The Book of Mordred (30 page)

"Yea, though I walk in the Valley of Darkness..." Father Jerome began.

Several voices cheered, perhaps to show love and support for Guinevere, like Gareth and Gaheris, or maybe because the interesting part was beginning. The sound was drowned out by another clamor from the bell. Whoever was in charge let each peal fade away before ringing the next. Birds—wrens and sparrows—that normally roosted in the tower alternately wheeled and fluttered uncertainly.

She and Gaheris were in the courtyard now. Kiera looked at the grim faces surrounding her. Who were all these people, like waiting vultures? Could their lives be so drab that they welcomed the diversion of a public burning no matter who the victim was, or were they specifically interested in seeing the Queen die? A man, a local peasant by his garb, had brought in a wagon and was loudly trying to sell sausages.

Ahead of them, Guinevere had mounted the platform that held the stake. She was stepping over the bundles of kindling.
Bong! Bong!
the bell continued. The courtyard spun and Kiera put her hand out to keep from falling onto the grass.

Grass?

But that made no sense: The courtyard was flagstone, not grass. Blue gray flagstone, with blood between the cracks, and there was Agravaine, bleeding from a massive chest wound.

Agravaine?

But he was already dead.

And of an injury to his head, not his chest.

She blinked, stiffened again, and heard herself whimper, but Gaheris chose not to notice. His job was to escort her to the stake, and they had already fallen too far behind the others.

Bong! Bong! Bong!

Kiera screamed and fell to her knees. Gaheris whipped around, looking for the source of danger.

And the bell stopped. There was a
thud!
instead of a
bong!
As though the bell ringer had—what? Stopped in midtug? Just as Gaheris had finally stopped and was now suspended midway down in crouching beside her ... As the black-hooded executioner had stopped tying Guinevere to the stake ... As the crowd stopped murmuring and shuffling.

Then the bell rang again. But fast this time, frantic, a call to arms, a ringing such as the people of peaceful Camelot hadn't heard since Arthur had become High King.

"Lord, have mercy on our souls," Gaheris whispered.

The man beside whom they had stopped threw back his rough peasant's cloak, revealing a long sword. Armed knights jumped out of their hiding places in the sausage wagon. "Lancelot!" someone called, a cheer. "Lancelot! Lancelot!"

And then another voice yelled: "Burn her!"

Instantly everyone was on the move. Friends and family members got separated. Already the crowd had divided into three contingents: those who wanted the Queen rescued, those who wanted her executed, and those who wanted to get out of the way as quickly as possible while the first two groups fought it out.

On the raised platform, the executioner wavered. He was looking toward the castle, to see if King Arthur watched from one of the windows, obviously hoping the king would give him a sign.

"Go!" Gaheris hauled Kiera to her feet and pushed her back toward the doorway from which they had just come.

The force of his push caused her to stagger forward several paces, but then she stopped to look over her shoulder, to watch what he was going to do. A dog, scrambling out of the way of all the suddenly running feet, got entangled in her legs. She put her arms out to regain her balance, and hit somebody in the face. As she turned to apologize, someone else ran into her, and she flipped over the dog, smacking her palms and scrapping her knees even through her dress. A woman heavy with child, already fallen, screamed into her ear.

The dog gave one warning growl, then began snapping at the surrounding knees and calves. Someone tried to kick the animal, hitting Kiera's elbow instead. But the menacing snarls kept the crowd back long enough for her to get to her feet.

In another instant she was almost trampled down again, but this time she clutched at the nearest person and managed to stay standing. Her hands were swatted away, and she was swept along with the crowd, facing backwards.

"Gaheris!" she called, unable to see over the mass of stampeding bodies—for, though she was too tall for a girl, at least half the crowd were men.

Nobody warned her, and the next moment she backed into rough masonry, the castle wall. The flow of people angled sharply off to the right, toward the nearest door. But it was already impossibly crammed with those trying to get through, away from the courtyard.

Her back scraping against the wall, Kiera forced her way instead to the left. She suddenly broke through the surge of humanity and had an unobstructed view of the courtyard.

There were knights killing each other—Arthur's men, recognizable by the winged dragon that had given the Pendragon family its name, and Lancelot's supporters, who wore no emblem.

But it was not only knights. Townspeople fought each other, using knives or stones or bare hands. Others ganged up on individual knights, often ones who were already wounded. The blacksmith had leaped to the front of the platform where Guinevere was tied, and picked up a bundle of the kindling. Now he waved it before him, jabbing its bristling ends at anybody from either faction who tried to approach. Half-trained squires retrieved weapons of knights who had already fallen, and they were, in turn, cut down.

Kiera squinted, unable from this distance and with her poor eyesight to recognize individual faces. There was one cluster where several of the palace guard fought, and she guessed that to be where Lancelot was. But something was wrong—there weren't as many of the King's men as there should have been. Even given that some would risk the accusation of treason by refusing to fight their former captain, they should have vastly outnumbered Lancelots group, which couldn't have been more than fifty or sixty.

The sweat on her back and arms chilled and began to prickle as she thought of Gareth and Gaheris unarmored. Once more she entered the crowd, pushing her way closer to the fighting.

A holiday-garbed merchant lurched into her, even though that portion of the crowd which was doing the most frantic pushing had already clustered at the various doorways. "Excuse," the man muttered, his breath stale with wine.

She edged sideways.

He took hold of her shoulders, tried to straighten her dress that was all twisted from sliding against the wall. "Excuse," he repeated, tipping forward.

"Get away from me!" she cried, loudly, to be heard over the clamor of the bell.

He backed away, bowing. "Looking for the door," he said. "Excuse." He sat down suddenly, looking surprised.

Kiera circled around him. "Gaheris!" she called. "Gareth!" Her voice didn't carry. She herself could barely hear it over the ringing of the bell and the clashing of swords and the shouts of men, both battle cries and death cries.
Let the others do this on their own!
she wanted to warn them. Oh, let the others do it.

A hand grabbed her shoulder from behind. She whipped around, suspecting the drunken merchant again, but it was Gaheris. She was ready to hug him, but he held her out at arm's length and shook her. "I thought you were safe inside. Dammit, I can't be nursemaid to you."

She opened her mouth to try to tell him the awful danger he was in: how she had seen him and Gareth, as well as Agravaine, dead.

"Burn her!" shouted the man standing next to them, his voice drowning out hers.

Gaheris flashed him a look of loathing.

"Gaheris," she tried again. Already his attention had moved off her, was focused instead on the center of the courtyard, where Guinevere was still tied to the stake, where Gareth stood, arguing with the black-hooded executioner who held his lighted torch. The blacksmith, whichever side he'd been on, was sprawled face down among the kindling. "Gaheris," Kiera insisted.

"Burn her!" the townsman next to them yelled again, and threw a rock that hit Gareth on the back, between the shoulder blades. Gareth whirled to scan the melee.

But Gaheris was closer, was there already. He took handfuls of the man's shirt and flung him against the sausage wagon. The man staggered and Gaheris kept him from falling by bouncing him off the side of the wagon again, and then again.

"Gaheris!" she begged, but he wouldn't be diverted. She looked toward the stake again. She couldn't hear, but she could tell that Gareth was angry by the way he waved his arms at the executioner, who, in return, shook his torch practically under Gareth's nose. Gareth grabbed his wrist and the man tried to pull away.

Another rock flew from a different direction to fall harmlessly among the kindling.

And then a third stone was hurled, and this one struck the executioner's hand. He jerked back.

And dropped the burning torch.

Into the kindling.

The dried wood burst into flame, and the crowd erupted into noise—cheers as well as cries of dismay.

Kiera caught a glimpse of Lancelot, wading through the concentration of Arthur's men who had positioned themselves around the platform. Not enough, she realized: They'd never stop him. He swung his broadsword before him, and his own followers were having a difficult time keeping up. She saw Sir Aglovale go down, and Sir Belliance, then lost sight of Lancelot.

She turned to Gaheris and found that he was gone, too. She finally made him out already halfway to the stake. There Gareth stamped on the flames. Guinevere shrank back against the stake, away from the fire. Then Kiera noticed the executioner. Apparently he had decided that in absence of a decision by the King, he'd take the fallen torch as a sign from God. He was running full-tilt at Gareth from behind.

"Look out!" she yelled. Not in time, even if she had been loud enough. Gareth went sprawling.

Just beyond the platform, Lancelot crouched as a peasant swung a thick, rough-hewn stave at his head. He sprang erect, his sword angled, and impaled the man. At the same moment Lancelot was yanking his sword free, Gareth was trying to get back to his feet. He must have heard the commotion behind him, for he whirled around, still at a half crouch, just as Lancelot leaped onto the platform.

And Lancelot ran him through.

"Gareth!" Kiera screamed.

Yet even if she had been close enough, he was already beyond hearing.

But there was still time to try to save his brother. "Gaheris!" Kiera screamed with all her might.

Gaheris swung onto the platform just as Lancelot sliced the ropes that bound Guinevere. Gaheris froze when he saw Gareth's body.

"Gaheris!" Kiera pushed through the crowd. "Lancelot, it's Gaheris!"

Lancelot must have caught Gaheris's movement out of the corner of his eye. His movement, but not his face. Lancelot gave a backhanded swing of his sword without noticing that the figure did not threaten, did not—in fact—move. The blade sliced Gaheris's throat, and Lancelot didn't check to make sure he was dead, nor even to see whom, among all the many, he was.

Kiera dropped to her knees, covering her eyes, unwilling to witness any more.

Sir Bors's voice rose above the confusion. "Lance! The rest of the guards!"

Reluctantly, Kiera pulled her hands down from her eyes. From somewhere, Lancelot's people had brought out readied horses. But now, two or three dozen of the palace guard were streaming into the courtyard, all on foot, all from the direction of the gate.

Numbly, Kiera realized that she was between the two groups of armed men. Arthur's men had been waiting, she saw, expecting a frontal assault, not infiltration. And now they were straggling in, a few dozen at a time, out of breath from the run in full field armor, and found themselves in the unaccustomed position of foot soldiers facing the lowered lances of mounted chevaliers.

From behind she heard Mordred's voice, yelling to the King's men to fall back, not to stand up against the horses.

Lancelot, mounted behind Guinevere and surrounded by his men, dug his heels into his destrier's sides. The group formed a wedge, and aimed themselves at Arthur's men, who scattered.

Move!
Kiera told herself, but there wasn't time. She threw her arms up to protect her head—much good
that
would do, but it was all there was time for.

An arm circled her waist, dragged her backwards, so that she and the person who had pulled her back tumbled to the ground. She felt a tug on her dress, felt and heard the tear of fabric, and knew that a horse's hoof had landed on the trailing hem.

She recognized the feel of her mother's arms, then the voice, shouting in her ear, cursing Lancelot's men as savages who endangered the lives of innocent children.

Kiera twisted around to gape at Alayna, this soft-spoken, soft-bodied woman who shunned situations of crowding and noise, who had somehow been close enough to see her danger.

Now that Lancelot and Guinevere had escaped, those of the townspeople who remained in the courtyard were joined by many who had initially retreated indoors. Dead bodies were identified. The widow Clive's son. Sir Priamus. Young Sumner who had just been accepted into the Woodcrafters' Guild. Friends and relatives with caved-in skulls or gaping wounds. The summer evening was pierced by voices raised in mourning, sending chills up the backs of all who had not yet located their loved ones.