First came white-plumed Arthur himself, in shining armour and carrying his mirror-bright shield and with his white cloak spread behind like wings. His spearhead dipped as his fifty men came into sight on armoured horses, their faces wrapped in iron and their spear-points glittering. The banners of the dragon and the bear flew bright and the earth shook beneath those ponderous hooves that slung water and mud high into the air as the big horses gathered speed. My men were running aside, forming two groups that swiftly gathered into defensive circles with shields and spears outermost. I went left and turned around in time to see Valerin’s men desperately trying to form a shield-wall. Valerin, mounted on his horse, shouted at them to retreat to the barricade, but it was already too late. Our trap was sprung and Lugg Vale’s defenders were doomed.
Arthur pounded past me on Llamrei, his favourite mare. The skirts of his horse blanket and the ends of his cloak were already soaked in mud. A man threw a spear that glanced off Llamrei’s breast armour, then Arthur thrust his spear home into the first enemy soldier, abandoned the weapon and scraped Excalibur into the dawn. The rest of the horse crashed past in a welter of water and noise. Valerin’s men screamed as the big brutes hurtled into their broken ranks. Swords slashed down to leave men reeling and bloody while the horses ploughed on, some driving panicked men down beneath their heavy iron-plated hooves. Broken spearmen had no defence against horses, and these warriors of Powys had no chance to form even the smallest shield-walls. They could only run and Valerin, seeing there was no salvation, turned his light horse and galloped northwards.
Some of his men followed, but any man on foot was doomed to be ridden down by the horses. Others turned aside and ran for the river or the hill, and those we hunted down in spear-bands. A few threw down spears and shields and raised their arms, and those we let live, but any man who offered resistance was surrounded like a boar trapped in a thicket and speared to death. Arthur’s horse had disappeared into the vale, leaving behind a horrid trail of men with heads cut to the brain by sword-blows. Other enemies were limping and falling, and Nimue, seeing the destruction, screeched in triumph.
We took close to fifty prisoners. At least as many others were dead or dying. A few escaped up the hill we had come down in the grey light, and some had drowned trying to cross the Lugg, but the rest were bleeding, staggering, vomiting and defeated. Sagramor’s men, a hundred and fifty prime spearmen, marched into sight as we finished rounding up the last of Valerin’s survivors. “We can’t spare men to guard prisoners,” Sagramor greeted me.
“I know.”
“Then kill them,” he ordered me, and Nimue echoed her approval.
“No,” I insisted. Sagramor was my commander for the rest of this day and I did not enjoy disagreeing with him, but Arthur wanted to bring peace to the Britons and killing helpless prisoners was no way to bind Powys to his peace. Besides, my men had taken the prisoners, so their fate was my responsibility and, instead of killing them, I ordered them stripped naked, then they were taken one by one to where Cavan waited with a heavy stone for his hammer and a boulder for an anvil. We placed each man’s spear hand on the boulder, held it there, then crushed the two smallest fingers with the stone. A man with two shattered fingers would live and he might even wield a spear again, but not on this day. Not for many a day. Then we sent them southwards, naked and bleeding, and told them that if we saw their faces again before nightfall they would surely die. Sagramor scoffed at me for displaying such leniency, but did not countermand the orders. My men took the enemy’s best clothes and boots, searched the discarded clothing for coins, then tossed the garments on to the still burning huts. We piled the captured weapons by the road.
Then we marched north to discover that Arthur had ended his pursuit at the ford, then returned to the village that lay about the substantial Roman building which Arthur reckoned had once been a rest house for travellers going into the northern hills. A crowd of women cowered under guard beside the house, clutching their children and paltry belongings.