Still no one answered though, God knows, enough men in our hastily aligned ranks must have feared that Gundleus spoke the truth.
The Silurian King lifted the helmet from his long hair and smiled at our plight. “You may all live,” he promised, ‘so long as you give me the child.” He waited for an answer that did not come. “Who leads you?” he finally asked.
“I do!” Owain at last pushed through the ranks to take his place in front of our shield-line.
“Owain.” Gundleus recognized him, and I thought I saw a flicker of fear in Gundleus’s eyes. Like us he had not known that Owain had returned to the heart of Dumnonia. Yet Gundleus was still confident of victory even though he must have known that with Owain among his enemies that victory would be much harder. “Lord Owain,” Gundleus said giving Dumnonia’s champion his proper title, ‘son of Eilynon and grandson of Culwas. I salute you!” Gundleus raised his spear tip towards the sun. “You have a son, Lord Owain.”
“Many men have sons,” Owain answered carelessly. “What is it to you?”
“Do you want your boy to be fatherless?” Gundleus asked. “Do you want your lands wasted? Your home burned? Do you want your wife to be my men’s plaything?”
“My wife,” Owain said, ‘could outfight all your men, and you too. You want playthings, Gundleus? Go back to your whore’ he jerked his chin towards Ladwys – ‘and if you won’t share your whore with your men then Dumnonia can spare Siluria a few lonely ewes.” Owain’s defiance cheered us. He looked indomitable with his massive spear, long sword and iron-plated shield. He always fought bare headed, disdaining a helmet, and his hugely muscled arms were tattooed with Dumnonia’s dragon and his own symbol of a long-tusked boar.
“Yield me the child.” Gundleus ignored the insults, knowing they were merely the defiance expected of a man facing battle. “Give me the crippled King!”
“Give me your whore, Gundleus,” Owain retorted. “You’re not man enough for her. Give her to me and you can go in peace.”
Gundleus spat. “The bards will sing of your death, Owain. The song of the pig-sticking.”
Owain thrust his huge spear butt-first into the soil. “Here the pig stands, Gundleus ap Meilyr, King of Siluria,” he shouted, ‘and here the pig will either die or piss on your corpse. Now go!”
Gundleus smiled, shrugged and turned his horse away. He also turned his shield the right side up, letting us know that we would have a fight.
It was my first battle.
The Dumnonian horsemen formed behind our line of spears to protect the women and children so long as they could. The rest of us arrayed ourselves in the battle line and watched as our enemies did the same. Ligessac, the traitor, was among the Silurian ranks. Tanaburs performed the rites, hopping on one leg and with one hand raised and one eye closed in front of Gundleus’s shield-wall as it advanced slowly across the grassland. Only when Tanaburs had cast his protective spell did the Silurians begin to shout insults at us. They warned us of the massacre to come and boasted how many of us they would kill, yet even so I noticed how slowly they came and, when they were only fifty paces away, how they stopped altogether. Some of our men jeered at their timidity, but Owain growled at us to be silent.
The battle lines stared at each other. Neither moved.
It takes extraordinary courage to charge into a line of shields and spears. That is why so many men drink before the fight. I have seen armies pause for hours while they summon the courage to charge, and the older the warrior the more courage is needed. Young troops will charge and die, but older men know how terrible an enemy shield-wall can be. I had no shield, yet I was covered by the shields of my neighbours, and their shields touched others and so on down our small line so that any man charging home would be met by a wall of leather-covered wood bristling with razor-sharp spears.
The Silurians began beating their shields with their spear-staffs. The rattling sound was meant to unsettle us, and it did, though none on our side showed the fear. We just huddled together, waiting for the charge. “There’ll be some false charges first, lad,” my neighbour warned me, and no sooner had he spoken than a group of Silurians ran screaming from their line and hurled their long spears at the centre of our defence. Our men crouched and the long spears banged home into our shields and suddenly the whole Silurian line was moving forward, but Owain immediately ordered our line to stand and march forward too and that deliberate motion checked the enemy’s threatened attack. Those of our men whose shields were cumbered with the enemy spears wrenched the weapons loose, then made the shield-wall whole again.