Trapped

by Doug Pugh

conclusion

Edrich approached, face striped with charcoal smears, confidence showing in the brusqueness of his walk, a man now ready to win a battle, despite any odds.

‘Their raiding parties and scouts?’ Huw asked.

‘Beaten back by a small wall of arrows, young Master. There is other news, too. The fire has been set on the next hill. Idris has got through their lines with the message. Cynnglann will know of our plight.’

‘Good! We are on our way to roasting some Saxons then, and our Lord will be coming to a feast!’

‘Oh, that he will,’ Edrich laughed. ‘Our men on the flanks below tell me that the very hill looks like a furnace of the gods with all the fire on its crest. It seems the druids and priests of the Saxons are having a hard time goading their troops to come up the path.’

‘Nothing like an overly large meal to upset your digestion!’ smiled Huw. ‘How did you fare on making that ballista?’

‘It’ll work to a degree. Nothing fancy, but I’d venture that no soldier will attack anything that spews out guts and entrails!’ The buckets of guts and intestines from all the slaughtered animals had been held back and added to the dung and urine that was normally retained for treating and tanning leather.

‘Let’s hope we defeat or hold them before we starve ourselves!’

Edrich laughed back. ‘Waste good cooked meat on them? That’s definitely the last resort!’

All humour had disappeared two long days later. It had been replaced by a dogged hope that Lord Cynnglann would soon be here. The first palisade had held past that first morning, the second late into the afternoon. The cost had only been two warriors. Surprised shock at the burning grease trap behind the first palisade had led to greater caution from the Saxons whilst taking the second. They tried instead to outflank the palisade in the defile of the winding path. Their bowmen had made the best of this, and though hugely depleting what arrows they had, had managed to immobilize swathes of Saxons.

A nighttime foray by two men tested the resolve of the Saxons holding the palisade. They’d been rebuffed, both men heavily injured by the thrown axes of the Saxons, and lucky indeed to have made their way back to the shelter of the earthworks.

The second day saw the first wave of Saxons repulsed by the smoke pots, acrid fumes causing them to run back to their lines, now firmly entrenched by the second palisade, and the later addition of flung excrement and guts.

Their wizards and priests walked back through this deluge, slipping and scrabbling in the mess, spitting out curses and doing strange one-legged dances that supposedly frightened away the evil power of the wizard’s charms. Bear and bull skulls, stuck on branch tips draped in beads, were shaken at the earthworks.

Merlin shouted at them in derision. ‘Killed a cow did they? Such brave cow killers from the northern seas! I spit on you! I spit on your gods! I spit on you all!’ He turned on the battlements of the earthwork, hoisted his tattered gown, bared his wrinkled old arse and blew forth a fart of quite impressive, if more than a little odious, magnitude.

‘If that doesn’t scare them, I don’t know what will!’ smiled Edrich.

A cheer rose from the earthworks as a wizard from the Saxon lines was singed by the near passage of a burning arrow. He turned to run from its range and slipped on the treacherous stones, falling face first into a pile of intestines. A hastily arranged line of farting arses was ordered back behind the shelter of the wall by the marshalling Edrich.

‘Fart at them all you like, but don’t ever risk your neck for the small pleasure!’ Edrich shook his head at Huw. ‘Stupid buggers! Once we are safe they can do that all they want.’

‘Safe? Think we can hold them the rest of today and tonight? Assuming, of course, that our Lord’s first troops get here by then.’ Huw asked.

Edrich followed Huw’s eyes to the sun dipping low towards the hills in the west. ‘Today? No problem! Tonight? Probably. By lunch tomorrow, if there’s no help here, we might be lunch ourselves!’

Sun rose over the intact earthworks, and Huw slumped against the banked walls shielding the gateway. His arms ached, the sword trailing its blood sodden tip on the trampled turf, the shield dangling from a hand knotted in cramps every time he tried to lift it. They all wore pieces of cloth across their noses and mouths, fighting to find clean air to breathe between the stench of the fires that Merlin and his huddle of children and women stoked around the encampment.

‘A last throw of fate’s dice,’ Merlin had said when questioned, before disappearing into the shelter of his tent.

The Saxons were massing for one last charge, the one that would sweep the encampment clean of all Celtic life. The Saxons knew it, and worst of all, Huw’s warriors knew it.

But there was suddenly a glittering trail of torches pouring down from the hillside across the valley. Lord Cynnglann! Huw heard muttering from the Saxon ranks, knowing they had seen, too. Their line started to break in both directions, some trying to retreat before the vengeance of Cynnglann, others anxious to capture the earthworks before that happened.

Huw wedged his sword into the soil and hung his shield upon it, flexed his shoulders, feeling his muscles protesting.

‘Cynnglann would be proud of you lad!’ Edrich clapped his brawny hand on Huw’s shoulder. ‘And will be more yet! Let these Saxon whores try us one more time, then they will be crushed beneath the horses and spears of a Celtic charge.’

Merlin rushed up to Huw.

‘A word in your ear. Can you grant me one favour, young Master?’

‘Kill you before the Saxon wizards have you?’ offered Edrich, teasingly lifting the hilt of his sword from its scabbard.

‘No, fool! These Saxons will taste the breath of the dragon before our Lord gets here! Young Master, could I ask you to withdraw from the gate just as the Saxons enter it? Step away and dive to the floor, no matter what you see!’

‘But that is when a sword is most needed, when the enemy is right upon us!’ Edrich looked at the Druid in disbelief.

‘Trust me? Young Master, I promise you my next fart will be one the Saxons will regret the most!’

Something about Merlin’s surety struck a chord with Huw. The Druid meant it. He had something planned, the last cast of the dice of the Gods, and if any man in this ring of earth and fire knew the Gods, then this was he.

‘I trust you Merlin. That is indeed what we will do. May your links with the Gods help us now.’ Huw looked at Edrich who strode over to the eastern pillar of the gateway, shaking his head at the lunacy. Merlin scampered away into the billows of smoke as Huw hefted his sword and shield onto his arms one last time.

The crash of Saxon axes and shields against the gateway bowed the timbers, spears struck through gaps, and the gateposts themselves sagged at the weight and ferocity that sought entry. Arrows and stones picked off those few that braved the heights of the earth wall on their own, desperate chances to seek individual glory obliterated by feathered shafts and sharp edged flints.

The timbers began to break before the press of bodies, splinters flew inwards towards the inner sanctum of the earthwork. Huw and Edrich glanced away from the deadly hail.

‘It’s failing!’ Edrich cried, as the timbers bowed further. A cracking noise resounded through the air, and the bolster itself, torn in two, flew through the air into the keep of the earthwork.

Huw cast himself to the ground, rolling further away from the gate, watching intently for the first Saxon warriors to attack him.

‘Dragonnnn!!!’ Merlin’s voice boomed, rising over the din of battle and the victorious cries of the Saxon pillagers.

Hanging in the dense smoke over the smitten gateway was a dragon, silhouetted in scarlet, its wings rolling in the clouds of rising smoke.

The Saxon host stood still, their victory cries frozen in their mouths as they looked upwards at the apparition.

‘Beware its breath and fart!’ Merlin boomed again

Huw watched a fire of sparks tear through the image of the dragon, its illusion shattered before its breath of flame, and rolled to shield himself from its horror. Cries of anguish and screams of purest agony rose from the front of the Saxon ranks. Huw felt the hairs on the back of his neck burn under the vengeance of the Dragon.

Minutes passed. Huw dared to look up and saw the gateway cleared of all but writhing bodies before the entrance. Children and women dashed in frenzy, plunging knives and daggers into those that lay stricken on the ground. More Saxons started to enter and the women and children withdrew, hiding in the plumes of smoke.

‘Dragon’s breath on you!’ Merlin’s powerful voice rolled around the amphitheatre over all noises that the subdued Saxons retained. Another huge shower of sparks surged through the gateway, washing over the Saxons who wilted under its power. Huw rolled until he was against the earthwork, shield held over his head, as stinging agonies of sparks showered over the other side.

‘Magic!’ Merlin stated.

‘Magic, my arse!’ said Edrich. ‘I know the secret of the Dragon, you old meddler!’

‘Really?’

Edrich held his hands to the fire’s flame, as if to warm them, then casually hooked his thumbs together and flapped his hands. A silhouette materialized against the walls of the tent. ‘Even I can make a bird!’

‘But not, it seems, a dragon!’ Merlin smugly grinned back at him. Edrich growled.

‘And the dragon’s breath, that was just the embers from the fires we had all around the encampment, launched from Edrich’s ballista,’ offered Huw.

‘You can’t serve a meal without burning a little something as an offering,’ smiled Merlin

‘The only time I’ve ever welcomed one of your farts, Merlin,’ Edrich grudgingly admitted. ‘That’s a novel way of doing it.’

‘Though it may take him longer to recover from!’ laughed Huw, pointing at the poultice on Edrich’s scalded head.

‘I’ll be glad when the stink has gone. It’s like carrying a dead hedgehog round with you. What on earth’s in this bloody poultice anyway, oh wise one?’ muttered Edrich.

‘That’s for the wise ones to know and keep.’

‘What I don’t understand is how you made your voice so loud? That was truly magical!’ teased Huw.

‘Magic it was, and magic it must remain, young Master’ Merlin looked wryly at the new conical hat he had taken to wearing, placed it on his head and wandered off.

‘Strange bugger, that one,’ mused Edrich. ‘I’m glad he’s on our side, though, and not theirs!’

Huw nodded and blew his nose.