Dawnspell

‘I don’t suppose you ever get down to the sea-coast,’ Grodyn said in a carefully casual tone of voice.

‘Well, this summer I’m thinking of trying to slip through the battle-lines. Usually the armies don’t much care about one old man. Is there somewhat you need from the sea?’

‘Red kelp, if you can get it, and some sea-moss.’

‘They work wonders to soothe an ulcerated stomach or bad bowels.’ Nevyn hesitated briefly. ‘Here, I’ve heard rumours about this peculiar so-called wound of our liege the King.’

‘So-called?’ Grodyn paid busy attention to the packet of beech-bark in his hand.

‘A wound in the chest that requires him to eat only soft food.’

Grodyn looked up with a twisted little smile.

‘It was poison, of course. The wound healed splendidly. While he was still weak, someone put poison into his mead. We saved him after a long fight of it, but his stomach is ulcerated and bleeding, just as you guessed, and there’s blood in his stool, too. But we’re trying to keep the news from the common people.’

‘Oh, I won’t go bruiting it about, I assure you. Do you have any idea of what this poison was?’

‘None. Now here, you know herbs. What do you think this might be? When he vomited, there was a sweetish smell hanging about the basin, rather like roses mixed with vinegar. It was grotesque to find a poison that smelled of perfume, but the strangest thing was this: the King’s page had tasted the mead and suffered not the slightest ill-effect. Yet I know it was in the mead, because the dregs in the goblet had an odd, rosy colour.’

Nevyn thought for a while, running over the long chains of lore in his memory.

‘Well,’ he said at last. ‘I can’t name the herbs out, but I’ll wager they came originally from Bardek. I’ve heard that poisoners there often use two different evil essences, each harmless in themselves. The page at table doubtless got a dose of the first one when he tasted the King’s mead, and the page of the chamber got the other. The King, alas, got both, and they combined into venom in his stomach.’

As he nodded his understanding, Grodyn looked half-sick with such an honest rage that Nevyn mentally acquitted him of any part in the crime. Caudyr too looked deeply troubled.

‘I’ve made special studies of the old herbals we have,’ the young chirurgeon said, ‘and never found this beastly poison. If it came from Bardek, that would explain it.’

‘So it would,’ Nevyn said. ‘Well, good sirs, I’ll do my best to get you the red kelp and what other emollients I can, but it’ll be autumn before I return. Will our liege live that long?’

‘If no one poisons him again.’ Grodyn tossed the packet of beech-bark on to the table. ‘Ah ye gods, can you imagine how helpless I feel? Here I am, fighting to undo the effects of one poison while someone is doubtless scheming out a way to slip him a second!’

‘Wasn’t there any inquiry into this poisoning?’

‘Of course.’ Abruptly Grodyn turned guarded. ‘It found out naught, though. We suspect a Cerrmor spy.’

Oh, I’ll just wager you do! Nevyn thought to himself; that is, if there are Boars in Cerrmor, anyway.

Their business over, Nevyn put on a good show of expressing the gossipy interest that any visitor to the palace would have on seeing the place where the King lived. Caudyr, who seemed to be a good-hearted lad, took him on a tour of the semipublic gardens and outbuildings. It took only the slightest touch of Nevyn’s dweomer to sense that the palace was filled with corruption. The omen came to him as the smell of rotting meat and the sight of maggots, crawling between the stones. He banished the vision as quickly as he could; the point was well-made.

As they were walking to the front gate, they saw a noble hunting party returning: Gwerbret Tibryn of the Boar, with a retinue of servants and huntsmen behind him and his widowed sister at his side. As Nevyn led his mule off to the side out of the way of the noble-born, he noticed Caudyr watching the Lady Merodda wistfully. Just twenty, the lady had long blonde hair, bound up in soft twists under the black headscarf of a widow, wide green eyes, and features that were perfect without being cold. She was truly beautiful, but as he watched her, Nevyn loathed her. Although he couldn’t pinpoint his reasons, he’d never seen a woman he found so repellent. Caudyr was obviously of the opposite opinion. Much to Nevyn’s surprise, when Merodda rode past, she favoured Caudyr with a brilliant smile and a wave of her delicately gloved hand. Caudyr bowed deeply in return.

‘Now here, lad,’ Nevyn said with a chuckle. ‘You’re nocking an arrow for rather high-born game.’

‘And don’t I just know it? I could be as noble as she is, but I’d still be deformed.’

‘Oh, my apologies! I meant naught of that sort.’

‘I know, good sir, I know. I fear me that years of being mocked have made me touchy.’

Caudyr bowed and hurried away with his rolling, dragging limp. Nevyn was heartsick over his lapse; it was a hard thing to be handicapped in a world where women and men both worshipped warriors. Later that day, however, he found out that Caudyr bore him no ill will. Just after sunset Caudyr came to Nevyn’s inn, insisted on buying him a tankard, and sat them both down at a table in a corner, far from the door.

‘I was wondering about your stock of herbs, good Nevyn. You wouldn’t happen to have any northern elm bark, would you?’

‘Now here! I don’t traffic in abortifacients, lad.’

Caudyr winced and began studying the interior of his tankard.

‘Ah well,’ the lad said at last. ‘The bark’s a blasted sight safer than henbane.’

‘No doubt, but the question is why you’re doing abortions at all. I should think that every babe these days would be precious.’

‘Not if it’s not sired by your husband. Here, please don’t despise me. There’s a lot of noblewomen who spend all summer at court, and well, their husbands are off on campaign for months at a time, and well, you know how things happen, and well, they come to me in tears, and –’

‘Shower you with silver, no doubt.’

‘It’s not the coin!’

‘Indeed? What is it, then? The only time in your life that women have come begging you for somewhat?’

When tears welled in Caudyr’s eyes, Nevyn regretted his harsh accuracy. He looked away to give the young chirurgeon a chance to wipe his face. It was the infidelities more than the abortions that bothered Nevyn. The thought of noblewomen, whose restricted life gave them nothing but their honour to take pride in, turning first to illicit affairs, then to covering them over, made him feel that the kingdom was rotting from the centre out. As for the abortions, the dweomer lore teaches that a soul comes to indwell a foetus only in the fourth or fifth month after conception; any abortion before that time is only removing a lump of flesh, not a living child. By the time a noblewoman was in her fifth month, Nevyn supposed, her indiscretion would be known already, and so doubtless Caudyr was solving their little problems long before the foetus was truly alive.

‘Now one moment.’ Nevyn was struck by a sudden thought. ‘You’re not using ergot, are you, you stupid little dolt?’

‘Never!’ Caudyr’s voice rose in a sincere squeak. ‘I know the dangers of that.’

‘Good. All it would take is for one of your noble patients to die or go mad, and then you’d be up to your neck in a tub of horseshit good and proper.’

‘I know. But if I didn’t find the right herbs for these ladies, they’d be cast off by their husbands, and probably end up smothering the babe anyway, or they’d go to some old witch or a farmwife, and then they would die.’

‘You split hairs so well you should have been a priest.’

Caudyr tried to smile and failed utterly, looking like a child who’s just been scolded when he honestly didn’t know he had done a wrong thing. Suddenly Nevyn felt the dweomer power gathering round him, filling his mouth with words that burned straight out of the future.

‘You can’t keep this sort of thing quiet. When the King dies, his murderers will need a scapegoat. It’s going to be you, because of this midnight physic you’ve been dispensing. Live ready to flee at the first sign that the King is sinking. Can Tibryn of the Boar find out about your unsavoury herbs?’

‘He could, the lady Merodda … I mean … ah ye gods! Who are you, old man?’

‘Can’t you tell dweomer when you hear it? The Boar will take his sister’s evidence, turn it against you, and have you broken on the wheel to avert suspicion from himself. If I were you, I’d leave well before the end comes, or they’ll hunt you down as a regicide.’

Caudyr jerked to his feet so fast that he toppled both his tankard and Nevyn’s, then fled, racing out of the tavern door. Although old Draudd gave Nevyn a questioning look, he also shrugged as if to say it was none of his affair. Nevyn retrieved the tankards from the floor, then turned on the bench so that he could look directly into the peat fire smouldering on the tavern hearth. As soon as he bent his mind to Aderyn, his old apprentice’s image appeared with his enormous dark eyes and his grey hair swept up in two peaks at his forehead like the horns of a silver owl.

‘And how’s your scheme progressing?’ Aderyn thought to him.

‘Well enough, I suppose. I’ve learned one very important thing. I’d rather die than put any Cantrae king on the throne.’

‘Is it as bad as all that?’

‘The palace stinks like the biggest dungheap on the hottest day of the longest summer. I can’t see how any young soul could grow up there without being corrupted from birth. I’m not even going to bother talking to the priests here. They’re corrupt, too, and doubtless in new and unusual ways.’

‘I haven’t seen you this angry in about a hundred years.’

‘Naught’s been so vexing in a hundred years. The most honourable man I’ve met here is an abortionist. Does that give you a hint?’

Floating about the fire, Aderyn’s image rolled its eyes heavenwards in disgust.

Caradoc and his band of mercenaries left the deserted hunting-lodge soon after Maddyn and Aethan joined the troop. Although everyone was speculating about where they would go, the captain told no one until the morning of their departure. Once the men were mounted and formed up in neat ranks that would have done the King’s Guard credit, Caradoc inspected them carefully, then pulled his horse up to face them.

‘It’s Eldidd, lads. We’ve got too many men who can’t let themselves be seen around Dun Deverry to take a hire on Slwmar’s side, and I don’t dare be seen in Cerrmor. I’ve hoarded some coin from the winter, seeing as our lodging was free and all, so I think we can ride straight there.’

Although no one cheered this prospect of leaving home for a foreign land, no one muttered in discontent, either. Caradoc paused, as if waiting for grumblers, then shrugged and raised his hand.

‘Otho the smith’s meeting us on the road with a wagon. Forward … march!’

With a jingle of tack the troop executed a perfect turn in ranks and began to file out of the dun gate, two by two. As a mark of honour to a bard, Maddyn rode next to Caradoc at the head of the line. Over the next few days, as they worked their way south-west as quickly as possible, he had plenty of chances to study his new leader. The biggest puzzle that ate at his bardic curiosity was whether or not Caradoc was noble-born. At times, when the captain was discussing some point of the royal law or giving orders with his firm authority, Maddyn was sure that he must have been born the younger son of a lord. Yet when it came to coin, he had all the grasping shrewdness of an old peasant woman, an attitude he never would have learned among the nobility. Occasionally Maddyn dropped hints or half-questions about the past into their conversation, but Caradoc never rose to the bait. When the troop camped for the night, Caradoc ate alone like a lord, and Maddyn shared a fire with Aethan and a small crowd of Wildfolk.

After a week of riding, the troop crossed the Aver Trebyc at a point about a hundred miles west of Dun Deverry. Caradoc gave orders that the men were to ride armed and ready for trouble. He sent out point men and scouts ahead of the main body of riders, because they were approaching the border between Cerrmor-held and Cantrae-held territory. The precautions paid off with a rather strange prize. On the second day of riding armed, when they were finally getting close to the Eldidd border, the troop stopped for the noon rest in a grassy meadow that had never known plough nor herd. When the point men came back to change the guard, they brought with them a traveller, an unarmed man with rich clothing, a beautiful riding horse, and an elegant pack-mule that had obviously been bred from the best stock. Maddyn was surprised that the poor dolt had survived unrobbed for as long as he had. The young, sandy-haired fellow looked so terrified that Maddyn supposed he was thinking similar thoughts.

‘He says he comes from Dun Deverry,’ the point man said. ‘So we brought him along in case he had any interesting news.’

‘Good,’ Caradoc said. ‘Now look, young fellow, we’re not going to slit your throat or even rob you. Come have a meal with me and Maddyn here.’

With a most discourteous groan, the stranger looked around at the well-armed troop, then sighed in resignation.

‘So I will, then. My name’s … uh … Claedd.’

Caradoc and Maddyn each suppressed a grin at the clumsiness of the lie. When the stranger dismounted, Maddyn saw that he had a club foot, which seemed to ache him after so many days in the saddle. As they shared a meal of flatbread and cheese, the supposed Claedd told them what little he knew about the troop movements around the Holy City. The current rumour was that the northern forces were planning to make a strong strike along the eastern borders of the Cerrmor kingdom.

‘If that’s true,’ Caradoc said thoughtfully, ‘we’ll have no trouble getting a hire in Eldidd. Probably the Eldidd King will want to take the chance to raid into Pyrdon.’

‘Oho!’ Claedd said. ‘Then you’re a free troop! Well, that’s a relief.’

‘Oh, is it now? Most men would think the opposite.’ Caradoc shook his head, as if he were utterly amazed at the innocence of this lad. ‘Well and good, then. Who’s chasing you? It’s safe to tell me. I’ve sunk pretty low, lad, but not so low that I’d turn a man in for the bounty on his head.’

Claedd concentrated on shredding a piece of flatbread into inedible crumbs.

‘You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,’ Caradoc said after a moment. ‘But think about travelling with us. You’ll be a blasted sight safer. Ever had a fancy to see Eldidd?’

‘That’s where I was trying to go, and you’re right enough about it being safer. I’ve never swung a sword in my life. I’m a … uh … a scholar.’

‘Splendid. Maybe I’ll need a letter written some fine day.’

Although Claedd managed a feeble smile at the jest, his face stayed deadly pale. Yet, when the troop rode out, he came with them, riding by himself just behind Otho’s wagon. At the night camp, Maddyn took pity on him and offered to let him share their fire. Although he brought out food from his mule-packs, Claedd ate little of it, merely sat quietly and watched Aethan polishing his sword. When, after the meal, Caradoc strolled over for a chat, Claedd again said little as the captain and the bard talked idly of their plans in Eldidd. Finally, though, at a pause he spoke up.

‘I’ve been thinking about your offer, captain. Could you use a troop chirurgeon? I finished my apprenticeship only a year ago, but I’ve had an awful lot of practice at tending wounds.’

‘By all the ice in all the hells!’ Maddyn said. ‘You’re worth your weight in gold!’

‘Cursed right.’ Caradoc cocked his head to one side and considered the young chirurgeon. ‘Now, I’m not a curious man, usually, and I like to leave my lads their privacy, like, but in your case, I’ve got to ask. What’s a man with your learning doing travelling the long lonely roads like this?’

‘You might as well know the truth. First of all, my name’s Caudyr, and I was at the court in Dun Deverry. I mixed up a few potions and suchlike for some high-born ladies to rid them of … ah well … a spot of … er well … trouble now and again. The word’s leaked out about it in rather a nasty way.’

Caradoc and Aethan exchanged a puzzled glance.

‘He means abortions,’ Maddyn said with a grin. ‘Naught that should vex us, truly.’

‘Might even come in handy, with this pack of dogs I’ve got.’ Caradoc said. ‘Well and good, then, Caudyr. Once you’ve shown me that you can physic a man, you’ll get a full share of our earnings, just like a rider. I’ve discovered that a lord’s chirurgeon tends his lord’s men first and the mercenaries when he has a mind to and not before. I’ve had men bleed to death who would have lived if they’d had the proper attention.’

Idly Maddyn happened to glance Aethan’s way to find him staring at Caudyr in grim suspicion.

‘Up in Dun Deverry, were you?’ Aethan’s voice was a dry, hard whisper. ‘Was one of your high-born ladies Merodda of the Boar?’

In a confession stronger than words, Caudyr winced, then blushed. Aethan got to his feet, hesitated, then took off running into the darkness.

‘What, by the hells?’ Caradoc snapped.

Without bothering to explain, Maddyn got up and followed, chasing Aethan through the startled camp, pounding blindly after him through the moonshot night down to the riverbank. Finally Aethan stopped and let him catch up. They stood together for a long time, panting for breath and watching the silver-touched river flow by.

‘With a bitch like that,’ Maddyn said finally, ‘how would you even know that the babe was yours?’

‘I kept my eye on her like a hawk all winter long. If she’d looked at another man, I’d have killed him, and she knew it.’

With a sigh Maddyn sat down, and after a moment, Aethan joined him.

‘Having a chirurgeon of our own will be a cursed good thing,’ Maddyn said. ‘Can you put up with Caudyr?’

‘Who’s blaming him for one single thing? I wish I could kill her. I dream about it sometimes, getting my hands on her pretty white throat and strangling her.’

Abruptly Aethan turned and threw himself into Maddyn’s arms. Maddyn held him tightly and let him cry, the choking ugly sob of a man who feels shamed by tears.

Two days later the troop crossed the border into Eldidd. At that time, the northern part of the province was nearly a wilderness, forests and wild grasslands broken only by the occasional dun of a minor lord or a village of free farmers. Plenty of the lords would have liked to have hired the troop, because they were in constant danger of raids coming either from the kingdom of Pyrdon to the north or from Deverry to the east. None, however, could pay Caradoc what he considered the troop was worth. With thirty-seven men, their own smith, chirurgeon, and bard, the troop was bigger than the warbands of most of the lords in northern Eldidd. Just when Caradoc was beginning to curse his decision to ride that way, the troop reached the new town of Camynwaen, on the banks of an oddly named river, the El, just at the spot where the even more strangely named Aver Cantariel flows in from the north-west.

Although there had been a farming village on the site for centuries, only twenty years before the gwerbret in Elrydd had decided that the kingdom needed a proper town at the joining of the rivers. Since the war with Pyrdon could flare up at any time, he wanted a staging-ground for troops and a properly defensible set of walls around it. Finding colonists was no problem, because there were plenty of younger sons of noble lords willing to risk a move to gain land of their own, and plenty of bondsmen willing to go with them since they became free men once they left their bound-land. When Caradoc’s troop rode into Camynwaen, they found a decent town of a thousand roundhouses behind high stone walls, turreted with watchtowers.

About a mile away was the stone dun of Tieryn Maenoic, and there Caradoc found the kind of hire he’d been looking for. Although Maenoic received maintenance from the gwerbret to the south, there was a shortage of fighting men in his vast demesne, and he had a private war on his hands. Since the authority of his clan was fairly new, he was always plagued with rebellions. For years now the chief troublemaker had been a certain Lord Pagwyl.

‘And he’s gathered together a lot of bastards like himself,’ Maenoic said. ‘And they claim they’ll ask the gwerbret to give them a tieryn of their own and not submit to me. I can’t stand for it.’

He couldn’t, truly, because standing for it would not only take half his land away but also make him the laughing stock of every man in Eldidd. A stout hard-muscled man, with a thick streak of grey in his raven-dark hair, Maenoic was steaming with fury as he strode back and forth looking over the troop, who were sitting on their horses outside the gates to Maenoic’s dun. Caradoc and Maddyn followed a respectful distance behind while the lord judged the troop’s horses and gear with a shrewd eye.

‘Very well, captain. A silver piece per week per man, your maintenance, and of course I’ll replace any horses that you lose.’

‘Most generous, my lord,’ Caradoc said. ‘For peacetime.’

Maenoic turned to scowl at him.

‘Another silver piece per man for every battle we fight,’ Caradoc went on. ‘And that’s paid for every man who dies, too.’

‘Far too much.’

‘As it pleases Your Lordship. Me and my men can just ride on.’

And over to your enemies, perhaps – the thought hung unspoken between them for a long moment. Finally Maenoic swore under his breath.

‘Done, then. A second silver piece per man for every scrap.’

With an open and innocent smile, Caradoc bowed to him.

Maenoic’s new-built dun was large enough to have two sets of barracks and stables built into the walls – a blessing, because the mercenaries could be well separated from Maenoic’s contemptuous warband. At meals, though, they shared the same set of tables, and the warband made barely tolerable comments about men who fought for money and quite intolerable comments about the parentage and character of such who did so. Between them Caradoc and Maenoic broke up seven different fist-fights in two days before the army was at last ready to ride out.

After he had called in all his loyal allies, Maenoic had over two hundred and fifty men to lead west against his rebels. In the line of march, Caradoc’s troop came at the very end, behind even the supply wagons, and ate dust all day long. At night they made camp by themselves a little way off from the warbands of the noble-born. Caradoc, however, was summoned when the lords held a council of war. He came back to the troop with solid news and gathered them around him to hear it.

‘Tomorrow we’ll see the first scrap. Here’s how things stand, lads. We’re coming to a river, and there’s a bridge there. Maenoic claims the taxes on it, but Pagwyl’s holding out. The scouts say Pagwyl’s going to make a stand to prevent the tieryn from crossing, because once he crosses against Pagwyl’s will, it’s his bridge again in everybody’s eyes. We’ll be leading the charge – of course.’

Everyone nodded, acknowledging that they were, after all, the disposable mercenaries. Maddyn found himself troubled by a strange feeling, a coldness, a heaviness. It took him a long time to admit it, but then he realized that he was quite simply afraid. That night he dreamt of his last charge up in Cantrae and woke soaked with cold sweat. You coward, he told himself; you ugly little coward! The reproach burned in his very soul, but the truth was that he had almost died in that last charge, and now he knew what it felt like to be dying. The fear choked him as palpably as if he’d swallowed a clot of sheep’s wool. What was worst of all was knowing that here was one thing he could never share with Aethan.

All night, all the next morning, the fear festered so badly that by the time the army reached the bridge, Maddyn was hysterically happy that the battle was at hand and soon to be over. He was singing under his breath and whistling in turn when the army crested a low rise and saw, just as they’d expected, Lord Pagwyl and his allies drawn up by the riverbank to meet them. There was a surprise, however, in the men who waited for them: a bare hundred mounted swordsmen eked out by two big squares of common-born spearmen, placed so that they blocked any possible approach to the bridge itself.

‘Oh here,’ said Maddyn, forcing a laugh. ‘Pagwyl was a fool to rebel if that’s all the riders he could scrape together.’

‘Horseshit!’ Caradoc snapped. ‘His lordship knows what he’s doing. I’ve seen fighting like this before, spearmen guarding a fixed position. We’re in for a little gallop through the third hell, lad.’

As Maenoic’s army milled around in confusion, Caradoc led his men calmly up to the front of the line. The enemy had picked a perfect place to stand, a long green meadow in front of the bridge, bordered by the river on one side of their formation and on the other, the broken, crumbling earthwork of some long-gone farmer’s cattle corral. Three rows deep, the spearmen stood shield to shield, the spearheads glittering above the chalk-whitened oval shields. To one side of the shield-wall, the mounted men sat on restless horses, ready to charge in from the side and pin Maenoic’s men between them and the river.

‘Horseshit and a pile of it,’ Caradoc muttered. ‘We can’t wheel round the bastards without falling into the blasted river.’

Maddyn merely nodded, too choked for breath to answer. He was remembering the feel of metal, biting deep into his side. Under him, his horse tossed its head and stamped as if it too were remembering their last charge. When Caradoc trotted off to confer with Maenoic, Aethan pulled up beside Maddyn; he’d already settled his shield over his left arm and drawn a javelin. While he followed the example, Maddyn had to work so hard to keep his horse steady that he suddenly realized that the poor beast did remember that last charge. He had a battle-shy horse under him and no time to change him.

The spearmen began calling out jeers and taunting the enemy for scum on horseback, screaming into the sunlight and the wind that blew the taunts into jagged, incomprehensible pieces of words. Some of Maenoic’s men shouted back, but Caradoc’s troop merely sat on their horses and waited until at last their captain left the lord’s side and jogged back, easy in his saddle, a javelin in his hand.

‘All right, lads. We’re riding.’

There was a gust of laughter in the troop as they jogged forward to join him. Maenoic’s own men pulled in behind, but the rest of the army wheeled off, ready to charge the enemy riders positioned off to the side. With an odd jingling shuffle, like a load of metal wares jouncing in a cart, the army formed up. Caradoc turned in his saddle, saw Maddyn right next to him, and yelled at him over the noise.

‘Get back! I want to hear our bard sing tonight. Get back in the last rank!’

Maddyn had never wanted to follow an order more in his life, but he fought with himself only a moment before he shouted back his answer.

‘I can’t. If I don’t ride this charge, then I’ll never have the guts to ride another.’

Caradoc cocked his head to one side and considered him.

‘Well and good, then, lad. We might all be doing our listening and singing in the Otherlands, anyway.’

Caradoc turned his horse, raised his javelin, then broke into a gallop straight for the enemy lines. With a howl of warcries, the troop burst after him, a ragged race of shrieking men across the meadow. Maddyn saw the waiting infantry shudder in a wave-ripple of fear, but they held.

‘Follow my lead!’ Aethan screamed. ‘Throw that javelin and wheel!’

Closer – a cloud of dust, kicked-up bits and clods of grass – the infantry shoving together behind the line of lime-white shields – then there was a shower of metal as Caradoc and his men hurled javelins into the spearmen. Shields flashed up, caught some of the darts, but there was cursing and screaming as the riders kept coming, throwing, wheeling, peeling off in a long, loose circle. Maddyn heard battle-yells break out behind as the reserve troops charged into Pagwyl’s cavalry. Snorting, sweating, Maddyn’s horse fought for the bit and nearly carried them both into the river. Maddyn drew his sword, slapped the horse with the flat, and jerked its head round to spur it back to the troop.

The first rank of Maenoic’s men were milling blindly, waving swords and shouting, in front of the shield-wall. Caradoc galloped among his troop, yelling out orders to re-form and try a charge from the flank. Maddyn could see that Maenoic’s allies had pushed Pagwyl’s cavalry back to expose the shield-wall’s weakest spot. In a cloud and flurry of rearing horses, the troop pulled round and threw itself forward again. Maddyn lost track of Aethan, who was shoved off to the flank when Maenoic’s men, blindly pulling back to charge again, got themselves mixed up with the charging mercenaries. One or two horses went down, their riders thrown and trampled, before Caradoc sorted out the mess into some rough order. Maddyn found himself in Maenoic’s warband. For one brief moment he could see Caradoc, plunging at the flank of the shield-wall with a mob behind him. Then his own unit rode forward for the charge.

On and on – the shield-wall was trembling, turning towards its beleaguered flank, but it held tight directly ahead of Maddyn. From the men behind him javelins flew. Maddyn’s horse bucked and grabbed for the bit; he smacked it down and kicked it forward. A split-second battle – of nerve, not steel – Maddyn saw the slack-jawed face of a young lad, his hands shaking on his braced spear, his eyes suddenly meeting Maddyn’s as he galloped straight for him. With a shriek the lad dropped his spear and flung himself sideways. As the man next to him fell, cursing and flailing, Maddyn was in. Dimly he saw another horseman to his right. The shield-wall was breaking. Swinging, howling with an unearthly laughter, Maddyn shoved his horse among the panicked spearmen. Ducking and bobbing in the saddle like a water bird, he slashed out and down, hardly seeing or caring whom or what he was hitting. A spearhead flashed his way. He caught it barely in time and heard his shield crack, then shoved it away as he twisted in the saddle to meet another flash of metal from the right. Always he laughed, the cold bubble of a berserker’s hysteria that he could never control in battle.