As I waited with the rest I wondered if this elaborate and time-consuming ritual of leavetaking had been really necessary. It was uncharacteristic also—neither Gwen nor Artos favored this sort of thing at the best of times. But as I looked around at the exalted faces, I began to understand why Artos had insisted; and when they stood at their places, and the whole vast Hall filled with the solemn soaring anthem sung by all of us together, thousands of voices many of whom would soon be silenced forever, my own perhaps among them, I knew he had been right to so insist.
Arthur had never been one for speeches. Though in his time he had delivered some few that would live forever even in the annals of a folk renowned for winged words, he did not love having to speak to order, as it were, and last night in our small family gathering before retiring had fretted endlessly that he would not today be up to the mark. He need not have worried.
"My friends," he began, and the Hall went silent as snow on the instant, "this may perhaps be the last time I shall come to speak to you so, or that you shall come so to hear my words. Therefore let you listen and let me say what I would."
It was a speech that stood with the one he had given us from the bridge of Carnwen, what time we had made our crossing from Gwynedd to Tara, bringing war against the Marbh-draoi on the very world he claimed as his. Arthur had then still been but our King to be, and the theme he had sounded had been like to the opening movement of a great piece of ceol mor, the Great Music, where all the themes to come are laid out in small. Now he was our King, and perhaps soon would be our King that had been; and his statement now was a coda, a final movement, the themes of his kingship all recapitulated with variations and resolutions, played full out one last time more ere the great shouting final chord was sounded.
What he said mattered little, though the words were fine and high and fair. How he said them mattered more than all. And he said them well indeed; as well as he had said those first public words of his, still a lad, barely fourteen, back at Coldgates, when for the first time he claimed his birthright as Amris Pendreic’s only heir, and vowed to his awed hearers, and to all Keltia, that mystic compact a prince makes with his people, and they with him.
Today, here, he made that compact with them yet again, and they swore it as fervently back to him. As I listened, tears scalding my eyes (for I would not weep, not in front of the entire kingdom, and then I saw that everyone else was weeping, and I was too by then in any case), I felt again that eerie far-off touch of the Awen upon my soul. This too, then…
But Arthur was coming to the end of his brief text—in his years as High King he had learned to edit his natural eloquence, for which we were all most grateful—and I set myself to hear him as a bard would, to hear and to remember, though the moment was recorded by many means and there was, strictly speaking, no real need, save the need I felt in my soul. For I had share in this, I had come all this way with Arthur, this moment was mine as much as his; aye, as it was Gwen’s, and Ygrawn’s (ah Goddess, Ygrawn!), and Morgan’s, and Donah’s and Arawn’s and Tarian’s and Grehan’s and oh, all the rest beside.
"Tide what may betide," he was saying, in a clear and joyous voice, "we know what we have done here. Keltia is Keltia again because of what we did together, none of us of more worth or import than another. You are my folk, I am your High King, Gweniver your High Queen. And I say to you that no matter the victory or the loss we go from here to find, that shall never change, not in the memory of the world. Never shall I cease to be your Ard-righ, for so long as it is in my power to be so. That is why I wished to speak to you all, here, now today: so that I may say to you now, as I said once before, ‘Lean thusa orm!": He paused for one electric instant. "Follow thou me!"
It was the old ros-catha he had cried us on with to land on Tara; Caerdroia itself had heard it shouted from the Stonerows to Turusachan, and in the long years since, it had been heard—and feared—on many worlds. Now as Arthur cried it here, to those whom he would almost momentarily be leading out against the Coranians, it seemed to resonate through the Hall and back through the very mountains behind us. And we shouted it back at him, ten thousand voices all as one, "Lean thusa orm!"
But he did not respond with the battle-exultance that had for so long been his trademark, only stretched out his arms above the crowd as the priest we often forgot he was, and in the sudden hush after the great tumult spoke the Beannacht to us, the blessing of the gods and man; and we received it solemnly and humbly. Then Alein the new Archdruid and Therrian who was still the Ban-draoi Mathr’achtaran came forward, and Arthur received their blessing as we had taken his.
With that, he became all business, and issued crisp orders to his chief commanders; the great mass began to disperse and in surprisingly few minutes the Hall of Heroes was empty save for the true Kindred: blood-kin and soul-kin, the royal family and the Companions who were also family.
This was the moment I had feared and dreaded above all else, the farewell we all must make to one another, in front of one another. But as I glanced round on these faces I had known for the better part of a lifetime, I suddenly saw there was naught here to dread or to fear, for there was naught here but love.
And so no need to linger: After all our partings were made, those who were to remain behind went up to the top of the Keep, so that they might watch Prydwen and her escort as they rose to join the fleet that waited for them out past the Criosanna. Ygrawn, Gerrans, Donah, Grehan who had been ordered to stay to help with the home defense should any be needed, and with the remnants of the civil strife if not, a few more: and with them, leading them, Gweniver Pendreic ac Penarvon ferch Leowyn gan Arthur, Ard-rian, High Queen of Kelts.
The rest of us took swift way by aircar to Mardale, and went each to our assigned craft. Most of our contingent was already aboard Prydwen, bursting with pride for being ordered to the flagship; many were soldiers we had fought beside for years, many more were newer, younger. And the leaven in all this was the core of Companions: Betwyr, Ferdia, Tanwen Farrach, Alannagh Ruthven; Daronwy and Roric (who had begged to be allowed to join us on this reiving, swearing that he was more Kelt by now than Aojunni); even my old teacher Elphin Carannoc, though his coming left us Chief Bard-less; my sister Tegau Goldbreast and her lord Eidier; Elenna, our Elen of the Hosts, who was in command second only to Artos himself; my young grandsons Anghaud and Sgilti, who if not Companions precisely were surely of the Company; even Tarian, who had signed over her Taoiseach’s office to Grehan Aoibhell, so that she might come with us. Oh, and many more beside, who had been with us in Coldgates or Daars or Llwynarth or Tinnavardan or so many of the old cherished lost places. It was not a crew merely, but a living memory… A great freight of Fairface were we that went with Arthur; and I could not help but wonder, as Prydwen rose beneath us and the techs on the field snapped to honoring attention as the ship took the air, how many of that freight would still be filling Prydwen when she came again home.
For that she would, I had no doubts; that had been promised too many times. For the rest of it, nay; there was no certainty, and I knew already some of the dan that was beginning to make itself felt here. Would that I did not; but I had no choice in that, and in that choicelessness there could be found a certain peace and freedom, something like a stone wall against which one could set one’s back. And sometimes, when your back was to such a wall, you fought your best…
So I mused to myself, as I stood beside my King and brother upon the bridge, and watched him watching Tara fall away aft. For myself, I did not wish to look. If my dan held for me as I had been given to believe, I should be seeing it soon enough again, and therefore did not need to look now, for it would only cause me pain. If my dan worked out other wise, then I should not be seeing it again until my next life, and a last look now should only cause me more pain; and so again I would not watch.
And in the end I did not watch Arthur either, not until Tara was a full bright sphere behind us and we had passed the Criosanna and red Bellendain—Argialla was just now on
the other side of the planet—and even the tiny shepherd moons that rim the Criosanna’s outer edge and, some say, keep the rings from straying.
I did not watch him until he had given the signal to send Prydwen into the ard-na-speire like an unleashed wolfhound on the chase, when he lifted his hand and let it fall in accordance with some inner timing of which only he was aware. And with the dropped hand he spoke another word he had spoken once before: "Ymlaen!"
Which signifies in the Kymric, "Forward!"
* * *
BOOK FOUR:
Diachtrai
* * *
Chapter Twenty-six
We met them as we could have wished to do. Arthur had his own choice of battleground, which was of course as he ever preferred it; and though you might think that one place in space is much the same as any other, you would find yourself wrong to think so.
The place Arthur chose for our stand against the Coranian and Fomori and Fir Bolg invaders was called Camlann; or rather, that was the name of the nearest planetary body, a small uninhabited planetoid. And according to ancient military custom it went down so in the histories: the Battle of the Roads of Camlann. And it was eternally and forever the wrong place to choose; the second, last and greatest of Arthur’s wrong battlefield choices—more wrong even than Moytura. "Two only!" I said to him later. "You might have gone for three; no bard will ever be able to make a triad out of this!" I said so to twit him, but the within-thought was to take some of the gravity from the moment, to ease his desperate pain at having so chosen, his blaming of himself; and to his credit for all time he laughed on both counts. But that was later.
We were a full three hundred on Prydwen this faring. Not a single Companion but had not begged fervently and eloquently to be included in this sluagh; but Arthur had ordered many of the best to remain at home with Gweniver and Morgan, in the very real case of war breaking out behind us in absence. All the same, it was a massive fleet we led to Camlann. Commanded by Elen Llydaw and Arthur himself, it was an array the like of which had not been seen in Keltia since Athyn’s day, or the Grey Graham’s, or maybe even Raighne’s or Brendan’s.
We had a while to wait: We could sail straight or take the road of the overheaven as we so chose, but the invaders had to come in through mined space, and also the Morimaruse, the great Dead Sea of the stars not so far from Keltia’s outmost borders was a daunting obstacle to folk who had not previously encountered it. It would take a while to sail round, and all the while they sailed was time for us to fling ourselves like a deadly cloak across the stars.
But all too soon—it is so in every battle, even the ones for whose commencing you think you have waited ages long—they were upon us. The enemy had come.
And none other to lead them than Marguessan Pendreic. She announced her presence on a swift and deadly Coranian dreadnought—not the flagship, which was a mighty thing called the Marro—and Arthur chose at once to speak to her.
Well—if you could call it that. He remained many moments silent, looking at his sister’s face as it filled the viewscreens—mocking, brutal, angry, pleased—and then on a sudden came a cold deadly rain of speech, a great hearkening-wind and following storm of words all sharp and fierce and stinging, as when An-Lasca flings its sleety freight against the walls of Caerdroia. Arthur—he who was known on worlds litten by strange stars for the honor and princely courtesy of his tongue—now spoke words like a storm of arrows, like the tip-whip hurling its savage little lash to hook it deep in flesh. Arthur was speaking to his sister Marguessan, who had dared to call and crown herself Ard-rian of Keltia. I will not repeat his words.
She went very white and very still, and when he was done spoke not one syllable in answer, but threw her chin up a little and vanished from the screen; and, all around, the Coranian (for so I shall call them, though there were others with them) battle lines began to shift the smallest tiniest bit. Not Marguessan’s command, then; I wondered briefly who it was that did lead here—the captain or war-admiral aboard the Marro, was my guess—and then had no leisure more for wonder, for the fight was joined.
"Shall we force them to fight as we do wish, then, Artos?" I asked, a little hesitant at the sheer volume of ships out there that must be overcome.
"We will pound their bones for them if they do not," answered Arthur cheerfully, and turned to the screens to watch his fight unfold.
There are surprisingly few rules for fleet battle in space. We—I speak here of the Kelts, and, latterly, the Yamazai (who of course had been trained up alike, under the goad of Artho Kendrion)—were ‘customed to apply the principles of chariot warfare (at which we were acknowledged masters) to starship warfare. There is not so much difference as you might think, between a small, fast, supremely maneuverable war-chariot and a similarly small, fast and even more maneuverable (in three dimensions, not a paltry two) spacecraft. Whether one is fighting on the plain below Caerdroia or below the plane of the solar ecliptic, the rules are the same, and we did now as we have ever done: Lead them after you with speed, then turn hard and fast and hit them harder and faster, while they are still coming up to you and helpless to alter course, so that they are struck not only with all the strength and force of your movement but with theirs as well. It worked surpassing fine with chariots, as many worlds could tell you; and, as Arthur and Elen employed it, finer still with chariots of the stars.
So began the Battle of the Roads of Camlann, fought in bitterness and silence and utter mercilessness; not a long fight as such things go, but one that changed forever the fates of more realms than our own, or even the Coranians’.
The difficulty of ground, if I may call it that for mere convenience’s sake, was made apparent early on. We had thought that the uninhabited condition of the nearby planetoid would provide perfect shelter for us, as a small hillock or rise will often do on an earthly battlefield—a place to go for momentary respite and regrouping. And, at first, this purpose it served, the small planetoid Camlann. But as the battle wore on, more and more of the enemy ships began making use of it themselves for shield, luring our craft in behind and blowing them to dust once they tore by in pursuit.
This had happened often enough for Arthur to give orders that our ships were not to dodge behind Camlann, however crippled or temptingly slow the enemy targets feigned. Worse, the tiny planet’s gravitational field was out of all proper proportion for a body so small, and began to play hob with the navigation systems on our smaller craft. Larger craft could compensate; not so the little dart-fighters, whose very advantage lay in their smallness and blazing speed. Coranian cutters gobbled them up like great calm salmon gulping down minnows at the bottom of a dark loch; and we could ill afford to lose even the least minnow of our schools.
So Elen, after consultation with Arthur, ordered a great flanking maneuver, such as might have been employed with stateliness and terrible grace on some snow-covered battlefield below, in the churned wake of which the snow would be red indeed. She made a monstrous scythe of our middle-rank craft, the cruisers and barques and destroyers, a giant curving wall of deadly ships; bladed the scythe with the swift biting smallships; and for the weight that swung it, the huge galliasses and dreadnoughts and carracks, the ships that anchored the line.
All this Elen flung out from Camlann, the planetoid as its fulcrum and the scythe poised to swing. And for the moment, she held it there; held it and looked to Arthur for the word, and he stared out at the great glittering array and did not give it.
For good reason: That word, once said, could not be called back again, and this for all intents was all the strength we had. There were fleets and divisions protecting the seven settled home-worlds, to be sure, but we would sooner perish utterly than call on those, for they might be meeting sore need of their own soon enough.
And yet to delay too long were also a hazard. Very soon the formation would begin to break up as the Coranians dove and bit and worried it, and then the Fomori and Fir Bolg would bring their lesser, slower ships up for the kill.
"I like not this pack-dog strategy of theirs," Daronwy remarked to me in an undertone. She glanced across the bridge at where my two young grandsons, Anghaud and Sgilti, were watching wide-eyed from a shielded viewport. "Do you think they are best kept up here?" she asked quietly. "I know they have been useful, Talyn—the communications bards have been singing their praises all day—but should aught go awry they might be safer below."
I made some noncommittal face, quirked mouth, raised brows, a sort of shrug above the neck. But it had occurred to me before now to wonder as to what was best for my son’s sons—especially should aught truly disastrous befall. Every warrior in Keltia knew what the Fian way was at such times—and if you could not manage your own sword to your own best interest it was fair to ask another to help you—but Anghaud and Sgilti were barely out of childhood, still more lads than youths. Would it fall to me, in such evil case, to have to slay my own grandsons to keep them from falling prey to the Coranians?
I knew in my heart that I could do so, if I must; knew too that Gerrans and Cristant and Morgan would not blame me for it—or blame my ghost, more like, since if I were forced to such act on my grandsons’ behalf I should not be far behind in doing the same service for myself. But if it came to that—I resolutely veered away, then my bard’s resolution brought me back to it again—could I, truly? On them? On, say, Daronwy or my other dearest friends? On—Arthur?
I did not know, and prayed I would not have to find out; for just then Arthur gave the order for the scythe to swing. And Elen did so with a will.
It was a staggering thing to see, that huge arc of fire and fmdruinna, starlight washing over the ships’ hulls impartially with enemy lasra bolts, beginning to move with awful majesty upon the Coranians. It seemed as if our ships were some immense seine being drawn tight upon a suddenly panicked shoal of sgian-fish, who responded by snapping indiscriminately at foe and friend alike, so that in the end they themselves accomplished much of the destruction we had willed to work on them.
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