Warriors of Camlann Read Online Free Page B

his discerning eye to be experienced warriors.
    Gawain felt no fear – a part of his mind ran through the best tactic to employ to despatch so many men without injuring himself. The dog beside him waited for the signal. The men were scarcely more than a metre away.He could see small rivulets of sweat trickling down the face of the nearest man; see the glazed look of unfocused aggression. Now! The dog leapt forward and at the same instant Gawain attacked. The first man raised his long knife but Gawain slashed his sword in a sideways motion to slice through the muscle under the man’s arm and open a deep wound across his chest. As the shocked man lost his balance and cried out in pain, the hound leapt for his throat.
    Gawain felt a searing agony of pain across his own torso although the man’s weapon had not so much as nicked his skin. At the same moment a picture of a smiling, blonde-haired child flashed across his inner vision – the child meant nothing to Gawain. He shook the image away just as he dismissed the pain from his mind. He had no time for weakness. He had no time for anything but the moment, the movement of the fight. He had not been touched and so, he knew, there could be no pain. Gawain’s attention was focused on the axe man. He was taller than his unfortunate companion and heavily built. The man’s face was set in a rictus of rage. He was screaming something in a language Gawain did not know. Spittle flecked his beard. The sound of the hound’s growls and the weakening cries of the dog’s victim sounded too loudly in Gawain’s ears. He imagined he could feel the war hound’s teeth ripping through his own flesh. He felt dizzy but he forced himselfto concentrate. He could not remember previous fights in detail, but he knew that something was different about this one, something was wrong. Something that had once insulated him from the awareness of the pain he inflicted was gone. This new awareness made it much harder to keep to his task: to stay alive; kill his enemies. The axe man, who was now within hacking distance of Gawain’s exposed body, hesitated as if steeling himself for the blow – it was all the time Gawain needed. He sliced down with all his sword’s weight on the man’s shoulder and all but severed his left arm. The nerves of his own left arm screamed out in agony but Gawain refused to listen to their lies; he was unhurt! The axe man tried to land a blow with his intact right arm but the shock of his injury had enfeebled him. Gawain ducked the blow, kneed him swiftly in the groin and kicked him so that he fell forward. At the same time, with a swift, horizontal, slicing blow he severed the jugular of the third man, who followed his fallen companion and stepped into the breach. The last two attackers slowed their charge. Three strong men were down and dying in a space of two or three paces. The hound had finished them off by tearing out their throats. Their screams of pain had ended as abruptly as they had begun. There was a strange kind of silence. Gawain could feel the terror of the two who remained, their conviction that they were about to die. Shock hadsobered them up sharply, but they did not run. Somehow, Gawain knew that it would shame them to leave their leader on a battlefield; though they were not warriors they chose to die like warriors. They exchanged a look and charged together. Gawain mentally saluted their bravery while readying himself for the kill. Without signal or warning the war hound leapt for the smaller of the two men and with his considerable weight knocked him over. The second man tried to slice at Gawain’s sword arm, but Gawain abruptly swapped his sword to his left hand and in one incongruously graceful motion sliced across his opponent’s belly. He hunched forward whimpering, clutching his spilling guts. Gawain brought his raised sword down with all the force he could muster and severed the man’s spine at