Chapter 25: The final decision

Out of the trees on the pathway appeared about fifty Celt warriors, painted in their blue war paint and wearing thick woollen dresses with belts around their waists. Each had a sword or spear in their hand and a round wooden shield attached to their forearm. Some of the warriors had human heads hanging from their belts, with the blood marks on their legs from the skulls, which showed the beheading was quite recent. I saw the heads all had blond hair and was almost certainly the heads of the men of the village of Regen.

It was obvious who the leader was, he was out front. He was a large man, with a long flowing beard, hair in pleats hanging on his chest and others hanging down his back. He was carrying a short stabbing sword in his right hand and a spear in the other, with the shield again strapped to his wrist like the others. Alongside him was a man carrying a throwing spear, rather than a short stabbing spear that some of the others held. They moved to about 20 feet from the gate, with the main party about another 20 feet behind them.

The whole party stopped, looking up at us standing on top of the wall.

"Surrender or we will kill you all, I am Kelvin the slayer," the leader shouted.

Maybe I shouldn't have laughed, but he became agitated and started shouting again. "Surrender or die." Then all the others in the party started shouting and displaying themselves, trying to taunt us, or was it getting up courage to attack?

"Cedric, 40 feet from the main gate is the main party, don't shoot until I say," I shouted down to inside the wall.

Then turning again and facing Kelvin and his companion. "Please go away, or we will reap a terrible vengeance on you, have you not heard what happened to the last war party that tried to attack me," I shouted at him.

Before I could do anything the spear thrower cast his spear and it went right through Hild's neck. I blasted him with my shotgun and he flew back about ten feet. I shouted "Cedric now," and moved my aim at the leader. Carol had already fired and had blown his leg off, so I left him and shifted my aim to the main group as the first hail of arrows fell. Like fools they looked up as the second flight fell. Marjorie and I started blasting away at the main group it was like skittles, they just stood there, they had no knowledge what to do against such weapons. They milled around now frightened to lift their shields up to protect themselves from the falling arrows, or keep them lower to protect themselves to some extent from the shotgun pellets.

Out of the party of fifty only fifteen were on their feet, but they had thrown their weapons to the ground, and lifted their hands above their heads. I kept them covered as Cedric and his other men went out the main gate and approached them. They were surprised to see the men approaching them were also Celts, but this group were clean and vastly different in appearance from the dirty looking raiding party.

I could see Hild lying on the ground with her mother at her side; she looked up at me and shook her head. It was at that moment that I had made up my mind to return to my own time and take my son with me.

I got down and went outside and walked up to Kelvin. "You are to blame for all this slaughter. The only one you killed was my wife. So I have sentenced you to death, but not by my hand. No, I will have your men do that for me."

There were ten wounded men who were now on their feet and the arrows had been removed from their wounds. Cedric's men were going round collecting all their arrows from the ground and from the bodies of the dead. They had lost fifty per cent of their group in less than a minute, and it was obvious that they had no stomach to try anything else.

"Firstly I want you to bury or burn your dead. Then I want you to execute your leader. If you fail to do any of these two things I'll start shooting you one by one." I had no design of doing it but they didn't know.

"How will we kill him you have our weapons?" One elderly warrior asked.

"Around you are stones, stone him to death," I replied.

"When you bury your dead you will bury all the heads that you carry, you are worse than animals, and I'm ashamed to say you are my ancestors."

We lent them spades to help them dig the grave, but well away from our village. Once all the bodies had been buried, and all the heads placed in as well, we removed all their bags from around their necks. I had previously collected the ones from the dead who had been wearing them.

'You now have one task to perform and then we will let you go. Kelvin your leader," I said to the group.

Without any hesitation ten of the warriors collected stones and threw them with such force that it was obvious that Kelvin hadn't been a popular leader, but it took fifteen minutes before he died. This was a biblical punishment and I could see that it was a cruel way to execute anyone. He deserved it; there were at least a hundred people in the village of Regen. These people had not only killed them but beheaded them and carried their trophies on their belts.

As the surviving Celts were sent on their way I spoke to them again. "If we ever see you in our land again none will return, that is a promise, pass it on to your other leaders."

If they arrived in a hurry, they left a lot quicker. Cedric wanted to kill them all, but accepted what I had done.