"We marched through that miserable town," Severus says with a pained and irate expression. "You saw us. Everyone saw us. Why did you not greet us?"
Hannes leans heavily on his staff to stay upright. "Chores." Not knowing what else to say, he finally blurts, "Only the high king may reside here. In Camelot." Hannes shrugs weakly as if he cannot help this immutable fact. "Everyone knows that."
"Yet, here I am." The warlord opens his bloused arms in a graceful gesture. "Does it follow, Merlin—I must be the high king?"
Hannes swallows hard and says aloud what Merlin has obliged him to say: "You will have to draw the sword then. From the stone."
"Bah!" Syrax's dark, Persian face sharpens spitefully. "We'll have none of that nonsense, Merlin. I have forged a coalition with most of the families. Only Marcus Domnoni has refused my entreaties. At your command, he will fall into line."
"At my command?" Hannes speaks with genuine surprise, the warlord's anger making him forget for the moment who he is supposed to be.
"Don't play the fool with me, wizard. You've jerked the strings of these marionettes for fifteen years now, denying Britain a leader while you play your puppet games with warlords and chieftains alike. That is finished." He leans far forward, eyes black flames. "I tell you, I have the allegiance of the families. And Bors Bona has thrown in with us. You will command Marcus Domnoni to obey—and you will do the same for the Celtic chieftains."
Flustered, Hannes shakes his head with dismay, dumbfounded.
"If you refuse, Merlin, there will be war."
"No—no war." His voice sounds dwarfed by the thunder of his heart. Again, he states Merlin's command, "Draw the sword from the stone. That is the challenge."
"That is your magic, sorcerer. You decide who pulls Excalibur. You are the maker of kings. You made Pendragon. You can make me." He sits back slowly, anthracitic eyes lazy. "If not—war."
Hannes feels that frightful word go through his robes into his bones. His shudder stiffens to anger at Merlin for putting him in this dangerous position where the lives of so many innocents hang in the balance. Emboldened by that anger, he begins again, "I can make you into a rat, too. I might prefer that, Syrax."
"Oh?" Severus's thin eyebrows hover. "You do realize, should anything unfortunate happens to me, Bors Bona will sweep over this land like a storm of fire, and your precious Camelot will be ruins before it is built."
Shivery fear drains Hannes's strength, and he sways with the weakness of his knees. What magic would Merlin work? He considers for a split second putting the warlord to sleep, and his guards as well, and having them all hauled out to wake up in the fields where they belong.
But then, what of Bors Bona? If there is war, it will be on Hannes's head. The very thought leaves his bones feeling like rotten wood.
In his fright, he is somehow reminded of his long years as a master builder and how he used to tame warlords who came to him with their brutal demands. And a broad smile slowly pleats his whiskered face. Of course! There is a special magic he learned on his own, long ago, a magic that could move the heaviest heart in moments: flattery.
"I admire your courage, Syrax," Hannes declares. "And your cunning. I daresay, your actions today have convinced me of your destiny. If now you can behave with the forethought and dignity of a monarch, you shall soon have your prize."
Severus Syrax tilts his head suspiciously. "What are you saying, Merlin?"
"The legend, Syrax." His voice swells with newfound confidence. "You must fulfill the legend. You realize, of course, that you cannot win the Celts and Duke Marcus by force. They are people with largeness of heart. Why do you think I set the sword in the stone as a challenge? To capture men's hearts. Seize that, mighty lord, and you will not need force."
The warlord's dark eyes narrow. "You will arrange for me to draw Excalibur from the stone?"
"That is the only way to assert authority without resort to arms. You must fulfill the legend. And I will help you. But it must be done properly. Most properly."
"What do you mean?"
"Marcus, Bors, Kyner, and Urien have yet to arrive." Hannes steps closer, his certainty brightening something deep inside his stare. "When they do, and the festivities have been enacted, then you shall have your chance to draw Excalibur—and I will see that the legend is fulfilled."
"Good." Severus Syrax lifts his forked beard in approval. "You are a reasonable old wizard after all, Merlin."
"Britain needs a king." Hannes nods with complicity. The hook baited and set; now, to pull him to where he belongs. "Of course, for now you cannot possibly stay here. Only after the sword is drawn may the high king enter this place."
"Naturally," the warlord readily agrees, nodding his coiffed head. "We don't want to inspire suspicions of collusion, do we?"
Hannes smiles, sealing their shared understanding. "We shall tell everyone that you have entered to inspect the construction. I shall extend that right to the other lords, so there is no jealousy."
Syrax rises and steps toward Hannes. "Fine, Merlin, fine." He squints his hooded eyes. "You look less frightful than last we met. They say you are a shapeshifter. I only pray that your word does not shift—for then, many will suffer."
Hannes's wide smile does not flicker. "I assure you, Severus Syrax—Merlin will keep his word."
Chapter 13: Wise Dog
In the dark forest of Crowland, Merlin and Master Sphenks follow Arthor and Fen from a distance. The sun hangs its prisms in the wet canopy so that the high branches glitter like a pelt of stars. On the forest floor, a dense labyrinth of root-buttresses and honeysuckle shrubs crowd the lanes among the trees, slowing the travelers. Jackdaws holler from boughs above deepening drifts of slant light. A scent of violets shoots past on a curl of wind, and milkweed tufts flow in cloudy streams through the leafshadows.
Ahead, an oak has collapsed, and the riders dismount to walk their steeds over it. At the moment Arthor and Fen begin clambering over the obstacle, frenzied screams explode from all sides, startling the horses. A half dozen maniacs—roving plunderers who ambush travelers for their coin and the thrill of killing—drop from the trees and fly out of the underbrush, rat-hair braids lashing, axes and daggers hacking.
Instantly, Fen leaps atop the log, hoping to mount his horse from there and fly from the killers. But his steed has jumped the fallen oak and clops away in a panic. Arthor's mount, too, has broken away, disappearing among the shrubs. The youth has no shield or helmet as Short-Life sings from its scabbard.
"A knife!" Fen calls, signaling Arthor to throw him the dagger sheathed in his boot cuff. Arthor pays him no heed, and the Saxon fetches about for a tree limb or a rock to defend himself.
There is nothing, and he jumps down from the log and crouches, prepared to grapple bare-handed with the attackers.
Arthor whirls the Bulgar saber from hand to hand, cutting the shadows with a sound like the north wind. His boyish face has set to a somber vigilance that hides the fury rising in him. He wants this. To drink blood with Kyner's saber flushes him with crazed desire, and he answers the shrieks of the brigands by releasing a wild war whoop that sets his bare-shouldered body dancing with the naked blade.
Blood flies like sparks, and the two nearest bandits collapse in a flurry of limbs and arterial spray. Arthor prances over them, ducks, leaps, skips, and—gyrating like a man gone mad—screeches a weird, killing laugh as he exposes himself to the enemy's steel, luring them into the blunt range of his blurred weapon. With the hollow thump of meat, another plunderer strikes the earth, hands tangled in his bowels.
Fen has never seen such beautiful frenzy, such controlled annihilation, not even among the berserkers. This boy kills with hideous ecstasy. The Saxon kneels in awe, breath stalled.
Three ax-men, wild at the deaths of their comrades, converge on Arthor. The death-dancer spins, driving them back, then stops cold, the short blade limp in his slick hand, and waits. Chin tucked, he grins mirthlessly, a boy amused at their fear. His amusement i
nfuriates them, and they lunge.
Arthor slashes. One bandit staggers back, vomiting blood, a second holds up wrist stumps and sags under the twin geysers of his spilled life. The third and last of the killers flees. He leaps over a flat rock and dwindles into a cypress alley.
With a defiant cry, Arthor hurls Short-Life so that it hits the flat rock whirling, caroms, and wings after the fleeing man. It strikes him between the shoulder blades and severs his spine.
The Saxon can only blow out his astonishment, empting his lungs in awe. How the boy's killing genius inspires him! He scrambles forward and, almost without thinking, seizes an ax from the spasmed hand of a dead brigand.
"Arthor," he calls out, wanting this remarkable youth to see his death, to know it and to know, too, that it is Fen of the Thunderers who slays him.
Arthor turns slowly, and his amber eyes lid heavily, recognizing his blunder.
"You are a great slayer of men," Fen tells him consolingly. "I will wear your hair on my sword belt with pride."
Expertly, Fen flings the ax at his foe with mortal force, so accurately that Arthor instantly sees there is no merciful inch of escape or even hope of a glancing wound, that there is no alternative at all but to meet ravaging death with a raw grimace.
Master Sphenks spurts through the trees. The small animal leaps, cleverly catches the hurtling ax helve in its jaws, and rolls to a tumbling mass at Arthor's feet. Without blinking, the young warrior snatches the ax from the ground and rushes forward.
Furiously, Fen reels around in a desperate attempt to flee but collides with the old gleeman, who has come huffing behind his dog up the trail. Before Fen can struggle free of the man's bony grasp, Arthor seizes him by his hair and yanks him upright.
The Saxon thrashes about briefly, intent on savaging the youth, and instead takes a blow between the eyes from the blunt end of the ax. The impact sits him down in a spray of hot stars.
"Kill him!" the gleeman cries. "Kill the heathen murderer!"
"No!" Arthor commands. "Get the horses."
"The horses?" The old man slaps the side of the Saxon's head. "Did you not see? This snake tried to kill you! If not for the magic of Master Sphenks..."
"If not for a carnival dog trick, I would be worm meat now." Arthor levels a cold look at the stranger. "Get the horses."
The gleeman blinks with disbelief. "And that's all the gratitude you have for the ones who saved your life? Just, get the horses?"
The young man does not answer. His pale flesh shines with the gloss of his exertion, and his roseate cheeks glow, flushed. Yet the soft contours of his fifteen-year-old face belie the hard stare in his grim eyes. "I have no gratitude for this life."
The gleeman steps back, astonished to realize that the boy is serious. As the wizard Merlin, he had assiduously avoided the child, blocking him even from his thoughts, fearing that enemies—Morgeu the Fey, demons, the Furor—would find Arthor and kill him. Now he wonders with cold despair if his neglect has killed the boy's spirit.
The old man shakes his head sadly as he wades through gilly grass with Master Sphenks. He avoids using magic to call the horses. Even at the crucial moment when Fen's flung ax threatened the future king, the wizard restricted his power to the wise dog. The radiance of magic throws long shadows that the dark entities will recognize. Until he reaches Camelot, the boy's best protection from the malefic forces dedicated to his destruction is his anonymity.
Merlin returns with the horses, with Master Sphenks standing atop one of the saddles, and they find Arthor laboriously breaking the axes and daggers of the dead brigands. Fen sits against the fallen oak, glowering morosely, his hands tied together by his boot cords.
When Arthor is done and stands sparkling with wrathful exhaustion, Merlin comes up beside him. "What is the name of the soul my impetuous wise dog has detained so unhappily in this world?"
Arthor pauses to retrieve his saber before answering. "What does my name name?" he asks wearily, then shrugs. "I am Aquila Regalis Thor—Arthor—ward of Chief Kyner." He hefts the Bulgar blade. "This is Kyner's sword, Short-Life, by which I am charged to return his hostage—this Saxon, named Fen—to Aelle, chief of the Thunderers."
"You are so young," the wizard says, and Master Sphenks leaps from the saddle with the strap of a water flagon in its jaws. "You can't have seen more than fifteen summers."
Arthor accepts the flagon from the wise dog with a tight smile and drinks. He stares closely at the old man, scrutinizing the long, sallow skull and huge sockets, like the ossature of a great ape, holding mineral eyes cloudy as quartz. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, and replies, "I am old enough for Kyner to send away into the world—and young enough to have blundered and grown no older if your little acrobat had not interfered." He passes the flagon to the gleeman. "I am certain that Kyner, who set me this mission to preserve the peace of his people, thanks you."
Merlin demurs with a mischievous slant to his eyes. "It is not I your chief must thank, young Arthor, but Master Sphenks."
Arthor bends down. "Then my master thanks you, wise dog, for saving the life of his dog."
Master Sphenks sits back and extends one leg straight out in salute.
"One dog to another." Arthor laughs and returns the salute. "You are welcome to journey with me to Hammer's Throw, old man—and your dog, too—though what lies ahead is dangerous."
"What lies here is no less dangerous." Merlin glances at the dead brigands hazed in flies. "We will travel in your protection."
With Fen and Master Sphenks on one horse, Merlin rides behind Arthor on the palfrey and listens deeper into the youth, hearing all the sorrows that have shaped him. They are the oldest illusions among men—pride, shame, vanity, and anger: the pride of blood denied by the shame of lowly birth, the vanity of nobility, and the angry bitterness of its lack.
If this furious soul were not himself Celtic elite, a proud warrior's soul, perhaps the boy could have seized satisfaction as the chief's beloved ward, his most-favored servant. Instead, he rankles at the commands of others, knowing in his pith a wider design to his destiny.
This reluctance to serve disturbs the wizard. He wants to warn the boy: Self-importance is a dangerous dream. When the delusion of conceit breaks, one feels that the weight of the past smothers the future, when in truth the world lies waiting for anyone humble enough to separate wish from reality and serve what is. But this truth cannot be spoken and be understood.
"There is a trail in that direction." Merlin points through the congested trees. "A bypath that leads to the glades and beyond to the hamlet of Apple Garth. We can rest the horses and take supper there."
"You do not speak as gruffly as the common gleemen I've heard at the bean feasts," Arthor observes, guiding his horse onto the bypath. "You speak fair Latin."
"Oh, I have served kings," Merlin admits, telling Arthor of the king of Cos without mentioning that the man was, in fact, the boy's grandfather. He relates a few of the adventurous tales of life in that perilous court before the Picts destroyed Cos and his castle.
In a merrier tone and caught up in a loquacious mood, Merlin then discourses on King Cole, the current monarch of the east coast at Camulodunum, who has held on to his throne not by fighting his enemies, the Angles, but by taming them with hemp pipes and bowls of mead, and organizing them into drunken orgies of fiddling and dancing.
"You served as jester for King Cole?" Arthor asks idly.
"Indeed. Would not that life appall this Saxon?" The gleeman sneers at their glowering prisoner. "I judge from his harsh silence that his people consider hemp, mead, and fiddle music no substitute for spilled blood and stolen land."
Later, as the riders enter the glades, the land itself answers for Fen, for Apple Garth lies in ruins. Scaly black posts alone remain standing above weeds that flourish from the ashes of the burned village. Scattered bones and skulls of the unburied dead bloom here and there with wildflowers.
Arthor unties Fen's wrists and pushes him off th
e horse. "Bury them," he orders.
Fen stares up dazed from where he has fallen.
"Use your hands," Arthor tells him, "and cover all these bones with dirt. Do it, or I will cut out your bowels."
Master Sphenks carries a bone to the Saxon and sits waiting for him to cover it.
"Go ahead, cut out my bowels," Fen challenges. "Kill me! I'll not honor these dead things."
Arthor shrugs. Bare-chested and sandy-haired, he looks like Fen's clansman as he stands over him and ties the Saxon's wrists together again. He helps Fen mount, and Master Sphenks hops onto the withers. They ride on, leaving the bones behind. The glade returns to the dark green corridors of the forest.
Presently, Merlin speaks from where he rides behind him: "You knew he would choose death. Why did you taunt him?"
"I wanted him to sit beside himself for a moment."
The gleeman barks a laugh. "Chief Kyner will be proud of you."
"I will not see Kyner again," Arthor answers coolly. "After Fen is returned to his people, I owe nothing more to the Celts. I will go my own way."
"Your own way?" Merlin speaks with thick incredulity. "What hope for one so young in this ruthless world?"
"They have hope who have nothing else."
"You quote Thales. Surely, Chief Kyner educated you well. Why are you leaving him, then? What better lord could you find?"
"No lord at all, gleeman," Arthor answers flatly "All lords ape greatness. The history scrolls teach us to admire them—Alexander first of all and then the Roman conquerors. But are they great? I say their greatness is vulgar."
"You do?" Merlin chuckles dryly. "What then, young Arthor, do you conceive as greatness?"
"For me, greatness is nature, God's creation. Balance that against history, I say. Beauty and goodness belong to God and His creation. The Greeks knew that. They built the city, the polis, in nature, each city responsible for its own place—until Alexander, who conquered it all, imposed one law, his law, and made it an empire."
The Eagle and the Sword (The Perilous Order of Camelot Book 2) Page 13
