The horn sounded a last time. And Arthur, at last, charged.
His armoured spearmen had come from their hiding place north of the river and now their horses foamed through the ford like a tide of thunder. They crashed over the bodies left by the early fighting and brought their bright spears down into the charge as they seared into the enemy’s rearward units. Men scattered like chaff as the iron-shod horses drove deep into Gorfyddyd’s army. Arthur’s men divided into two groups that cut deep channels through that press of spearmen. They charged, they left their spears fixed in the dead and then made more dead with their swords.
And for a moment, for a glorious moment, I thought the enemy would break, but then Gorfyddyd saw the same danger and he shouted at his men to form a new shield-wall facing north. He would sacrifice his rearward men and instead make a new line of spears from the back most ranks of his forward troops. And that new line held. Owain, so long ago, had been right when he told me that not even Arthur’s horses would charge home against a well-made shield-wall. Nor would they. Arthur had brought panic and death to a third of Cuneglas’s army, but the rest were now formed properly and they defied his handful of cavalry.
And still the enemy outnumbered us.
Behind the tree fence our line was nowhere more than two men deep and in places it was just one. Arthur had failed to cut through to us, and Gorfyddyd knew that Arthur never would cut through so long as he kept a shield-wall facing the horses. He planted that shield-wall, abandoning the lost third of his army to Arthur’s mercy, then turned the rest of his men to face Sagramor’s shield-wall again. Gorfyddyd now knew Arthur’s tactics, and he had defeated them, so he could hurl his spearmen into battle with a new confidence, though this time, instead of assaulting all along our line, he concentrated his attack along the vale’s western edge in an attempt to turn our left flank.
The men on that flank fought, they killed and they died, but few men could have held the line for long, and none could have held it once Gundleus’s Silurians outflanked us by climbing the lower slopes of the hill beneath the ghastly ghost-fence. The attack was brutal and the defence just as horrid. Morfans’s surviving horsemen hurled themselves at the Silurians, Nimue spat curses at them and Tristan’s fresh men fought there like champions, but if we had possessed double our numbers we could not have stopped the enemy from outflanking us and so our shield-wall, like a snake recoiling, collapsed on to the river bank where we made a defensive half-circle about two banners and the few wounded men we had managed to carry back with us. It was a terrible moment. I saw our shield-wall break, saw the enemy begin the slaughter of scattered men, and then I ran with the rest into the desperate huddle of survivors. We just had time to make a crude shield-wall, then we could only watch as Gorfyddyd’s triumphant forces pursued and killed our fugitives. Tristan survived, as did Galahad and Sagramor, but that was small consolation for we had lost the battle and all that remained for us now was to die like heroes. In the northern half of the vale Arthur was still held by the shield-wall, while to the south our wall, that had resisted its enemies all that long day, had been broken and its remnant surrounded. We had gone into battle two hundred strong and now we numbered just over a hundred men.
Prince Cuneglas rode forward to ask for our surrender. His father was commanding the men facing Arthur and the King of Powys was content to leave the destruction of Sagramor’s remaining spearmen to his son and to King Gundleus. Cuneglas, at least, did not insult my men. He curbed his horse a dozen paces from our line and raised an empty right hand to show he came in truce. “Men of Dumnonia!” Cuneglas called. “You have fought well, but to fight further is to die. I offer you life.”