A chapter a day: The Broken Kingdom – Chapter 5
I’ve decided to publish a fresh chapter every weekday for the next month or so of my new Arthurian epic novel The Broken Kingdom. It’s completely free to read, and I am hoping that people will come to this website each day and read the next chapter (of 30) of the story about the legendary hero Arthur, his mother Igraine and sister Morgan, the wizard Merlin, and all the rest of the familiar cast from the legends, plus a few new additions. It’s a fantasy novel, technically, as it has a little light magic and some seriously nasty dragons, but otherwise it is set in a realistic 5th-century Britain, after the Romans have left, which is riven by endless war. Only Arthur and his band of warriors, can hope to mend The Broken Kingdom . . .
Chapter Five
Arthur looked along the line of the spear shaft, at the scowling face of the Rheged warrior at the other end. His primary sensation was astonishment. Then outrage. They had come here on a mission of peace, hoping to heal the rift between Rheged and Dumnonia, between north and south. An honourable marriage mission, bearing gifts.
And then this – this foul treachery. He could feel the anger igniting in his belly, a hot sour flare, a fury that shivered his limbs, and filled his eyes with a reddish glow.
His heartbeat seemed impossibly loud and slow, a giant ponderous drum inside the cave of his chest. The Rhegedian spear point was inches from his face, and in a heartbeat the big scowling man in furs behind it would thrust it into him. Arthur took a moment, perhaps his last moment on earth, to snatch a glance at the princess up on the dais. Her mouth was open in shock and her face was white as chalk. The skinny woman standing next to her had a firm grip on her arm. But she was too far from him.
“No need to draw this thing out,” said King Urien. “Guards . . .”
The bard struck a note on his harp. It was a sad chord, the kind played before the beginning of a lament or tragic tale of death. It was the perfect note to accompany their murders, Arthur thought, but with only half his mind. His body was already moving with the vibration of the chord. His head twisting away from the spear point.
The bard’s note was incongruous enough to command the attention of every man in the hall, just for an instant, but long enough, and in that half-moment, Arthur turned his head and grasped the spear shaft with both hands, hauling it from the surprised guard’s grip. He tugged it free, then immediately lunged back at the man at the other end, the butt slamming into his cheek. The Rheged soldier fell back with a cry. And all around Arthur was motion. He saw the Decurion Julius lurch forward as a spear took him full in the belly, punched in with such force that it went straight through his bronze armour. As Arthur heard the officer grunt, he flipped the stolen spear and drove it into the neck of the man who had just stabbed his friend. The soldier whose spear he had taken was lumbering forward, in fury, his hands reaching out blindly for Arthur – who jumped forward to meet him, grabbed a handful of cloak at the man’s neck and he pulled his face forward and into his own smashing forehead.
Arthur’s skull crashed like a boulder into the man’s face and even as the Rheged spearman was falling, Arthur’s hand was reaching for the sword sheathed at his waist. As he gripped its hilt, Arthur felt the great scalding surge of rage filling his body. His bane. Arthur’s Bane. His greatest weakness, his mother had always told him. It did not feel like a weakness now. He felt faster than a diving hawk, more powerful than a hunting leopard. The man he had butted collapsed, his nose crushed. As he fell in a heap on the hall floor, his heavy iron sword was left unsheathed in Arthur’s hand.
“Kill them, kill them all,” the King’s voice was a mad bull’s bellow.
Arthur looked out at the world through a veil of red. The smallest details were finely etched, the movements of other men comically slow. A spearman lunged at Arthur as if the fellow were half-asleep or drugged. In his heightened state, Arthur saw the spearpoint coming long before it was anywhere near him. He saw the wisp of dark hair on the man’s knuckles where they gripped the spear. He dodged the point with a half-step and twist to the right, and swung the sword in the same movement, a sequence he had practised a thousand times in the yard at Caer Camlann, pounding the crude blade down diagonally into the corner of the lunging fellow’s neck and shoulder, pounding it into him and snapping his collar bone, and felling him at once.
Arthur turned and saw that all of his comrades in the hall were already dead. Julius was curled on the floor around the spear lodged in his belly. Antonius was a huddled bloody mass by the throne, the crop-haired Gwynedd man stood over him, a gory sword in his hands. His four Dumnonian turma-mates now all writhed on the hall floor, pierced through belly and chest by long spears, leaking their life’s blood.
Arthur looked again at his half-sister Morgan. Three men and the thin woman Ceinwyn had her firmly in their grasp and were hustling her away from the hall towards the chamber behind the screen. King Urien was pointing a stubby, be-ringed finger at Arthur and roaring for his immediate death. The young bard had disappeared completely. Half a dozen spearmen were now advancing on him. And there were more warriors behind them. It was no good. He had to run. He could not fight them all. He could not save Morgan. He had to get out of this hall now or he would join his comrades, bloody and broken on the floor with their entrails spilling on the rushes.
Arthur took two running steps, and dived at the feet of the spearman nearest the door to the hall, he rolled and rose in one fluid movement jamming the iron sword point into the man’s groin as he came up. The man screamed as Arthur tore his blade loose from his lower belly, and ripped the spear from his unresisting hands. There was only one man between him and the door now, a fair-haired fellow with a sword in his hand twenty yards away. Arthur hefted the spear, he pulled back his arm and hurled it at the fair man, and it smacked into his chest and knocked him clean off his feet. Arthur was already running for the square hole behind him. He leapt over the fallen man, screams of rage pushing at his back, batted another fellow out of the way and burst out of the hall and into the night, the bloody sword still gripped in his fist.
There was no time for thought.
He saw that the thatched roof of the ramshackle barn across the courtyard where the rest of the turma was sheltering was aflame. Their hosts were trying to burn them alive! There were several figures struggling outside the open door. He saw the round familiar shape of Bagdemagus wrestling with a Rheged spearman, and his fat comrade threw the man to the ground, and a knife flashed with firelight in the darkness. But a pair of enemy spearmen rushed forward, their faces hellishly ruddy in the glow, and shoved Bagdemagus back with their shields, away from the fallen man, back inside the burning building, the fat legionary tripped on the doorstep and fell into the barn. The spearmen slammed the door closed, locking the turma man inside.
Arthur was by now half way across the courtyard. He made no sound as he attacked. Gave no war cry, he merely slammed his iron sword into the back of the neck of the nearest man. The blade stuck fast in his spine. The second Rheged man turned, shrieked in fear, and lunged with his sword at Arthur, who dodged the strike.
The Dumnonian swung the wounded man around, the man in whom his sword was still lodged, swung him round to face his own comrade. Arthur put his right boot in the stricken man’s lower back, and shoved him hard towards the other fellow.
The dying man came off the sword wedged in his neck and stumbled towards his comrade, his wobbling legs failing him. They both fell in a tangle of limbs, the dying man’s weight hobbling the living. Arthur stepped in and chopped across at the top of second man’s head, ripping off half his scalp with the blow and opening up his skull.
Then the door. He plunged the sword point first into the packed earth of the courtyard, and seized the door with both hands. It was barred by a simple rotating flat strip of iron, and as Arthur turned it, lifting it out of the bracket, he felt the intense heat in the metal, almost making it untouchable. What must it be like inside? There was shouting now coming from behind him. Angry voices. The King was bellowing.
The door was open and out rushed Bagdemagus, a knife in his hand, a ferocious grimace on his soot-blackened face. He stooped dead and stared at Arthur, blinking.
“The others?” said Arthur. But he needed no answer. A second figure came blundering out of the doorway, a big fellow named Bors, who scarcely looked at Arthur and instead immediately bent to the fallen Rheged men and scooped up shield and spear. Another man came tumbling out coughing like a beggar-hag – Caradoc. He still wore his sword at his waist. And more behind him, pushing, shoving to get out of the smoke-reeking darkness inside, most of them clutching weapons of some kind.
Arthur retrieved his sword, and looked back again at the great hall. There were dozens of Rheged warriors there now, with fiery torches. He could make out Urien, his golden crown winking in the red light. Spears, shields. Naked swords gleaming. More warriors were emerging from huts around the caer’s perimeter. Too many.
Arthur’s mind was blank. He had no plan. No plan but to fight. To die fighting.
He looked wildly left towards the main gate, the big wooden double-doors through which they had entered only a few hours previously. There were knots of men standing before them, a score at least. And more gathered on the ramparts. He scanned to the yard. The shields before the hall had multiplied. They were coming.
He looked to his right and saw a lone figure in a brilliant white robe, standing between two huts. Something about the man arrested Arthur’s gaze. The man had a lit torch blazing redly in one hand and he was beckoning. To Arthur. Come here! Come!
A line of poetry rose in Arthur’s mind. “I met my love by the east gate, the secret gate, the east gate . . .” The bard had sung it – and it had seemed strange at the time, and oddly random, a meaningless ditty. But there was the same bard now. In the east of the courtyard, beckoning to Arthur. He had no plan. No other plan, anyway.
“Follow me,” he said, glancing quickly behind him. There were a dozen figures outside the barn now, most armed, some armoured, a few shields, some still bent over their bellies, racked, convulsing, coughing up filth from their smoke-corrupted lungs.
“This way,” said Arthur. “Hurry! Hurry!”
All who could ran across the courtyard, sprinted eastwards; towards the man in the shining robe on that side. The Rheged men in front of the hall were beginning to spread out, making a line, and sweeping across to meet them. Two of the last turma men to emerge, Lamiel and Cador, were even now just blundering madly out of the inferno. They were coughing badly, retching, disorientated, confused. They were last the emerge from that burning barn – the last who ever would – weak and tottering out into the middle of the courtyard. And this is where the Rheged wolves caught them.
Cador got in one good sword blow before he was felled by a hail of steel, and Lamiel blocked a spear-strike with his oval shield, but they were both soon in the middle of a maelstrom, curled on the beaten earth ground, surrounded by shouting, stabbing, gleeful enemies who chopped down into their prone bodies without mercy.
Arthur spared them only one quick, backwards glance as he ran, and suddenly he was face to face with the young bard. He was breathless, but there was no time for talk anyway. The bard pointed at a doorway that led into a small, low, strongly-built hut, fashioned from stout logs, that abutted the high perimeter wall, and Arthur – instinctively trusting the man, despite his odd white garb and otherworldly manner – simply nodded and stepped trustingly into the dark space.
Bagdemagus was beside him, his bulk making for easy identification, then another man – Caradoc, perhaps, Arthur thought he saw a profile of his beard – and then Bors and a host of others. Hywel, Lucan, Agravaine, Melais, more besides. Arthur blundered blindly forward, to make space, holding out both arms, and hit the far wall.
Then the bard was inside the hut with them – it was now a very crowed space – with his burning torch. He handed the brand to Gawain, one of the youngest of the turma, and after a glance out of the door, slammed it shut and slid the locking bar across.
“Wait!” said Arthur.
“What the fuck!” shouted Bors. He had a drawn sword in his fist, and he was glaring at the bard. “You’ve just trapped us again, you cunning bastard!”
Bors struggled to get through the crush to the bard, who was still by the door.
“Be silent,” said the bard, holding up a single commanding finger. “Shut your mouth and make a space for me. I am Taliesin, by the way. And you are welcome.”
Arthur could heard the shouts of the Rheged men outside the barred door, then the thuds of axes, or swords against the wood. Foul curses, too. A scraping sound.
“Make way, all of you, let me pass,” said Taliesin, pushing through the crowd of frightened Dumnonians. He got to the back wall and called out: “Bring that light!”
And there it was. Another door. Cut into the log wall. Made from the very same material so that it was difficult to make out. Heavy iron bolts at head and ankle height holding the portal secure. Taliesin wrestled with them. And Agravaine knelt to help him slide back the lower one. And the door was swinging open on to utter darkness.
They ran down the steep slope on the eastern side of the caer, all of them in a flood, with Taliesin in the lead, and nothing to light their way on the dark and dew-wet grass but a sickle moon, leaving the door in the palisade wide open behind them.
Down into the valley, they ran, slipping, falling, bumping their arses, but getting up again and continuing as fast as they could pump their terror-fuelled legs. Down the slope and across its marshy bottom; up the other side towards woods at top of a hill.
At the crest, they paused in the tree line, all panting, and breathless, and Arthur looked back across the small valley at the looming Palace of Penrith. There was a red light in the door to the hut now. The men of Rheged had clearly battered open the entrance to the hut and broken in. Arthur could see a figure of a spearman outlined under the lintel, his head questing this way and that. But there was no pursuit – not yet, at least. He looked at the black sky. Dawn was still a good many hours away. They must hurry – they must put as much distance as possible between them and King Urian’s killers. Men were spilling out the doorway now, men with blades, the bare metal reflected in the torchlight. Orders were bring shouted. They would know exactly where the Dumnonians had gone. And they would surely follow the fugitives.
Arthur turned to Taliesin and said: “Are you coming with us – or not?”
The bard shrugged. “I can’t go back there.” He jerked his thumb at the caer.
“Yes, right, good,” said Arthur. “You have my thanks, by the way. You saved us all.” Then: “Let’s go! Everyone. Turma, on me. Now.” And he turned and ran fast into the depths of the wood, with the rest of the Dumnonian men straggling after him.
They ran all night and for a good part of the morning. But Arthur knew that Urien’s men would soon be mounted and he knew that his only chance of survival lay in hiding from the searcher. He thought about Morgan a good deal as they thumped along in the darkness, legs aching, lungs burning over unfamiliar woods and fields. Had she been killed too? Or would Urien hold her as a prisoner. No, the King had said he was going to make a gift of her to Angharad of Gwynedd. Arthur shuddered at that thought. It meant war, of course. Uthur would not stand for this insult to his men and his daughter. All the High King’s efforts to make a lasting peace were in ruins.
Arthur pushed all these thoughts from his mind and ran on.
One man called Lucan sat down during one of the hourly pauses, and when Arthur gave the order to march again, he remained seated. Dead. His heart had failed.
They ran east until the sun was high in the sky – inside his secret heart, Arthur was surprised at their stamina. The bard Taliesin, too, ran like a fallow deer, never seeming to tire. Was that magic? Arthur wondered. Everyone knew that bards were touched with a special kind of power. Their songs and poems came from the old gods – Christians had no time for such frivolity – and they could sometimes be like spells cast over an audience, holding every man in thrall to the music and the words. Magic.
As noon came nearer, Arthur spied a big structure beside a narrow, swift-flowing river. As they came closer he saw that it had been badly burnt and was little more than a ruin of a building. But they all badly needed to rest. They approached cautiously, weapons are the ready, and, as they came close, it became clear what the building had once been: a watermill. The place where the local Rheged farmers would have come to have their grain milled into flour. But someone had attacked it, with in the last few weeks. Probably Estronwyr. They came across the rotting corpse of a long-dead person, they could not tell whether it was man or woman since some wild animal had since feasted eagerly on it flesh – more than one animal, most likely.
The mill had been set on fire, probably by marauders from the east, and partially destroyed. But there was still a roof of sorts and the remains of an upper storey. The men of the turma gratefully slumped down inside the mill, taking off their boots and massaging their aching feet. Someone fetched water from the river, and all the men took a long, welcome draught. Bagdemagus, who had been rooting around restlessly, gave a sudden joyous cry and emerged from a storeroom carrying a heavy sack of something – the remains of a large bag of milled flour. The rain-damaged top part was congealed into a hard mouldy crust, and the bottom was soggy, too. But after careful sifting, Bagdemagus managed to find a few pounds of wholesome flour, and mixing it with river water he shaped it into several rough cakes or loaves to bake beside the fire. Soon the comforting smell of baking bread filled the entire building.
Arthur posted a lookout in the upper story of the mill, and sat down on a rickety stool beside the huge millstone. This great round slab, and another of equal size underneath it, had crashed down from the upper storey when the supporting floor had collapsed, weakened by the fire. Or perhaps it had been tipped on top of an attacker, Arthur did not know, and did not care. It made a decent table at which he could lay out what meagre possessions he had. Some copper coins in his purse, a flint and steel, a small sharp eating knife, a coil of thread and a pair of needles, a flask of oil, two buttons, a fishing line and a small whetstone . . . Arthur sat at the round surface, laid out his belongings, and began to clean his stolen iron sword, with a scrap of cloth. It was a nasty crude implement, with several notches in the edge, heavy, rusty – but it had proved its worth. So Arthur tended to it with care, oiling the length and trying to smooth the worst of the notches. He knew he might well have need of it soon.
Taliesin came and squatted next to him, watching him at his work.
“They need a leader,” he said quietly. “And that man is clearly you.”
Arthur looked at the bard but said nothing. He continued scraping at the blade.
“They also need a mission. A reason to carry on. You must give them that, too.”
“Who are you?” said Arthur. “Why did you help us?”
“I am Taliesin,” the bard said.
“I know. But who are you? How did you know about the secret gate?”
“Merlin sent me,” Taliesin said. “We have known each other a long time. He asked me to visit Penrith and keep an eye on you. I heard them talking of what they would do when you came here. That fellow Angharad of Gwynedd, the Prince of Ynys Mon, was boasting that he would slaughter you all himself. I did what I could out of friendship to Merlin. Now I must leave. I have urgent business in Elmet. A competition of bards: an eisteddfod. I desire their golden crown. I will take it, too.”
“You are leaving us?”
“I’m no warrior, Arthur. I am no use to you. It is a time for swords, not songs.”
“But you have knowledge, wisdom, you could help . . .”
“I must leave. You must lead them. You will know what to do. And Merlin will help, if he can. He has far more knowledge and wisdom than I do. I wish you luck.”
Arthur watched Taliesin as he walked out of the mill, his robe still as white as swan’s plumage. There was magic, if you like. After all the mud-spattered running.
Merlin, he thought. The irritating old man everyone feared. Arthur had known him all his life – he had been, until recently, a regular guest at Caer Camlann. They said he as a sorcerer. But Arthur had spoken to him only a handful of times. What had Merlin the Sorcerer to do with this bloody mess at Penrith? Arthur could not guess.
Bagdemagus came over to the millstone with a tray of small, hard, slightly burnt loaves. But the smell was still intoxicating. Arthur realised that he had not eaten for most of a full day. Dusk was falling and the surviving men of the turma gathered around the great stone, some sitting on their cloaks, some squatting, a lucky few sitting on stools. They broke open the steaming bread and passed the pieces round the table to each other; they drank river water from a cracked jug: the mood was sombre.
Arthur looked around the makeshift table at these men: there was Bors, still angry at Rheged’s treachery, his brow dark and furrowed; there was Agravine, blond as an Estronwyr, chewing his bread and looking at the millstone, and Bagdemagus, beaming at everyone, in the triumph of having produced some hot food for them all.
And there was Bedevere and Hywel, Caradoc and Yvaine, Erec and Geraint and young Gawain . . . There were eleven young legionaries sat around that large round table, including Arthur. And Galahad on the top floor keeping a watch over them all.
Twelve exhausted warriors in a burnt-out building in the northern wilderness.
“What now?” said Gawain, stealing a crust of bread from the pile in front of Bagdemagus. “To Dumnonia? Back to Caer Camlann, our tails between our legs?”
“No,” said Arthur, quietly but firmly. “No – we are not going to go home yet. At least, I am not going home yet.”
Every eye around the table was fixed on Arthur. Silence filled the whole space.
“What then?” asked Dagonet. He looked exhausted, his face pale and strained.
“Our mission was to guard the Princess Morgan. We failed her. Shamefully.”
“But what could we have done?” said Erec. “There were hundreds of them . . .”
“I don’t know. But I do know I am not going home,” said Arthur. “I abandoned my sister – who was in my charge, under my protection. I left her in danger. So I am going back to Penrith to fetch her out of that place. I ask any of you who would be my friend and comrade, any man who is precious of his honour, to come with me.”
“What!” the whole table broke into a babble of sound, too many voices for sense. “Have you lost your mind?” and “No, by God!” and “What madness is this?”
Arthur looked slowly round the table in one long sweeping glance. The men of the turma gradually fell silent. “I shall go back to the Palace of Penrith to rescue my sister,” he said. “I invite you to come with me. Together we shall redeem our honour.”
Chapter Six
Morgan ap Uthur sat on the edge of the huge bed behind the wicker screen and listened to the sounds of carousing coming from the great hall in the Palace of Penrith. Urien, King of Rheged, was feasting his warriors and his honoured guest – Angharad of Gwynedd, Prince of Ynys Mon – on the eve of that prince’s departure.
To be continued tomorrow.
If you would like to read the complete story of The Broken Kingdom, either as an eBook, or paperback, or listen to the audio version, it is available now from Amazon. Follow the link here.
If you enjoyed this free extract from the book but would like to buy me a cup of coffee or a pint to say thank you, I will most gratefully accept. Visit the Ko-Fi website here to show your appreciation for my work. Thank you very much!
Angus Donald’s has also written an epic five-book Viking series, published by Canelo, which begins with The Last Berserker (Fire Born 1). He is the author of the Outlaw Chronicles, which kicks off with Outlaw, published by Little, Brown. He is currently writing the 11th Robin Hood novel in that bestselling series.