, and I had a right to know what odds those men faced. Or maybe it was not my directness that irritated Agricola, but rather that he did not want to be reminded of the enemy's preponderance. Finally, however, he gave me the tally. “According to our spies,” he said, “Powys has assembled six hundred spearmen from their own land. Gundleus has brought another two hundred and fifty from Siluria, maybe more. Ganval of Elmet has sent two hundred men, and the Gods alone know how many master less men have gone to Gorfyddyd's banner for a share of the spoils.” Masterless men were rogues, exiles, murderers and savages who were drawn to an army for the plunder they could gain in battle. Such men were feared for they had nothing to lose and everything to gain. I doubted we had many such on our side, not just because we were expected to lose, but because both Tewdric and Arthur were ill disposed towards such lord less creatures. Curiously, though, many of Arthur's best horsemen had once been just such men. Warriors like Sagramor had fought in the Roman armies that had been shattered by the heathen invaders of Italy and it had been Arthur's youthful genius to harness such lord less mercenaries into a war-band.
“There's more,” Agricola went on ominously. “The kingdom of Cornovia has donated men and just yesterday we heard that Oengus Mac Airem of Demetia has come with a war-band of his Black-shields; maybe a hundred strong? And another report says the men of Gwynedd have joined Gorfyddyd.”
“Levies?” I asked.
Agricola shrugged. “Five, six hundred? Maybe even a thousand. But they won't come until the harvest's finished.”
I was beginning to wish I had not asked. “And our numbers, Lord?”
“Now that Arthur has arrived…” He paused. “Seven hundred spears.” I said nothing. It was no wonder, I thought, that men in Gwent and Dumnonia buried their treasures and whispered that Arthur should leave Britain. We were faced by a horde.
“I would be grateful,” Agricola said acidly, as though the thought of gratitude was utterly alien to his thinking, 'if you did not bruit the numbers about? We've had desertions enough already. More, and we might as well dig our own graves."
“No deserters from my men,” I insisted.
“No,” he allowed, 'not yet.“ He stood and took his short Roman sword from where it hung on a tent pole, then paused in the doorway from where he cast a baleful eye towards the enemy hills. ”Men say you're a friend of Merlin."
“Yes, Lord.”
“Will he come?”
“I don't know, Lord.”
Agricola grunted. “I pray he does. Someone needs to talk sense into this army. All commanders are summoned to Magnis tonight. A council of war.” He said it bitterly, as though he knew that such councils produced more quarrels than comradeship. “Be there by sunset.” Galahad came with me. Nimue stayed with my men for her presence gave them confidence and I was glad she did not come for the council was opened by a prayer from Bishop Conrad of Gwent who seemed imbued with defeatism as he begged his God to give us strength to face the over-mighty foe. Galahad, his arms spread in the Christian pose of prayer, murmured along with the Bishop while we pagans grumbled that we should not pray for strength, but victory. I wished we had some Druids among us, but Tewdric, a Christian, employed none, and Balise, the old man who had attended Mordred's acclamation, had died during the first winter I was in Benoic. Agricola was right to hope that Merlin would come, for an army without Druids was giving away an advantage to its enemy. There were some forty or fifty men at the council, all of us chieftains or leaders. We met in the bare stone hall of Magnis's bath house that reminded me of Ynys Wydryn's church. King Tewdric, Arthur, Agricola and Tewdric's son, the Edling Meurig, sat at a table on a stone dais. Meurig had grown into a pale thin creature who looked unhappy in his ill-fitting Roman armour. He was just old enough to fight, but with his nervous air he looked very unfit for battle. He blinked constantly, as if he had just come into sunlight from a very dark room, and he kept fidgeting with a heavy gold cross that hung around his neck. Arthur alone of the commanders was not in war gear, but looked relaxed in his countryman's clothes. The warriors cheered and stamped their spear-butts when King Tewdric announced that the Saxons were believed to have withdrawn from the eastern frontier, but that was the last cheering for a long while that night, because Agricola then stood and gave his blunt assessment of the two armies. He did not list all the enemy's smaller contingents, but even without those additions it was clear that Gorfyddyd's army would outnumber ours by two to one. “We'll just have to kill twice as fast!” Morfans shouted from the back. He had returned the scale armour to Arthur, swearing that only a hero could wear that amount of metal and still fight. Agricola ignored the interruption, adding instead that the harvest should be complete in a week and the levies of Gwent would then swell our numbers. No one seemed too cheered by that news.