I thought for a moment he had mistaken me for Arthur and I pulled the hinged cheek pieces aside so he could see my face, then at last I recognized him. It was Griffid, Owain’s captain and the man who had tried to kill me at Lindinis before Nimue intervened to save my life. “Griffid ap Annan,” I greeted him.
“There’s bad blood between us, Lord,” he said, and fell to his knees. “Forgive me.”
I pulled him to his feet and embraced him. His beard had gone grey, but he was still the. same long-boned, sad-faced man I remembered. “My soul is in your keeping,” I told him, ‘and I am glad to put it there.”
“And mine yours, Lord,” he said.
“Minac!” I recognized another of my old comrades. “Am I forgiven?”
“Was there anything to forgive, Lord?” he asked, embarrassed at the question.
“There was nothing to forgive,” I promised him. “No oath was broken, I swear it.”
Minac stepped forward and embraced me. All along the shield-wall other such quarrels were being resolved. “How have you been?” I asked Griffid.
“Fighting hard, Lord. Mostly against Cerdic’s Saxons. Today will be easy compared with those bastards, except for one thing.” He hesitated.
“Well?” I prompted him.
“Will she give us back our souls, Lord?” Griffid asked, glancing at Nimue. He was remembering the awful curse she had laid on him and his men.
“Of course she will,” I said, and summoned Nimue who touched Griffid’s forehead, and the foreheads of all the other surviving men who had threatened my life on that distant day in Lindinis. Thus was her curse lifted and they thanked her by kissing her hand. I embraced Griffid again, then raised my voice so that all my men could hear me. “Today,” I said, ‘we shall give the bards enough songs to sing for a thousand years! And today we become rich men again!”
They cheered. The emotion in that shield-line was so rich that some men wept for happiness. I know now that there is no joy like the joy of serving Christ Jesus, but how I do miss the company of warriors. There were no barriers between us that morning, nothing but a great, swelling love for each other as we waited for the enemy. We were brothers, we were invincible and even the laconic Sa-gram or had tears in his eyes. A spearman began singing the War Song of Beli Mawr, Britain’s great battle song, and the strong male voices swelled in instinctive harmony all along the line. Other men danced across their swords, capering awkwardly in their leather armour as they made the intricate steps either side of the blade. Our Christians had their arms spread wide as they sang, almost as though the song was a pagan prayer to their own God while other men clashed their spears against their shields in time to the music.
We were still singing of pouring our enemies’ blood on to our land when that enemy appeared. We sang defiantly on as spear-band after spear-band came into view and spread across the far fields beneath kingly banners that showed bright in the day’s cloudy gloom. And on we sang, a great torrent of song to defy the army of Gorfyddyd, the army of the father of the woman I was convinced I loved. That was why I was fighting, not just for Arthur, but because only by victory could I make my way back to Caer Sws and thus see Ceinwyn again. I had no claim on her, and no hopes either for I was slave-born and she a princess, yet somehow I felt that day as though I had more to lose than I had ever possessed in all my life.
It took over an hour for that cumbersome horde to make a battle line on the river’s far bank. The river could only be crossed at the ford, which meant we would be given time to retreat when the moment came, but for now the enemy must have assumed that we planned to defend the ford all day for they massed their best men in the centre of the line. Gorfyddyd himself was there, his eagle banner stained by its dye that had run in the rain so that the flag looked as though it had already been dipped in our blood. Arthur’s banners, the black bear and the red dragon, flew at our line’s centre where I stood facing the ford. Sagramor stood beside me, counting the enemy banners. Gundleus’s fox was there, and the red horse of Elmet, and several others we did not recognize. “Six hundred men?” Sagramor guessed.