The Sword and The Quest: Lady Merlin's Saga (Epic Fantasy) (41 page)

“Where are the eld?” Arthur shouted to him.

“I am they,” said the blind man.  “Jealousy keeps them out.  They’ll take the sword from your corpse, King, and kill each other for it.  Like good Britons, they prefer civil war to any other kind of war.”

Rufus said, “We’ve broken the enemy’s center, King, but his wings can crush us still.  We have to attack again.”

“Which way?” said Arthur, staring around, “we’re in the middle of the enemy.”

The blind warrior said, “You’ve lost this battle, King.”

“It’s barely begun!”

“Already lost.  Go east,” said the old warrior.  “Save a remnant to build a new army free of traitors and Saxon mercenaries!”

“Never!  We’ll attack across the ground we’ve already crossed.”

“To kill corpses?” said Rufus.

“To break out to our reserve and with them to attack Cheldric’s right or left, whichever’s weaker.”

“Three attacks over the same ground?” I said, nearly too bruised to raise my checkered shield and the Brittany greatsword, my arm muscles stiffening, crying out for rest.  “Where in the Greeks and Romans did a general ever do that?”

“We make a new warfare here,” Arthur said.  “Continuous attack, in any direction, but always attack.”

“There’s too much war-madness in you,” I said.  “I love it!”

“You’re thinking with your blood, not your liver, King,” said Rufus.  “We have to save the army.”

“It’s Uther’s hot blood in me,” said Arthur.  “What can I do about it?”

He slung his shield over his back and raised Excalibur to signal his warriors.

Arthur dropped reins to free both hands to fight.  His war horse screamed its war-hunger and lunged into the trees.

Rufus and I and the army plunged after Arthur, hacking into Cheldric’s startled Saxons already howling their victory cheers as they cut-throat the British wounded.

Their cheers stopped.  They had no time to raise their knives to defend themselves.

Arthur first and then his army rode them down, trampling their bones and brains, kicking up helmets and broken spears.  We charged through the trees as confused by what we were doing as was the Saxon enemy, our lines of fighters first charging east and then turning in their footprints to charge west at Arthur’s shout.

Arthur banged away Saxons with his shield, hacked them with Excalibur, his war horse biting off enemy faces and legs, and shouted to Rufus, “Have you ever seen a victory made from so much confusion?”

“Never, King, but you’re the only Arthur we’ve got!  What can we do?”

I cheered confusion.

I cheered to release the fury in me.

I cheered to continue my hacking at the hideous enemy.

* * *

Arthur with Excalibur and me with the Brittany greatsword were the first to trample over Saxons to a hilltop to see the battle below us.  It was spread across fields and forests in a chaotic mess and looked to me like some wild thing spinning toward disaster.

On distant high ground, where Arthur had stationed his reserve, we saw Guenevere, with the upright and gleaming Round Table and her Bretons, fighting Horst and our Saxon allies.  Ronwen’s army on a nearby hilltop stood silent, watching Guenevere’s fight, brooding.

To the north were the clan-armies of the eldermen and women, drawn up and waiting the outcome of Guenevere’s battle before committing themselves to one side or the other.

Swirling up from the south and pouring out of the trees were the combined armies of Cheldric and Baldaf.  We had left thousands of them to hang bleeding on forest branches but many thousands more were freshly arrived on the battlefield and howling for battle-glory.

Arthur gathered his battle-frenzied and bloodied army and charged uphill toward Guenevere as she led her reserves charging downhill through the Saxons toward us, the huge Round Table on its cart flashing yellow light on the battle.

Between hammer and anvil, Arthur and Guenevere broke the back of Horst’s army.  Stunned Saxon warriors threw down their weapons and ran away screaming, Horst with his lifeguards yipping and shrieking toward the safety of Cheldric’s battle line.

“Where to now?” said Guenevere to Arthur, her armor black with mud and blood.  “We’ve lost this thing, haven’t we?”

“Where are my sons?” said Arthur.  Guenevere drew back a tent of brine-hardened leather that hid the two boys on the Table’s cart.  Lancelot raised the boys to Arthur to kiss them.

“Lifeguards!” Arthur shouted to his bodyguard.  “Leave me to the protection of Excalibur.  Make sons your charges now.  Hadrian!”

“Here, Master,” said Hadrian the Lesser.

“Warrior-Magician-Fool, protect my children.”

“I guard them for my lovely Guenevere.  It’s only incidental to me that you made them, somehow.”

Below us, Cheldric’s army gathered for assault.  To the north squatted the watching armies of the eld.

“We go north,” Arthur said, taking from his slaves a fresh shield and helmet, clapping his gold circlet on the new helmet.

“To beg those eldish traitors to help us?” I said.  “I’d rather kill them…”

“To persuade them to join us by leading Cheldric’s army into them,” said Arthur.

I nearly laughed at the absurd trap he’d set for his enemy allies.

Arthur clapped shut his helmet, his eyes gleaming like a demon’s out of the helmet gloom.  Seeing them drove up my fighting blood.

I scraped mud from the faces on my screaming shield so everyone would know me.  I grabbed a horned helmet.  I leaped onto a fresh mount.  I galloped war crying behind Arthur toward the eld, all the British infantry and cavalry stampeding after me.

Behind us, British archers stapled to the mud the oncoming lines of Cheldric’s attack, stapling pagans together in twos and threes, until the archers ran out of arrows gleaned from the field across which they followed us.

Then they retreated following us, beating off Cheldric’s warriors with their bows, flinging darts and javelins at them, throwing boulders to smash Saxon shields and skulls, and finally raising their own iron-rimmed shields to batter off more of the shrieking enemy.

All of our weapon-throwing and arrow-flinging rearmed the Saxon archers and javelin-throwers and depleted the weapons of the Britons.  But we had Cheldric’s army following us and that’s what Arthur wanted.

The startled elders realized Arthur’s game and turned to run with their own forces, but Cheldric’s trumpets cried for the victory slaughter.

The Saxon army surged forward as Arthur’s army scrambled through the legions of the elders and let Cheldric fall on them.  The elders fled away, dragging their banners in the bloody mud, abandoning their own warriors.  The abandoned had no choice but to join the fight alongside Arthur or be slaughtered by scramasaxes.

* * *

Arthur was bare-headed, his crowned helmet battered off and gone in the melee.  His shield was beaten to bits.  He used the shield’s boss like a fist-fighter’s glove.  His armor was shattered to dangling bits, one boot gone.  His army was nearly wrecked.  He himself was being hammered into the mud by a dozen axes and swords.

Dunwallo the Seatless, hammering through the enemy throng with his bloodless war club, shouted, “Here, take this shield, King, it’s ‘Pridwen’ and unbreakable.”

On the shield’s face was Dunwallo’s York Cross.  On its inner surface was painted the face of the mother of the Hero Jesu.

Arthur in his shattered armor and Excalibur huddled breathless behind Pridwen as the shield was stabbed with arrows and hacked by axes.

I swung in to carve fighting room for Excalibur.

A young girl half Arthur’s size, even in her armor, swinging a hissing greatsword to hack apart Saxons terrified the pagans and they fell back.

“Use Excalibur now!” I shouted to Arthur.

Arthur tore off the last of his ruined armor.  He was naked as Ajax at Troy, his chest smeared with Saxon blood.  Pridwen on his arm.  He kissed the blade and said in his soul’s voice,
Excalibur!

He stabbed Excalibur into the Saxon army, the sword growing, thrusting out, driving into the soul of the enemy army where it bit, twisting and tearing as Arthur swung the sword left and right, its immense length cutting down Saxons by centuries and cohorts, cutting up men and horses, shattering shields and battle axes, sending Saxons howling away from Arthur, reeling and falling, screaming, stampeding, crushing each other in their mad panic to flee the gleaming steel.

Cheldric’s army broke and fled, Cheldric standing astonished and alone on the battlefield, beneath his torn battle standard, before he too ran away.

Now Ronwen, her three immense braids tied behind her back, led her own army hacking through the Saxon flight.  She shouted down from her saddle, “Kiss me as Duchess of Angleland, Arthur, and I’ll go there now and slaughter every Saxon for you, and clear the land for my estates!”

Arthur, leaning on Excalibur, gasping in battle-exhaustion, said, “You’d leave me in the middle of my fight?”

“You fight like a naked Greek out of legend, but you’ve lost this battle, Arthur.  Why should I let the enemy gorge on my troops, too?”

Arthur kissed her and she whooped away, leading her force hacking through the enemy toward far Angleland.

King Lot, his armor steaming, cradling the Orkney greatsword as though he would a child, stumbled up the mound of dead and shouted, “Pendragon!  The sun’s overhead, we’re boiled in armor but these cold-blooded Saxons fight like the unChristed beasts they are.  Withdraw!”

Lancelot led to Arthur the shattered remnants of the Breton cavalry and said, “Arthur, I weep, I’ve lost so much in horse and men!  We must abandon the field to the enemy.”

Bedivere said from where he squatted in exhaustion, “We all say this battle’s lost, King.  Give it up and save what we can.”

Out of the forest came more howling Saxon warriors, like another wave of a relentless sea.

Our army groaned in misery.

All hope of Camelot was about to end, and Britain, too.

I was only one-tenth the merlin I needed to be to save the dream.

I had no idea what to do.

I was filled with berserker fury.

I knew this shattered army could not beat back these fresh-swarming hordes.

Not today, not here.

We had to run away to fight again for Camelot.

I roared at the army, in something too near panic, “Withdraw!”

* * *

We and the remains of the army were three days away from the battle that Arthur called the fourth of the thirteen battles he was Fated to fight and still our ears rang with the clatter of combat and the shrieks of the dying.

Not a warrior among us was unbruised and uncut. Not a horse unwounded.  Every shield was arrow-pierced, too many swords were battle-bent, too many spears broken, we had field-gleaned too few arrows to refill our quivers.

Cold rain fell over us, soaking our wool, rusting our armor, trickling down our spines and legs into our sloshing boots, increasing the misery of our battle-loss.

We moved like old men and old women, groaning and falling out to puke and weep in pain.  We ate nuts and berries, slaughtered tiny forest creatures, made cook fires only in daytime to avoid attracting Saxon scouts.

We starved as we marched and, though it rained unstopping, we thirsted as we tramped west away from Cheldric’s army pursuing us.  The Saxons pursued not too closely because, even ruined as we were, they were afraid of us.

We marched away from Colgrin coming up from the south searching for us.

Arthur had lost Excalibur’s fleece-lined scabbard given him by Gurthrygen’s spirit.  When we stopped to make a meal of squirrels, he drove Excalibur into any stone for safekeeping, then leaned against the stone as his pillow.  He curled up there in his misery of failure and let the rain fall on him.

His war band stared at him with a gloom too much like doubt.

“Here am I the supposed gilt milestone of the age,” he said bitterly to them.  “Do you still love me?”

“We’ll love you better,” said Hadrian, “when you kill more of them than of us.”

Guenevere, muddy and exhausted, said, “In antique times a dead hero was awarded his statue in the Forum.  Shall we give you a statue now, Arthur, as you consider yourself dead to us?”

Bedivere kicked Arthur.  “Get up, you fool, you’re the damn king.  Let the army see you a king.”

“Leave me!”  Arthur threw a rag over his head and wept.

Bedivere put his hand on Excalibur.  “This sword should belong to a better man than you.”

“Take it, it’s yours.”

Bedivere pulled on the sword.  It would not draw from the stone.  He cursed each of his household gods.

He said to Arthur, “The sword says you’re still our chosen king and damn our Fate.”

Bedivere spat at the sword.

“Mother!” Arthur cried from beneath the rag over his face.  “Tell me what comes next or tell me to cut my throat with that magic sword.”