“Edge back!” Owain ordered us. He would try to shuffle slowly backwards across the half-mile of grassland to Caer Cadarn, hoping that the Silurians would not raise the courage to make their charge while we completed that pitifully slow journey. To give us more time Owain strode ahead of our line and shouted at Gundleus to fight him man to man. “Are you a woman, Gundleus?” our King’s champion called. “Lost your courage? Not enough mead? Why don’t you go back to your weaving loom, woman? Go back to your embroidery! Go back to your spindle!”
We shuffled back, shuffled back, shuffled back, but suddenly a charge of the enemy made us stand firm and duck behind our shields as the spears were hurled. One whipped over my head, its passage sounding like a sudden rush of wind, but again the attack was a feint intended to panic us. Ligessac was firing arrows, but he must have been drunk for his shots went wildly overhead. Owain was a target for a dozen spears, but most missed and the others he swept contemptuously aside with spear or shield before mocking the throwers. “Who taught you spear-craft? Your mothers?” He spat towards the enemy. “Come Gundleus! Fight me! Show your scullions you’re a king, not a mouse!”
The Silurians beat spear-shafts on their shields to drown Owain’s taunts. He turned his back to show them his scorn and walked slowly back to our shield-line. “Back,” he called to us softly, ‘back.”
Then two of the Silurians threw down their shields and weapons and tore off their clothes to fight naked. My neighbour spat. “There’ll be trouble now,” he warned me grimly.
The naked men were probably drunk, or else so intoxicated by the Gods that they believed no enemy blade could hurt them. I had heard of such men and knew that their suicidal example was usually the signal for a real attack. I gripped my sword and tried to make a vow to die well, but in truth I could have wept for the pity of it all. I had become a man this day, and now I would die. I would join Uther and Hywel in the Otherworld and there wait through the shadowed years until my soul found another human body in which to return to this green world.
The two men unbound their hair, took up their spears and swords, then danced in front of the Silurian line. They howled as they worked themselves into the battle frenzy; that state of mindless ecstasy that will let a man try any feat. Gundleus, sitting his horse beneath his banner, smiled at the two men whose bodies were intricately tattooed with blue patterns. The children were crying behind us and our women were calling to the Gods as the men danced nearer and nearer, their spears and swords whirling in the evening sun. Such men had no need of shields, clothes or armour. The Gods were their protection and glory was their reward, and if they succeeded in killing Owain then the bards would sing of their victory for years to come. They advanced one on each side of our champion who hefted his spear as he prepared to meet their frenzied attack which would also mark the moment when the whole enemy line would charge.
And then the horn sounded.
The horn gave a clear, cold note like none I had ever heard before. There was a purity to that horn, a chill hard purity like nothing else on all the earth. It sounded once, it sounded twice, and the second call was enough to give even the naked men pause and make them turn towards the east from where the sound had come.
I looked too.
And I was dazzled. It was as though a new bright sun had risen on that dying day. The light slashed over the pastures, blinding us, confusing us, but then the light slid on and I saw it was merely the reflection of the real sun glancing from a shield polished bright as a mirror. But that shield was held by such a man as I had never seen before; a man magnificent, a man lifted high on a great horse and accompanied by other such men; a horde of wondrous men, plumed men, armoured men, men sprung from the dreams of the Gods to come to this murderous field, and over the men’s plumed heads there floated a banner I would come to love more than any banner on all God’s earth. It was the banner of the bear.