Merlin kept one arm around Nimue as he strode towards us. Gorfyddyd had seen the Druid’s arrival and now galloped his horse towards our part of the battlefield. Merlin raised his staff in greeting to the King, but ignored his questions. The Irish war-band had stopped at the hill’s foot where they formed their grim black wall of shields.
Merlin walked towards me and, just as on the day when he had saved my life at Caer Sws, he came in stark, cold majesty. There was no smile on his dark face, no hint of joy in his deep eyes, just a look of such fierce anger that I sank to my knees and bowed my head as he came close. Sagramor did the same, then suddenly our whole battered band of spearmen was kneeling to the Druid.
He reached out with his black staff and touched first Sagramor and then me on the shoulders. “Get up,” he said in a low, hard voice before turning to face the enemy. He took his arm from around Nimue’s shoulders and held his black staff level above his tonsured head with both hands. He stared at Gorfyddyd’s army, then slowly lowered the staff, and such was the authority in that long, ancient, angry face and in that slow, sure gesture that the enemy all knelt to him. Only the two Druids stayed standing and the few horsemen remained in their saddles.
“For seven years,” Merlin said in a voice that reached clear across the vale and right up its deep centre so that even Arthur and his men could hear him, “I have searched for the Knowledge of Britain. I have searched for the power of our ancestors that we abandoned when the Romans came. I have searched for those things that will restore this land to its rightful Gods, its own Gods, our Gods, the Gods who made us and who can be persuaded to come back to help us.” He spoke slowly and simply so that every man could hear and understand. “Now,” he went on, “I need help. I need men with swords, men with spears, men with hearts unafraid, to go with me to an enemy place to find the last Treasure of Britain. I seek the Cauldron of Clyddno Eiddyn. The Cauldron is our power, our lost power, our last hope to make Britain once again into the island of the Gods. I promise you nothing but hardship, I will give you no reward but death, I shall feed you nothing but bitterness, and will give you only gall to drink, but in return I ask for your swords and your lives. Who will come with me to find the Cauldron?”
He asked the question abruptly. We had expected him to talk of this sprawling blood-letting that had turned a green vale red, but instead he had ignored the fight as though it was irrelevant, almost as if he had not even noticed that he had strayed on to a battlefield. “Who?” he asked again.
“Lord Merlin!” Gorfyddyd shouted before any man could respond. The enemy King pushed his horse through the ranks of his kneeling spearmen. “Lord Merlin!” His voice was angry and his face bitter.
“Gorfyddyd,” Merlin acknowledged him.
“Your quest for the Cauldron can wait one short hour?” Gorfyddyd asked the question sarcastically.
“It can wait a year, Gorfyddyd ap Cadell. It can wait five years. It can wait for ever, but it should not.”
Gorfyddyd rode his horse into the open space between the spear-walls. He was seeing his great victory jeopardized and his claim to be the High King threatened by a Druid, and so he turned his horse towards his men, pushed back the cheek pieces of his winged helmet and raised his voice. “There will be time to pledge spears to the Cauldron’s quest,” he called to his men, ‘but only when you have punished the whoremonger and drowned your spears in his men’s souls. I have an oath to fulfill, and I will not let any man, even my Lord Merlin, deflect that oath’s keeping. There can be no peace, no Cauldron, while the whore’s lover lives.” He turned and stared at the wizard. “You would save the whore-lover by this appeal?”