Arthur, King. William Speir
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want to agree with you, Uther,” he said glumly.
“Then don’t, old friend,” Uther said gently. “Agree to disagree. We want different men to be High King. That’s all. There are no quarrels between you and me. Don’t let a difference of opinion change that. You’re my ally and my friend, and our heirs will be allies and friends long after we’re gone.”
Uther held out his hand. Ceretic looked at the hand and then at Uther’s face. Nodding, he grasped Uther’s forearm.
Uther was about to embrace his old friend when he heard riders approaching. Ceretic released Uther’s arm.
“What treachery is this Uther?” Ceretic demanded, reaching for his sword.
“Wait, Ceretic,” Uther barked. “This is not my doing.”
Ceretic and Uther looked around, trying to see the riders. A moment later, three riders appeared behind Ceretic, and one dismounted as soon as he saw the two kings.
“Forgive me, my Lords,” the rider said approaching them. “Picts are pouring across the northeastern border of Strathclyde!”
“In what strength?” Ceretic demanded.
“Vast, my Lord. Thousands of them in three columns.”
“Where are they headed?”
“Here, my Lord.”
“Here?” Uther asked.
The rider nodded.
Another rider approached from the direction of Uther’s army. He dismounted and approached the kings.
“Lord Uther, Picts are invading Gododdin!”
“Are they heading here?” Uther demanded.
The rider looked shocked. “Yes, my Lord. How did you know?”
Uther ignored the question. “When will they arrive?”
“Four, maybe five hours, my Lord.”
Uther looked at Ceretic. “This is why our alliance and friendship are more important than a difference in opinion.”
“But why are they coming here?” Ceretic asked.
“Because this is where we are,” Uther replied. “They think that we’re fighting each other. All they have to do is surround us, and they can wipe out whoever is still alive after we’ve finished trying to kill each other.”
Ceretic’s face turned red with anger. “Those bastards!”
Glancing at Uther, Ceretic added, “This is your kingdom, Uther. What should we do?”
Uther stroked his beard and thought about the situation for a moment. He looked back toward the ridge where his solders waited, and then he looked back at Ceretic with a smile on his face.
“They’re coming here, right? They expect to see us fighting each other when they arrive. Let’s let them find exactly what they expect to find.”
The northern border of Strathclyde and Gododdin was a Roman wall known as the Antonine Wall. It had been constructed three hundred years earlier by the Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius to mark the northern border of the Roman province of Britannia. It was made primarily of timbers and earthworks, and thanks to years of weathering, it was now little more than a berm running along a ditch. The wall had flattened in several places, and the Picts used these places on their raids into Gododdin and Strathclyde.
Late that afternoon, six columns of Pict warriors converged along the western boundary that separated Gododdin from Strathclyde – nearly five thousand warriors altogether from four of the Pictish tribes that lived along Uther and Ceretic’s northern borders.
Their scouts had no difficulty finding the place where Uther and Ceretic’s armies were fighting. Bodies of the Gododdin and Strathclyde dead littered the ground as the hundreds of soldiers still fighting were in small clusters around the field. Near the center of the field, the Pict leaders saw Uther and Ceretic fighting each other to the death.
The Pict leaders ordered their warriors to surround the field, certain that the surviving British wouldn’t take notice of their presence so deep inside Gododdin, let alone their movements around the field.
The leaders watched the fight between Ceretic and Uther. Uther appeared to be pushing Ceretic back, but suddenly Ceretic used his sword hilt to strike Uther on the side of his head. Uther fell, and Ceretic ran his sword through Uther’s chest. Uther lay limp on the ground as Ceretic withdrew his sword.
“Victory for Strathclyde!” Ceretic shouted.
The soldiers still fighting around the field stopped and looked at their kings. The Gododdin soldiers, leaderless, knelt in a sign of surrender. The Strathclyde soldiers cheered their victory.
The Pict leaders gave orders for their warriors to advance on the field. They were confident that Strathclyde’s victory would be short-lived.
They could not have been more wrong.
While the Picts positioned themselves around the field, they failed to notice the two armies moving into position behind them. The bulk of Uther and Ceretic’s forces were still on the two ridges where they had been waiting for most of the day. Ceretic’s archers deployed south behind the Picts, and Uther’s cavalry moved to the north. It was the Picts who were now surrounded.
As the Pict warriors moved forward, the whistling of arrows was heard overhead. The Strathclyde and Gododdin soldiers on the south end of the field, including those who appeared to be dead and wounded, suddenly crouched behind their shields. Too late, the Picts realized that they had walked into a trap.
Ceretic reached down and helped Uther to his feet. “To your kings, soldiers of Gododdin and Strathclyde!” Uther shouted. “Rally to your kings!”
The Strathclyde and Gododdin soldiers on the field stood and formed ranks in the center of the field, surrounding the two kings. The soldiers behind the Picts attacked, and the Picts found themselves caught between two forces. Having no way out, they fought furiously against the soldiers from Britain’s two northern kingdoms.
Uther and Ceretic’s soldiers were well-rested, and they pushed the Picts back. The soldiers in the field attacked the rear of the Picts. Uther’s cavalry rode in from the north, killing the leaders of the Picts and driving the rest of the warriors into the middle of the battle. No matter how hard the Picts fought, they were no match for the Strathclyde and Gododdin soldiers. Ceretic’s archers sent wave after wave of arrows into the Pict’s ranks, and the spears of Uther’s cavalry impaled any warrior who got close enough.
As the sun sank low in the western sky, most of the Picts lay dead or dying on the field. What they thought would be a simple victory turned into a disaster. The few Picts who survived the battle slipped away in the night and returned to their tribes with stories about the ferocity of their enemies.
Uther watched the search parties working by torchlight to tend to the wounded Strathclyde and Gododdin soldiers. The bodies of the Picts were piled in the center of the field to be burned. This was necessary to keep wolves and other man-eating animals away. Wounded Picts were killed and their bodies dumped on the piles.
Uther was surprised and happy that the Gododdin’s losses were light, as were the Strathclyde losses – only two hundred dead between the two kingdoms. And according to the healers, most of the injured soldiers’ wounds were not life-threatening.
Uther visited the healers and saw Merlin’s three sons standing around their father as one of the healers worked on a nasty cut on Merlin’s left thigh.
“Merlin! What happened?”
Merlin winced as the healer cut away a jagged part of the wound. “My own stupid fault, my Lord,” he said through clenched teeth. “I knocked the axe out of his hand but missed the knife he was carrying.”
Uther looked at Merlin’s sons, who were part of his cavalry.