As I quickly realised, the thing about Goblins is that they're stupid.
This had advantages but also some pretty significant demerits.
On the plus side, it wasn't like we would be up against any military geniuses. And, to be fair, for all his personality defects, Arthur lived for this shit.
The Britons had long learned their lesson from the Romans. The days of gearing up for individual duels during a battle, undisciplined hordes running pell-mell at each other, had long since been beaten out of them. Too many warriors - and too many war chiefs - had found themselves being cut to pieces by carefully arranged, solid lines of shields and swords to ignore the example.
Thus, the shield wall.
Britons were a bit more attached to their spears to abandon them for short swords, but - in some ways - this actually made the British shield wall more lethal than the lines of Roman Legionnaires slowly grinding undisciplined rabbles to dust.
And, of course, every last man who accompanied their king on this quest was a veteran of countless encounters against the Saxons. In that crucible, you got very good at this form of warfare, or you got very dead, very quickly.
The Goblins were no Saxons.
I was about three lines back from the front row, with the strictest of instructions not to work my forward with the rotations. I'd argued, initially - I was stronger and faster than anyone else on the field (with the possible exception of Lancelot) - but I was left in no doubt that when it came to this sort of disciplined warfare, experience trumped anything else.
I was to watch, learn, and throw as much "devastating magic shit as you've got."
In an ideal world, my dear, you'd be hovering - beyond arrow range - above the conflict and just raining merry hell down on the little green buggers.
I added 'learn to fly' to my 'to do' list, all the time marvelling that I even possessed a list that didn't just say 'get fucked' on it. Personal growth.
So, when our small force stepped out from the cover of the trees and the back rows opened up with arrows and javelins - modesty forbids the mention of the strong blasts of
Even as far away from the action as I was, I felt the impact of their attack hit our shields. Then the screaming started.
*
Arthur was on the back of Llameri with ten of Beric's heavy horses.
He'd wanted to be in the middle of the shield wall where his expertise with the spear would give the most value, but wiser heads had prevailed. It would have been too easy for a stray knife to find itself in his side - not even ordered by one of the other kings, but their men would understand what Arthur's death would mean to their master.
Here, instead, he found himself. On the extreme left side of their formation, charged with killing any Goblins that got it into their heads to try to slip past and around the British shield wall.
Arthur winced at the impact of - literally - hundreds of green creatures flinging themselves on the spears in the line. He knew that the most significant danger right now was his men becoming overwhelmed by targets. That the sheer volume of attacks was too many for the barricade of wood, leather and iron to hold.
But then he saw the first of the attackers fall, the shield wall hold and pressure break away like a tide hitting a wave break.
By the gods, he loved these men. Even those from the other kingdoms. They were lost in an alien world; they were beset by creatures out of mythology; their leaders were in open conflict with each other. And none of it mattered. Nothing other than the shield, the spear and the warrior at their side.
His cloak hissed and snarled as someone rode up to join him. He wasn't quite used to Morgan's gift yet, but he could not deny it was proving to be useful. Certainly, no one was approaching him unseen while the dragon had his back.
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He turned, it was Ɛolgef, Beric's champion. "They're spilling around the edge a little. Might be worth encouraging them away from that course of action."
Arthur nodded, ignoring the lack of a 'sir' or a 'your majesty'. That would come, or it wouldn't. Reaching up, he dropped the plate of his dragon helm closed over his face. "Nothing clever, boys. A quick in and out. Let's just let them know that we are."
He kicked softly at Llameri's side, and the eleven giant warhorses were on the move.
*
I'd lost count of the streams of lightning and flame I'd launched into the press of Goblins. They were like ants boiling from their nest to assault our line, and nothing seemed to be bringing their attack to an end.
Then, from the corner of my eye, I saw Arthur's charge on the far side of the horde. I don't know about the little green fuckers, but the sight scared the shit out of me. Then Lancelot and the riders from the other side performed a mirror of the manoeuvre, crashing into the side of the column, such as it was, pinning us down.
The assault was perfectly executed, with all the mounted warriors bringing utter ruin to the Goblins and, at the sound of a horn, being able to pivot around and then back up the hill.
It was fucking glorious.
It was at this point, Merlin told me, that a human army would rout.
They were crashing against an unmoveable object; the death toll on Yoda's inbred cousins was catastrophic, and now they were facing heavy horses they were ill-equipped to combat. And that went without mentioning the wall of Qi-death I was flinging out any which way I could.
And that's where the downside of fighting Goblins came into its own.
They had no concept of self-preservation.
We were kicking their arses every way until Sunday, and in any standard confrontation, they'd break and retreat, leaving us to open the victory mead and let the backslapping commence.
However, despite their losses and despite them being outgunned in any way that usually mattered, these dudes were simply going to keep coming.
And the men around me were getting tired.
I switched from blasting off beams of destructive lightning and concentrated on refreshing the stamina of those holding the line.
Be careful, my dear. Using your Qi in this manner substantially drains your resources.
"You know, there's something really fucked up about a process that makes it easier to kill people than it is to keep than alive. I feel I should write to someone about it."
Maybe another time, my dear.
"Look, I'm not sure how long they will be able to keep this up unless I help them out."
And how long will you survive if you drop out of Qi-exhaustion before this is all over?
I growled in frustration and halved the amount of energy I was directing into the men around me. It wouldn't be enough to restore them completely, but it was better than nothing.
And then - and I am not wholly sure how it happened - the man in front of me stumbled just as the guy in the front row looked to switch out for a break.
I'd watched these veterans perform this shuffle countless times during the fight and had been impressed by the smooth economy with which they achieved the swap during a pitched battle.
So, seeing it go tits up was a surprise. That's my excuse as to why, without thinking, I stepped forward to fill the gap, hauling the guy who was retreating backwards.
It was then I realised I'd made a couple of fairly significant errors.
The first was that I was at the front of a shield wall and had no shield. This is what was known in the trade as a 'schoolboy error'.
Fortunately, Drynwyn was drawn and was perfectly capable of fucking up anything that thought it was a good idea to come too close.
However, I sensed the second error was likely to prove a touch more costly. You see, the man in front of me had been one of Mark's retinue. And judging by the knife he had just slipped between my shoulder blades, his little 'fall' had less to do with unstable footing and more of, you know, a full-on assassination plot.
If that were the extent of the problem, we'd have been in gravy. Without wishing to brag, we'd long moved past the point where a little casual backstabbing was going to put me off my game. However, those men of Arthur's who were in the line alongside me were somewhat protective of their resident nuclear bomb.
They completely lost their shit and chopped the assassin to pieces.
This was, understandably, poorly received by everyone else in the shield wall who, not being privy to the half-arsed attempt on my life, could only see the men of Dumnonia going to town on someone under a different flag.
As you can imagine, this did little for unit cohesion.
The shield wall bent, bowed and then snapped - hundreds of green bastards flooding into the gaps. This gave me a terrible vision of the last time I'd witnessed a shield wall break - when Cedric had finally overcome Bors' defence on the retreat from Isca.
Men were fighting men. Men were fighting Goblins. Goblins - I swear - were fighting Goblins. As I might have mentioned, they weren't the smartest tools in the box.
And then a horn blew, and Arthur was with us, his horse rearing on its back legs and crushing Goblin skulls left and right. Trust me, it was a full-on 'Aslan off the Stone Table' moment.
Someone was shouting orders, and the melee was slowly pulling itself into order. Amongst the shambles and just on the edge of chaos, our formation shuddered, and a circle formed. Only two deep, but, fuck me, these guys had balls.
I'd have been feeling pretty good about things, knife still sticking out of my back aside, had not, at that precise moment, a second - equally as big - Goblin army not appeared.
Ah. Well, that's not ideal.