When First I Met My King: Book One in the Arthur Trilogy

by Harper Fox

  The sword sat so light in Lance’s hand that he scarcely had to exert strength to wield it. It did his bidding with no gap between thought and act, worked almost ahead of thought, leaping to block Art’s every move. Lance couldn’t have held him off otherwise. The sword was the answer: with Excalibur, he was immortal, could join Arthur’s forces and be worth something…

  Just as this happy thought struck him, Balana—who was not immortal—slipped and went down like a rockslide.

  Lance hit the ground first. A heartbeat later she fell on him, in a flail of legs and mane. The sword took flight. Pinned, winded, Lance watched it flash end over end and vanish off the edge of the crag.

  He minded, but not half so much as he minded having hurt the horse. Her knees and flanks were bloodied: he saw it in dazed flickers as she scrambled to her feet. “Poor beast! Poor beast!” he gasped, pushing up onto his knees and holding out a shaking hand to catch her reins. She was battle-hardened, trained not to leave a fallen man, but plainly she’d been put past patience—stood staring and blowing at him with such an expression of disbelief that he almost laughed. Then pain caught up with him, and he dropped back onto the rock.

  Art dismounted neatly. His weird fires were gone, quenched absolutely. Only the sweet-natured, sober lad remained. Quickly he caught Balana’s rein and stilled her. “Poor beast?” he echoed. “Poor Lance, I think. What a fall! Are you still alive?”

  Lance gave it thought. “Too stupid to die,” he said, looking at the surface of the outcrop around them. “We shouldn’t have fought here, Art. It’s like glass. But never mind me. The horse…”

  “The horse comes first,” Art finished for him, grimly. Gaius had appeared beside Arthur, expression unreadable, and taken the reins from his hands. Only then did Art come and crouch beside Lance. “She’s fine. They’re scratches, that’s all. You, however…” He ran both hands down Lance’s shin, glancing at him in wry admiration when he didn’t cry out. “If you were Balana, your outlook would be grim. That’s broken. Guy and I will set it for you.” He smiled pallidly. “At least, he will sit on you while I do it. Where’s your sword?”

  “Went over the crag. It doesn’t matter.” For the moment, it was true: Lance knew by now he’d gladly barter immortality for five minutes at the centre of Arthur’s regard.

  But Art’s face shadowed. “I’ll fetch it for you,” he said, and before either Guy or Lance could respond, had leapt to his feet and was running for the edge of the rock. “Guy, look after him!”

  Lance flipped over onto his stomach, oblivious to the sunburst of pain in his leg. He watched in horror as Art hesitated, assessing the drop, then slipped lithely over the precipice and vanished. “Gaius, stop him!” he gasped. “It really doesn’t matter. Gods—not that much, anyway!”

  “The sword from the lake?” Gaius roughly demanded. “It damn well should. As for stopping him…” He unfastened his cloak, took it off and dropped it on Lance without ceremony. “As for stopping him, you’ve surely seen by now how easy that is.” He gave Lance a look that made his face burn with shame. “You’ve been a big help, by the way.” Then he too was gone, leaving Lance almost too mortified to cover himself with the cloak.

  ***

  Climbing rocks. It had been the one game Guy could win against Art. At first all their contests had been easy: Guy was older and bigger, and angry enough not to give Art an inch on either count, no matter how hard Ectorius scolded him. Then the prince, the Pendragon’s son who could do no wrong, had fledged like an eagle, and overnight, it seemed to Guy, with a minimum of training, had become a natural expert in archery, swordfighting, horsemanship, all the arts of war in which Ector was having them trained. He hadn’t forgotten being crushed by the bigger boy, either, and Guy had suffered accordingly.

  For some reason, though, Guy remained better at scrambling up and down the cliffs that towered along Dumnonia’s coast. Brute strength, probably, he bitterly reflected, beginning his descent. Big limbs, harder to break than his royal highness’s: Art had grown into the length of his bones but would never be husky. Guy glanced down the crag and saw him making a decent job of negotiating the pitching, jagged slope, but as ever he was headstrong, not stopping to plan his route. Guy could see a better one. He steadied himself, undid his own sword belt lest the blade unbalance him, and sturdily began to scramble down.

  The sword was lodged tightly in a deep cleft between two massive outcrops of the ridge. Two scales of the dragon’s spine, Art thought, shuddering. It was cold down here, and damp, as if the sunlight had despaired of the place long ago. He wouldn’t have seen the hilt if it didn’t have a weird light of its own, if its spiral, didn’t seem to dance in the corners of his vision, then go still when he looked at them direct. But for all its gleaming and dancing, Art couldn’t reach it, not without a leap across four foot of empty space over a sickening drop.

  The sword was all Lance had. It was his pledge, his promise, from the Lady of the Lake, and he’d lost it through Arthur’s own fault. He had to try. Bracing himself to the rock, he glanced across the gap, swallowed hard and made ready to jump.

  “Arthur Pendragon! Don’t you bloody dare!”

  Art froze where he was. Guy was growing into his father’s voice, and that still had power to halt him in his tracks. He glanced up to the source of the roared-out command, and saw his foster brother making his way down toward him. The sight of him, the rugged solidity of his bearing, which for all his teasing Arthur secretly envied, made him feel like a child again, and he hated the tremor in his voice when he called out, “But the sword, Guy! We have to get it back for him!”

  “I know. I don’t think he’d want us to kill ourselves doing it, though. Stay where you are! There’s an easy way over from here.”

  Art frowned up into the distant, blazing sky. Was there? Ah, yes—an obvious one, too, if he’d bothered to look. Ectorius accused him sometimes of making things hard for himself on purpose, and he’d always denied it, but perhaps it was so. Certainly life tasted best to him when he was riding full-pelt against it. No old men or visions assaulted him then. He watched Guy step over the gap where it was only a big stride across, and begin to scramble down to the sword.

  He almost jumped anyway. His pride had been dented by Guy’s common sense, and it would be a coup to spring over the abyss and get there before him.

  Squinting, he looked up to see his brother’s expression. There was no malice there, no trace of triumph. There hadn’t been for years, he realised. Guy was just trying, as usual, to take care of him. He’d risked his neck in the process, too, and not for the first time—even the more sensible path he’d taken down the crag was fraught with danger. His homely face was concentrated with the effort of staying upright. Art felt a surge of affection for him, and began with care to make his way up to the safe path he’d been shown.

  “Damn thing’s stuck,” Guy observed as Art slithered down the last few feet of the scree to where he was sitting. “Blade’s gone clean down between these two rocks.”

  Arthur came to a halt and surveyed the scene. He rested one hand on his own sword hilt and ran the other through his hair, blowing out a puzzled breath. “How did he manage that?”

  “I don’t know, but I bet you he couldn’t do it again.”

  They broke into brief laughter. “I’m sorry, Guy,” Art said. “I picked the fight with Lance. He didn’t want it at all. And I just got carried away.”

  “You two are meant to be friends. That’s why I left you alone this afternoon—to use your diplomatic skills to persuade him to come with us tomorrow.”

  Their eyes met. Guy’s were tranquil, but didn’t hide a faint gleam. Arthur blushed like a rising sun. “We are friends. And, er... thanks.”

  “My pleasure. Come and help me try to shift this thing.”

  They both tried, Art clasping his hands round his brother’s on the hilt and lifting, first of all directly upwards, then leaning against the wall of rock to get some angle and purchase. Gaius gestured A
rt aside and tried it again by himself, bracing his thighs and pitting all his considerable muscle against the blade’s entrapment.

  But the sword was balanced there as if in a perfect-made scabbard of stone, as if it had grown in place. “Sorry, Bear,” Guy said, after another few efforts. “I think we might have to leave it.”

  Bear. Arthur smiled, eyes stinging. Guy hadn’t called him that since their arrival at Vindolanda, as if aware of the changes the place had wrought in him, the sudden scramble to adulthood. Why did the old name touch him so deeply now? Art couldn’t have said, except that some moments felt more than others like knife edges, like forks in the road when he knew that his path and Guy’s would divide unimaginably far, and he had grown to love him dearly. “All right,” he said roughly. “Thank you for trying. We’d better go and see to Lance.”

  He was turning away when the skies darkened. Guy was ahead of him: Art was tired, and only too willing now to follow his brother’s better idea of how to get back to the top. “Wait,” he said. “I have to try it again.”

  Guy shook his head. “I gave it all I had, and you’re two thirds the man I am. Don’t bother. It really is caught fast.”

  Had the light changed? Arthur shivered, and ran a hand over his eyes. No—the jagged patch of sky between the jaws of the rock above them was still diamond bright. The hairs on his nape prickled up. His eardrums popped as if he’d galloped too fast downhill. He’d scarcely known a day’s illness in his life, and couldn’t identify the horrible weakness undoing his joints, the cold sweat damping his spine and his palms, at the thought of leaving the weapon behind. Evading the hand Guy had put out to steady him, he went back.

  He took hold of it lightly, just beneath the guard. He didn’t brace to pull. There was no need. He simply stepped outside his flesh. He let all his bones turn to rock, breathed through lungs made out of the sweet north wind. He watched with the eyes of the sun, as the white-faced boy who was himself effortlessly pulled the sword from the stone.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “That’s ridiculous,” Guy said. “I must have slackened it. Put it back and let me try again.”

  Art stared at him, one disbelieving eyebrow on the rise. “You are kidding me, aren’t you?”

  “No, I really want to have another—”

  A tremor shook the ridge. Guy flung out both hands to stay upright. A baker’s dozen of ravens shot up from their nest-ledges into the blue. “Guy,” Art whispered, when the cawing and the shudder of the ground had ceased. “Take the sword back to Lance.”

  “Take it yourself. What was that?”

  “Can’t you hear it?”

  “Hear what?”

  “The song of the dragon. Uther tried to seize it—that inheritance, that old magic—but he could only ever pass it on. The song of the sacred earth.”

  “For pity’s sake.” Guy strode to catch him before he could drop. “Sit down. Put your head between your knees. Give me that wretched sword.”

  “You have to take it back to Lance, Guy.”

  “All right, all right. In a minute. Are you going to faint?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then sit still while I look at the crack in the rock.” Cradling the sword, Guy knelt to examine the place where the blade had been wedged—forever, he’d thought. “I don’t understand,” he said after a moment. “It’s gone. The whole surface here is in one piece, as if it...”

  “As if it healed itself?”

  “Yes, but that has to be nonsense.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Will you just take it up and give it back to him?”

  “Arthur, it’s yours,” Guy said harshly. His father had always made him swear not to burden the lad with the prophecies, but Art had ever been too bright and inquisitive for secrets to stay covered long in Ector’s small, ingenuous household. “You must know that.”

  Art turned on him. He was sweat-damped, shivering, and yet when his grey gaze met Guy’s, there was command in it. “Didn’t you hear me? I must rest here for a while. Take this sword and restore it to my friend.”

  Gaius climbed carefully, the sword tucked awkwardly through his belt. Occasionally he glanced down to see that Arthur was safe. After a while the boy began to follow, but slowly and at a distance, as if he didn’t yet want to emerge into the light.

  As he hauled himself over the edge, the beauty of this strange countryside seemed to strike Guy for the first time, with almost painful force. His focus had been on Arthur, on keeping him safe and returning him in one piece to Ectorius after each ride. The hills to the northeast caught his breath—endless, marked out in cloudshadows. Guy, not overly sensitive to landscape, was bemused by his sudden awakening now. The air smelled so sweet. It was as if the whole earth was silently laughing at him. He stood for a moment, distracted.

  Then he turned, and his heart dropped into his boots. Lance was there on the outcrop where he’d left him. Standing over him, complete with horse, weaponry and three tall grooms, was Sir Ector.

  ***

  “Inexcusable. Irresponsible, feckless, unjustifiable.”

  Lance tried to sit up. He’d been comfortably propped on the grooms’ saddlebags, given water and wine by Sir Ector’s own hands. He’d attempted several times to intervene, but to no avail so far. The old knight was punctuating each of his words with a poke at Guy’s chest with one forefinger. “Sir Ector,” Lance cried out in desperation. “It was my fault just as much as Art’s, and Guy’s fault not at all. I lost the sword, and Art knows what it means to me. He went to fetch it.”

  Ector spared him a glance. Then he swivelled back to face Guy. “Unforgivable!” Another poke, hard enough to rock sturdy Guy on his feet. “Hours past your time of return, and no sign of any of you. That sharp-eyed old priest it was who saw the flash of sword-blades up here, and raised the alarm. The Picts! A raid! The whole damn village up in arms, or hiding under their beds, according to their nature. I take to horse, and come up here like thunder with these good lads to rescue my sons and this prince from the jaws of the invader, and what do I find? Squabbling boys! My fine Balana with skinned knees, and...” He ran out of breath. After a moment he looked at Lance again. The life seemed to drain out of him. “The sword is lost?”

  Lance made one last effort. “It was I who hurt Balana,” he said. “Forgive me, Sir Ector—all this is down to me. As for the sword...”

  “I have it!” Guy interposed, his voice cracked and raw. “I have the sword, Father. Here, Lance—take it.”

  Sir Ector’s arm fell to his side. When he spoke again, he sounded like himself once more, but chastened and ashamed. “For God’s sake, Gaius. That’s good, but... where is my boy?”

  “On his way up, Father. He isn’t hurt.”

  Stiffly Lance took the blade from Guy. As soon as his fingers closed round the hilt, he felt the cold recede from his limbs, felt new life stir in him. He remembered the touch of a hand which had somehow come warm from the depths of the lough. “Thank you, Gaius. Had it fallen far?”

  Guy glanced nervously at his father, who nodded curt permission to proceed. “The strangest thing happened. The sword fell into a crevasse. I... I pulled it free.”

  Lance was a rotten liar, but Gaius was worse. Lance wondered if he’d ever before in his life told a deliberate untruth. He was bullfinch-red from his brow to the neckline of his shirt.

  Sir Ector, instead of exploding once more with rage, took him gently by the shoulders with both hands. “Is that what really happened, dear Guy?”

  “Yes, sir. I...”

  “Father Ector?”

  The whole group turned, Lance twisting round as far as he could to see. Arthur struggled back onto the crest. He was dishevelled and grazed, and looked as if the climb had taken the last of his strength. Nevertheless he lifted a hand to wave at them all, and flashed Guy a rueful, self-mocking smile.

  Guy closed his eyes in shame. “Father,” he said. “I am a vain fool. The sword was caught between two rocks. I tried and tried, but
could not pull it out. Then Arthur put one hand to it and lifted it free. The earth shook, and I heard a huge, strange voice singing, and now the sun shines more brightly than it did before. I don’t understand these things,” he finished humbly. “I told a lie. I wanted to be part of it all—this strangeness, this miracle—but I am not. Am I?”

  At Ector’s gesture, the grooms ran to help Art. Then the old man put his arms around his son. “Let me tell you what you are,” he said roughly, as Guy hid his face on his shoulder. “You are my Gaius, my firstborn. My good, brave boy.”

  Art stumbled over. He looked at his father and Guy in dismay, then dropped to his knees beside Lance. “Are you all right?”

  Before anyone could stop him, Lance pushed up: got onto one knee, using the sword as a dangerous prop. Once he was steady, he held it out to Art. “This is yours,” he said. “Your brother knows it, and your father too. The very earth knows it, Arthur. Take your own.”

  He held on for long enough to see in Arthur’s eyes the scared child, who’d fled his destiny at every turn and been run to ground at last on these northern moors, on the dragon’s spine, bow his head and let the cloak of adulthood descend upon his shoulders. In unbreathing silence they shared the knowledge of how much that garment would weigh—how magnificent it was, how crushing, how impossible to remove. A shudder passed through Arthur, a last flash of grief and rebellion, and then he reached to take the sword.

  It was done, and Lance, knowing his duty discharged, dropped back to the rock, the grey edge of a faint threatening his vision. The day became ordinary. Art, promptly practical, shoved the sacred blade into his old sword’s scabbard. “Quick,” he said, glancing up at his father and Guy. “Let’s get that leg set while he’s too weak to fight us off.”