Arthur H. Landis - Camelot 03

by The Magick of Camelot

  Need I say that my heart was pounding? It surely was! I had no fear of the man’s swordsmanship. It was his sword that scared me. It glowed as did our armor, with a yellow, golden shimmer. Why? Was it what it seemed to be, just a sharpened, metal weapon? I’d soon find out… . We began to circle, to measure each other. Beyond him, ghostlike, more warriors with the white tab filtered through to join the lines before the temple. The task, I knew would not be easy.

  But then, we’d never expected it to be so.

  There is a triple art to the fighting with two hands on a sword’s haft. The first is the art of the true greatsword, that clumsy, giant bar of heavy steel reputedly used by the Terran Arthur in his time. The second is the art of the somewhat smaller greatsword, but still a greatsword, as it continues to be used on Fregis. The last is the art of the double-handed sword which is neither great nor small; as it had been used in the long ago by Terra’s famed samurai. … I was a master of all three!

  I hoped to learn his style before I killed him and, at the same time, to show my stalwarts what they too could expect these last watched tense, their breathing deep and studied, as they prepared for violent action. Indeed, in the light of the many torches their eyes were already red-rimmed.

  He attacked, silently, fiercely, skillfully. It was like no other attack I’d ever experienced. Whatever the true weight of his light armor, to him it mattered no more than the woolen hose, shirt and shoon of a dancing master. And that is exactly what he was, a dancing master… . Though I was a better swordsman than he, it was still all I could do to fend his blows; indeed, the single thing that saved me was that he’d been wholly unaware of my strength. Moreover, I quickly concluded that our average Marackian swordsman was also stronger.

  I would let the advantage work for me.

  At one point he sliced through the mesh of my hauberk to cut my left arm; upon which my foot slipped. Laughing wildly like a ten-year-old, he rushed in for the kill. I rolled easily away from the sweep of his blade—and slipped again, but this time, deliberately. Again he came in, blade held back as an extension of the length of his arm. Since I was half down, the sweep of it, if he’d connected, would have taken my head. But my slip being a feint, I was fully in control. I arose suddenly up and directly into his swing, caught it at my waist and on my own close-held blade, then literally threw myself against his off-balance body—and pinned him to the stone of the square with the heavy point of my own weapon. The crowd roared, but I didn’t know whether their yells were for me or against me. No matter. I knew what I had to do, if for no other reason than to establish firmly in the minds of all that the true arms of Marack were in the field, that the sky-lords would be opposed. I held up a hand to silence them, to focus their attention on me, on my sword—and on the creature at the other end of it. Achieving my ends in part, I gave the Alphian the coup de grace with a quick reflex thrust.

  Cruel? Unworthy of an Adjuster? Right on both counts. But I was a Fregisian now, a true son of Camelot-Fregis and a prince consort of Marack. And this screaming thing, this lab-created animal had, just a few short days before, killed hundreds of ours, ruthlessly; for no purpose other than to show that he could do it.

  Unfortunately, Marackians have strong loyalties even to their own errors, including the act of treason. The lines of men-at-arms above us—and there were four now instead of two—swarmed yelling down the last steps to avenge their lords and to save themselves, if possible. I’d hardly time to grab the enemy’s laser and blaster guns and to shove them into my belt, when they were on us.

  With rare exceptions, battles fought on Camelot-Fregis are crystal-clear in my memory. Especially the fight for the temple of the Trinity of Ormon, Wimbely and Harris.

  They were sixty to our eight.. I’d expected such odds; known, too, that despite them, what with our prowess, we were still quite evenly matched. The Alphians, the source of my greatest concern, had been slain. The thing now was to prevent ourselves from being overwhelmed by the press of numbers. We would strike for the proverbial “high-ground,” the dais itself, and quick!

  Our tight circle had become a phalanxed diamond. As they rushed down upon us, we each went to one knee, caught their plunging bodies full on our shields and came up to fling them over our heads and into the watching crowds around us. We utilized, in this way, the full force of their own momentum. We also chopped legs, thighs and groins, while smashing forward and up through the melee of writhing, screaming bodies.

  The dais was forty feet from the slabs of the square. With myself at point and Rawl and Gen-Rondin to either side, we achieved it in as many seconds. In the final sword-swinging, raging surge of steel—and in a veritable spindrift of sweat and gore—we killed at least a dozen and left twice that many hors de combat. When we’d attained the top we turned on them… . And it was precisely then, with hardly a pause for breath, that we wreaked such bloody havoc among them as to destroy completely what combativeness they still retained.

  It must be understood that those who attacked us were men-at-arms, whereas we, excepting our student-warriors, were among the finest swordsmen in all the north.

  With the main flurry over, we rested our weight on our swords and gazed down through the bloody mists to the enemy’s remnant thirty. The scene was a chaos of bodies, severed limbs and bloodied stones. The oily smoke from the torches plus a red glow from the incense pots made of it all a blazing inferno. The crowds of gaping watchers beyond the prime circle of light had become gargoyles, distorted, grotesque, half-beasts and humans. For those with weak stomachs, it was a collage of purest nightmare.

  And, too, the crowd, no longer contained by the men-at-arms who’d joined the original twenty-four, pressed even beyond the still laden tables to stare hypnotically at those blood-drenched stairs. The dead Alphians, their fallen, would-be “death angels” for the new god, Diis, still glowed. with a faint and shimmering aura akin to our own. Two of my students, Rogas and Kodder, went to them and took their swords. No hand was raised to prevent them.

  Then, and I’d asked that it be timed this way should we succeed, there appeared on the dais, indeed, in our very midst, a three-statue ensemble, life-sized, also glowing. It was of Ormon, Wimbely and Harris—courtesy of our lady-enchantress, Elioseen.

  A groan swept the ranks of the would-be turncoats. Some fell to their knees in terror. Others, fearful, made the sign of Ormon upon their breasts. There were still a few, however, who looked around them cannily for what might now come from the other side. They could not believe that the sky-lords would take such a defeat so easily….

  Then a chant began; came rolling across the square. At first a whisper, it swelled, grew: “Ormon! Marack! Ormon!— Marack!”

  I at once shouted above this new obeisance to the white-faced throng beneath me, and especially to those thirty who still clung to their arms. “If you love life,” I told them, “then throw down your arms and address yourselves immediately to Marack and to Ormon’s grace.” The crowd did, but the thirty swordsmen who’d accepted the white tab refused. Though trembling, they were still Fregisian warriors and they could not, for their honor’s sake.

  It made no difference. Indeed, it was already too late. One by one they were seized, beaten; knives thrust to their bodies—and this by the very sycophants of the erstwhile Diis and his sky-lords.

  Some had appeared, however, who were not sycophants. From two side streets and rallying, apparently, to the voices that had shouted that the Collin and the Lord, Gen-Rondin, the king’s judge, were leading warriors against the debasers of Marack’s gods, there came at least two hundred swordsmen, warriors, armed students, simple people, ready to place themselves at our sides, though they’d not known of our small victory.

  They split the wavering crowd like so much jelly, to arrive below us and to shout: “Collin! Rondin! Collin! Rondin! Marack! Marack!” and to kill instantly any who so much as looked at them cross-eyed, or dared to curse them.

  But it had to end, and quick. Sooner or later, and mo
re likely sooner, our Tarkiis would certainly get wind of what had happened and descend upon the city.

  And so I yelled once more for their attention. “Hold!” I cried. “I speak now to all of you, whether you be followers of the new god, or of the gods of Marack and Marack’s king. Know this: The war of Marack and of Ormon, Wimbely and Harris against the sky-lords, ‘has just begun. We of Marack will win this war. But the enemy’s still strong. I ask you all therefore to gather your belongings and to flee this city now. Warn your friends and neighbors to do likewise. The enemy will most certainly return to wreak such vengeance and destruction as to leave the house of neither friend nor foe still standing … Leave therefore. Leave now for the countryside. For those who would fight this enemy, why then I ask that you organize yourselves in bands and companies and under your chosen knights and lords. Do not seek us! When you are organized, we’ll come to you. I promise it! Now. I repeat. They’ll be coming shortly. We cannot prevent this. But we will return! And when we do, why I say to you that these sky-lords will be destroyed once and for alL … Put your trust in Ormon and Marack, vrho have never betrayed your’

  And they cheered us, all of them. There were no supporters of the Alphians now. Already, on the crowd’s fringes, people were running for the street exits to carry out our bidding.

  I then handed my sword and shield to Rawl, asked that he step back from me a bit, raised both my fists over my head— and gave the prearranged signal to Elioseen.

  At once our three students disappeared, to the ooohs and aaahs of the throng. I raised my fists again. Lors Sernas and Gen-Rondin vanished in a burst of golden light Again I raised my hands, and Sir Dosh was but a cloud of dust motes against the now billowing smoke from the untended torches. I then threw an arm around my sword-companion’s shoulders, gave one last wave—and fell into the blackness of an abyss which was uncomfortable, to say the least.

  I remained in the witches room of Elioseen just long enough for her to check Glagmaron Castle to see if Tarkiis was aware as to what had happened in the temple square. He wasn’t like the D.O. before him, he lacked perceptive abilities, had no experiences from which to draw and, having been conditioned to the limitations of arrogance, his ability to analyze anything was but a mishmash of non sequiturs: He was all-powerful; therefore none could stand against him; therefore none would ever try, etc., etc.

  I thought then to have a look in on the king and Melylys too, but Elioseen would have none of it.. She told me abruptly, and with some heat that it was obvious that I had little or no understanding of the price paid to do what she had done. She showed me—in the persons of those who’d participated in the three covens. They were listless, hardly conscious and with a wan and deathlike visage. It was as if the very life itself had been drained from them. And no wonder, when you think on it. They had participated in a matter-to-energy conversion process and back again; had even been forced to hold to their original package throughout the period, with all that that meant in complexities. In essence, it was not just the sound and its various tonal, vibratory qualities that did the job with the magnetic field. Another energy source was first needed to impose the sound at the right places and in a proper continuity—and to keep it there. This could only come from the humanoid body itself…. I had a lot to learn. I apologized sincerely.

  But all the while in the witches room, I’d felt strangely weary myself. It was a tiredness not shared by my comrades. They remained boisterous, loud and ebullient in our victory.

  I mentioned my condition to Rawl, saying, “Hey, old comrade, I’m strangely weary. When we’ve been released from the baths and the ministrations of our good chirurgeons, I’d ask you as a favor to see to it that I’m left alone to sleep through ‘till tomorrow morning—unless, of course, the enemy’s burning the castle around our ears.”

  He looked at me with a frowning concern. “I’m minded you’re cut” he said, “from that damned sky-lord’s blade, too. We’d best call Elioseen, for there may have been magick in it.”

  I shrugged. “Nay. If ‘twas from that blade, it would have taken me completely long before now.”

  But his eyes grew dark. The concern remained. He said curtly, “I’ll call her anyway.”

  “See to it,” I changed the subject, “that our own “sky-lord” from our little ship is accompanied on his rounds tomorrow by perhaps yourself and Sernas. And do not worry him too much,” I winked, “for, as you must know, he’s not of Fregis, and is somewhat fearful of our ways.”

  He grimaced at my mention of Sernas but agreed. He did, however, ask me of Kriloy which normally he would not do, respecting my private matters. He knew, I think, that I was really sick. … I explained what I could, finished with the suggestion that if anything did happen to me, he was to watch over Kriloy. “Because,” as I put it, “that poor lad’s a flatfish without an ocean….”

  It was in the room of the chirurgeons that I lost consciousness. I scarce remember even being there. All I can honestly swear to is that for some time I was aware only of dreams, one following another in time and space so that all that had ever happened to me again passed before my eyes. There then seemed to be a gray period. The dreams became fewer and mixed up; nothing ever really began or ended. And suddenly, with an accompanying chill to my sleeping spine, there was just nothing at all; only a twilight landscape that stretched away forever. It was a plain of sand, low loess hills at a distance of a mile, or maybe a thousand miles, then nothing…. Finally, even that grew faint, opaque.

  It was then, I think, that I knew I had left my body, but not quite. It was something, perhaps, like Hooli’s predicament of being betwixt and between. I was actually experiencing the act of dying, and knew it. It was not all that unpleasant. Indeed, the only shadow of unpleasantness was when Hooli showed up….

  This time his sense of humor was absolutely macabre, gauche. And since he forever chose to associate what he did, his various guises, his aping of this supposed character or that, his speech (with my voice), its idiom and the like, he was way off base. Indeed, he was even a might tacky, as it were.

  He came strolling across the sand plain in a monk’s black robe and carrying a monstrous scythe. He was Death, coming to get me. The apparition was so ghastly, so utterly terrifying under the circumstances—and mind you, I didn’t actually know it was Hooli—that he could easily have pushed me the final few millimeters over the edge. I was saved by the fact that at the very last moment I spotted the mortarboard on top of his cowl. Moreover, as he drew closer still, I was able to see inside the cowl and to note with some relief that he also had on his purple, heart-shaped glasses. He slowed, did a buck-and-wing, switched to a knee-knocking dance, and halted. Leaning directly into my line of vision, he yelled: “Heeeeeeyyyyy, Buuuuddyyy! What’s happenin’?”

  I took a deep breath. “You know what’s happening, you little bastard, or you wouldn’t be here.”

  “Not true.”

  “It is true.”

  “Well,” he asked, his little black eyes beaming behind Ml shades, “where do you think you are right now?”

  “Where else? Gortfin.”

  “Mais non, man petit.” Hooli shook his little fat head sorrowfully. “But you soon will be.” He reached out a small paw to touch me. He had the power, amongst other things, to rearrange every cell in one’s body; he could make you brand new again, from top to bottom—cure you of every disease.

  I couldn’t feel the actual touch. What I did feel was an instant, allover shock, plus the ensuing calm of a burgeoning peace and well-being. Moreover, I had the sudden presentiment that an approaching doom had somehow been avoided. I felt solid things again, such as a current of air against my face; the bulk of pillows behind my neck, head and shoulders; the warmth of bed furs and the actual flow of that sweet air into and out of my lungs.

  Beyond Hooli in his cowl and robe, I could now see a shadowy square of latticed window through which the rays of Fomalhaut I poured in beams of a million dancing dust motes.

&nbs
p; “Well,” I told him, intending to answer his first question, “here’s what’s happening. You ask a question, you get an answer. The way I see it, up to a few minutes ago, I was dead and on my way to that great ‘black hole’ in Cygnus III, to be refloobled and returned as a Farkelian white ape. As of now, however, and as anyone can plainly see, I’ve been returned to Gortfin Castle, courtesy of one, Hooli, the Universal Adjuster.

  “Now don’t go away,” I pleaded—he’d begun to fade somewhat. “And don’t wake me either, brown-bag. We’ve still some talking to do.”

  “Fire away.”

  He grew solid again while struggling out of the clumsy robe and cowl; careful to hold his mortarboard so it wouldn’t be crumpled in the process. His scythe had wavered and disappeared completely, a reaction, I think, to my unhappy reaction at the sight of it. Stripped of the robe, he now wore beach shorts, a webbed tank top and open-toed booties.

  “First question: When last we talked, you were supposedly caught in the gateway—in some four-dimensional taffy-stretch. Yet the Ferlachian Pug-Boo, Mool, distinctly winked at me with your eyes. What have you to say to that, plus the obvious fact that you are out of the gateway now?”