Legacy: Arthurian Saga (60 page)

9

I walked slowly back across the
platform towards the door. As I opened it I heard from below, clear
and sharp, a knocking on the postern gate.

I took a stride through to the
landing, pulling the door quietly shut behind me, just as Felix
came out of the lodge below, and made for the postern. As his hand
went out to the chain-bolt, Ralf whipped out behind him, his arm
raised high. I caught the glint in his fist of a dagger, reversed.
He jumped cat-footed, and struck with the hilt. Felix dropped where
he stood. There must have been some slight sound audible to the man
outside, above the roaring of the sea, for his voice came sharply:
"What is it? Felix?" And the knocking came again, harder than
before.

I was already halfway down the flight.
Ralf had stooped to the porter's body, but turned as he saw me
coming, and interpreted my gesture correctly, for he straightened,
calling out clearly: "Who's there?"

"A pilgrim."

It was a man's voice, urgent and
breathless. I ran lightly down the rest of the flight. As I ran I
was stripping my cloak off and winding it round my left arm. Ralf
threw me a look from which all the gaiety and daring had gone. He
had no need even to ask the next question; we both knew the
answer.

"Who makes the pilgrimage?" The boy's
voice was hoarse.

"Brithael. Now open up,
quickly."

"My lord Brithael! My lord -- I cannot
-- I have no orders to admit anyone this way..." He was watching me
as I stooped, took Felix under the armpits, and dragged him with as
little noise as I could, back into the lodge and out of sight. I
saw Ralf lick his lips. "Can you not ride to the main gate, my
lord? The Duchess will be asleep, and I have no orders
--"

"Who's that?" demanded Brithael.
"Ralf, by your voice. Where's Felix?"

"Gone up to the guard-room,
sir."

"Then get the key from him, or send
him down." The man's voice roughened, and a fist thudded against
the gate. "Do as I say, boy, or by God I'll have the skin off your
back. I have a message for the Duchess, and she won't thank you for
holding me here. Come now, hurry up!"

"The -- the key's here, my lord. A
moment." He threw a desperate look over his shoulder as he made a
business of fumbling with the lock. I left the unconscious man
bundled out of sight, and was back at Ralf's shoulder, breathing
into his ear: "See if he's alone first. Then let him
in."

He nodded, and the door opened on its
chain-bolt. Under cover of the noise it made I had my sword out,
and melted into the shadow behind the boy, where the opening door
would screen me from Brithael. I stood back against the wall. Ralf
put his eye to the gap, then drew back, with a nod at me, and began
to slide the chain out of its socket. "Excuse me, my lord
Brithael." He sounded abject and confused. "I had to make sure...Is
there trouble?"

"What else?" Brithael thrust the door
open so sharply that it would have thudded into me if Ralf had not
checked it. "Never mind, you did well enough." He strode in and
stopped, towering over the boy. "Has anyone else been to this gate
tonight?"

"Why, no, sir." Ralf sounded scared --
as well he might -- and therefore convincing. "Not while I've been
here, and Felix said nothing...Why, what's happened?"

Brithael gave a grunt, and his
accoutrements jingled as he shrugged. "There was a fellow down
yonder, a horseman. He attacked us. I left Jordan to deal with him.
There's been nothing here, then? No trouble at all?"

"None, my lord."

"Then lock the gate again and let none
in but Jordan. And now I must see the Duchess. I bring grave news,
Ralf. The Duke is dead."

"The Duke?" The boy began to stammer.
He made no attempt to shut the gate, but left it swinging free. It
hid Brithael from me still, but Ralf was just beside me, and in the
dim light I saw his face go pinched and blank with shock. "The Duke
-- d-dead, my lord? Murdered?"

Brithael, already moving, checked and
turned. In another pace he would be clear of the door which hid me
from him. I must not let him reach the steps and get above
me.

"Murdered? Why, in God's name? Who
would do that? That's not Uther's way. No, the Duke took the chance
before the King got here, and we attacked the King's camp tonight,
out of Dimilioc. But they were ready. Gorlois was killed in the
first sally. I rode with Jordan to bring the news. We came straight
from the field. Now lock that gate and do as I say."

He turned away and made for the steps.
There was room, now, to use a sword. I stepped out from the shadow
behind the door.

"Brithael."

The man whirled. His reactions were so
quick that they cancelled out my advantage of surprise. I suppose I
need not have spoken at all, but again there are certain things a
prince must do. It cost me dear enough, and could have cost me my
life. I should have remembered that tonight I was no prince; I was
fate's creature, like Gorlois whom I had betrayed, and Brithael
whom I now must kill. And I was the future's hostage. But the
burden weighed heavy on me, and his sword was out almost before
mine was raised, and then we stood measuring one another, eye to
eye.

He recognized me then, as our eyes
met. I saw the shock in his, and a quick flash of fear which
vanished in a moment, the moment when my stance and my drawn sword
told him that this would be his kind of fight, not mine. He may
have seen in my face that I had already fought harder than he, that
night.

"I should have known you were here.
Jordan said it was your man down there, you damned enchanter. Ralf!
Felix! Guard -- ho there, guard!"

I saw he had not grasped straight away
that I had been inside the gate all along. Then the silence on the
stairway, and Ralf's quick move away from me to shut the gate told
its own story. Fast as a wolf, too quickly for me to do anything,
Brithael swept his left arm with its clenched mailed fist smashing
into the side of the boy's head. Ralf dropped without a sound, his
body wedging the gate wide open.

Brithael leapt back into the gateway.
"Jordan! Jordan ! To me! Treachery!"

Then I was on him, blundering somehow
through his guard, breast to breast, and our swords bit and
slithered together with whining metal and the clash of
sparks.

Rapid steps down the stairs. Ulfin's
voice: "My lord -- Ralf --"

I said, in gasps: "Ulfin...Tell the
King...Gorlois is dead. We must get back...Hurry..."

I heard him go, fast up the stairs at
a stumbling run. Brithael said through his teeth: "The King? Now I
see, you pandering whoremaster."

He was a big man, a fighter in his
prime, and justly angry. I was without experience, and hating what
I must do, but I must do it. I was no longer a prince, or even a
man fighting by the rules of men. I was a wild animal fighting to
kill because it must.

With my free hand I struck him hard in
the mouth and saw the surprise in his eyes as he jumped back to
disengage his sword. Then he came in fast, the sword a flashing
ring of iron round him. Somehow I ducked under the whistling blade,
parried a blow and held it, and lashed a kick that took him full on
the knee. The sword whipped down past my cheek with a hiss like a
burn. I felt the hot sting of pain, and the blood running. Then as
his weight went on the bruised knee, he trod crookedly, slipped on
the soaked turf and fell heavily, his elbow striking a stone, and
the sword flying from his hand.

Any other man would have stepped back
to let him pick it up. I went down on him with all the weight I
had, and my own sword shortened, stabbing for his
throat.

It was light now, and growing lighter.
I saw the contempt and fury in his eyes as he rolled away from the
stabbing blade. It missed him, and drove deep into a spongy tuft of
sea-pink. In the unguarded second as I fought to free it, his
tactics shifted to match mine, and with that iron fist he struck me
hard behind the ear, then, wrenching himself aside, was on his feet
and plunging down the dreadful slope to where his own sword lay
shining in the grass two paces from the cliff's edge.

If he reached it, he would kill me in
seconds. I rolled, bunching to get to my feet, flinging myself
anyhow down the slimy slope towards the sword. He caught me half on
to my knees. His booted foot drove into my side, then into my back.
The pain broke in me like a bubble of blood and my bones melted,
throwing me flat again, but I felt my flailing foot catch the
metal, and the sword jerked from its hold in the turf to skid, with
how gentle a shimmer, over the edge. Seconds later, it seemed, we
could hear, thin and sweet through the thunder of the waves, the
whine of metal as it struck the rocks below.

But before even the sound reached us
he was on me again. I had a knee under me and was dragging myself
up painfully. Through the blood in my eyes I saw the blow coming,
and tried to dodge, but his fist struck me in the throat, knocking
me sideways with a savagery that spread-eagled me again on the wet
turf with the breath gone from my body and the sight from my eyes.
I felt myself roll and slip and, remembering what lay below,
blindly drove my left hand into the turf to stop myself falling. My
sword was still in my right hand. He jumped for me again, and with
all the weight of his big body brought both feet down on my hand
where it grasped the sword. The hand broke across the metal guard.
I heard it go. The sword snapped upwards like a trap springing and
caught him across his outstretched hand. He cursed in a gasp,
without words, and recoiled momentarily. Somehow, I had the sword
in my left hand. He came in again as quickly as before, and even as
I tried to drag myself away, he made a quick stride forward and
stamped again on my broken hand. Somebody screamed. I felt myself
thrash over, mindless with pain, blind. With the last strength I
had I jabbed the sword, hopelessly shortened, up at his straddled
body, felt it torn from my hand, and then lay waiting, without
resistance, for the last kick in my side that would send me over
the cliff.

I lay there breathless, retching,
choking on bile, my face to the ground and my left hand driven into
the soft tufts of sea-pink, as if it clung to life for me. The beat
and crash of the sea shook the cliff, and even this slight tremor
seemed to grind pain through my body. It hurt at every point. My
side pained as though the ribs were stove in, and the skin had been
stripped from the cheek that lay pressed hard into the turf. There
was blood in my mouth, and my right hand was a jelly of pain. I
could hear someone, some other man a long way off, making small
abject sounds of pain.

The blood in my mouth bubbled and
oozed down my chin into the ground, and I knew it was I who was
groaning. Merlin the son of Ambrosius, the prince, the great
enchanter. I shut my mouth on the blood and began to push and claw
my way to my feet.

The pain in my hand was cruel, the
worst of all; I heard rather than felt the small bones grind where
their ends were broken. I felt myself lurching as I got to my
knees, and dared not try to stand upright so near the cliff's edge.
Below me a master wave struck, thundered, fountained up into the
greying light, then fell back to crash into the next rising wave.
The cliff trembled. A sea-bird, the first of the day, sailed
overhead, crying.

I crawled away from the edge and then
stood up.

Brithael was lying near the postern
gate, on his belly, as if he had been trying to crawl there. Behind
him on the turf was a wake of blood, glossy on the grass like the
track of a snail. He was dead. That last desperate stroke had
caught the big vein in the groin, and the life had pumped out of
him as he tried to crawl for help. Some of the blood that soaked me
must be his.

I went on my knees beside him and made
sure. Then I rolled him over and over till the slope took him, and
he went after his sword into the sea. The blood would have to take
care of itself. It was raining again, and with luck the blood would
be gone before anyone saw it.

The postern gate stood open still. I
reached it somehow and stood, supporting myself with a shoulder
against the jamb. There was blood in my eyes, too. I wiped it away
with a wet sleeve.

Ralf had gone. The porter also. The
torch had burnt low in its socket and the smoky light showed the
lodge and stairway empty. The castle was quiet. At the top of the
stairway the door stood partly open, and I saw light there and
heard voices. Quiet voices, urgent but unalarmed. Uther's party
must still be in control; there had been no alarm given.

I shivered in the dawn chill.
Somewhere, unheeded, the cloak had dropped from my arm. I didn't
trouble to look for it. I let go of the gate and tried standing
upright without support. I could do it. I started to make my way
down the path towards the bay.

10

There was just light enough to see the
way; light enough, too, to see the dreadful cliff and the roaring
depths below. But I think I was so occupied with the weakness of my
body, with the simple mechanics of keeping that body upright and my
good hand working and the injured hand out of trouble, that I never
once thought of the sea below or the perilous narrowness of the
strip of safe rock. I got past the first stretch quickly, and then
clawed my way, half crawling, down the next steep slide across the
tufted grasses and the rattling steps of scree. As the path took me
lower, the seas came roaring up closer beside me, till I felt the
spray of the big waves salt with the salt blood on my face. The
tide was full in with morning, the waves still high with the
night's wind, shooting icy tongues up the licked rock and bursting
beside me with a hollow crash that shook the very bones in my body,
and drenched the path down which I crawled and stumbled.