Winter's Blossom: The Seasons of Arthur

Chapter 39

It did not feel like we had won.

Owain's victory had been as complete as any commander could have hoped for. I had thought of Owain rescuing us during the battle while Agravaine and I had battled to survive. I had imagined his men coming like a wedge to where we had held up an army. I had known how a wedge would split the enemy and likely cause them to flee.

Owain had not wanted them to flee. Instead, he had watched first in horror as I had fallen, expecting my death. Then, to his deepening horror he had seen Agravaine run back to what he presumed was to be his immediate death too. And then, astounded, he had watched my wolves and Agravaine's war band of a little under a hundred men had charged into six hundred screaming warriors.

'By God,' Dirandon exclaimed as he sat by the fire. He sounded awed still by the mere memory. 'I've never seen anything like it. One minute the whole line was running for cover and then they turned and charged an army and checked the bastards. It was like something from the songs of old.'

In the mad rush from the trees the Caledonian army had not had time to spread out yet and so my men had met them pretty much head on, and had carved into them. Only slowly had the Caledonians held us up. They had gone around the exposed flanks and through the gaps made from where men had fallen. We had been vulnerable in the melee against an enemy who vastly outnumbered us. We had been heavily armoured, that was what had saved us, each heavily armoured warrior had been worth half a dozen of the ill equipped, bare skinned tribesmen wielding rusty spears, broken swords and scythes.

'Aye.' Dirandon had agreed. 'and as you fell into your small groups and knots the Caledonians surrounded you like you were an island in a sea, and all their attention was fixed on dealing with you first.'

And while their attention was on us Owain had left us to die.

No, that was unfair. He had ruthlessly thrust asides any thoughts of rescue, but nor had he waited for us to be dealt with us first. Instead he had, with the cold callousness of a battle commander, decided to use our desperate fight for survival to his advantage and win a decisive battle rather than a simple skirmish. He would crush them. To do it he had divided the remainder of his two armies even further, splitting them into two columns, one commanded by himself and the other by Pellinore that had swept around on either side of the army that had surrounded his trapped men and reformed their shield walls before driving them in.

'It was a slaughter the like of which I've rarely seen.' Dirandon said. 'Unarmoured, not knowing which way to turn, enemies in between and on every side and only the men on the extremities of the flanks able to escape.

'It was a slaughter.' I had agreed, my voice hollow. A hundred men had been on the piquet line with me. Almost all of them had charged. Fifty-nine of them had died. Of the forty-one survivors, a surprisingly high number of them had been my wolves. They had been in the centre though, had instinctively stayed tighter and had benefitted from being closer to Agravaine and myself and the ruthless efficiency of which we had fought. That said, there were still only twenty-six of them left, meaning fifteen of them had been killed or were dying. Of the forty-one survivors, the strongest, fastest and luckiest bastards of those men, there was not a single man who did not carry a wound. Meanwhile not a single man from Owain nor Pellinore's men had been killed, and only one of Owain's had even suffered an injury when he had tripped on a body and broken his own nose on his own shield.

Owain himself came to see me. He crouched down besides me and tried to personally hand me some bread and meat. There was a lot of it, and I knew he must have given me his rations but I had no gratitude for him, only accusations. 'You abandoned us.' I told him, and my words cut as deep into him as the blades had into my body. He flinched away from me. 'You left us to die. You killed...' I could not say his name. I still could not accept that he was dead. 'You killed everyone. This is all your fault.'