“Dead,” Morgan answered for me. “Slain by Gundleus.” She spat through the mouth-slit of her mask towards the captured King who was being held a few paces away.
“Hywel dead?” Arthur asked the question of me, his eyes on mine, and I nodded and blinked back tears and Arthur instantly hugged me. “You are a good man, Derfel,” he said, ‘and I owe you a reward for saving our King’s life. What do you want?”
“To be a warrior, Lord,” I said.
He smiled and stepped away from me. “You’re a lucky man, Derfel, because you are what you want to be. Lord Owain?” He turned to the burly, tattooed champion. “Can you use this good Saxon warrior?”
“I can use him.” Owain agreed readily enough.
“Then he’s your man,” Arthur said, and he must have sensed my disappointment for he turned back and rested a hand on my shoulder. “For the moment, Derfel,” he said softly, “I employ horsemen, not spearmen. Let Owain be your lord, for there’s no one better to teach you the soldier’s trade.” He gripped my shoulder with his gloved hand, then turned and waved the two guards away from Gundleus’s side. A crowd had gathered close to the captured King who stood beneath the victors’ banners. Arthur’s horsemen, helmed with iron, armoured in iron-clad leather and cloaked in linen or wool, mingled with Owain’s spearmen and the Tor’s fugitives about the grassy space where Arthur now faced Gundleus.
Gundleus straightened his back. He had no weapons, but he would not let go of his pride, nor did he flinch as Arthur approached.
Arthur walked in silence until he stood two paces from the captured King. The crowd held its breath. Gundleus was shadowed by Arthur’s standard that showed a black bear on a white field. The bear was flying between Mordred’s recaptured dragon banner and Owain’s boar standard, while at Gundleus’s feet was his own fallen fox banner that had been spat on, pissed on and trampled by the victors. Gundleus stared as Arthur drew Excalibur from its scabbard. The blade had a bluish tinge to its steel that was polished as brightly as Arthur’s scale coat, helmet or shield.
We waited for the fatal stroke, but instead Arthur dropped to one knee and held Excalibur’s hilt to Gundleus. “Lord King,” he said humbly and the crowd, who had been anticipating Gundleus’s death, gasped.
Gundleus hesitated for a heartbeat, then reached out to touch the sword’s pommel. He said nothing. Perhaps he was too astonished to speak.
Arthur stood and sheathed the sword. “I took an oath to protect my King,” he said, ‘not to kill kings. What happens to you, Gundleus ap Meilyr, is not mine to decide, but you will be held captive till the decision is made.”
“Who makes that decision?” Gundleus demanded. Arthur hesitated, plainly unsure of the answer. Many of our warriors were shouting for Gundleus’s death, Morgan was urging her brother to avenge Norwenna while Nimue was shrieking for the captive King to be given to her revenge, but Arthur shook his head. Much later he explained to me that Gundleus was a cousin of Gorfyddyd, King of Powys, and that made Gundleus’s death a matter of state, not revenge. “I wanted to make peace, and peace rarely comes out of revenge,” he admitted to me, ‘but I probably should have killed him. Not that it would have made much difference.” Now though, facing Gundleus in the slanting sun outside Caer Cadarn, he merely said that Gundleus’s fate was in the hands of Dumnonia’s council.
“And what of Ladwys?” Gundleus asked, gesturing towards the tall, pale-faced woman who stood close behind him with a look of terror on her face. “I ask that she be allowed to stay with me,” he added.
“The whore is mine,” Owain said harshly. Ladwys shook her head and moved closer to Gundleus.
“She is my wife!” Gundleus protested to Arthur, thereby confirming the old rumour that he had indeed married his low-born lover. Which also meant that he had married Norwenna falsely, though that sin, considering what else he did to her, was small indeed.
“Wife or whatever,” Owain insisted, ‘she is mine.” He saw Arthur’s hesitation. “Until the council decides otherwise,” he added in a deliberate echo of Arthur’s invocation of that higher authority.