Warrior of the West Read Free Page A

place them reverently in their leather provision sacks, and then string them round their necks. At any moment, the warriors expected to be hacked to pieces, and their nerves were stretched to screaming point.
    Glamdring looked scornfully at the three shaken Celts who were bowed over by their hellish burdens. Then he delivered his message to Artor.
    Ulf was forced to repeat the message three times until each phrase was perfect. Sickened, the cavalryman knew that he was doomed to live.
    ‘Now, run away, little dogs, and tell your master that Ironfist is waiting. Tell him also that the bodies of his men will have no burial. Their souls will wander in the void forever, as will all Celts who dare to set foot on Saxon soil.’
    And, to his shame, Ulf fled, closely pursued by his companions. Their despair knew no bounds because, by random chance, they lived when better men had died. They hadn’t struck a single blow to save their masters from death, so honour demanded that they should also perish. But stronger than terror or shame was their oath to the High King. Artor must receive Glamdring’s message if the Saxons were to be punished for their crimes against the helpless. Ulf must bear witness to what he had seen and heard, although desperation coiled in his belly so that he vomited until his throat was raw.
    Although his cloak and tunic stiffened with blood and serum, and the two leather bags thudded wetly against his sides, still he ran until he could no longer move without weeping.
    Eventually, the three survivors found their way to a Celtic settlement and begged horses to speed their journey. They did not stop to eat, or to clean their bodies of the blood that had seeped from the heads of Artor’s ambassadors, until they finally reached Cadbury Tor and their long and ghastly task was completed.

CHAPTER I
    BLOOD GUILT
    Then all the councillors, together with that proud tyrant
Vortigern, the British king, were so blinded, that, as a
protection to their country, they sealed its doom by
inviting in among them (like wolves into the sheepfold),
the fierce and impious Saxons, a race hateful both to God
and men, to repel the invasions of the northern nations.
    Gildas
     
    Artor stood on the summit of the imposing earthworks of Cadbury Tor and stared down at his domain. Below him, like the peeled skin of an apple, the ramparts and cobbled roadways leading to the flagged fortress curled around the tor. Regular redoubts guarded heavy log gates that could be closed and barred to seal any enemy between its walls of wood and stone. If any fortress could be considered impregnable, then Cadbury was one such, for in its long history it had never fallen.
    As he stared down at what he had rebuilt, Artor recalled his first, crucial campaign against the western Saxons twelve years earlier.
    Older Celts still remembered, and resented, the foolishness of King Vortigern who had been so lost to reason that when the strong, golden legs of Rowena, his Saxon queen, were wrapped round his waist, he was prepared to accede to her every request. While in her thrall, Vortigern permitted the Saxons to settle in the lands of the Demetae, and for generations Celts and Saxons had dwelt together uneasily, until the Saxons had eventually sought to extend their power by forming an alliance with Katigern Oakheart in the east.
    But, early in his reign, Artor had ridden north out of Cadbury and defeated the invaders at a time when he was still untried, both as a king and as a leader. For the first time, and in bloody attrition, Artor had used his cavalry against that most fearsome of barbarian tactics, the Saxon shield wall.
    A double line of Saxons wedged their circular wooden, bull hide and bronze shields together in unconscious imitation of the old Roman tortoise. But the Saxons stood well over six feet in height, unlike the Romans who were rarely taller than five and a half feet. The second row protected the heads of the front row with their shields, and once