Warrior of the West Read Free

least he had the balls to be singled out as leader. We are not unduly cruel to those enemies who show courage.’ Glamdring leered knowingly. ‘Now, who among you wants to be next to die?’
    The Saxon leader obviously intended to make the Celtic warriors suffer as they awaited their fate.
    Suddenly, the Roman envoy moved. Against all the rules of the truce, and less trusting than his companions, he had secreted a knife in his boot. With a sudden lunge, he managed to put out the eye of a burly Saxon who had failed to take the slight man seriously.
    The Roman died quickly from a devastating sword thrust that split him from groin to breastbone. As the man died in the hot stink of his own entrails, Gaheris wished he could remember the warrior’s name.
    Three other envoys were hacked to pieces, slowly and deliberately, so that the Saxons could choose when to grant the welcome boon of death. Only Ulf, two other Celtic warriors, and Gaheris now remained standing on the bloody earth.
    The air was still, as if the whole, slate-grey earth held its breath. Gaheris stared intently at Ulf, who was trying hard to stand nonchalantly and display the fearless arrogance of a Celtic cavalry officer. Bloodstained, and with his fingers trembling and one knee twitching despite his best efforts, Ulf embodied what was most noble in a Celt, and Gaheris was oddly comforted. This was not reckless, brainless courage. Ulf represented the ordinary man who was faced with an extraordinary situation, and he had mastered his terror when most men would have wept or voided their bladders.
    Now that his fate was sealed, Gaheris saw the Celt and Saxon races so clearly that he was surprised he hadn’t realized the purpose of Artor’s long wars years earlier.
    ‘Whatever you do to these men will change nothing, Glamdring. Surely even a barbarian can give credence to the words of a man who is about to die. I can smell your death upon you, and it will be worse for you than for these brave men, for you don’t know Lord Artor. You judge him by the standards set by my father, King Lot, and by Artor’s father, Uther Pendragon. Artor is not an ordinary man, and he will exact the worst punishment upon you that he can devise . . . and my lord is a master of imagination. You will wish that you had listened to my warnings when you hear your children scream and burn.’
    Glamdring’s face reddened slightly beneath his grimy skin, but Gaheris relentlessly goaded the Saxon, hoping for a quick and painless ending. He stared at the sky, where the hawk still circled, oblivious to the human raptors below him. Gaheris, turned his frank green eyes towards his executioner.
    ‘I have the same gift of sight as my aunt, Morgan, so I can read your death clearly in your eyes. Artor would have had the sense to keep the horses alive, and he would have fought fire with fire. Artor wouldn’t stoop to kill the defenceless and sully his honour by slaying unarmed envoys. Even Lot will be sickened when he hears of your cowardly murders.’
    ‘Lot is a fat fool,’ Glamdring blustered. ‘And your Morgan is a whore.’ In his rage, the Saxon’s fingers gripped his axe so tightly that his knuckles were ridges of white bone.
    Gaheris smiled with a young man’s bravado, and the contempt of a prince.
    ‘Those insults are the only truths that you have spoken on this bloodsoaked day. You are a condemned man, Glamdring, because, like most Saxons, you’ll never learn.’
    Glamdring gave a great cry of rage, swung his axe above his head and struck Gaheris on the shoulder, cutting deeply into his breast.
    Even as the prince fell, choking on a sudden rush of blood into his mouth, Gaheris managed the ghost of a chuckle.
    ‘Never learn . . . never . . . change.’
    Then Glamdring struck off the boy’s head with a vicious blow to the neck.
    The shale and gravel were thick with congealing blood. At sword point, Ulf and the other two survivors were forced to collect the six heads of their masters,