The Sword and The Quest: Lady Merlin's Saga (Epic Fantasy) (40 page)

Rufus scooped up funeral ash and watched it blow away from his hands.

“Here was the greatest general I’ve ever known,” he said.  “By thrust, parry, and feint, he fought a dozen campaigns against the Saxons with no battles until Arthur made the fights at York and Kaerlindcoit.  He chased and lured them around the Island a score of times and exhausted them.  He threatened their cities and crops.  He frightened off their longships.  He didn’t waste a single precious soldier. He was a Julius and a Claudius together.  He preserved everything for you, Arthur.”

Rufus, weeping, climbed down from the stone to find his camp.

Arthur and I alone remained awake on the stone, keeping vigil as the last of Gurthrygen’s pyre-ash blew away.  Arthur’s war band kept watch around the stone.

Across the night-black fields flickered the lights of the campfires of Gurthrygen’s – now Arthur’s – army.  Firelight was blotted by the cheering passage of fresh troops of warriors riding into the camps to join Arthur, the drawer of the World Sword.  Their cheers made Mordred and Gawain stir in their sleep in Guenevere’s arms there in the safe center of the Round Table.

Arthur, watching the infants, said, “There’s the scene for which I’d sacrifice crown and country if I could keep it forever.”

I gazed at Mordred and Gawain and thought I saw in one treachery and in the other succession.  But I felt the thousand-year fire that had driven me to try to kill Mordred banked.  No, not banked.  Burnt up in another fire, the fire and over-confidence of youth and the clean forgetfulness of the future.

But some undiminished part of me looked out across the campfire-glittering fields, searching for some shadow-shift to tell me what comes next in this unpredictable world.  What could I see out there to help Arthur shape the victories he needed to build Camelot?

I felt a terror of my merlin power fleeing me and evaporating into time.  I barely could imagine all my past frights and dreams.  I could not remember the future.  But I was young, strong, and sure, and confident that was enough to make a new world.

I waited impatiently for the night to end so I could kill Saxons for Arthur.  To win my own place at the Round Table.  And scream my victory cheer over the corpses of my dead.

* * *

In the graying before dawn, Arthur’s captains gathered around him on the stone.  Guenevere, Mordred, and Gawain still slept in the safe center of the Round Table.  The stars had gone out.  Mist rose.  In the surrounding camps, waking warriors began to shout for “Food!” and “Ale!” and to scratch, stretch, and kick clods of earth.  To cluster around the base of the Brutus stone to piss.

Arthur said to me, “Where’s my enemy today, Mother?”

I was startled at the request.  I was just another warrior eager for whatever battle my chief could provide.  Now I also had to play his merlin.

I looked across the camps with my soul’s vision but my sight was stunted.  I called out in my soul’s voice and could barely hear it myself.  I reached out but hand and arm would not stretch across Britain to find the Saxons.

Out there, beyond the morning gloom, were Hengist, Cheldric, and Baldaf.  Beyond them, Colgrin with his horde.  Beyond Colgrin was Saxonia pumping out more war-babies.

But I could not point in any direction and say, “Go there and fight Hengist” or “There and fight Cheldric.”  That power was gone from me.

Bedivere said, “Why ask her, Arthur?  She’s a child now and empty-headed.  We can go north, east or south and still plow fields full of Saxons.”

Horst, braiding his yellow beard with ribbons, said, “Find Hengist.  Kill him first.  Give me the remains of his army and his towns, King, to keep them in the family, so to speak.”

“I object to any arrangements,” Ronwen said, “that displace me from my rightful place as dead Gurthrygen’s queen.  All those lands should come to me.”

“Then sharpen your sword, Sister, and prepare to object in person to Hengist,” said Horst.

“Let him carve out your soul today,” she said to Horst.

She spat to seal the curse and jumped down off the Brutus stone.

“There goes half your army, Arthur,” Rufus said.

Horst said, “She loves the fat of Britain over the cold of Saxonia.  Offer her a duchy when we triumph.  Give her Angleland and she’ll be your best warrior princess forever.”

Arthur sent a boy running after Ronwen to offer her the Angles’ territory, if she would conquer it for Arthur.

A moment later, out of the gloom, they heard Ronwen cheer, slap her gladius on her shield, and heard her Saxons shout, “Arthur Cynning!  Arthur Cynning!”

Bedivere said, bitterly, “There’s no Saxon problem that can’t be solved by giving away another piece of Britain.  That was Gurthrygen’s folly and your father’s error, Arthur.”

“I’ll give away anything I don’t have,” Arthur said, “if it helps me keep what I do have.”

Arthur said to me, “Mother, find me the enemy.  Show us where to fight.”

I in frustration at my dwindling power spread myself on the morning haze, drifting out from the Brutus stone and across Arthur’s camps, seeping across the brightening shell of sky until some of me was in every part of Britain, looking for the Saxon chiefs.

I found them but, in my weakness, in finding them I alerted them that Arthur was searching for them, that the World Sword had been claimed by the prince for whom it had been made, that dread horror was coming upon them.

The Saxon chiefs turned their soul-faces toward Arthur and marched to meet him.

I reassembled myself on the stone.  “A half-day’s march east is Duke Hengist,” I said.  “Baldaf comes from the northwest with Scots and Picts.  Cheldric descends from York.  Out of the south – the entire south – comes Colgrin.”

“All coming this way at once?” cried Bedivere.

“Drawn by Arthur with Excalibur,” I said.

“There are thirty thousand with Hengist,” Horst said, frightened.

“Forty with Baldaf,” I said.  “Ten with Cheldric.  All the Saxon world comes with Colgrin.”

“How could there be so many Saxon fighters on this one little island?” cried Percival.

Arthur turned from reading the Round Table – another badge had come clear – it was Rufus’.

“Am I of your company, too?” said Horst, as though an unhappy possibility had come into his mind.

“I’ll welcome you into my war band, anyway,” said Arthur.

“Hail, Laverd King,” Horst said quickly, to avoid the sealing kiss, “but in your drawing the sword we’re all made Arthur’s men, aren’t we?  No need of a sacred kiss…”

“A kiss that demands that a warrior die with his chief,” said Percival.  She laid her dagger on Horst’s neck.  “Shall I cut out this throat that lies, Arthur?”

“Cut,” said Rufus, turning up his thumb in Roman style.

Thumbs went up around the circle of captains and elders.

Horst threw himself at Arthur’s knees, howling everlasting loyalty and screaming threats at the others.

“Assemble my loyal Saxons,” Arthur said to him.  “Prove yourself by winning for Camelot.”

Horst scrambled off the stone into the safety of his lifeguards.

The blind elderman who had crowned Arthur said from where he sat with his four sons, “I am Dubric, Duke of Aqua Sulis, King. My sons and I are five chiefs.  We bring you two hundred clan-warriors and a thousand peasant-fighters.  What do you promise us in victory?”

“British blood.  Is it enough?”

“Enough!  We’ll follow you to battle.”

“How many others in eld with their war bands join our fight?” Arthur said to the squatting elders.

“As many of us as can lift an ax,” said an elderwoman.  “Let the King make one victory and then we’ll swear.”

The old blind Dubric said, “How will you fight Duke Hengist today, King?”

“Ride out, find him, kill him.”

“That’s your whole strategy against six legions of Saxons?”

“The greater the trial, the greater the triumph.”

“Perhaps for boys hearing saga,” said Dubric.  “Not for an old man.”

“We all have to be boys in battle,” Arthur said.  “If war’s not sport, it’s too terrible to do.”

He raised Excalibur in its scabbard as a signal for war.  Men pissing at the stone’s base raised a cheer that carried across fields and camps and drove away the gray mist, letting morning color Britain.

Arthur went down off the stone into the cheers of his army and his war band.

But the elders shouted after him, “How do we organize the army, King?  When do we count them?  How do we feed them on the march?  Who do you want for scouts?  Where do we send the cavalry to clear the route?  What route?  King, tell us!”

The blind Dubric said to me, “Does he really believe all he needs to beat the Saxons is to be chosen by the sword?”

I cried in delight, “Yes!  Isn’t he right?”

“We’re not all born to be heroes, Lady Merlin.  Someone’s got to think of meat and ale and horseshoe nails.  You made Arthur for us, now go make his army.”

I, young and shrinking toward the perfect empty headedness of girlhood, said out of the remnants of a hundred and forty-four lifetimes’ experience, “I shall.”

I shouted, “Hear me, each of you captains!  Herald Percival, guide the king and his army on the road to Londinium.  Lucan, take your York infantry ahead of the king.  Stand by the road and count every fighting man and woman and every mule and sword that passes.  Lancelot, organize your Breton cavalry to the front and flanks.  Hadrian, fortify the column’s tail and beat on the stragglers.  You,” I said to the elders, “scatter to your clan-armies.  Look to a Round Tabler for orders and follow the king’s red dragon standard wherever it goes.”

“So you’re not so young as to be a complete fool, Lady Merlin?” said the blind chief.  He cheered, slapped sword on shield, and ran after his sons running for his army.

All the chiefs scrambled down off the rock to their duties.

Bedivere and Kay were left with me.  “What for us?” they said.

“Take the honor of leading the wings in the attack.  Go!”

Rufus said, “My orders, General Merlin?”

“Stay by the king.  Be a good Roman to him.  Make him listen to you.”

Guenevere, with Arthur’s sons and her Breton lifeguards, said, “What do you have for me, Commander?”

“Preserve the seeds of Camelot” – I gestured at the boys – “and guard the Table.”

“You don’t need to hear my oath to know I’ll do that.”  She rattled her gladius on her breastplate.

“This is a moment that demands oaths,” I said.  “It’s the turning of the age, when men and women must choose the good or evil side and say it out into the air to make it heard by Mother Earth and recorded in our soul-books.  I have to hear yours and you must hear mine.”

I kneeled before her and said, “Bless me, Queen, and make me proof against arrow and ax. Bring me out of battle alive to serve Arthur!”

“Great Lord God,” she said, “you Britons are too full of passion.  But you’re all good Trojans, every one of you.  I bless you, Merlin, for whatever good my blessing may do.”

Guenevere banged her gladius on her shield and shouted, “I pledge to Arthur!”

She howled her war cry.  Her lifeguards shouted, too.

“Bring me the sword,” she said to her slaves.

They brought her a scabbarded sword and its belt, wrapped in silks.

“Here,” she said, drawing from its fleece-lined scabbard a gleaming steel blade, “is the ancient Brittany greatsword.  Gifted me by my father in case Arthur proved a failure and I had to cut my way off this barbarous island and back to Brittany.”

The blade sang to me its soul-name.  In the perfection of its song, I knew it to be as grand a sword as any I could have made in Prince Llew’s forge.  Nearly as wonderful as Excalibur.

“Take this,” she said, giving me the fabulous steel sword.

I held the sword in my hands, its lightness and balance a perfection, its flex and energy hot and alive, its blades so keen they hissed in still air.

“If my blessing isn’t enough to keep you alive,” Guenevere said, “this sword will.  You two together will preserve my Arthur and cut the ground for Camelot.”

She scooped up Arthur’s sons and led her guards howling off the stone – rolling the Round Table with them –and into a place of safety in the center of the army.

I jumped off the stone onto my horse and galloped through Arthur’s legions, helmet thrown back on my head, red hair streaming out, arms outstretched with screaming shield and glittering greatsword, howling for Saxon blood and Camelot’s victory.

Arthur rode east, holding the gleaming Excalibur as a beacon for his army.  Behind him rode the aboriginal kings and queens of Britain, the Romanized princes, the vassal and vagabond knights, the warrior women and lady-knights, the grim-faced armed peasants, all shouting for victory over the Saxons.  The rising sun made all the east red and then yellow, as though changing from the temper of battle to the gold of a victory crown.  The army cheered.

I caught up with Arthur, the Brittany greatsword slung over my back, feeling in my bowels and veins a ferocious stirring of youth and energy unlike any of the other changes I had endured as Lady Merlin.

So much I had forgotten, so much of power I had lost as I’d grown younger.  But the residual hopes of a hundred and forty-four lifetimes told me this was the moment for which I had been chosen Merlin.

An hour from now, a day, a year, and Arthur would destroy the last Saxon and begin building Camelot.  I had brought him to this moment, armed him with Excalibur and the Round Table, given him Guenevere and love, and made him the Arthur who could be king.  I cheered for myself.

Half-naked peasants streaming from the trees ahead cried out to Arthur, “The Saxons are killing us, King, see our villages burn!”  “They send packs of dogs to tear our corpses from the funeral pyres!”  “They slaughter women and children!”  “They eat us, dead and alive!”  “Save us, King!”

Lancelot’s cavalry cleared away these refugees clogging the army’s path and Arthur led us on faster.

Bedivere rode up to report:  “Lucan’s counted twenty thousand infantry in your army, Arthur, a motley of professionals and peasants, and two thousand cavalry, mostly Breton heavy horse.”

“The First Caesar had more when he conquered the Island,” said the gloomy Rufus.

“But he was a hopeless foreigner,” Bedivere said, “and so were his sea-sick troops.”

“Colgrin,” said Rufus, “has fifteen times more.”

“We took so few thousand to York,” said Bedivere, “and look at the victory Arthur made there.  With these twenty thousand we can rock the world on its foundations!”

“There’s another world-rocker up there waiting for you,” said Rufus, “but he’s only a ‘hopeless foreigner’ called Colgrin with three hundred thousand.”

“More cold water on the fire of our battle-craze?” I cried.

I banged greatsword on shield.

“I’d fight you now, Roman,” I cried, “just to have someone to fight!”

Arthur laughed.  “Spare my Old Roman, Mother.  I need him.”

“Why keep this gloomy beast?” I cried out of my youthful frenzy.

“I keep him, Mother, because his Roman chill balances my British heat, as you once did.”

Why did he mean?  I was puzzled.  I was furious.  I wanted something to kill with this marvelous greatsword in my hand.

But Arthur turned to Rufus and said, in a calm that infuriated me, “What do you advise, late Colonel of the Ninth Legion?”

“Find Baldaf first with his ten thousand and strike him.  Knock him off the Island.  Do it before the boredom of the march persuades too many of our loyal troops to fall out in search of shady nooks, good fishing, and a quiet bucket of ale.”

“There, you see?” Arthur said to Bedivere and me.  “The Roman does understand the best of British life.”

“But he has no confidence in the eager loyalty of your army!” I cried, furious.

Rufus said to me, “Arthur has no army until it wins a battle, Lady Girl.  All he has now are boys and girls on a lark, and British boys and girls at that.”

I shouted in frustrated hunger for battle.

“How many Saxon allies counted?” Arthur said to Bedivere.

“You’ve ten thousand, all infantry better equipped than we Britons.”

I’d been listening to this cool conversation in growing impatience.  I wanted to shout some good sense into everyone.  So I cut in, saying, “Be Roman!  ‘Always trust the dog that hates you and distrust the dog that loves you.’”

Rufus was startled.  “I didn’t think you had any good sense left in you, Lady Merlin.  Listen to her, King.”

Arthur said to Bedivere, “Put our ‘loyal’ Saxons in the reserve.  Put our own reserve between them and the battle.  I don’t want them on my back when I’m fighting their cousins in front.”

“I’ll also divide our Saxons,” said Bedivere.  “Ronwen’s army in one place, Horst’s in another.” Bedivere galloped off reorder the troops.

“Put them where they can eat only each other if they want to fight!” I shouted after him.

A Saxon scout ran out of the trees shooting arrows at refugees.  The scout stopped, gawking at the gathering British army, and ran back into the forest gloom.

Rufus said, “Baldaf has found us.”

Arthur said to his captains, “Gather in the army.  Remember Scipio at Zama.”

“You want to make classical battle against cannibals?” I said, startled.  “We want an old-fashioned, swinging fight, Arthur.  Why waste time plotting strategy?  Let me close with a hundred Saxons and kill them all!”

I whacked the flat of my greatsword on the flank of my horse and it reared in good British fury and blood-lust.

Arthur grabbed my reins and settled me and the horse.

“Listen to me, Mother,” he said.  “These Saxons are no stupider than Hannibal’s elephants, are they?”

“Who cares about elephants?  Let’s fight!”

“Hannibal crushed Rome’s legions under his elephants’ feet.”

I was furious.  I was puzzled.  I couldn’t remember any of that.  Who cared?  Let’s go!

Arthur said to his captains.  “Draw out the army along this high ground facing the trees, cavalry on the wings.  Light infantry – the peasants – in front and thickening to heavy infantry in the rear.  Put knights on foot at intervals with shields and battle axes to buttress the peasants.  A reserve of mounted men and armored but fast-footed infantry.  How many archers?”

“Just five hundred, King,” said a captain.

“Send them to prick the Saxon vanguard if it pokes its head out of the trees before we’re in place.”

“It’ll be dusk before we draw in the army’s tail, King.”

“Then the tail is our second reserve.  To glean death in the field after we’ve done the slaughter.”

“Look there!” cried a captain.

The Saxon army pushed out of the forest in a shoving forward of roaming fighters like the leading edge of a growing flood, steel-rimmed shields and spear points flashing as though the trees suddenly had ignited.

Saxon cavalry came out on this vanguard’s wings, shouting insults and shaking feathered spears.

Rufus, hauling up his shield, said, “Pray Jupiter that Baldaf’s cavalry is as stupid as Hannibal’s.  Forget Zama.  Lady Merlin’s right.  Tell us to charge, Arthur.”

Arthur looked down his army’s front.  Bedivere and Kay had whipped and shouted the two wings into alignment.  Warriors ran to fill gaps in the line.  Standards, banners, and flags jerked and jumped over the battle-hungry array.

Warriors shouted their war cries to identify themselves to an enemy that had never before heard their names and could not speak British.

Bedivere banged his sword on his shield.  Britons and loyal Saxons took up the clatter.  British dukes and princesses with their lifeguards galloped up to the Saxon line to fire volleys of arrows, turn and gallop away or to tap surprised enemy soldiers with feathered spears for the glory of first touching the enemy.

Duke Horst with his war band and streaming battle flag raced across the face of our army, hooting insults at Baldaf, and drew up before Arthur, sweating with pride and battle-craze.

“Make the charge before they organize, King!” he cried.

Horst turned his horse to lead Arthur across the field for the first attack.

Arthur said, “Hold!  Mark Baldaf for me.”

“The duke my cousin is there!”

Horst pointed at a yellow-braided giant on a yellow-braided horse, a double-headed battle ax in his hands.

“Let us kill him together, King!”

Arthur shook off his shield.  “Give me bow and arrows.”

“What weapon is that for a proud fighting man?” cried Horst.

Arthur rode out alone from his army.

Baldaf, his big, flat face unreadable, shield slung over his back to free his two hands for the ax, threw out his arms, the ax in one fist, British scalps in the other, and galloped shouting at Arthur for single combat.

Arthur kicked his horse to a gallop and fired one arrow, two.  The shafts went into Baldaf’s horse’s head, one arrow above each eye, as though the animal had suddenly sprouted horns, and the horse stopped dead standing, too rigid to fall over.

Baldaf sat stunned to silence on his dead horse, arms out, Arthur galloping toward him.  Arthur fired once, twice.  Arrows like horns sprouted over Baldaf’s eyes. The giant was dead in his saddle, arms outstretched forever.

The Saxon army howled in stunned horror.

Arthur galloped past the dead man, snatching Baldaf’s battle ax from his dead hand.

The Saxon army howled in fright.

Arthur rode into the Saxon front line swinging the huge ax with both hands, carving air as panicked Saxons stumbled shouting away from him.  They cowered from the huge ax.  They screamed magic oaths to protect themselves from the man who had killed their champion.  They threw at him their magic pebbles and bits of holy bark, all clattering uselessly off his armor.

Arthur held the battle ax in one hand and drew the gleaming World Sword with the other.

The Saxons flung down their weapons and fell to their knees, shouting for mercy and crying, “Cynning!  Cynning!  Laverd Cynning!”

“Join me!” Arthur cried.  “Join me in Camelot!”

The Saxons shouted and cheered and poured across the field behind Arthur, as though Arthur were leading the enemy horde against his own army.

The Britons raised their spears to fight.

Arthur shouted, “Receive our brothers!”

Rufus shouted, “You’ve only won the first battle line, Arthur.  Look what’s coming!”

More Saxons poured out of the forest in a fresh flood, Saxons who had not seen their duke slain, and with them came Cheldric’s battle flag and his horde.

“There are fifty thousand of them!” cried Rufus.

Horst on his excited mount cried, “Hold up the battle ax, King!  Let them see it.  It’s ‘Morgengrabe,’ a mightier power than armies.  It will win victory for us.  Or give it to me to safe-hold.”

“If it has a pagan charm in it,” Arthur said, “then it’s nothing I want.”

He threw Morgengrabe to Horst who caught it in both hands, its weight nearly pulling him out of his saddle.

“Thanks, Lord Fool,” Horst said.  “You’ve made me king!”

Horst with his lifeguards galloped away, trampling Saxons still cheering Arthur.

The battle-craze was searing inside me and now it found a happy focus.  “I’ll find you and kill you!” I shouted after Horst.

Cheldric’s cavalry swept clear the field between the two armies to make space for fighting.

Arthur raised Excalibur.

All across the face of the British army greatswords were drawn and thrust into the air, glinting blue, white, red, all the many colors of steel naming princes and nations.

“Begin the slaughter!” Arthur shouted.

The British army and its Saxon converts cheered.

The army surged forward, driving into the half-ready enemy, skewering and hacking, shoving Cheldric’s army back into the dank forest.

Arthur used Excalibur’s gleam to light a path into the gloomy trees and to give light to the Britons cutting Cheldric’s army into bits to be terrorized, surrounded, and slaughtered.

Rufus shouted, “Get us out of the trees, Arthur, Saxons were bred to fight in places like this, not us!”

Arthur’s shield clattered fending off Saxon spears too expertly aimed through the trees.

“Forward or backward, Merlin?” he cried to me.

“East!  The forest breaks there!” I said.  “We push them into the grass and happily murder them!”

Arthur kicked his horse eastward across enemy corpses, climbing over immense tree roots, the army following Excalibur’s gleam.  Rufus and I were his lifeguards, hacking away Saxons.

We three galloped into a break in the trees full of slanting light, up spinning cut off heads, and broken swords.  We were in meadow grass.

Sudden silence.

Daylight here was so bright it masked the flash of Excalibur.  Birds sang.  A breeze nodded flowers.  Our horses, gasping and sweat-lathered, stared around confused by sudden peace.

Then the battle rolled out onto the grass around us.  Saxons shoved out into good fighting space but Britons surrounded them and cut them down in Roman style, a dozen hacking blades against each Saxon.

Horst and Ronwen with their reserves were not there nor were the elders with their clan-warriors.  But the blind elderman Dubric led by his four sons crashed through the Saxon infantry to join Arthur.